10 Our Lord and His Bible
Our Lord and His Bible Our Lord had some other things to say about the Bible that showed His absolute confidence in it. His confidence would have been unwarranted if the Bible contained errors. The Canon. Canon means measuring rod, and thus, metaphorically, a standard. It was first used by Athanasius to refer to those books that measured up to certain standards and were regarded as part of the sacred Scriptures. The criteria used seem clear, and although the results of applying those criteria took some time to emerge, the actual number of books that belong to the canon of the Bible is not generally disputed, with one exception. And that exception, of course, is the Old Testament Apocrypha. It consists of fourteen or fifteen books, depending on whether the letters of Jeremiah and Baruch are separated or counted as one. Written mostly after 200 B.C. , the apocryphal books were given various degrees of esteem but were never considered on a par with the canonical Old Testament books until the Roman Catholic church officially pronounced eleven of them canonical at the Council of Trent in 1546. Our Lord had something to say about the extent of the Old Testament canon, His Bible. When condemning the leaders of the Jews for killing God’s messengers throughout history, He charged them with the guilt of shedding the blood of all the righteous from Abel to Zechariah (Matthew 23:35; Luke 11:51). Now the murder of Abel is recorded in Genesis 4:1-26, and the murder of Zechariah is found in 2 Chronicles 24:1-27, which in the arrangement of the Hebrew canon was the last book in order (as is Malachi in our arrangement). In other words, the Lord was saying in effect, “From the first to the last murder in the Bible.” There were, of course, other murders recorded in apocryphal books, but the Lord does not choose to include those in those He cites. Apparently, He did not consider those apocryphal books to be of equal authority with the books from Genesis to 2 Chronicles. Thus in one statement He let everyone know what He considered the canonical Old Testament Scriptures. His temptation. The account of the temptation of our Lord reveals some important matters concerning His view of the Bible.
1. Jesus accepted the plenary inspiration of the Bible. When first approached by the devil to turn stones into bread, our Lord replied that man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. (Matthew 4:4, quoting Deuteronomy 8:3). He did not say “some things” but “every thing.” If Scripture is breathed out from God (2 Timothy 3:16), then Scripture must be included in what sustains man, not only parts of Scripture but all of it. The second temptation also illustrates the importance of plenary inspiration. Satan tried to entice the Lord to throw Himself off the pinnacle of the Temple by assuring Him that He could claim the promise of Psalms 91:11-12 that God’s angels would guard Him. But in quoting those verses Satan omitted part of Psalms 91:11 : “To guard you in all your ways.” The omission distorts the meaning of the promise, which is that God will keep the righteous on their journeys, not that He will preserve them when they take needless risks. A needless risk was exactly what Satan had proposed to Christ. The Lord replied that to bank on part of a verse would be to tempt God. Instead He would rely on every word that came from God, including every word of Psalms 91:11-12.
2. Jesus accepted the truth of the propositions of the Bible. As has been said, a popular viewpoint today sees the Bible as containing only personal revelation, not propositional revelation. That is, the Bible reveals God and Christ accurately, but it does so in a person-to-person relationship rather than in statements. Therefore, although we can trust the message of the Bible, we really cannot (nor do we need to) trust the particular statements or propositions of the Bible. The Bible, this view says, witnesses to the infallible truth, but it does not have to do so with inerrant statements. The pointer, the Bible, is fallible, but Christ, to whom it points, is infallible. But Christ’s response to Satan’s attacks negates that viewpoint. He said, “it is written” (Matthew 4:4, Matthew 4:7, Matthew 4:10). He did not say, “It witnesses.” He relied on propositional statements to convey truth in and of themselves and to convey it accurately. The history in the Old Testament. Our Lord used historical incidents in the Old Testament in a manner that evinced His total confidence in their factual historicity.
1. He acknowledged that Adam and Eve were created by God, that they were two living human beings, not merely symbols of mankind and womankind, and that they acted in specific ways (Matthew 19:3-5; Mark 10:6-8).
2. He verified events connected with the Flood of Noah’s day; namely, that there was an ark and that the Flood destroyed everyone who was not in that ark (Matthew 24:38-39; Luke 17:26-27).
3. On two different occasions, He authenticated God’s destruction of Sodom, and the historicity of Lot and his wife (Matthew 10:15, Matthew 10:23; Luke 17:28-29).
4. He accepted as true the story of Jonah and the great fish (Matthew 12:40).
5. He acknowledged the historicity of Isaiah (Matthew 12:17), Elijah (Matthew 17:11-12), Daniel (Matthew 24:15), Abel (Matthew 23:35), Zechariah (Matthew 23:35), Abiathar (Mark 2:26), David (Matthew 22:45), Moses and his writings (Matthew 8:4; John 5:46), Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Matthew 8:11; John 8:39).
Some very important conclusions must be drawn:
1. Christ did not merely allude to those stories, but He also authenticated the events in them as factual history to be completely trusted.
2. Those events include many of the controversial passages of the Old Testament-creation, the Flood, the major miracles including Jonah and the fish.
Obviously, our Lord felt He had a reliable Bible, historically true, with every word trustworthy.