What Does The Authority Of Scripture Mean?

What Does The Authority Of Scripture Mean? June 29, 2016

What does it mean when someone speaks about the authority of Scripture?

Second Timothy 3:16-17 “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”

We can be comprehensive when we say that Scripture is not of human origin but were breathed-out by God Himself and were given to men to record and these and all Scriptures are for the purpose of teaching, reproving, correcting, and training in righteousness or for “right living.” The Word of God cuts like a knife but it cuts in order to heal. The Word can complete, equip and perfect the Christian for their duty before God since “the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Heb 4:12).

Second Peter 1:20-21 “Knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”

Imagine someone critiquing the word processor that I wrote this on as not being my word but the word of a computer. That’s ludicrous of course but the point is if we say that Scripture are only man’s word and not God’s word, then we’re calling God a liar but we’re also ignoring the fact that Scripture was never brought about by the will of man but by men who spoke form God what the Spirit carried them along to write. To say that the Word of God is not authoritative because it was written by the hand of men is like refuting my words just because they were written on my word processor. They will not believe the Word of God but they will believe what man has written, even though this too is the word of man. By their logic, we can throw out all books ever written by mankind because by their same argument, they were written by man too.

Jeremiah 33:2 “This is what the Lord says, he who made the earth, the Lord who formed it and established it—the Lord is his name.”

Jeremiah never wrote what he wanted to write. He only wrote down “what the Lord says.” These were not the thoughts and prophecies of a man (Jeremiah) but of God. The Lord established the Bible and man has been trying to tear it down ever since. The Word of God says “This is what the Lord Says” but unbelievers say, “This is what man has written.” Based upon their reasoning then, how can I believe anything they write? For those who criticize the Bible because they allege it was written by men, how can we believe their words since they are also from man?

All-Scripture-is (1)

Second Samuel 23:3 “The Spirit of the LORD speaks by me; his word is on my tongue.”

Samuel records the source of the words on his tongue; it is “The Spirit of the Lord” Who “speaks to” him and puts the word on his tongue. In other words, these aren’t his words but the words of the Spirit of God; the same Spirit Who authored the rest of the Old and New Testament. Samuel knows where these words came from and they weren’t from him.

Acts 3:18 “But what God foretold by the mouth of all the prophets, that his Christ would suffer, he thus fulfilled.”

In the Book of Acts, we see the Apostle Peter speaking in Solomon’s portico to a crowd and he says that all of the Old Testament prophets foretold that Christ would suffer but notice it was God who foretold of this through the mouth of the prophets. It wasn’t the prophet’s mouth who foretold this; it was God so the authority was not theirs but was God’s.

Luke 1:69-70 God “has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David, as he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from of old.”

Zechariah, John the Baptist’s father, prophesied that God had brought salvation to Israel through the house of his servant David, and more specifically, through His seed, the Messiah, Jesus Christ. This was spoken of long ago “by the mouth of his holy prophets” but not from the prophets. We have already read it was God Who foretold of this and used the mouth of the prophets to declare it. These were never the prophets own declarations of Christ.

Jeremiah 2:2 “Go and proclaim in the hearing of Jerusalem, Thus says the Lord, “I remember the devotion of your youth, your love as a bride, how you followed me in the wilderness, in a land not sown.”

There are 423 occurrences where it says “Thus says the Lord” but not even one “Thus says man” so clearly the Bible is God’s Word and is “thus says the Lord” and not man. The tremendous references to “Thus says the Lord” are found in almost every book in the Bible because every book in the Bible is “Thus says the Lord.” There can be no mistake as to Who the true source is.

Conclusion

We can have confidence in what we are reading today in the Bible as being the very breath of God and the Spirit of God moved the men of God to record the Words of God so it is indisputably God’s Word and not man’s. When we dismiss the enormous amount of manuscript evidence and insert our belief that its only man’s word, we make God out to be a liar, when the truth is, every man is a liar but God cannot lie (He 6:19), just as it says in the Old Testament, “God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it” (Num 23:19)?

Article by Jack Wellman

Jack Wellman is Pastor of the Mulvane Brethren Church in Mulvane Kansas. Jack is also the Senior Writer at What Christians Want To Know whose mission is to equip, encourage, and energize Christians and to address questions about the believer’s daily walk with God and the Bible. You can follow Jack on Google Plus or check out his book Teaching Children the Gospel available on Amazon.


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