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Long For Truth: <div id="Title">Why the Authority of Scripture Matters</div>

Sunday, August 3, 2014

Why the Authority of Scripture Matters



1. God, who is Himself truth and speaks truth only, has inspired Holy Scripture in order thereby to reveal Himself to lost mankind through Jesus Christ as Creator and Lord, Redeemer and Judge. Holy Scripture is God’s witness to Himself.

2. Holy Scripture, being God’s own Word, written by men prepared and superintended by His Spirit, is of infallible divine authority in all matters upon which it touches: it is to be believed, as God’s instruction, in all that it affirms; obeyed, as God’s command, in all that it requires; embraced, as God’s pledge, in all that it promises.

3. The Holy Spirit, Scripture’s divine author, both authenticates it to us by His inward witness and opens our minds to understand its meaning.

4. Being wholly and verbally God-given, Scripture is without error or fault in all its teaching, no less in what it states about God’s acts in creation, about the events of world history, and   p xvi  about its own literary origins under God, than in its witness to God’s saving grace in individual lives.

5. The authority of Scripture is inescapably impaired if this total divine inerrancy is in any way limited or disregarded, or made relative to a view of truth contrary to the Bible’s own; and such lapses bring serious loss to both the individual and the church.~The Chicago Statement on Biblical Innerancy (1978)
from the book, Sproul, R. C. Can I Trust the Bible? Vol. 2. The Crucial Questions Series, pp.xiv-xv. Lake Mary, FL: Reformation Trust Publishing, 2009.

The above statement, a brief summary of several articles, was a direct result on the attack of the authority and innerancy of Scripture by liberal theologians. During the 1960'S and 1970's many began to espouse the view the the Bible was merely "suggestive" and not authoritative. As a result, many evangelical leaders met together in Chicago and drafted and published their belief of the authority and innerancy of Scripture.

But why does belief in the authority of Scripture matter? How does it affect ones life if he/she does not consider Scripture authoritative and binding upon their lives? Again, R.C. Sproul summarizes it well:
The issue is crucial. It is via the Scriptures that the church historically has claimed to understand matters of faith and life, from God’s creation of all things from nothing to the significance of the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ to the ultimate consummation of all things toward which history is moving. If the Bible is unreliable in what it teaches about these things, the church is left to speculate and has nothing of value to speak to the world. Ibid, p.xii.
Simply put, if the Bible is not God's word then we as Christians have nothing to offer the world: no future hope, no escape from our own corruption, and most importantly, no redemption from our sins!

If the Bible is not authoritative in matters of faith, and particularly life, then we are truly free to become a Flotsam and Jetsam society; and indeed, we are seeing that now as the battle for God's intended design of the family is deprecated more and more.

And because many preachers have abandoned this crucial doctrine they have given a license to their congregation to indulge in any type of sinful behavior whether Scripture speaks clearly on the subject or doesn't.




If the Evangelical church is to survive the coming cultural storms (and they are coming) then we must once again take up the mantle of such men as Wycliff, Huss, Tyndale, Knox, and a host of others who actually gave their lives in death with the belief and a conviction of the authority of Scripture. We must submit ourselves to its authority and be willing to push against the tides of our ever-shifting society–even if it means death!

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1 Comments:

At August 30, 2014 at 1:29 AM , Anonymous Anonymous said...

John MacArthur wants to make a NIV with his name on it.

 

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