What is the word of God?
The holy scriptures of the Old and New Testament are the word of God, the only rule of faith and obedience.
If it is not apparent, not all that is written by man is of equal value. Much in fact is a waste of time. It may be of no use because it has no merit and is untrue. It may be even worse than untrue; it may be misleading and deceptive. To find truth is truly a wonderful discovery; he who finds truth has discovered an attribute of God. In Scripture we have His Word.
There is no truth, even written by man, that is not first from Him…but first, we must know Him the true and Only God.
It makes little difference, at least in this respect, whether you hold the existence of one God, or a plurality of gods, since, in both cases alike, by departing from the true God, you have nothing left but an execrable idol. It remains, therefore, to conclude with Lactantius (Instit. Div. lib 1:2, 6), “No religion is genuine that is not in accordance with truth.”
– John Calvin, Institutes of Christian Religion chapter 4
The Word of God is the first and final authority when it comes to what it is we should believe and how it is we should conduct ourselves.
2 Timothy 3:16 “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness.” Let me consider the ways scripture benefits mankind: It teaches, it reproves, it corrects and it trains in righteousness.
Scripture is God speaking.
Paul was not alone in this perspective. We hear Peter also telling us,
“…and we ourselves heard this utterance made from heaven when we were with Him on the holy mountain. So we have the prophetic word made more sure, to which you do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star arises in your hearts. But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.” 2 Pet 1:18-20
So Paul and Peter both agree, the Scripture is important to the believer. The believer is not left up to their own devices to make sense of it. Each person is not supposed to arrive at what they think the scripture says. No, the believers task is to understand what the apostle or the prophet meant by the scripture they wrote. Paul explains, “having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the corner stone.” Ephesians 2:20
Each believer is part of the building of God, the temple in fact. It is important that what each individual believes, conforms to the overall structure of what God has revealed and is building. It’s a serious matter for a building block to be distorted and out of shape. The building blocks must conform to the specifications of the builder. This is made clear when Paul says in Galatians 1:8–9 “But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed! As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed!”
John the apostle echoes this same thought in Revelation 22:18–19, “I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues which are written in this book; and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his part from the tree of life and from the holy city, which are written in this book.” So it seems what God has given he expects us to know, understand and live by.
This standard has been the case for many, many years. Even Abraham refers us to this standard. Luke says pertaining to Abraham, “But Abraham said, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.’ … But he said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be persuaded even if someone rises from the dead.’” Luke 16:29, 31
This passage is very telling, Abraham knew that something like a man rising from the dead was not going to make an unbeliever, believe. To believe, requires an act of the Spirit of God to raise the dead heart to life so that a person can read and believe the words of truth.
This should give us significant pause. The Spirit must act for us to believe. This is possibly contrary to what we think about how it is we have come to faith. I remember making a decision to believe. It’s time to trust the Word of God in Scripture and take God at His word. Faith is a gift, given before it is exercised.
Eph 2:8 For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God;
By the time I am making a decision, God has already acted on my behalf and sent His Spirit into my heart, crying Abba Father, arise and walk. The dead make no decisions for God. To decide is to already be alive for Christ has already breathed His life into my dead soul and so I respond in faith.
The dead make no decisions for God but they do stink while doing it – living for themselves. If you don’t stink anymore, or are endeavoring to stink less, praise God for He has done this in you!
P.S. – “Can any thing be more detestable than this madness in man, who, finding God a hundred times both in his body and his soul, makes his excellence in this respect a pretext for denying that there is a God? He will not say that chance has made him differ from the brutes that perish; but, substituting nature as the architect of the universe, he suppresses the name of God.”
John Calvin – Institutes of the Christian Religion, Chapter 5
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