We’re beginning today a series of four lectures on biblical authority and biblical interpretation. Now I do know that this is not, strictly speaking, a subject you would expect in a class on homiletics. And I must ask your forgiveness if you feel it irrelevant. I feel slightly diffident and apologetic about it. It belongs, I suppose, more to a course on systematic theology or something of the kind. But I feel so deeply and strongly about this that I suppose the major reason why biblical preaching is so rare today is because biblical authority has been lost. And one of the major reasons why biblical preaching is so bad today when it is attempted is that people don’t understand the principles of biblical interpretation. So an assurance about the authority of Scripture and some guidance on the principles for interpreting Scripture are both, I believe, fundamentally relevant to our task as biblical preachers.
But I want to take today, and next time “Biblical Authority”, and I would like to introduce the subject by setting it briefly within the crisis of authority in the secular world. It is a truism to say that we’re all of us caught up in a kind of global revolution today, in which the old order is giving place to something new. It’s not always so clearly understood, although I’m sure it is by you, that a fundamental part of this revolution is a thorough-going revolt against all established authority. And the strength of this revolt against authority is something I just want us to feel for a few moments before we come to the subject of “biblical authority.” Now I recognize that this revolt against authority is a very complex phenomenon, and I may be guilty of some oversimplification. I would like to say before I come into some detail that some of the current protest is mature, responsible, and deeply Christian. And I don’t think that we should make a blanket condemnation of it. Some of it arises in the Christian doctrine of man and of the dignity of man made in the image of God. It seeks to protect man from the process we call depersonalization, and it seeks to protect him from exploitation by the institution or the system. Some of it strives then to lessen the gulf between the governors and the
John R. W. Stott, D. D.Experience: Founder, Langham
governed and to give the governed a chance to participate in the government. Now that kind of revolt against authority saying “let me participate in the processes of decision-making,” I would say is adult, mature, responsible, and Christian. Then it arises from the Christian doctrine of man. So let’s don’t be so conservative and reactionary that we reject all revolt against authority in the world today.
Nevertheless, some of the more extreme forms of the anti-authority mood are far more radical than this, and I give some examples. In political terms, the rebellion is more than a rejection of every authoritarian regime which presumes, for example, to subjugate a racial minority or to imprison people, as in Greece, merely for their own opinions. In extreme forms, in extreme political terms, it is a rejection of democracy itself. Because it is thought to eliminate every alternative, and it seems to those who reject it to oppress all minorities. And alongside a rejection of democracy goes a rejection of everything else that belongs to the establishment or to entrenched privilege.
Next in economic terms, Herbert Marcuse, I suppose, is one of the chief exponents of this at UCSD (San Diego), the elderly prophet, as he now is, of the new left. He argues in One-Dimensional Man, described as the most subversive book published in the United States this century, that “the vaunted freedom of liberal democracy is illusory, and that it is, in fact, a powerful instrument of domination.” That’s Marcuse’s phrase. He argues that technology destroys the free development of human beings and that our economic system creates a new social servitude. And we’re all slaves to the market, to perpetual drudgery which is created by the very economic system in which we live. And economic freedom, to Marcuse, would mean freedom from the economy altogether. It’s a very subversive book, although a lot in it, again I would say, is Christian in its attitude.
Now in intellectual terms next, the rebellion includes the repudiation of every system and opinion which is laid down from on high by authority. Any system, any opinion that cannot be verified either empirically by our own observation or existentially by becoming meaningful to me—and the only intellectual authority there is, in the opinion of these people—lies in the self-authenticating quality which some idea may have as it authenticates itself to me now. Otherwise I reject it. And if any authority lays it down from on high, whether that authority be God or the state or my parents or my school or anybody, I reject
it. Again, this is the mood, isn’t it, the anti-authority mood in intellectual terms today?
