What good is Scripture? How does it help us with spiritual insight for important life decisions?
As we begin a new study series on “The Doctrine of Scripture”, we hope to see what Scripture says about itself: that God’s Word is sufficient, clear, authoritative and necessary.
(A)The God Who Speaks (Heb 1:1)
In Hebrews 1:1, we see that “God spoke to the fathers through the prophets at many times and in many ways”. The “fathers” referred to the Patriarchs of Israel, the main characters of its national history. The prophets were God’s designated messengers that brought God’s word to His people. This has been the God of the Bible’s consistent pattern of revelation throughout history: He speaks.
This speaking God makes all the difference to how we understand our world. Many would have been familiar with the illustration of the blind men and the elephant to illustrate how many different religions all claim to have spiritual insight and wisdom. The illustration is designed to conclude that all the claimaints are equally blind. But the problem with the analogy is that the elephant, the so-called object of mystery, does not speak. The God of the Bible however, is a speaking God who has revealed Himself through words.
The first prophet who records for us what God has spoken is the man, Moses. He wrote the first 5 books of the Bible. Consider how the first pages of Scripture help us to understand the way that God speaks and what He speaks for. In Genesis 1:1-10, we are introduced to a God who speaks with an effectual word. What He commands, comes forth in creation as He says it should. Creation flows out of His spoken word. In Genesis 1:28, we see that with His word, God also blesses. How should we respond to a God who speaks? Surely we listen, obey and receive His blessing. Our response to Him is to joyfully receive.
Later in Genesis 3:8-9 after the fall, after Adam and Eve, who desired to be their own god, disobeyed God and rebelled against Him, we see another instance of how God uses His word. How does this speaking God respond to rebels? There, He does command their retribution, or even summon them to Him for judicial reckoning. Rather, He graciously invites them into His presence. This speaking God uses His word to seek out sinners. By responding to His Word, there is real relationship and opportunity to know His kindness.
God’s word is given in order to reveal Himself. In Psalm 50:1-2, we read of this God who creates and rules over the created world. But in this psalm we also see Him exposing and dealing with our sin (Ps 50:19-21). But what does He say is our fault? That we think He is as we are – that we make Him out to be one like us. The speaking God shatters any illusion that He is like us.
Moreover, the God who speaks expects our lives to be changed by His Word (c.f. Deut 4:5-8). God gives us laws — holy, delightful and good laws — that are meant to order, shape and structure the good life. As we gather around what He has said to us, we see how He desires for life to be lived, and we know His will for our lives. Knowing that God speaks also shapes and guides our lives.
The word of the God who speaks should reshape our hopes and dreams. What are we really pursuing? What are we spending ourselves for? Listening to the God who speaks is to know Him, and He lifts the veil of mystery to know Him in truth. We have something better than shadows, doubt and mystery. From Isaiah 55:10-13, we learn that God’s word will never fail – it will always achieve the purpose for which it was sent. It will reveal, uncover, inform, transform and make things anew. By speaking His sufficient word, God will accomplish something eternal, certain, true and everlasting!
(B) The Son Who Shows (Heb 1:2-3a)
Pay attention to the shift now emphasised by the writer of Hebrews in “these last days”. God has now, spoken to us by His Son (Heb 1:2a). The “former” days and “the last days” are contrasted through the appearing of God’s own Son. Thus, we can understand time and history in terms of how God has revealed Himself. These days of the knowing God through the Son are indeed the last days.
In Hebrews 1:2b-3a, we read of four attributes that describe the Son. He is:
The heir of all things
The One through whom God created the world
The radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of His nature
The One who upholds the universe by the word of His power
Thus, all things are for the Son – they are His as the heir of all – and are rightfully His. But since creation is by Him, all things are by Him. As God’s own radiance and image, He is above all things. Since He upholds all things, all things are through Him.
Thus, all things are for Him, by Him, under Him and through Him.
