The Beauty of Biblical Authority

On Wednesdays we “walk in the Word” through study & application of Biblical doctrine. Rightly understanding Biblical doctrine fuels doxology, delight in Jesus, & gospel centered discipleship. Today we celebrate the beauty of  Scripture's authority.

The biggest reason Christians misunderstand biblical authority isn’t the culture around us, it’s the Church itself. It’s tempting to blame the secular world, where the individual is seen as the highest authority and personal desires like pleasure, power, and preference drive decisions. But sadly, many Christian leaders  in both churches and homes have followed that same path, and believers have followed them. The consequences have cascaded into relationships, mental and spiritual health, finances, communities, sexuality, ethics, and more. The solution begins with recovering a right understanding of biblical authority by exploring the meaning of Inspiration, Inerrancy, and Infallibility.
 
What does it mean that the Bible is inspired by the Holy Spirit, God’s very words that are perfect and purposeful, what we call infallible and inerrant? While these three terms are woven together to form an unbreakable rope, we will briefly unpack them one at a time.
                                Inspiration
All of God’s Word is inspired by the Holy Spirit. The Greek word “theopneustos” combines “God” and “breath out,” used in 1 Timothy 3:16 to emphasize the divine origin of Scripture. Three views of how God’s Spirit breathed out God’s Word should be considered:

• Romantic inspiration is popular among liberals who believe the Biblical writers were inspired but their writings were not superintended by the Holy Spirit. This low view of Scripture puts the Bible on par with classic works from artists like Shakespeare or Bach and robs the Bible of reliability and authority.
• Mechanical inspiration, or inspiration by dictation, is on the other end of the spectrum. This view sees Biblical authors as secretaries of the Spirit and eliminates the importance of historical context and intended meaning for the original audience. This approach forces readers and interpreters to impose our ideas onto Scripture. Denying the value of the literal sense of Scripture hinders the practical authority of Scripture.
• Organic inspiration holds that God’s Spirit moved Biblical authors and superintended their writings so by His inspiration they wrote infallibility. In doing so, the Spirit did not circumvent their humanity or historical context thus communicating God’s timeless truth for all God’s people in all times through real people who were living in actual history.

 
B.B. Warfield rightly noted:
“Inspiration is that extraordinary, supernatural influence exerted by the Holy Spirit on the writers of the Scriptures by which their writings were made trustworthy and free from error."

    God’s Word is Purposeful and Perfect
Inspiration is inseparable from inerrancy and infallibility. God’s Spirit supernaturally guided human authors so their words were truly God’s Word, to accomplish God’s work and perfectly authoritative in original languages (before translations). The person of God wrote the perfect word of God through the people of God, so the purposes of God will be accomplished. But if it is this simple, why do we struggle to embrace the beauty of Scripture’s authority?

In the introduction to R.C. Sproul’s book Knowing Scripture, J.I. Packer writes, “If I were the devil…one of my first aims would be to stop folk from digging into the Bible. Knowing that it is the Word of God, teaching men to know and love and serve the God of the Word, I should do all that I could to surround it with the spiritual equivalents of pits, thorn hedges and man traps, to frighten people off.” Packer then quotes Jonathan Edwards, “The devil has ever shown a mortal spite and hatred towards that holy book the Bible: he has done all in his power to extinguish that light…He is engaged against the Bible, and hates every word in it.” (Knowing Scripture, p 12) 

Satan desires for us to question the authority of God's Word, and he uses our lack of understanding against us.  Let's quickly define terms:
 Infallibility claims that Scripture cannot fail in its purpose or teaching. Because God cannot lie or err, His Word is entirely trustworthy in all it affirms. Scripture comes from a perfect God who cannot lie and who will accomplish the purpose of His Word:
                   Titus 1:2 “…God, who never lies…”
              Isaiah 55:11 “so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.”

Inerrancy goes further, stating that Scripture is entirely trustworthy and is incapable of error in all it affirms about God, salvation, history, and the created world… everything. God’s Word will not endorse error, so all it contains is truth, not merely because it happens to be true but because it comes from a God who is a truth teller.
 
The Bible embraces its own inerrancy:
            Psalm 12:6 “The words of the Lord are pure words, like silver refined in a furnace… purified seven times.”
               Proverbs 30:5 “Every word of God proves true; he is a shield to those who take refuge in him.”
                  John 17:17 “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.”
 
For Christians to embrace the beneficial authority of God’s word, we must believe the bible is actually God’s word, written by God’s Spirit to accomplish God’s work and incapable of error because the Author is a truth teller. This means, practically, that God’s word is our absolute authority in all areas of life: Relationships, sexuality, health, identity, (mental, spiritual, financial, and physical), community, finances, hope, purpose, ethics, and everything else. 
 
God’s Word is perfect, and His purposes will be accomplished through His word.

                      The tension is real!
This battle for the authority of God’s Word and the tension we navigate is illustrated well by the story of the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy (1978).
 
In the 1960s and 70s, evangelical institutions such as seminaries, denominations, and publishing houses were increasingly influenced by liberal theological trends that questioned or denied Scripture. Many still affirmed that the Bible was “inspired” in the romantic sense but their subjective interpretations created confusion. 
 
Proactively, a group of reformed and evangelical leaders recognized that the heart of the battle was over the trustworthiness of God’s Word. Led by theologians R.C. Sproul, J.I. Packer, Francis Schaeffer, and James Montgomery Boice, over 200 scholars, pastors, and leaders gathered in Chicago in 1978 under to form the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy (ICBI). The result was the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, a landmark document that provides detailed “Articles of affirmation and denial” and exposition on the meaning of inerrancy. 
 
One of the core affirmations reads:
“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…”
 
And one of the most pointed denials states:
“We deny that it is possible for the Bible to be at the same time infallible and errant in its assertions. Infallibility and inerrancy may be distinguished, but not separated.” 
 
The document directly addressed a growing compromise among evangelicals who wanted to say the Bible was trustworthy for salvation but could err in its historical or cultural claims. You can read the whole statement HERE.
 
RC Sproul summarized the importance stating, “The doctrine of inerrancy is not a peripheral issue… It goes to the very heart of our confidence in the truthfulness and authority of Scripture.”

                                 Conclusion
It turns out, celebrating the beauty of Biblical authority is as basic as believing, fully trusting God's Spirit wrote God's Word through God's people, recorded perfectly to accomplish the purposes of God. There is an enemy who wants believers to doubt the beauty of Scripture's authority, but the enemy has no authority over believers (unless we give him authority). Christians must repent from rejecting Biblical authority and return in faith, concrete confidence that God's Word is sufficient for all of life and welcoming His authority in all we say, think, and do.