"The words I speak are not my own, but my Father who lives in me does His work through me. Just believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me." - Jesus (John 14:10b-11a, cf. verse 24)

Faith comes by hearing and hearing through the word of God. (Romans 10:17)

The scriptures reveal God to us. The Bible is the early history of God's relationship with humanity, especially through the line of Abraham, under the later leadership of Moses, and culminating in Jesus Christ, the Son of God and Savior of humanity.

After I became fully committed to Christ's Lordship (circa 1975), the first thing God did for me was to cause me to believe in His sovereignty and to grasp this principle in some depth. I began exclaiming, "God's will - WILL be done." No maybes allowed. God also revealed that there is an inevitable connection between the doctrine of sovereignty and the doctrine of scriptural authority. The latter doctrine depends upon the former, as I will show.

Is there a right and wrong way to interpret the Bible? Yes, there is a right and a wrong way, because God does have a particular point of view and of course His viewpoint is absolutely true. Truth is not relative; it is absolute and unchanging because God's thinking is always correct and His words have absolute authority. It is also true that we humans can only discover spiritual realities (for example regarding salvation) through God's special revelation, the Holy Bible, a compilation of writings containing words which He directly inspired and authorized to be written. If you believe that the Bible is just a more-or-less random collection of writings by religious people, then how can you believe anything about Jesus Christ at all? Virtually everything we know and believe about Christ is based on this biblical record.

Reflecting Articles VI and VII of the Anglican 39 Articles of Religion, the venerable Bishop of Liverpool, J.C. Ryle (1816–1900) exhorted: "I charge every reader to remember that God's written Word is the only rule of faith, and to believe nothing to be true and soul-saving in religion which cannot be proved by plain texts of Scripture. I entreat him to read the Bible and make it his only test of truth and error, right and wrong."

From John R.W. Stott: "The assertion that God has 'spoken' (Heb 1:1), that He has put his thoughts into words, must be taken with full seriousness. It is impossible for us human beings to read even each other's thoughts if we remain silent. Only if I speak to you can you know what is in my mind; only if you speak to me can I know what is in your mind. If, then, men and women remain strangers to each other until and unless they speak to one another, how much more will God remain a stranger to us unless He speaks or has spoken? His thoughts are not our thoughts, as we have seen. It is impossible for human beings to read the mind of God. If we are ever to know his mind, He must speak; He must clothe his thoughts in words. This, we believe, is precisely what He has done. . God's word is infallible, for what he has said is true. But no Christian individual, group or church has ever been or will ever be an infallible interpreter of God's Word. Human interpretations belong to the sphere of tradition, and an appeal may always be made against tradition to the Scripture itself which tradition claims to interpret."

God created the universe with words and created humans in His image with the capacity for choice and speech. He has revealed Himself by actually speaking to us in our own languages through the Hebrew prophets, through Jesus Christ, and through the disciples of Jesus. Being omniscient, omnipotent, and living in eternity, God knew exactly what the future would hold for us and what we would need to hear. Thus His words are as appropriate for our own time (when millions can read and hear them) as they were at the time they were first written.

Forever, O Lord, Thy Word is settled in heaven. (Psalm 119:89, NAS) The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever. (Isaiah 40:8, NKJ)

"Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away." (Jesus, in Matthew 24:35, NIV)

The Word of God Made Flesh

True Christians cannot doubt that God has revealed Himself most clearly through His incarnation as a human being in Jesus Christ. Thus, as the 'Word of God Made Flesh' (John 1) and the 'Son of God,' Jesus' words were directly from the Father and His deeds exactly reflected the Father's will. Examine Jesus' proclamations of this truth in John 8:28, 10:30-38, 14:6-11 & 24. Jesus had full authority to interpret the OT scriptures to us. He fulfilled/completed many of the prophecies and thus eliminated the need for certain rituals (for example, the blood sacrifices) and He abrogated the dietary and Jewish civil laws for the sake of gentile believers. On the other hand, He interpreted some of the moral laws much more strictly (see Matthew 5 regarding sexual lust, expressions of anger, divorce and remarriage, loving enemies, etc.). As revealed by Paul, Jesus' purpose in making the Law almost impossible to keep was to drive people to repentance and, after Calvary, to full acceptance of Christ's sacrifice for their sin. As the spotless Lamb of God, only Jesus merited heaven, but now salvation was available to us through faith in Him. But only through faith in Him.

