AUTHORITY-BIBLE

The Bible claims for itself a singular and final authority concerning all matters it addresses. No other instructions, written or verbal, represent a higher or even equal authority. This authority was not granted to God at one of the historical councils of the church; God does not need men to agree with Him or determine the extent of His authority. The Scriptures carry ultimate authority for one reason: They are the words of the sovereign Ruler of the universe.

Daryl Wingerd
The Bible is God's Special Revelation, Christian Communicators Worldwide, www.CCWtoday.org. Used by Permission.

When the Word of God is not set up as the supreme authority, division is inevitable. Such happens even in evangelical churches, when pastors and other leaders begin substituting their own ideas for the truths of Scripture. The substitution is seldom intentional, but it will always happen when the Bible is neglected. A Bible that is not studied carefully cannot be followed carefully. And where it is not followed there will be division, because there will be no common ground for beliefs and practices. When the truth of Scripture is not the sole authority, men's varied opinions become the authority.

John MacArthur

If Jesus, the sinless and perfect Son of God, limited Himself to speaking nothing during His incarnation except the truth He received from His Father, how much more should those who have been called into ministry speak only on the authority of divine Scripture.

John MacArthur

Titus, Moody, 1996, p. 127.

The true Christian was intended by Christ to prove all things by the Word of God, all churches, all ministers, all teaching, all preaching, all doctrines, all sermons, all writings, all opinions, all practices. These are his marching orders. Prove all by the Word of God; measure all by the measure of the Bible; compare all with the standard of the Bible; weigh all in the balances of the Bible; examine all by the light of the Bible; test all in the crucible of the Bible. That which cannot abide the fire of the Bible, reject, refuse, repudiate, and cast away. This is the flag which he nailed to the mast. May it never be lowered!

John Wycliffe

“We think with our feelings,” Sinclair Ferguson has said. It’s true. We allow our feelings to guide our thinking and we shouldn’t. Emotions are a wonderful gift from God. And our relationship with God should bring to our lives strong godly affections. However, our emotions shouldn’t be vested with final authority. This should be reserved for God’s Word alone.

C.J. Mahaney

The Cross Centered Life, 2002, Sovereign Grace Ministries, p. 48. Used by permission of Multnomah Publishers, Inc. Excerpts may not be reproduced without prior written consent of Multnomah Publishers, Inc.

[If] preachers wish to preach with divine authority, they must proclaim this message of the inspired Scriptures, for the Scriptures alone have divine authority. If preachers wish to preach with divine authority, they must submit themselves and echo the Word of God. Preachers are literally to be ministers of the Word.

Sidney Greidanus

The source of my authority in this pulpit is not...my wisdom; nor is it a private revelation granted to me beyond the revelation of Scripture. My words have authority only insofar as they are the repetition, unfolding and proper application of the words of Scripture. I have authority only when I stand under authority. And our corporate symbol of that truth is the sound of your Bibles opening to the text. My deep conviction about preaching is that a pastor must show the people that what he is saying was already said or implied in the Bible. If it cannot be shown it has no special authority.

John Piper

The Wisdom of Men and the Power of God, 1 Corinthians 2:1--5, July 13, 1980. www.desiringGod.org. Used by Permission.

The subject of spiritual experience is at the forefront of thinking in evangelicalism worldwide today. A clear line of division can be drawn between those who insist that the Bible must be the basis by which all spiritual experience is tested and those who regard experience as pre-eminent and resist the tests of Scripture. Is the Word our authority, or is spiritual experience our authority? The Puritans were strong in the area of knowing God by heart experience but they sought to test everything by Scripture. We do well to follow their example.

Erroll Hulse

Who Are the Puritans? Evangelical Press, p. 142.

The church at Ephesus faced a culture characterized by immorality. We, too, live in a culture tolerant of sexual immorality. It is popular to be open-minded to many types of sin, calling them personal choices or alternative lifestyles. But when the body of believers begins to tolerate sin in the church, it is lowering the church's standards and compromising its witness. Remember that God's approval is infinitely more important than the world's. Use God's Word, not what people around you are willing to accept, to set the standards for what is right or wrong.

