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Bob Frisken, President of New Hope International with his wife Maryanne who is Executive Secretary of New Hope International

MONDAY MESSAGE The Authority of the Bible

Rev R J Frisken AM

The Bible Is the Word of God
Bible believing Christians believe that there is one God who has revealed himself to mankind by his Word. God is the supreme authority, since He created the world. He has chosen to reveal Himself through His Word and Christians therefore accept that what is written is what He intended for us. So God's Word has authority for our lives. We need to read it with understanding and to be guided by the Holy Spirit. There are sometimes disputes between Christian about whether the Word of God is without any mistakes. Some argue that it is without error in the original language in which it was written; but these disputes miss the central fact that God is sovereign. If He has chosen to reveal His word through the mouths and writing of fallible human, He has done so in a way that preserves the truth as He intended it. He has preserved for us a Word that has authority for our living and we disregard its instructions at our peril. God is consistent in his character and His truth does not change with changing fashions of men. However we do need wisdom and understanding as we apply God's Word into our cultural situation. People influenced by postmodern thought believe that all truth is relative and that each person constructs or makes his or her own meaning. However, there is no room for relativism in our faith because God has spoken and His Word has authority.

The Bible teaches us that God has made all things, and the evidence of his being is everywhere in creation but the human race, through the sin of Adam, has rebelled against its Creator and suppressed the knowledge of the truth. (Romans 1:18-21) In love and mercy God acted to redeem a people for himself through faith in Jesus and his atoning death. The gospel is God's redemptive word, which through the work of his Spirit takes from us our rebellious spirit and gives us a heart of faith. God is one, and his plan of salvation embraces the whole world and so there is no place for the thinking that places all gods and all religions on the same level. God is God alone, the Creator of the universe and the father of Jesus Christ. The plan of salvation revealed in the Bible is consistent only with a God who alone is God.

To be a Christian teacher we need confidence in the authority of the Bible as the revealed Word of God. While the postmodern world rejects the idea of God as its Creator and Saviour and therefore the concept of absolute truth, the Christian teacher must be bold to claim the oneness of God and the absolute nature of his authority. Truth is absolute and consistent because it is the truth of an absolute and consistent God. Bible believing Christians believe that the universe is the creation of one God and that it is meaningful and orderly, except where sin has brought disorder.

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The Bible Is the Only authoritative Word of God
If we believe that there is one God who has chosen to reveal Himself through the Bible then we have to believe its claims to be the unique and authoritative Word of God and there are no other writings that can stand beside it (John 10:35, 2 Timothy 3:16; Revelation 22:18, 19). Christianity is not a Western Religion though it was largely European Christian missionaries who spread it throughout the world. Today the great majority of Christians are found in Asia, Africa or South America. Western colonialism exploited the Gospel for its own commercial purposes and thus mixed in with the pure message of the gospel much European culture which had nothing to do with the essence of the Gospel as revealed in the Bible. In rejecting Western colonial thought it is important neither to reject Biblical truth nor to allow the message of the gospel to be mixed with local cultural religious ideas or traditions.

Only by maintaining the authority of the Scripture can we fight the power of the Evil One who seeks to distort and to dilute the truth of the Bible. The authority of the Bible has been under attack for centuries. At one stage the official Church taught that it alone could interpret the Bible and thus it had authority over it. Since the period of history known as the Enlightenment (in the eighteenth century) there have been many people who have rejected the idea that there is a God or if there is, that He had anything to do with the writing of the Bible. These people say that the Bible must be treated like any other humanly produced book. And thus they attack the idea that there is One Author. If this was true it would leave us only with an interesting collection of religious writing.

While we certainly should not reject the proper use of scholarship in studying the Bible we need to remember that Jesus accepted the authority of the Scripture as the Word of God and we should too. However even the Christian who accepts the Bible as God’s Word may use it incorrectly. For example when verses of the Bible are taken out of context; and applications are made without being concerned for what the biblical author, who is ultimately the Holy Spirit, is seeking to convey by the text we are implying that what we think is more important than what God intended to say. In our teaching we should always seek to understand the passage we read or teach as part of the whole story of God’s revelation. In this the Old Testament is just as important as the New Testament. There is one word of God. We should always seek to understand Scripture by Scripture. By this, I mean teaching should not be based on one verse or passage alone. We need to also remember that that the centre and reference point for the meaning of all Scripture is the person and work of Jesus Christ the only begotten Son of God.

The Bible God’s Word about the One Way of Salvation
Bible believing Christians accept the uniqueness of Christ and reject the idea that all roads lead to God, because the Bible expressly rejects it when Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me (John 14:6 NIV).
The idea that we need to be tolerant of other religions does not mean that we believe that it does not matter what you believe or that there is no problem if different cultures have their own non-Christian spirituality. This idea is quite foreign to the Bible. True religion does not consist in human beings seeking after God, rather it is God who reveals himself to us and our responsibility is to obey what God reveals in his Word. (James 1:26-27 Micah 6:8). What the Bible teaches should strengthen our desire to preach the Gospel as the only answer to the deepest needs of people of all races and cultures. It should strengthen our resolve to teach the truth in love as the means of establishing people in the faith and leading them to maturity.

The Bible presents the only way to rescue of the world and those in it from eternal destruction in Hell and it offers, through God’s grace, a sure hope of salvation to all who receive Christ by faith. Other religions, teach us that human effort is the way of reaching eternal happiness. The Bible presents a unique picture that is so out of step with the secular way of thinking or with the thinking of other religions that it has to be constantly argued and defended. To do this we need to trust the Bible and know what it teaches.