BIBLE-SUFFICIENCY
This weapon
is good at all points, good for defense and for attack, to guard our whole
person or to strike through the joints and marrow of the foe. Like the seraph’s sword at Eden’s gate, it
turns every way. You cannot be in a
condition that the Word of God has not provided. The Word has as many faces and eyes as
providence itself. You will find it
unfailing in all periods of your life, in all circumstances, in all companies,
in all trials, and under all difficulties.
Were it fallible, it would be useless in emergencies, but its unerring
truth renders it precious beyond all price to the
soldiers of the cross.
C.H. Spurgeon
Spiritual Warfare
in a Believer’s Life, Sermon Matthew 4:4.
Some
persons think they can know God by means of their own human reason. But reason is a blind ally
spiritually. It has always been the
great minds exercising their powers apart from the Word of God who have
produced the great heresies. Some think
they can discover God by listening to a so-called 'inner voice.' But the voice
is often nothing more than an expression of their own
inner desires. Quite a few think that
spiritual truths can be verified by supernatural events or miracles. But the Bible everywhere teaches that even
miracles will not lead men and women to understand and receive God's truth
unless they themselves are illuminated by the Bible (see Luke 16:31). I believe that we can state categorically
that there is no knowledge apart from Jesus Christ and that there is no
knowledge of Jesus Christ apart from a knowledge of
the Bible.
The Bible is
a sufficient source of truth and direction for salvation and for all
significant aspects of life. A person should not search the Scriptures in hopes
of learning the best way to poach an egg or repair an automobile. But when it
comes to issues of sin, salvation, the church, the worship of God, evangelism,
marriage, the education and discipline of children, relating to an immoral
society, or any other aspect of Christian living, the Bible stands alone as
sufficient. God’s Word does not need to be supplemented by human wisdom,
ingenuity, philosophy, or psychology.
Daryl Wingerd
The
Bible is God's Special Revelation, Christian Communicators Worldwide, www.CCWtoday.org. Used by Permission.
I
have convenanted with my Lord that he should not send
me visions or dreams or even angels. I
am content with this gift of the Scriptures, which teaches
and supplies all that is necessary, both for this life and that which is to
come.
The Bible
contains the words of God and has great power. It is the primary tool that God
uses to provide divine guidance and insight, convict sinners, change hearts,
judge thoughts and attitudes, and train and equip Christians.
Karl Graustein
Growing Up Christian, P&R, 2005, p. 188. Used by Permission.
How did the
early Church ever function without the “expertise” we have today? Yet those
Christians turned the world upside down (Acts 17:6), and they did it without
any celebrity testimonies, without modern management techniques, without
psychotherapy, without mass media, and without most of the means the
contemporary church seems to view as essential. All they had was God’s Word and
the power of His Spirit, but they knew that was sufficient.
John MacArthur
Bible-Believing
Doubters from Our Sufficiency in Christ, 1991, Crossway Books, a division of
Good News Publishers, Wheaton Illinois 60187, www.crosswaybooks.org. p. 122.
Even
though [the Bible] is an ancient document, every person in every situation in
every society that’s ever existed can find in this book
things that endure forever.
Here’s a book that never needs another edition. It never needs to be edited, never has to be
updated, is never out of date or obsolete. It speaks to us as pointedly and directly as
it ever has to anyone in any century since it was written. It’s so pure that it lasts forever.
You Can Trust the Bible, Moody Press, 1988, p. 21-22.
Vainly
do they run about with the pretext that they have demanded councils for the
faith’s sake; for divine Scripture is sufficient above all things.
[Sola Scriptura
is defined as] the comprehensive and completed revelation of the will of God
for us by which we can be thoroughly equipped for every good work... Such a complete, perfect, eternal, all-embracing, and
all-sufficient revelation from God that it will never need amendment,
correction, or supplementation.
Joe
Morecraft
How God Wants Us to Worship Him. Vision Forum
Ministries, p. 10.
Embracing Sola Scriptura will
radically alter your attitudes. It arouses profound gratitude to God for His
rich supply to His children of “everything we need for life and godliness.” It
inspires confidence in the Word of God as the complete, perfect, all-embracing,
and all-sufficient revelation from God that it will never need amendment,
correction, or supplementation. It begets humility regarding your own opinions
and a deep suspicion toward your autonomous conscience and reason. It produces
admiration and appreciation for the larger body of Christ in other times and
places and the documents (creeds, confessions, catechisms, commentaries) which
they have labored to leave for our understanding and benefit. And finally, it
encourages submission to Scripture’s God who alone has ultimate authority in
your life – the One who is in charge and who gets the final word.
John
Thompson
The Sufficiency of Scripture: By What
Standard? April 3, 2003, www.visionforumministries.org,
Used by Permission.