Bruce Barton

We are to believe and follow Christ in all things, including His words about Scripture. And this means that Scripture is to be for us what it was to Him: the unique, authoritative, and inerrant Word of God, and not merely a human testimony to Christ, however carefully guided and preserved by God. If the Bible is less than this to us, we are not fully Christ's disciples.

James Montgomery Boice

The Preacher and God’s Word.

It is beyond doubt that Jesus highly esteemed the Old Testament and constantly submitted to it as to an authoritative revelation. He taught that the Scriptures bore a witness to him, just as he bore a witness to them. Because they are the words of God, Jesus assumed their complete reliability, in whole and to the smallest part.

James Montgomery Boice

Taken from "Foundations of the Christian Faith-Book I" by James Montgomery Boice, page 45. (c)1986 InterVarsity Christian Fellowship of the USA, Revised edition. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press, P.O. Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515. www.ivpress.com http://www.gospelcom.net/cgi-ivpress/book.pl/code=991.

Our claim is that God has revealed Himself by speaking; that this divine (or God-breathed) speech has been written down and preserved in Scripture; and that Scripture is, in fact, God’s Word written, which therefore is true and reliable and has divine authority over men.

John Stott

The ultimate issue in question is the authority of the Bible over our lives. Who is in charge? Who gets the final word? And the way that men (even saved but sinful men) avoid God’s authority is through autonomy: a self-determination that pursues self-sufficiency producing self-rule. It may not be an “intentional” self-determination – indeed we may be unthinkingly swept along by the influences of our culture – but the outcome is the same: a self-sufficiency (in place of God’s sufficiency through His Word) that results in self-rule.

John Thompson

The Sufficiency of Scripture: By What Standard? April 3, 2003, www.visionforumministries.org, Used by Permission.

The revelatory process ceased with the sixty-six books in the Old and New Testaments which contain exactly what God wanted us to have. Our Lord told His disciples that, after His ascension, He would send the Holy Spirit who would guide them (the disciples present) into ALL the truth (John 16:7, 13; 14:26). These were the men who, under the supernatural inspiration of the Holy Spirit, would finalize the writing of the New Testament. Paul said that when the “perfect” comes (i.e., the completed New Testament revelation), prophecy and other modes of revelation would cease (1 Cor. 13:8-12). It is a fact of history that divine revelation did cease when the last Apostle died. So, with a complete and final revelation in hand, where should we look to find the mind and will of God for His people? Not to modern-day prophecies, nor to signs and wonders, nor to inner promptings and experiences, but to Scripture ALONE!

John Thompson

The Sufficiency of Scripture: By What Standard? April 3, 2003, www.visionforumministries.org, Used by Permission.

If Jesus knew that Scripture contained human error yet never made this fact known to His followers, misleading them rather by His insistently positive attitude toward it, He can hardly qualify as a great moral teacher and the incarnate God of truth.

Henry Virkler

Hermeneutics, Baker, 1981, p. 37.

First of all, the evangelical is one who is entirely subservient to the Bible… This is true of every evangelical. He is a man of one book; he starts with it; he submits himself to it; this is his authority.

D.M. Lloyd Jones

What is an Evangelical? The Banner of Truth Trust, 1992, p. 42. Used by Permission.

Holy Scripture, being God’s own Word, written by men prepared and superintended by His Spirit, is of infallible divine authority in all matters upon which it touches: it is to be believed, as God’s instruction, in all that it affirms; obeyed, as God’s command, in all that it requires; embraced, as God’s pledge, in all that it promises.

The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy

A Short Statement, n. 2.

Is authority to be placed in human wisdom or cultural experience, or is it to be located in an incommensurable divine revelation that intrudes into our world from the beyond? Does it lie within the compass of what we can ordinarily discover or conceive, or does it break into our world as a new reality that overturns human imagination and conception? Is it a truth waiting to be uncovered through diligent searching, or is it a word personally addressed to us, calling us to repentance and obedience?

Donald Bloesch
Taken from: A Theology of Word and Spirit © 1992,p. 185, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA. Used with permission of InterVarsity Press, P.O. Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515. www.ivpress.com.