In social terms, the rebellion is more than a plea for total permissiveness. I wonder if all of us realize that even the phrase “the permissive society” is rejected because, as a concept it is essentially paternalistic. Permissive society— who is it who gives me certain permissions to do certain things and withholds permission to me to do certain other things? Who is this father figure who makes society permissive? You see, that’s what they’re saying. The permissive society is a paternalistic idea. It suggests there is some institutional father figure somewhere who gives and withholds permissions. The libertarian says “I object to be treated like a child.” The free society, he says, the alternative society, is a mature society. It is a responsible society in which each individual has absolute liberty to make up his own mind, both ethically and socially. And in such a society all censorship would be abolished, even for the young. I don’t know that I can give an example from your own country. You may just have heard. I’m not sure if it’s come here. Has The Little Red Schoolbook come to your country? The Little Red Schoolbook, anyway, comes from Scandinavia originally, but it’s translated into English. And it’s a sex education book of great “libertinarianism” if there is such a word. And it circulates sort of under the counter. And when it was banned in England in July 1971, the verdict passed upon it was described by one libertarian as one of the gravest blows to freedom in Britain for a very long time. Well now, this is the thought then of liberty and anti-authority in social terms. In ethical terms, the rebellion is an insistence, of course, that morality cannot be enjoined by any law, authority, or buttressed by the sanctions of the law, that morality ethics is a purely personal thing— it’s relative and each individual in ethics, as in everything else, has the right to do his own thing in his own way.
Now I simply paint that very quick picture of certain aspects of modern society, in order that we may see how foolish it would be to underestimate the magnitude of the contemporary revolt against established authority. Some of it is a deeply Christian protest against privilege and against tyranny and against oppression and in favor of participation. Some of it, on the other hand, is extremely dangerous and irresponsible. Those who’ve embraced it, I guess, are still a small minority. But they’re a vocal and articulate, a dedicated minority, and I think a growing minority in numbers and in influence. And they’re challenging many of the basic assumptions on which western civilization is built and
certainly on which the Christian faith and ethic are built. So that is the crisis of authority.
Now let’s turn to the Christian church. The Christian church is always in an ambivalent position, vis-a-vis the mood of the world. And both extremes of uncritical acquiescence, on the one hand, and of uncritical rejection on the other, should be avoided. But in one sense, the church will respond to the contemporary mood with sensitivity. I wish the church was more sensitive to what the secular world is saying sometimes and at least struggled to listen to it and to understand it. We should embrace what we find to be true in what the world is saying, and we should relate our own unchanging message to the thought forms of today. We should be more sensitive. Nevertheless, in another sense the church must continue to stand over against the world, evaluating secular society by our own objective Christian criteria. And where necessary, we must dissent from the world and protest against it. For it is not the calling of the church to be a chorus girl, or if you find that a rather worldly metaphor, it is not the calling of the church to be a reed shaken with the wind, which is a biblical metaphor. But they both say the same thing. And I fear, if I may generalize, that the church has succumbed too readily to the contemporary mood of relativism in ethics, of course, in situational ethics, saying that there are no laws except love. Nothing is laid down. Nothing is prescribed before you get into the situation. And then you have this built-in moral compass called “love” that will show you what to do. That is acquiescing in the contemporary mood. It’s a surrender to subjectivity and relativism. And the same is true in doctrine, in the uncertainty of the modern church and the syncretism of the modern church in terms of doctrine.
Now then I simply want to say as an introduction to my lecture on the authority of Scripture, that authority remains a Christian concept. So does freedom— freedom and authority are both Christian words. And we need to grapple with these categories today and try to understand how they relate to one another. Some of our freedom can only be found in the rejection of authority and some can only be found in submitting to authority. And we need to be more careful to distinguish between authority and authoritarianism— between authority and the abuse of authority. But “biblical authority” is one thing from which the Christian can never escape.
So at last I come to my subject. And I want further these introductions in a way but necessary ones, I would like now to
bring you three definitions of the three great words commonly used in talk and in writing about the Bible. One is revelation, the second is inspiration, and the third is authority. And it’s important for us to understand that these are related but distinct.
