Scripture's Sufficiency

 

"We study the Bible because it is the whole counsel of God."

This past Sunday, my morning class discussed the sufficiency of Scripture. Wayne Grudem offers this helpful definition of what sufficiency really means:

"The sufficiency of Scripture means that Scripture contained all the words of God He intended His people to have at each stage of redemptive history, and that it now contains all the words of God we need for salvation, for trusting Him perfectly, and for obeying Him perfectly.”

Think about it: The Bible does not leave us lacking as it pertains to what we are to believe or how we are to behave. This conviction makes us very strange people. The world, of course, rejects the inspiration of the Bible, the sufficiency of the Bible, and, subsequently, the authority of the Bible. However, we uphold Scripture as the complete, infallible word of God that conveys the truth (not just "our truth"). The ramifications of this belief are virtually endless.

Yesterday at our church's booth at a community event, a young man who had recently returned from his LDS mission asked me what makes our church different than other Christian churches he might encounter. I told him that we cherish the true exposition of Scripture, studying the Bible verse-by-verse, chapter-by-chapter, not skipping over anything God has said. I was essentially echoing this core value: We believe the entire counsel of God for us today is found in the Word inspired and preserved, so we study every part of it. When we say we will go through a book of the Bible together, we mean that we will look at every word of it. We will embrace how God chooses to lead us along and we will permit His revelation to take preeminence among our creaturely thoughts and opinions. We will see how Scripture fits with and interprets itself and ask God to help us apply what He has said to our lives.

We are, after all, a Bible church. It is how we have chosen to define ourselves. So, let us pursue the knowledge of God we so desperately need by examining what He has breathed from His mouth (Matthew 4:4, 2 Timothy 3:16-17).