Question: How can we be so sure that the Bible is the Word of God?
Question: How can we be so sure that the Bible is the Word of God, when there are so
many other holy books that claim to be God’s Words?
Pastor Bill responds (pt. 1):
This is an important question, because the very first vow for membership in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church is “Do you believe the Bible, consisting of the Old and New Testaments to be the Word of God, and its doctrine of salvation to be the perfect and only true doctrine of salvation?” This commitment was the primary reason the OPC came into existence in 1936, and it remains the hallmark of the OPC’s doctrinal commitments: The Bible IS the Word of God, and it - and it alone - is our final authority in all matters of faith and practice.
But how do we know the Bible is the Word of God? Ultimately, that conviction only comes as the Holy Spirit works that faith in our hearts (I Cor. 2:9,10). But that’s true of everything we believe that comes from God! The Holy Spirit must open our hearts and teach us because, by nature, we are dead in trespasses and sins, and we suppress the truth in our own unrighteousness, cf. Eph. 2:1, Rom. 1:18)
However, when the Holy Spirit opens our hearts by the power of God’s grace, we
see the Bible as we never saw it before:
• We’re struck with the fact that over 2000 times in the Old Testament alone, i.e. the 39 books written between about 1425 and 425 years before Christ was born and that point us forward to His coming, we read “Thus says the Lord…”
• The New Testament confirms what we call the “inspiration” of the Old Testament when the apostle Paul says, “All Scripture is given by the inspiration of God (literally, “God breathed out”) and is profitable…that the man of God might be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work” (II Timothy 3:16,17). And the apostle Peter says that the Scriptures did not come by the will of man, “but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (II Peter 1:21)
• Jesus Himself frequently described his life and ministry as “to fulfill what the Lord had spoken…”, eg. Matthew 1:22f, 2:15, 17, etc.
• Jesus clearly taught that the Old Testament words came from God himself, e.g. Matthew 19:4,5.
And the Bible (unlike other “holy books”) shows itself to be the Word of God.
We’ll look at that next week.