A. The fundamental word is “revelation”. It indicates that God has taken the initiative to reveal. That is unveil: “revelatio” is, of course, the Latin. “Apocalypsis” is the Greek equivalent of an unveiling of God—His mind, His purpose, His will. And the reasonableness of revelation should be evident to any Christian, because the God we believe in is beyond our ken. He is infinite and absolute. We cannot discover Him by our own wisdom. And unless God makes Himself known, He will remain forever an unknown God. So this is revelation, the initiative of God to unveil Himself, to draw aside the veil of sense which would otherwise hide Him from our eyes.
B. Inspiration indicates the chief mode by which He has chosen to reveal Himself. Revelation describes the fact that God has taken the initiative to disclose Himself, and inspiration tells us the mode by which He’s done it. Now of course, God has partly revealed Himself in nature. Inspiration has nothing to do with the general revelation of God in the created universe nor, indeed, that He has supremely revealed Himself in Christ. But when we’re speaking of the biblical revelation, then we introduce the idea that God has spoken to particular people at particular times. And it’s this process of verbal communication that is called inspiration. Not in the general sense in which musicians or poets may be described as inspired, but in the particular sense in which the word is used in 2 Timothy 3:16, the word I hope you all know already, “theopneustos,” that all Scripture is in the five words “given by inspiration of God” is the one Greek word theopneustos or God-breathed meaning—not that God breathed into the writers nor that He breathed into the writings—somehow changing their nature after they’d been written. But rather that what was written by men was breathed out by God. They were His spokesmen. He spoke through them breathing His Word out through their words. So that strictly speaking, inspiration is a wrong word. It isn’t that He breathed into them, the writers or the writings, but expiration (or spiration) would be a better word—that what we mean by the inspiration of Scripture is that it is God-breathed, issuing from the mouth of God by the breath of God. I do not hesitate to use the word “verbal” inspiration, because it simply teaches that the breathing out extended to the very words which God spoke by His breath from His mouth. The apostle Paul claims that, for example, in 1 Corinthians 2:13 when he speaks, communicating
what has been revealed to him “not in words taught by human wisdom but in words taught by the Holy Spirit.” And there is a clear claim to verbal inspiration that the very words with which he communicated the truth revealed to him were words supplied by the Holy Spirit.
And of course, it is reasonable, too, because when you think about it, it is impossible to convey a precise message except by precise words. The idea of the revelation of thoughts that does not extend to words is a non sequitur. It may surprise you that I have my lecture down here more or less in fairly full notes, because I’m anxious to convey to you some precise ideas this afternoon. And I know that it is impossible to convey precise ideas if I do not convey my ideas by precise words. And every preacher knows this. Words are our stock in trade. It is by words that we build up sentences and express truth. So there first is revelation, the divine initiative in disclosing Himself, inspiration the way He’s done it by speaking.
C: Authority is the power or weight which in (inaudible) in Scripture because of what it is; namely, a divine revelation given by divine inspiration. Because it is the Word of God, it has authority over men. And its authority arises from its nature of divine revelation given by divine inspiration. Because when you think of it, behind every word there stands the person who speaks the word. And whether the word is authoritative depends on the person who is speaking the word. And God’s Word carries God’s authority.
One of the best illustrations of this, I think, is in Luke 5 where, in the miraculous draft of fishes, Jesus says to these fishermen, “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a draft.” And all Peter’s experience as a fisherman for many years, all his expertise that he’s gathered over the years, rebels against this word. He says, “Lord, we’ve toiled all night and caught nothing.” It’s ridiculous to go out now. You don’t know anything about fishing. You may be a good teacher, but I’m the fisherman. But you see, although all this rises within him to rebel, he goes on. “Nevertheless, at Your word I will.” That is, I will do it because you say it. Because behind Your Word stands your person. And because of who You are, I will do it. But I wouldn’t do it for anybody else. If my brother, Andrew, said it, I’d chuck him board. Sorry, that’s in addition to the text. But anyway, this is an illustration that behind the word there stands the person. So here is our claim that God has revealed Himself by speaking, that this divine God-breathed speech has been written down and preserved in Scripture and that Scripture,
therefore, because it is God’s Word written is true, reliable, and authoritative. That, I suggest, is a simple way of bringing into relation with one another the great words revelation, inspiration, and authority; three definitions.
