The Next Chapter - Taking God at His Word, Ch 7

Christ's Unbreakable Bible, ch 7

Ch 7 answers the question, "What did Jesus believe about the Bible?" This one seems like a no-brainer, at first, but resides at the core of a struggle that many people face in dealing with the Bible. There are those who think Jesus, at times, corrects the Scriptures. There are others who believe Jesus nullifies some passages. There are even more who think along the lines of, "I put more weight on the red letters in the Bible. Those are the words of Jesus! The others are written by men." There are even folks who believe the Old Testament has no spiritual value or application for believers today, even though it is the only Scripture quoted by Jesus and the writers of the New Testament.  

This can cause some to pay closer attention to some parts of Scripture while discounting others, believing such fallacies as, "Some Scripture is written to non-believers and does not pertain to believers." While it's true, there is Scripture written about non-believers, all Scripture is written to believers (2 Tim 3:16-17).  It is truth to us, revealed by the Holy Spirit who is in us, and not in unbelieving people (Rom 8:7-11). Another fallacy is that there are Scriptures that have no spiritual or eternal value to us as New Testament believers. All of these false teachings fly in the face of the above passage in 2 Tim, which claims that all Scripture is "breathed out" (inspired) by God, certainly referring to the Old Testament, as those words were written in AD 62, but encompassing the books the the New Testament as well. 

DeYoung refers to the words of Christ in the gospels to prove that Jesus' exceptionally high view of Scripture, all Scripture, is proven by the things He said and by the way He interacted with the Scriptures. 

In John 10:35-36, Jesus says, "Scripture cannot be broken", referring to a single word in an obscure Psalm, affirming its authenticity as a word given by God, through men. To paraphrase, Jesus is saying, "No word of Scripture can be invalidated or nullified." All the promises, blessings, threats and statements in the Bible are, as the Jews correctly believed, the actual words of God.

In Mt 5:17-19, Jesus not only teaches that the word will not pass away, but includes every "iota and dot", chastising those who teach anything less. Iota is the smallest letter in the Greek alphabet and dots are very tiny hooks or markings setting one Hebrew letter apart from others. Jesus constantly maintains the veracity of Scripture down to the dotting of i's and crossing of t's. 

Furthermore, we may find there are times when Christ brings greater clarity to Scripture, but there are never times when He corrects a verse that has been rightly interpreted. Jesus can be pretty harsh on those who wrongly interpret the Bible (Mt 23:23), but never nullifies a correct interpretation.

Jesus acknowledges and affirms the historical accuracy of the Bible (Mt 12:38-42), speaking of Jonah and the Queen of Sheba in the same breath. 

DeYoung says, "Jesus may have seen Himself as the focal point of Scripture, but never as a judge of it." For Jesus, what the Bible says is what God says. His trust in the Scriptures is so complete, He boldly proclaims them in the throes of His two greatest trials, the temptation and the cross.

Ultimately, what we see in Jesus is that He "...submitted His will to the Scriptures, committed His brain to studying the Scriptures and humbled His heart to obey the Scriptures."

Can we do any less? For a lot of folks, it's easy to embrace those parts of the Bible we like and ignore those parts we are uncomfortable with. How would our walk and spiritual health change if we tried, as hard as we could, to embrace all of them as the infallible, inerrant word of God?