People who regard themselves as Christians yet pay little or no attention to the Bible are getting their direction in life from somewhere else. It’s coming from their church’s doctrine and tradition, and from priests; It’s coming from what their pastor tells them in his own “inspired” sermons, or from what other Christians tell them, or worst of all, it’s coming from their own idea of what’s right or wrong.
If you want to be a ship’s captain or an airline pilot or a surgeon, you have to pass through a rigorous process of very precise and highly defined training. There’s no room for having your own ideas on how to fly an airliner with four hundred people on board, except perhaps in certain situations when initiative comes in, but that can only occur once you’ve been fully approved and tested. The Christian life certainly isn’t only available to an exclusive minority, but it does require “training” and attention to specifics. We’re told by Christ himself that the way to life is narrow and that few find it, while the way to destruction is broad and many go that way. Therefore it’s vital for us as people aspiring to please our Lord and our God to know what that Way is, how to find it, and how to stay on the correct and narrow path.
WHICH WAY DO WE GO? Jesus left us in no doubt that He is the Way to life, and he said that “no man comes to the Father but by me”. It seems it should be a simple task then, to know and to follow the narrow road to life – but where are the details? Where’s the road map to our God and to heaven? We don’t have to be in the dark over that question, because Jesus gave the answer. He told his disciples and so us also, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples” (John 8:31b ESV). We are, said Jesus, to abide in or to live according to His words. Where do we find those words? They are in our Bibles, and especially our New Testaments.
The gospels pass onto us via Jesus’ immediate disciples the words of Christ. In them we can know what Jesus said. We can know what his instructions to us are. Unbelievers, agnostics and cynical people of the world demote the Biblical Scriptures and are anxious for all of us to do the same. Interestingly, people living alongside Jesus had the same attitude even then: it’s nothing new. Pilate cynically and rhetorically asked Christ, “What is truth?” He was sure that there is no such thing as definably objective truth, and he didn’t expect an answer. He said this to shrug off what Jesus had just told him:
“…the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me” (John 18:37b).
A CHOICE. You can “listen” to the words of Jesus (by reading them) and know that they are true, because you sense in them something which is truly profound and factual, and which works at every level of society when applied. If you believe they are the words of someone who is more than just a man and follow them, you are a disciple of Christ. Alternatively, you can believe the atheists and agnostics when they say many things in an attempt to drive us all from faith in Christ. They say that Jesus never lived, or Jesus was misrepresented, or Jesus never said those things at all. They say that he was making things up or that his followers were deluded or dishonest. They say that the words of Christ have been changed over and over through the centuries, so that you can’t rely on anything attributed to Jesus or his apostles. That’s your choice. I for one stand with the words of Christ, because he has the words of eternal life (John 6:67-69). I’ve seen and read enough evidence to believe that if God is God, He is perfectly able to preserve the words of His only son. I’ve heard enough evidence, some of which I’ve shared on this blog, to accept that Jesus’ words as spoken in the first century have been passed down and translated faithfully so that we can know the truth all the way up to his return.
The question is not, “Does the Bible contain any truth?’; the question is, “Am I going to accept the Bible as my guide and my roadmap to heaven?” For me the answer to the latter is an emphatic “Yes!” I’ve made up my mind and I’m going to live the rest of my life on that conviction. I’ve sensed the presence of God in my life. I believe that Biblical Scripture speaks truth about creation, life and eternity. I believe that there is one God and that He loved us so much that He sent His only son to die as a sacrifice for our sins, and I believe that the creator of all I see and am must, logically, be capable of both preserving His word and of having and fulfilling the very plan He’s laid out in Scripture.
THE APOSTLES AND EARLY CHURCH. If you’re prepared to accept the words of those who Christ commissioned including Paul, you can see a seamless logic and teaching in their words. The New Testament’s foundation is the Old Testament, and the apostles’ foundation is Christ. There are verifiable historical figures and events in the New Testament and the rest of Scripture in the form of history, ancient commentary and archaeological support. The church “fathers” of the first three centuries confirmed the words and works of the apostles, so that qualified Bible scholars will tell you that were we to lose the New Testament it could be almost entirely re-written from the words and quotes of these leaders who lived and wrote from the first century onwards. Gnostic gospels came along later than the ones we have in our Bibles and take a different course: they aren’t on that “narrow road” which Christ told us to follow.
THE OLD TESTAMENT. There’s a movement within the Church to trash or forget the Old Testament. This is not only negligence, I believe it’s a sin. Jesus himself quoted regularly from those books and plainly stated that they contained and represented the very words of God. He used many verses and phrases from the Old Testament, and he and the gospel writers declared over and over again that Christ was fulfilling the prophecies and promises of pre-Christian Scripture. In fact, when you read the Bible as a whole, though it is a collection of books you see that it tells one story. It’s the story of Jesus Christ, the son of God. It’s the story of God’s love for humanity so that He prepares and directs a genealogical line beginning at Adam and Eve and ending with you and I (if you believe) safely in heaven with our God for all eternity. The Old Testament follows that genetic line and its associated characters and events from the beginning of creation all the way to the end. Remember that Christ said, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End” (Revelation 22:13). You can’t have the end without the beginning.
God has prepared and preserved that relevant history for us, which reveals much of the character of God along with His plan for humanity and for all of creation. Trash the Old Testament and you are trashing an enormous view into what God is like, what He does, and what He will do in the future. You will have an incomplete and possibly false understanding of God and HIs plan.
The apostles repeatedly spoke and wrote of the importance of Scripture. Perhaps the one most intent on making that clear was Paul. He wrote in a letter to Timothy,
“All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16).
Paul claims here that Scripture is directly inspired by God. You can identify Scripture by that which he, Jesus and the other apostles regarded as authoritative. John recorded this:
“To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:31-32).
Holding to the teachings of Scripture will give us truth and freedom. This is a pattern not just in the New Testament but all through the Bible. God wanted to be clear that what we are reading is His message to us about who He is and what He is doing.
THE ALTERNATIVE. Once you begin to go along with what skeptics want you to think without checking on the real available evidence to the contrary, you begin to pick apart the Scriptures, or even to add to them as some cults have done, claiming that God has spoken when He hasn’t. When you tear out one page you are casting a shadow on another, so you may as well tear that one out also. If you follow the logic of the unbeliever, you end up with nothing more than superstition, confusion and human opinion. Who will decide what Truth is? Will the unbeliever decide? Will the godless or the materialist decide for you? We have “experts” who will swear that Jesus was just a revolutionary or even that he was mad. In fact, there are experts of all stripes who will tell you a myriad of different things: which one will you believe? The alternative is that you can believe the simple, clear, profound words of Jesus Christ and those he chose to carry his gospel to the world, in a good and faithful translation of The Bible.
Fuel for Faith, Food for Thought 