Next I come to three disclaimers— that is, what we don’t believe—ust clearing a bit of rubbish at the moment, clearing the ground. And the purpose of these disclaimers is to anticipate objections and to disarm possible criticism, if not from you, then from the secular world outside.
1. The process of inspiration was not a mechanical one. We do not believe in mechanistic inspiration. God did not treat the human authors of Scripture as dictating machines or tape or cassette recorders. He treated them as living, active, responsible human beings. True, He sometimes spoke in dreams and visions, sometimes with an audible voice, sometimes through angels. But at other times, we’re not told how the Word of God came to people. They may well have been unconscious of the process altogether. And one of the best examples of this is in the case of Luke the evangelist historian in whose case divine inspiration was not incompatible with human research. He tells us in the preface to his gospel what painstaking trouble he took in researching his material. Whatever means God employed, it never obliterated the human personality of the authors.
Now how can I be so dogmatic about that? Well, because of the nature of the text itself. For example, their literary styles and vocabularies are their own. If God was dictating, you would expect the divine vocabulary to be the same and the divine style to be the same. But the fact that there are different vocabularies, different literary styles, indicates that God is speaking through these men in such a way as not to obliterate their own personality and their own style and vocabulary. The same is true of their themes. It is not an accident, for example, that Amos is the prophet of the justice of God, Hosea is the prophet of the love of God, Isaiah is the prophet of the sovereignty of God, and that there are different themes and emphases in the prophet. It is not an accident in the New Testament that Paul is the apostle of grace and faith, James is the apostle of works, John is the apostle of love, Peter is the apostle of hope, and each of these apostolic authors has a different emphasis in the way in which he conveys the truth. All this indicates that God, far from obliterating their personality, uses their personality, their temperament, their upbringing, their knowledge, their background, in order to convey through each an
appropriate and a distinctive truth. All this teaches us a lot about the process of inspiration. God spoke, God breathed; but in doing so He did not obliterate their personalities. So, then, we have to say that Scripture is equally the Word of God and the words of men. And indeed, the Scripture itself says so, and describes itself like this. You can read, on the one hand, the “mouth of the Lord has spoken it” (Isaiah 1:20). And you can read in Acts 3:21 “God spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets.” So the two mouths were involved in the speaking of these words the mouth of God and the mouth of men. Or again you can read in Hebrews 1:1 “God spoke through the prophets.” And in 2 Peter 1:21, “Men spoke from God.” So that in this Word you have two people speaking; you have God speaking, you have men speaking, men speaking from God, God speaking through men. And the Scripture is equally human speech and Divine speech. Again, the law in Luke 2:22-23 and one verse following the other is called the Law of Moses and the Law of the Lord. It’s both Mosaic Law and Divine Law. So this dual authorship of Scripture, this double authorship of Scripture is an important truth to be carefully guarded that, on the one hand, God spoke revealing truth, preserving the human authors from error and yet without violating the human personality of the authors. Or on the other hand, men spoke using their human faculties freely and responsibly, yet without distorting the Divine message being conveyed through them. Their words were truly their words, but they were also God’s words so that what Scripture says, God says.
So that is the first thing we believe as evangelicals about Scripture. We do not hold a mechanistic view of inspiration. And two, we do not hold a literalistic view of Scripture either. Now I must be careful here, and I’m going to stray a little bit into what I’m going to say later about interpretation. But hold your horses before you tear me limb from limb. It is sometimes said by our critics and our detractors that we believe that every word of the Bible is literally true. Well, such a statement would need to be qualified in several ways. I would never accept it stated in those bold terms. I would want to qualify it in at least two ways.
