Originally posted on 4.17.20
Nothing is more important to God than His Word (Psalms 138:2). Therefore, that should be our own estimation of it. Receiving the message of the Bible should be the paramount purpose of our lives.
God’s Word is on par with Himself (John 1:1). Even on a human level, a person’s word is equivalent to that person. So, to despise any person’s word is to despise that person. In the same way, to honor a person’s word is to honor that person. For a child to disobey its parent’s word is to disobey the parent. When Adam and Eve disobeyed the Word of God, they disobeyed God. Though the command regarding the forbidden fruit may seem inconsequential to someone, disobedience to the command was the worst thing that Adam and Eve could have done. In disobeying the Word of God, they despised God.
The Bible is the revealed will of God to us. We have no clearer means to know God’s will than by what is recorded in its pages. Hence, there is no greater way to obey or to disobey God. The Word of God is paramount to our relationship with, and understanding of, God. All things that we can know specifically about God are revealed to us in His Word. We wouldn’t even know His name apart from His Word. We wouldn’t know how to obtain remission of sins or that we could receive His Spirit were not these things revealed in God’s Word. This should give us some sense of why the Word of God is most important to Him and why nothing should be more important to us than the Word of God.
To study the Bible is to come to profoundly believe its authorship is divine. As we begin to grasp its remarkable content, it becomes impossible to believe otherwise. It is a phenomenal, cohesive book that sets forth the gracious redemption of the human race by a loving and compassionate God. To the person who is not closed-minded and will learn its message, the Bible proves itself to be the Word of God, though penned by men. I think it was Matthew Henry that said, “No man knows enough to assail the truthfulness of either Testament”.
The Bible is the mind of God and, therefore, will be challenging at times for us to understand. J.I. Packer offers some helpful advice here: “God, then, does not profess to answer in Scripture all the questions that we in our boundless curiosity would like to ask about Scripture. He tells us merely as much as He sees we need to know as a basis for our life of faith. And He leaves unsolved some of the problems raised by what He tells us in order to teach us a humble trust in His veracity. The question, therefore, that we must ask ourselves when faced with these puzzles is not, “Is it reasonable to imagine that this is so?”, but, “Is it reasonable to accept God’s assurance that this is so? Is it reasonable to take God’s Word and believe that He has spoken the truth even though I cannot fully comprehend what He has said?” The question carries its own answer. We should not abandon faith in anything God has taught us merely because we cannot solve all the problems which it raises. Our own intellectual competence is not the test and measure of divine truth. It is not for us to stop believing because we lack understanding, but to believe in order that we may understand.”
There may be ground to doubt the Bible as being the Word of God if it didn’t offer challenges to our finite minds.