God now reveals Himself through the Son. How is this different from the past? We can know God now through the person of God, Jesus Christ, in the flesh. Just as we can know a lot about a great and famous person through museum exhibitions, correspondences, accounts etc, these all pale in comparison to meeting the person directly and hearing from Him.
Scripture tells us that the Son has revealed God decisively and personally, as He is God in the flesh. When we open the Scriptures, it allows us meet this God in a deeply relational and complete way. We need no other resource than this word about the Son.
It is through the Bible that we learn about this Jesus, who is the royal heir of all, the creator of all, the God of all and the sustainer of it all. Every book of the Bible reveals Him, from the Old Testament that anticipates Him, to the New Testament that explains Him.
There is no other means by which we can know Jesus other than the Word He gave to know God and how God has arrived. And we have no other means to knowing God other than knowing Jesus. Thus the sufficiency of this Book is to believe and accept the trustworthiness of this effective word – that its purpose in knowing Jesus is achieved. A sufficient Scripture is to have all that we need to know about God’s Son, and that God has spoken enough to us.
What are you doing to try and know God and the good life? Where are you looking in order to know more about God? Or to know God? If God has truly spoken through His Son, would He not be perfectly able to give us everything we need to know Him truly?
This is the sufficiency of the Scripture – that the God who has finally spoken through His Son has given us a word about Him that does not fail. That word would not be littered with errors or irrationality, or fail to convey truthfully what we need to know Him.
Only if the knowledge of the Son is sufficiently and adequately conveyed to us, can we have the Son who shows. And in knowing Him, we hear the God who speaks.
(C) The Scripture Is Sufficient (Heb 1:3b-4)
Hebrews 1:3b-4 focuses on two final acts of this revealing Son. The works of Jesus are highlighted: how he offers up purification for sins, just as the priests did, and second, how He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty of High (Heb 1:3b). The writer of Hebrews, in thinking about how the Son reveals, gives us what the Son does. Here we are asked to imagine an earthly priest, having completed his sacrificial duties standing at service in the tabernacle or temple, now seated. But he is not seated at his place of duty, he is seated at God’s own right hand.
All that needed to be done has been finished, and decisively so. This is what the author of Hebrews wants us to understand. God’s purposes have been completely accomplished by this Final Word. The Final Word has fully saved and presented a complete sacrifice. It is principally, perfectly and completely as Jesus offers Himself up for the sins of the world. All of Scripture has been priming us to know God our Saviour, and now in Jesus we see Him completing our salvation, and fully and finally revealing God in it. In achieving the salvation that God has purposed all along, He enables us to know God.
Salvation is no mere change of status. While our identity is certainly changed, there is much more! The God who has spoken and revealed Himself has also saved us, and His word to us does more than inform us. It also transforms us as we are reconciled to God!
2 Peter 1:3-8 teaches us how that that transformation takes place. Peter tells us there that “the knowledge of God changes us. As He has spoken to us to reveal Himself, we receive the “knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises”. This word He has spoken is all we need for life and godliness. Whenever we open the Scriptures to know God in Christ, we receive this knowledge and His promises to us. They enable us to partake in the divine nature and change, becoming more like Him, the one in whose image we are made, and for whom we were made. We don’t just know Him as our Maker and Judge, but as the One who changes us and makes us like Him.
His Word changes everything, and His Word can be trusted,
The Scriptures are sufficient to reveal God in Jesus Christ, and imparting to us salvation, new life and transformation.
The Scripture is sufficient because it is perfectly able to help us know Jesus and achieve all God has for us in Him. Jesus is the Son who shows the Father. And in Him, the Father has spoken. This should change every part of how we live our lives. It changes the way we eat. See the delight God has in this world. It changes the way we think about life, this world, and about other people — as those made in the image of God. It changes the way we makes plan in our lives — why wouldn’t we make this Scripture the very foundation and centre of our lives? This is what the sufficiency of Scripture gives us. A very great confidence that we can know God, that we can receive His word of salvation in Jesus, and that because of that, everything can change.