A. I would say every word of the Bible is only true in its context. Isolated from its context, it may be entirely untrue. And the best example I know of is the book of Job. Well, the bulk of the book of Job, as you know, is a dialogue between grief-stricken Job on the one hand and his three comforters who were later joined by a fourth. And this dialogue occupies the first 37 chapters of the book. Then in the last five, chapters 38 to 42, God appears. Now
some of the words of Job and of his friends in the first 37 chapters are mistaken and erroneous. And they are included in the sacred text of Scripture in order to be contradicted and not in order to be believed, so that at the end of the book, Job says, “I have uttered what I did not understand.” Job says it of himself. He says some of the things I’ve said I didn’t know what I was talking about, and they were mistaken. And God says to the comforters, “You have not spoken of Me what is right.” That’s Job 42: 3-7. So Job says he was mistaken, and God says his comforters were mistaken in some of the things they said. Therefore, the Scripture itself warns us that it is impossible to take any text out of the first 37 chapters of the book of Job and say this is the Word of God. It may very well not be. You can only interpret the first 37 chapters of the book in the light of the last five. So, do I believe that every word of the Bible is literally true? Yes, in its context. But I must have the liberty to say some of what is recorded is recorded to be contradicted and not to be endorsed. That’s my first qualification.
B. Much Scripture is deliberately figurative. For example, there are anthropomorphic descriptions, descriptions of God in the form of man referring to His eyes, ears, arms, hands, fingers, mouth, breath, and nostrils. These are not literal for the simple reason that God is spirit. He hasn’t a body. He has no eyes literally in bodily terms as we have. So that when in 2 Chronicles 16:9, we read that “the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth seeking people on whose behalf He may make Himself strong,” we are not to imagine a couple of Divine eyes galloping over the surface of the earth. No, we are to interpret this as meaning the eyes of the Lord run to and fro, that God is omnipresent, He is everywhere, and wherever He is, He is vigilant. His eyes are open, and this omnipresent, vigilant God is looking for people on whose behalf He may exhibit His strength. Similarly, when we read of people hiding under the wings of Jehovah, we don’t imagine that He is a bird with feathers. Now this is important because there are some extreme evangelical fundamentalists who do think these very things— that everything in the Bible is literally true. Next I would have to say that there are some deliberately poetic and figurative expressions as, for example, in Psalm 19 when we read that the sun comes forth like a “bridegroom out of his chamber and rejoices like an athlete to run his course.” Now we are not committed by that to a pre-Copernican view of the universe and that the sun is revolving round the earth because the Bible says so. The Bible says that the sun comes like a bridegroom out of his chamber and goes across the sky and, therefore, you must have a Ptolemaic cosmology, and you must believe that the sun
rotates around the earth. No, because the author is obviously writing poetry. He is obviously not writing a scientific statement. And after all, even sophisticated technocrats of the 1970s can wax eloquent about the rising of the sun and the setting of the sun. We don’t accuse them of literalism. We know that they are speaking from the point of view of human observation and in the language of figures of speech. So we do not hold a literalistic view of Scripture. We have liberty in our interpretation with regard to anthropomorphisms and figures of speech—I’ll come to that further when we talk about interpreting Scripture.
C. The inspired text of Scripture—that is, God’s Word written—is the original Hebrew and Greek text. That, I suppose, is obvious. We claim no special inspiration or authority for any translation, whether ancient, Latin, or modern English. Why it’s perfectly true that no autograph has survived from either an Old Testament or New Testament author. The loss of the original autographs is due presumably to a deliberate providence of God, maybe to prevent man from giving superstitious reverence to pieces of paper. Nevertheless, we do know that the scribes in Old Testament days copied their Hebrew texts with scrupulous fidelity. And we know the same of the New Testament documents. Further, as you’ll know if you’ve done any textual criticism, that there are far more early copies of the original text than of any other literature—some going back to within a very few years of the original autographs. And that, in addition to these very early copies, we have the early versions: that is, the translations into Latin or Syriac or whatever it may be; and we have quotations from the originals in the early fathers in patristic writings. And obviously, the comparison of the early copies, the versions into other languages, and the patristic quotations constitutes the science of textual criticism. And we may say that we have an authentic text beyond reasonable doubt, and that the remaining uncertainties are almost all trivial, and that no doctrine of importance hangs upon them.