Sola
Scriptura makes is a
transformation in your trust. Your conviction and confidence is no longer in
psychology, social theory, corporate business models, or modern marketing
techniques, but rather in the fully sufficient Word of God. For personal life,
family life, church life – indeed, for ALL of life: vocational, political,
community, etc. – the comprehensive principles, precepts, practices, and
prudence of the Word of God is your safe and sure guide. No longer will you
live life as a practical humanist, but rather you will approach all issues
“epistemologically self-conscious” since there is no moral neutrality in the
universe.
John
Thompson
The Sufficiency of Scripture: By What
Standard? April 3, 2003, www.visionforumministries.org,
Used by Permission.
Sola
Scriptura will bring
about a revolution in your reading, studying, and living of Scripture. Knowing
now the incredible life-changing resource that God has put into your hands, you
will develop a specific plan to read and study the whole Bible through, listen
to the Bible on tape, listen to sermons on tape, help your spouse and children
read and study more, memorize God’s promises that help you escape the
corruption of the world, pray through the Scriptures asking God for help in
applying them, write specific applications that God wants you to do, meditate
on special portions of God’s Word, remove those things from your life that
quench your thirst for Scripture, and get involved in a church where God’s Word
is faithfully taught as “the complete, perfect, all-embracing, and
all-sufficient revelation from God that will never need amendment, correction,
or supplementation.”
John
Thompson
The Sufficiency of Scripture: By What
Standard? April 3, 2003, www.visionforumministries.org,
Used by Permission.
Those who
have sidestepped (even inadvertently) the authority of a fully sufficient Bible
have strayed in two opposite directions. The Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox,
and authoritarian cults have wrongly given autonomy and final authority to the
Church… At the other end of the spectrum are those who, in reaction to an
authoritarian church, have skirted a fully sufficient Bible by giving autonomy
and final authority to the individual’s conscience and reason. They assert that
every believer has the unfettered right to interpret the Scriptures not only
for himself but by himself. Interpretation, according to this view, is strictly
an individual matter.
John
Thompson
The Sufficiency of Scripture: By What
Standard? April 3, 2003, www.visionforumministries.org,
Used by Permission.
The
Scripture is the library of the Holy Ghost; it is a pandect of divine
knowledge, an exact model and platform of religion. The Scripture contains in it the credenda,
“the things which we are to believe,” and the agenda, “the things which we are
to practice.”
A Puritan Golden Treasury, compiled by I.D.E. Thomas, by permission of Banner of Truth, Carlisle, PA. 2000, p. 32.
He
doth not bid us take a taste of all sins and vanities, as Solomon did, to try
them: for they are tried already; but
that we should set the Word of God always before us like a rule, and believe
nothing but that which it teacheth, love nothing but
that which it prescribeth, hate nothing but that
which it forbideth, do nothing but that which is commandeth, and then we try all things by the Word.
A Puritan Golden Treasury, compiled by I.D.E. Thomas, by permission of Banner of Truth, Carlisle, PA. 2000, p. 36.
An
understanding of the sufficiency of Scripture is the context in which we
assert, maintain and practice the centrality of Scripture in the life of the
church.
Mark
Dever
"God Told Me" and the Sufficiency of Scripture, ©9Marks. Website: www.9Marks.org. Email: info@9marks.org. Toll Free:
(888) 543-1030.
God’s Word
has always been His chosen instrument to create, convict, convert, and conform His people.
Mark Dever and Paul
Alexander
The
Four P’s, taken from The Deliberate Church, © 2005, Crossway Books, a division
of Good News Publishers, Wheaton Illinois 60187, p. 33, www.crosswaybooks.org.
Whenever a
man takes upon him to make additions to the Scriptures, he is likely to end
with valuing his own additions above Scripture itself.
J.C. Ryle
Matthew Commentary, Chapter 15.
The whole
counsel of God, concerning all things necessary for His own glory, man’s
salvation, faith and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good
and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture: unto which nothing at
any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit, or
traditions of men.
Westminster
Confession of Faith
1:6.
The
sufficiency of Scripture means that we don’t need any more special revelation.
We don’t need any more inspired, inerrant words. In the Bible God has given us,
we have the perfect standard for judging all other knowledge. All other
knowledge stands under the judgment of the Bible even when it serves the Bible.
John
Piper
Thoughts on the Sufficiency of Scripture, February 9, 2005. Used by permission.
www.DesiringGod.org.
The Bible and the Bible alone (Sola Scriptura) is
sufficient to provide us with all truth essential for salvation. Whether explicitly or implicitly, everything necessary for faith
and life can be found in Scripture.
Sam
Storms
Authority and Method in Theology, November 8, 2006, www.enjoyinggodministries.com.
Used by Permission.
The
fanaticism which discards the Scripture, under the pretense of resorting to immediate
revelations is subversive of every principle of Christianity. For when they boast extravagantly of the
Spirit, the tendency is always to bury the Word of God so they may make room
for their own falsehoods.