“There are those who wish to challenge the Full Authenticity and Infallibility/ Inerrancy of the Scriptures. Unfortunately, some “Christian” denominations don’t even hold God’s Word in the highest esteem. What are ways to address these positions?”
What is a true church?
1) One that holds to Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior,
2) One that holds to the gospel as true,
3) One that submits to an authoritative Bible.
The Reformed confessions emphasized three foundations for the true church:
1) The gospel is preached,
2) The sacraments are served in fundamental integrity, and 3) Discipline is exercised.
But if you boil all these marks of the true church down it amounts to this:
The Word of God is received as authoritative and it is obeyed.
1) For in the Bible we find the gospel, and how to preach it;
2) we find the sacraments and how to serve them;
3) and the standard by which we exercise discipline.
Receiving the Bible as the Authoritative Word from God is essential to the true church.
The God behind the inerrant, infallible, authoritative Bible is the foundation of the Church. So, to say a church is biblical is redundant. Every true church accepts the Bible as our standard of truth. Francis Schaeffer called this the watershed issue of the church.
So if a church claims to be a true church yet denies the Word of God and refuses to submit to it; they are a false church.
Many churches, that we call liberal, have denied the authority of the Bible and the wisdom of the historic confessions.
If the Word of God does not lead them, what is their authority? If it is not Theonomy (God’s law), it is autonomy, (self law). The spiritual battle that is being waged all around us is between God’s Word and wisdom and fallen man’s word and wisdom.
PCUSA, out of which the PCA came, had 4.25 million members in 1965. Today they have just under 1.2 million. They lost more than 3 million members. Today, 69% of their members are 50 or older and 40% of their churches have less than 50 members. The PCA has more infant baptisms than the PCUSA, even though we are 1/3 their current size.
If the church doesn’t stand on the Bible, they stand with the culture. If that is true, why do we need the church?
In 1958 J. I. Packer wrote, “Fundamentalism” and the Word of God.”
“We have to choose whether we will accept the biblical doctrine of Scripture as it stands or permit ourselves to refashion it according to our fancy. We have to choose whether to embrace the delusion that human creatures are competent to judge and find fault with the words of their Creator or whether to recognize this idea for the blasphemy that it is and drop it. We have to decide whether to carry through our repentance on the intellectual level or whether we shall still cherish our sinful craving for a thought-life free from the rule of God. We have to decide whether to say that we believe the Bible and mean it or to say it and look for ways whereby we can say it without having to accept all the consequences.
“If the human mind is set up as the measure and test of truth, it will quickly substitute for man’s incomprehensible Creator a comprehensible idol fashioned in man’s own image; man wants a god he can manage and feel comfortable with and will inevitably invent one if allowed. He will forget (because he cannot understand) the infinite gulf that separates the Creator from his creatures and will picture to himself a god wholly involved in this world and wholly comprehensible (in principle, at any rate) by the speculative intellect…. Once people reverse the proper relationship between Scripture and their own thinking and start judging biblical statements about God by their private ideas about God, instead of vice versa, their knowledge of the Creator is in eminent danger of perishing and with it the whole idea of supernatural religion.”
What are the reasons that we believe that the Bible is the Word of God?
Honesty – its heroes are exposed as sinners. David, Moses.
Preservation – We still have it, and it is accurate. “Down through the years it’s been ridiculed, burned, refuted, destroyed, but it lives on. It is the anvil that has worn out many hammers. Most books are born, live a few short years, then go the way of all the earth; they’re forgotten. But not the Bible.”
The Bible claims to be the Word of God.
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness. (2 Timothy 3:16)
Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation of things. For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. (2 Peter 1:20-21)
And we also thank God continually because, when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human word, but as it actually is, the word of God, which is indeed at work in you who believe. (1 Thessalonians 2:13)
Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction. (2 Peter 3:15-16)
Every word of God is flawless; he is a shield to those who take refuge in him. Do not add to his words, or he will rebuke you and prove you a liar. (Proverbs 30:5-6)
Jesus said, “Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth.” (John 17:17)
Miracles – like the resurrection.
Unity – Written by many authors over many years. “Billy Graham writes: “The Bible was written by 40 writers, over a period of 1,600 years, in 66 books. And the great theme from one end of the Bible to the other is redemption.”
Accuracy – historical and geographic. “(The Bible) accurately recording the past, accurately interpreting the present, and accurately predicting the future.
Christ endorsed it.
Predictive prophecy.
The uniqueness, power, and magnitude of its teaching.
Hebrews, 4:12, it says: “For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.”
Power to change lives. The blessings to those who accept it.
But only the Holy Spirit can convince us that the Bible is the Word of God.
Westminster Confession of Faith 1:5
5. We may be influenced by the testimony of the church to value the Bible highly and reverently, and Scripture itself shows in so many ways that it is God’s word; for example, in its spiritual subject matter, in the effectiveness of its teaching, the majesty of its style, the agreement of all its parts, its unified aim from beginning to end (to give all glory to God), the full revelation it makes of the only way of man’s salvation, its many other incomparably outstanding features, and its complete perfection. However, we are completely persuaded and assured of the infallible truth and divine authority of the Bible only by the inward working of the Holy Spirit, who testifies by and with the word in our hearts.10
10. 1 Tm 3.15, 1 Jn 2.20,27, Jn 16.13-14, 1 Cor 2.10-12, Isa 59.21, 1 Cor 2.6-9.