Well, those are my three disclaimers following three definitions. Now I begin to come to some arguments for the authority of Scripture. And I want to run quickly over one or two that I don’t wish to leave out.
1. The historic Christian churches have consistently maintained their belief in the trustworthiness and the authority of Scripture. Only in comparatively recent times have some churches changed their official doctrine on this matter. Whether you consult the (inaudible) of the Roman church, the Orthodox churches, the
Anglican, Lutheran, Reformed, and other churches, the witness is virtually unanimous. And although this is not, of course, in any way a conclusive argument because it belongs to the realm of tradition—it is, nonetheless, a very impressive Christian consensus down the centuries. Bishop Handley Moule—whom I’ve quoted before—in his primary episcopal charge in 1904 spoke about the need for a reverent patience with the innumerable problems connected with the Bible, especially in the face of Old Testament criticism. And he went on like this, “That I do with emphasis plead for a reverent persistence in the long-tried faith of the church our direct inheritance through the Lord from the elder dispensation (that is the Old Testament). About the vast solidity and trustworthiness of the holy Scriptures as a whole, truly if ever a (inaudible) could pass that vast and sifting test, semper ubique ab omnibus (always everywhere by everybody). It is the (inaudible) of the veracity and authority of the holy Bible.” Now this semper ubique ab omnibus is a very remarkable consensus down the Christian ages until recent days.
2. We turn from what the historic churches have taught to what the biblical writers themselves claimed, and this is even more impressive. For example, the obvious phenomena that we find in the biblical text that Moses said he received the law from God. The prophets introduced their oracles: thus says the Lord, the Word of the Lord came to me saying, etc. The apostles could write like Paul “when you received the Word of God which you heard from us (the apostolic plural of authority), you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is, the Word of God,” claims for themselves and their own oracles. Similar claims are made for each other, and there is this elaborate cross-authorization within the Scripture itself. Thus, the prophets endorsed the law, the psalmists extolled its beauty, its truth and its sweetness, and above all, the New Testament authors endorsed the old. We even have the famous passage in 2 Peter where he refers to the wisdom given to our beloved brother Paul. And he quotes his epistles with Scripture.
3. The third argument is derived not from the writers of Scripture but from the readers of Scripture. And by this, I’m referring to the phenomena you find in the Scripture yourself when you come to it as a reader. You find not only the remarkable unity and coherence of the theme—despite the diversity of authors, not only the striking phenomenon of fulfilled prophecy, not only the nobility and dignity of the biblical themes and their extraordinary relevance thousands of years later to which the continuing
popularity of the Bible bears record—but especially the power of Scripture in human lives to disturb, to comfort, to abase, to heal, to bring hope, and to bring direction to the lonely who’ve lost their way. And in addition, there is what the reformers called the “testimonium internum spiritus sancti,” the inward witness of the Spirit, this deep assurance from God, the experience of the burning heart as you read the Scripture for yourself.
4. The first and foremost reason for accepting the authority of Scripture is not because of what the churches teach, nor because of what the writers claimed, nor because what the readers sense, but because of what Jesus Christ Himself said. Christ endorsed the authority of Scripture, and we are bound to conclude that Christ’s authority and Scripture’s authority stand or fall together. Okay, I was just going to skip that in my notes, but I see I mustn’t skip it. I’m just oppressed by this wretched mechanism here that tells me that time ticks pitilessly by. No, I think I can do it fairly briefly.