Even those Old Testament laws that are difficult and seem cruel have had positive purposes. All sin is harmful to us, even when we do not yet understand why. It is exactly like a parent who is tough with his 4 year old child who wants to run into the street. Out of love, parents must teach and discipline their children in order to protect them. Because of Christ, God is not against us for sin, but He is for us and against sin.

The Holy Spirit and Scripture

Scripture is written in the common lowly languages of imperfect human beings. Scripture is incarnational; like believers, it is "treasure in jars of clay." But fortunately, the Gospels themselves were not dependent upon mere human memory. Jesus told his disciples:

"All this I have spoken while still with you. But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you." (John 14:25-26, NIV) It is likely that this principle generalizes to how the Holy Spirit generated the OT writings as well. "Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet's own interpretation. For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.(2 Peter 1:20-21, NIV)

Inerrant by Divine Purpose

It matters not whether the Bible is perfect according to human literary or scientific standards. The Bible is "inerrant" in the sense that it is exactly the way God intended and it will accomplish exactly what God has purposed for it: "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish so that it yields seed for the sower and bread to the eater, so shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; it will not return to Me empty, but will accomplish what I desire, and achieve the purpose for which I sent it." (Isaiah 55:8-11)

How much do you think that God values the written words which are most closely associated with Himself? Either God is able to preserve Scripture as His faithful, personal communication to us, or He is not God. So Christians believe the Bible because we know that neither the will of individual humans, nor the power of culture, nor the power of evil spiritual forces are enough to prevent God's messages from coming through- exactly as He planned.

From a human, this-world viewpoint, we must agree that there was conflict in the early church about which writings should be included and which ones should be left out of the Canon. That's history. There are early manuscripts and fragments that use slightly different words and some of them leave out passages that the others include. These are facts. But what makes us think that this situation is not exactly as God planned? God chooses to reveal His power most obviously in the midst of human weakness (2 Cor 12:9-10, and see VOL article: http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=17515#.UmrWPPmsiSo).

Certainly it is true that human weakness cannot reduce the spiritual power inherent in the Word of God. "We have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us." (2 Corinthians 4:7)

The Lord may speak to you or to me personally, but we have insufficient authority to convince anyone that this communication was really from Him and not just a product of our own imagination. However, the New Testament has Apostolic authority: first-hand witnesses chosen personally by God for their roles of remembering and writing the words of Jesus. The Old Testament was the Bible for Jesus and the Apostles and they quoted it extensively. Jesus interpreted it (for example, on the issue of divorce) but He never criticized it.

Again, John R. W. Stott's thinking is pertinent: "We take our stand on the divine origin of the Bible because we believe the Bible itself requires us to do so. Indeed, it is a strange fact that theologians who are prepared to accept the biblical doctrine of God, of Christ, of the Holy Spirit, of man and of the church, are often not willing to accept the biblical doctrine of Scripture. But...if the Bible is authoritative and accurate when speaking about other matters, there is no reason why it should not be equally so when speaking about itself." For example: All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. (2 Timothy 3:16) God-breathed.

Priorities of Scripture

Although all of Scripture is inspired and has divine purpose, we must agree that some truths are more important than other truths, and some of these truths were more applicable to the original hearers than they are to us today. The clearest and best of Scripture can be found in the words of Jesus in the Gospels (the "red letters"). "The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life." (John 6:63, NIV) Then Jesus said to those Jews who believed Him, "If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." (John 8:30-32, NKJV)

"Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash." When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching, because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law. (Matthew 7:24-29, NIV)

Secondly, after the red letters, we value everything else we find in the four Gospels, then Acts, the Epistles, and the rest of the New Testament. Third, we honor the Old Testament prophecies of the Messiah, the Pentateuch history of God's early interactions with humans, and the rest of the Old Testament (the psalms, prophets, writings). Although not regarded as true scripture by many, we also value the Apocrypha and the writings of the early Church Fathers. But always, the words of Jesus have primacy.

Conclusion

We believe that the Bible is called the written word of God because the Holy Spirit made sure that what ultimately emerged was exactly what God willed. God is sovereign, omnipotent, and cares that much about truth, depth of meaning, and the accurate representation of Himself in His communications to us.

Coming next, Part 2: Essential Principles of Interpretation

Dr. Atkinson is a graduate of Fuller Theological Seminary with a doctorate in clinical psychology and an M.A. in theology. He is a licensed psychologist in clinical practice in Atlanta and also works as a clinical supervisor training Christian counselors for Richmont Graduate University. He is a founding member of Trinity Anglican Church (ACNA) in Douglasville, Georgia