Beliefs about the Bible that keep my foundation grounded.
If I had more room to write a longer title to this post I would have said something like this: What I am convinced a person who follows Jesus needs to believe about the Bible in order to keep their lives on a solid foundation, and to keep the forces of deconstruction at bay. I suppose it’s a bit of a mouthful, but it gets my point across well enough.
The Bible is where I find and hear the words of Jesus that keep me steady in the chaos of a fallen world (Mat 7:24-27). And I also believe it has been the source of sanity that has kept me from being colonized by the insanity of the surrounding culture. What Paul describes as escaping the captivity of the world and staying firm in the faith (Col 2:7-8). Whether it’s the desire for cultural acceptance, political division, general cynicism and apathy, or any other spirit that seeks to take us captive, the Bible has been like a beefed up defense system that keeps sweaty Uruk-hai ladders off my walls and steels the spine of the coward within.
So here’s what I believe about the Bible, and it’s what I also think you should believe too. And just so we’re clear, this is not something I came up with. This is what most Christians throughout church history have believed about the Bible. This is dusty old truck doctrine. Nothing new or fancy going on here.
First, the Bible is authoritative. It is the very Word of God. Thus saith the Lord is the old school way of phrasing it. Contained in the 66 books of the Bible, written by men inspired by the Holy Spirit, is the prophetic voice of God revealing himself and his will to humanity (2 Pt 1:19-21).
Believing in the authority of scripture necessarily knocks over another domino. Affirming that the Bible has an authority outside of myself means I also must affirm that it is true outside myself. The bible does not have authority over our lives because we decide it does. Just like truth doesn’t exist because we agree it exists. It just exists. And so we are either in submission to the truth of scripture or we are in rebellion to it. It’s like tripping over a tree root on a hike. It does me no good to deny the tree root exists.
This is not offensive to the Jesus follower because his words are the words of life (Jn 6:63). Jesus’ words may be hard and challenging. I might stumble over them at times. But following the voice of the Great Shepherd always leads to green pastures and still waters (Ps 23).
The Bible is also inherent and infalible. This means that there is no mistake or misspeak in the scriptures. The Bible is without error. That means there are no contradictions or dissonant notes in the Bible, only harmonies we’ve yet to hear clearly.
This is ultimately rooted in the doctrine of God, that he is perfect and without error. And so if I get up and preach an egg of a sermon that contains an erroneous interpretation of the text, the problem is not with the text, it’s with me. It’s not that the word is fallible. It’s that I am fallible.
The Bible is sufficient. This is a big one. This means that the Bible contains sufficient knowledge of salvation and is able to make us wise and complete servants of God. We don’t need other sources of human wisdom to know God and obey his will. We just need the Bible. This isn’t to say you shouldn’t read other things, like the manual to your string trimmer. But the belief in the sufficiency of scripture does mean that you don’t need Bill Nye the science guy to fact check the Bible’s claim that God made the world in 6 days.
The Bible is also alive (Heb 4:12). The Bible is not simply ink on a thinned out dead tree written by old dead men. The Bible contains the living word of God that when read produces an effect on the listeners (Is 55:11). God’s Spirit makes the words, in a sense, jump off the page. And its effect is either repulsive to those perishing or enchanting to those being saved (2 Cor 2:16).
There’s a lot more that could be said about the Bible. And I bet you could list out a few more important beliefs about God’s word. But at the end of the day I believe the most important truth about the Bible is that it communicates the love of God. As the old children's song says, “Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” That’s what I want my daughters to take away from the Bible, and that’s what I want you to as well.