Because there are many people who do retort that our evangelical argument about the authority of Scripture—namely, that because Christ endorsed it, it is a circular argument which could be expressed like this. How do you know that Scripture is inspired? Answer because of Christ who says so. How do you know that Christ says so? Answer: because of Scripture, which is inspired. Now if you state the argument like that, our critics tell us that is begging the question; you are assuming that the truth of the question that you’re wanting to prove. But I would want to say you have misstated the argument.
When we first approach the Bible, we bring no assumptions with us about its inspiration and authority. We accept the New Testament simply as historical documents, which they are, containing the witness of first century Christians to Christ. That is a fact, whatever you make of them factually speaking, what these New Testament documents are is the witness of first century Christians to Christ. All right? As we expose ourselves to their witness, to Jesus Christ, we become convinced that the Jesus to whom they bear witness is true, although we’ve become convinced still without formulating any doctrine of Scripture. But after we’ve become convinced about the divinity of Christ and the authority of His teaching, the Christ we have come to believe in then sends us back to Scripture. He gives us a new understanding of Scripture because He endorses its authority Himself. Well, that’s the way I would try to break the circular argument. And I think it is not the circular argument that some people say.
Now in my remaining minutes, I want just to try to answer the question “how did Christ endorse Scripture”? Well, of course, we all know Scripture is divided into the Old Testament and the New in separate halves. And the way He set His seal on each is different. And for the rest of my time now this morning or this afternoon, I take His endorsement of the Old Testament, and then I shall take the New in the first lecture next week. And I would like to outline our Lord’s personal submission to Old Testament Scripture in three spheres.
1. In His personal conduct. Let’s take His temptations in the Judean wilderness as the only example we have time for. He counted each diabolical temptation by an apt biblical quotation. “Man shall not live by bread alone” or whatever it is taken from the sixth and the eight chapters of the book of Deuteronomy. Now sometimes it is said that He quoted Scripture at the devil. It would be much more accurate to say that He quoted Scripture at Himself in the presence of the devil. For example, when the devil offered Him the kingdoms of the world if He’d fall down and worship him, Jesus said “Be gone, Satan, because it is written you shall worship the Lord your God and Him only you shall serve.” Jesus was not applying that text about worshipping God to Satan, saying to Satan now you’d better worship God because the Scripture tells you to. No, He is saying to Satan you invite Me to worship you Satan, but I’m not going to worship you; because the Scripture tells Me whom I am to worship as man. And that is, I’m to worship the Lord My God. So Jesus knew from Scripture that worship was due to God alone. Therefore, He would obey and give to God the worship that was due to Him. So you see the single word “gegraptai” (it stands written) was sufficient. He could say be gone, Satan, gegraptai ga, because it stands written you shall not. So there was no need for Jesus to question, to discuss, to argue, to negotiate. The matter was already settled in His own mind by the plain teaching of Scripture. Now I find this voluntary subordination of the Son of God to the Word of God and the authority of Scripture extremely significant—“be gone, Satan, for it stands written”—in submission and in His personal conduct.
2. His personal submission in the fulfillment of His mission. Jesus seems to have come to an understanding of His messianic role from a study of Old Testament Scripture. He knew Himself to be Isaiah’s suffering servant and Daniel’s Son of Man. And He accepted from Scripture that He couldn’t enter His glory, except by the road of suffering and death, because the Scripture said so. Luke 18:31 “Behold we’re going up to Jerusalem and everything
written of the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished.” Hence, His sense of necessity or of compulsion, the Son of Man (Mark 8:31) must die (this word “must”) suffering many things and be rejected and killed and after three days rise.” Why “must”? Because the Scripture said so. Voluntarily, deliberately, He put Himself under the authority of what stood written in Scripture with regard to His own role as the Messiah. He must suffer. He must die, because it was written in Scripture. So He determined to fulfill the Scripture in His mission as in His conduct. So when Peter tried to avert the arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane, He told Peter to sheath his sword. He said there’s no need for me to have any human defense. Could I not appeal to My Father, and He’d give Me legions of angels? Then why don’t I? Well, how then should the Scriptures be fulfilled that it must be so (Matthew 26:54)? And He had the same opinion after the resurrection. We saw this morning was it not necessary for the Christ to suffer and enter His glory. He submitted in His personal conduct. He submitted in the understanding of His mission.
