The Need for Inerrancy
Posted: December 17, 2010 Filed under: Daily Life, Gospel, Testimony 3 Comments »Inerrancy is a hot-button word in Evangelicalism. Men who stand for it are often called fundamentalists or legalists. Men who stand against it are called heretics and liberals. The Conservative Resurgence in the SBC surely polarized this subject on a broad scale, above and beyond Baptist life. In any event, say what you wish and stand where you want.
As for me, I need the Bible to be inerrant.
The Bible cannot merely be another religious book with some truth in it. Adam and Eve cannot be simply a poetic example of good vs. evil. Abraham cannot simply be a cartoon character. David cannot simply be one of many kings in a small area of the Middle East. John the Baptist cannot simply be a crazy redneck from the woods.
I need Jesus to really be God.
I need Jesus to really be born of a virgin.
I need Jesus to really live a perfect, sinless life.
I need Jesus to really be punished on the cross in my place.
I need Jesus to really bodily rise from the grave.
I need Jesus to really return on the clouds in glory.
I need Jesus to really banish Satan and evil forever.
I need Jesus to really establish the new Heaven and Earth.
If Jesus is not who He said He was, if He is not who the Scriptures record Him to be… then He is another apocalyptic rabbi decomposed in a tomb somewhere. There is no hope, no real reason for doing anything.
Too many pastors are ignoring this. Too many choose to preach on topical nothingness rather than espousing the absolute dire need for Scripture to be right about the Gospel.
There is no more important message than the message of a risen Savior and the TRUTH of that message.
1 Corinthians 15:3-4, 14
For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures … And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.
Agreed!
Christmas without the Virgin birth and the Incarnation is a nothing story about a baby born in poverty. Who grew up to bring false hope to the masses.
That would not be worth celebrating.
Praise our Incarnate Risen Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ!
Ben.
A few years after my conversion from atheism which was a quite literal fulfillment of Rev.3:20 and Acts 16:14, I became concerned about knowing the nature of biblical inspiration. I cannot remember the date of my becoming persuaded that verbal inspiration was the view of the Lord Jesus Christ like the date of my conversion (12-7-57), but I do remember the book I was reading and the passage under consideration. It was L. Gaussen’s Theolopneustia and the pericope was Mt. 22:31,32,41-46. Our Lord’s exposition, usage, and application hit me like a ton of bricks. He treated the record as verbally inspired, word-inspired, and He spoke of it as God speaking to the people of his generation. From His holiness and purity I reasoned that inerrancy was tranmitted to the text. TheBible speaks of its own purity. A further consideration brought home to my mind and heart the profundity of the biblical word. Intellectualism being one of the areas in my M.A. program, I looked upon the Bible from the perspective and came to the conclusionthat Holy Scripture is reflective of the depth of the Being who inspired it. The experience of a friend provided an analogy by which to get some insight into the depths of the word and the intelligence of it. My friend was fishing on a mountain stream near Danville, Va. He saw a big rock on the other side and down stream from where he was. That was where the trout would be, he thought. Glancing down at the stream, he could see the bottome. “I could even see the grains of sand rolling alon the bottom. Two to three feet deep, I thought. I stepped off into the stream with all of my fishing great on and like to have drown. That stream was 18-20 feet deep. I came up grasping for every sprig of grass, anything to save me.” The clarity of the stream was the problem – along with the difference in the medium of water and its magnifying power. Likewise, the perspicuity of the written word of God is a problem. We think we grasp and understand it, but the depth is much greater than we can conceive. I spent two years doing research on the Greek text of I Cors.13 and wrote a paper for an honors course. Then I preached 10 sermons from that passage as a part of a Doctor of Ministry project on Christian Love and Race Relations. That experience shook me to the foundation of my being. In addition, the discovery that the paradoxical nature of much of the teachings of God’s word and how very opposites can restore responsibility and make the believer balanced, flexible, creative and magnetic led me to the conclusion the our real problem is our sinful ignorance and failure to think careful, deeply, and thoroughly about the word and how it works in human life.
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