Here it is, plain and unvarnished. Unless I am convinced of error by the testimony of Scriptures or...by manifest reasoning I stand convicted by the Scriptures to which I have appealed, and my conscience is taken captive by God's Word, I cannot and will not recant anything...On this I take my stand. I can do no other. God help me.

Martin Luther

The authority of Scripture is greater than the comprehension of the whole of man's reason.

Martin Luther

We must not in practice deny our allegiance to the authority of the Word of God by saying we believe it while continuing to live according to what is right in our own eyes.

Burk Parsons

Questionable Authority, Tabletalk, March, 2009, p. 2. Used by Permission.

From the Garden of Eden, to the experience of Job, to the temptation of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the present day, Satan has tried to move man away from submission to the authority of God and His Word. If he cannot do it through direct enticement or challenge, he will attempt to do it through all manner of subtlety and deception. That is why one must be careful not to embrace new revelations that come through any avenue: impressions, intuition, visions, dreams, tongues, or prophecy. As noted previously, such undermine both the authority and sufficiency of Scripture.

John Napier

We must not allow our emotions to hold sway over our minds. Rather, we must seek to let the truth of God rule our minds. Our emotions must become subservient to the truth.

Jerry Bridges

As far as the apostles were concerned, they were as weak as any other men. They were uneducated, very ordinary men. Yet they are given this privileged position: they will deliver the Word of God through the Son to the world. From God the Father, through the Son, through the Spirit, and through the apostles to the world. In this sense, the apostles are "foundational" to the church...Theological and ethical instruction from the apostles is universally binding. Indeed, it is "from God to us."

Fred Zaspel

Tom Wells and Fred Zaspel, New Covenant Theology, 2002.

There is nothing so deluding as feelings. Christians cannot live by feelings. Let me further tell you that these feelings are the work of Satan, for they are not right feelings. What right have you to set up your feelings against the Word of Christ.

C.H. Spurgeon

Since no daily responses are given from heaven, and the Scriptures are the only record in which God has been pleased to consign His truth to perpetual remembrance, the full authority which they ought to possess with the faithful is not recognized unless they are believed to have come from heaven as directly as if God had been heard giving utterance to them.

John Calvin

God speaks in the Scriptures, and by it teaches the Church herself; and therefore His authority in the Scriptures is greater, the authority of Him that teaches, than of those by whom He teaches as the authority of a king in his law is greater than that of an officer that proclaims them.

Author Unknown

A Puritan Golden Treasury, compiled by I.D.E. Thomas, by permission of Banner of Truth, Carlisle, PA. 2000, p. 56.

The Word of God never returns empty handed, frustrated, and defeated. It always, and without exception, accomplishes the pleasure of the sovereign God because He has decreed that His divine plan shall prosper in each single detail (Isa. 55:11; Acts 13:48).

Duane Edward Spencer

TULIP, The Five Points of Calvinism in the Light of Scripture, Baker, 1979, p. 22.

The idea of sola Scriptura is that there is only one written source of divine revelation, which can never be placed on a parallel status with confessional statements, creeds, or the traditions of the church. Scripture alone has the authority to bind the conscience precisely because only Scripture is the written revelation of almighty God.

R.C. Sproul

Twilight of the Idols, Tabletalk, June 2008, p. 7, Used by Permission.

The Bible alone is the only authority that can bind the conscience of a person absolutely because it is the only authority that carries with it the intrinsic authority of God Himself.

R.C. Sproul

The Divine Foundation of Authority, Tabletalk, March, 2009, p. 7. Used by Permission.

The Bible was the only book Jesus every quoted, and then never as a basis for discussion but to decide the point at issue.

Leon Morris

The inspiration and authority of the Bible is the bedrock upon which our faith is built. Without it, we are doomed to uncertainty, doubt, and a hopeless groping in the darkness of human speculation.

Sam Storms
Special Revelation I, November 8, 2006, www.enjoyinggodministries.com. Used by Permission.

Jesus himself clearly believed in the inspiration and authority of Scripture. Being a disciple of Jesus entails not only doing what Jesus did but also believing what Jesus believed. It is impossible to accept the authority of Christ without also accepting the authority of Scripture. To believe and receive Jesus as Lord and Savior is to believe and receive what He taught about Scripture.