3.He submitted to Scripture in His controversies. Jesus was in continuous debate with the religious leaders of His day. They disagreed with Him. He disagreed with them. Now whenever there was a difference of opinion, He regarded Scripture as the only court of appeal. “What is written in the law?” He asked. “How do you read?” (Luke 10:26). “Have you not read the Scripture?” (Mark 12:10). One of His chief criticisms of the contemporary leaders concerned their disrespect for Scripture. The Pharisees added to Scripture their traditions. The Sadducees subtracted from Scripture. They subtracted the supernatural. So to the Pharisees Jesus said, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God to keep your tradition. You make void the Word of God through your tradition” (Mark 7:9, 13). To the Sadducees He said, “Isn’t this why you’re wrong? You don’t know the Scriptures, neither the power of God” (Mark 12:24). So it’s beyond question that Jesus Himself was personally submissive to Scripture in His ethical standards, in the understanding of His mission, and in His debates with the religious leaders of His day. He said Scripture can’t be broken. Till heaven and earth pass, not an iota or dot will pass till all is accomplished. There is no example of His contradicting Scripture. We’ve seen that the six antitheses of the Sermon on the Mount are contradictions, not of Scripture, but of perdition of the scribal distortions of Scripture. And all the evidence shows that He assented in heart and mind to the authority of Scripture as God’s Word written. There are only two alternatives to the Christian accepting Christ’s view of Scripture. I want to argue
that the evangelical view of Scripture is the Christian view of Scripture. And it is the Christian view of Scripture, because it is Christ’s view of Scripture. And it is inconceivable to me that we should have a lower view of the Old Testament than the Son of God incarnate. There are only two alternatives. One is to say that Christ was mistaken. The incarnation imprisoned Him in the limited mentality of a first-century Palestinian Jew. Oh, people say, of course, He accepted the authority of Scripture. Everybody did in those days, but His views are outmoded today. This, of course, is a form of the so-called “kenosis doctrine,” the doctrine of the self-emptying of Christ involved in the incarnation. But we would have to assert that He did not empty Himself of His deity or of anything that belongs to His deity. And although He seems to have been ignorant of certain things, at least He said that the Son of Man didn’t know the day and the hour of His return—the remarkable fact to me is that He wasn’t ignorant of His ignorance. That is, He knew the limits of His knowledge, and He never strayed beyond those limits. He said that He taught only what His Father had given Him to teach. And, therefore, He was inerrant in His teaching including His endorsement of Scripture. He was not mistaken. The other alternative is not a doctrine of kenosis but a doctrine of accommodation. And these are the people who say, well Jesus, of course, knew perfectly well that Scripture is not entirely reliable and trustworthy. No, because His contemporaries believed that Scripture was the Word of God, He accommodated Himself to their ideas. But there’s no need for us to do so. That, we would have to say, is an intolerable reconstruction, because it is derogatory to Christ and incompatible with His claim to be the truth and to have come to teach the truth. Besides, Jesus never hesitated to disagree with His contemporaries on other matters. So if He disagreed with their view of Scripture, why didn’t He say so? Why should He accommodate Himself to that view when He disagreed with their other views when they were wrong? Further, to say that He disagreed but accommodated Himself to them would be to attribute to Him the very thing He detested most, which is religious pretense or hypocrisy. So we reject both the kenosis and the accommodation theories. And over against them, we insist that Jesus knew what He was talking about, He meant what He was saying, and what He believed and taught is true. So we believe it, too. Hallelujah!
