Where has the Word of God spoken?
Where can we find the Word of God? I tried to respond to this in the first part of these articles, which has been published with the title of The Power of Prayer. We find the Word of God in the Bible. We do not say that only the Bible contains the Word of God; we attest that the Bible is the Word of God.In a time of turmoil and distress, and in the midst of the doubts and weaknesses of our lives, we can accept with absolute confidence that Book.
When we say that the Bible is the Word of God, we mean in fact something very concrete. We mean to say that the Bible is true.
We mean to say that the writers of the Bible, in addition to all the requirements providential Possessed for his task, received an impulse and support immediate and supernatural by the Spirit of God, the impulse and direction that made them free of errors that are found in the other books.
As a result, these books, the Bible, is completely true in all that it says about matters of fact, and has an absolute authority in what it commands. This is the great doctrine of the plenary inspiration or full of the Sacred Scripture.
This doctrine, contrary to what it has often been imputed, non-violent, the originality and personality of the biblical writer; and it does not mean that they become mere automatons who knew not what they were doing. It does mean, however, that the move of the Holy Spirit in inspiration was supernatural.
Was not a mere providential action of God, nor the simple-to-use on the side of God of the resources of the universe that he had created; it was an interference with the benevolent and free in the course of nature by the immediately power of God.
This doctrine means that the Bible is the work of God and not of man. Other books give the idea that they advise as to what is good and what is bad; this book only advises on what is good, or rather gives precise mandates that come to us with the full authority of the sovereign God.
This articles we are now are based on this high perspective of the Bible. I will try to examine the Bible with you in order to discover what God has said, not a simple man.
In this presentation of what God has told us in the Bible I truly hope is not the lack of sincere compassion for the man who does not believe in what I believe; I hope, not lacking in sympathy for the doubt. I hope to be able to show to that man in the development of my articles that some of the objections against the teachings of the Bible, common currency among our contemporaries, based on a misunderstanding of what the Bible says or a lack of consideration of important evidence that confirm the veracity of the Bible.
But all this about the Word of God should not confuse what I'm trying to do.
I am not trying to introduce you to what I have discovered by myself, nor help you to discover things by yourselves, but I ask you to read with me to what God has told us in his Word.In the articles that we begin today, as I began to talk to you about what God has told us in his Word.
The revelation of God contained in the Bible, we said, is not the only revelation that God has made. God has revealed himself through the universe he has made. "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament tells the work of his hands."
God has also been revealed by his voice inside of us, the voice of our mind. "When the gentiles which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, although not having the law, becomes a law, a law to themselves." The Bible puts the stamp of approval in what you may call "natural religion."
But the revelation of God through nature is not the only revelation that God has given. In addition nature has given a revelation that is called "supernatural" by reason of his higher nature.
This supernatural revelation was needed for two reasons.
In first place, the revelation of God through nature had been concealing from the eyes of men because of sin. The wonders of the world of God would have had to make the men worship you and would glorify the Creator, but his foolish heart is darkened.
The voice of conscience would have had to decide with clarity what was good and what was evil, but the consciousness of the men had been numb as seared. Because of that a sinful man needed a clear and new confirmation, of what nature and conscience, were saying.
In a second place, and this is even more transcendental that we acknowledge, man as a sinner needed to be revealed about God certain things which nature and conscience did not offer even the slightest clue.
He needed the revelation of the grace of God. Sin had not only blinded him but also got him lost him. He was under his own guilt and curse. He was under that influence. He desperate needed to be told how God had saved him. Nature was saying anything about this. The knowledge about God could only come to a sinful mankind in a way that was supernatural in the strictest sense.
How wonderfully and how rich it is the supernatural revelation of God found in the Bible verses! How much it surpasses the revelation of God through nature! All the doctrine of the Trinity, the appearance and work of the Lord Jesus Christ, the application of the work of Christ through the Holy Spirit, the glorious promise of a world to come, all this is not manifested to us through nature; we are told about this in the Bible and in the Bible only. We are intrinsically in contact with a revelation that is not natural but supernatural.
In previous articles, I started to tell you some references about this revelation. I explained to you the great biblical doctrine of a triune God. There is only one God, self depending on himself but in three persons; Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
At the very core of that presentation of the doctrine of the Trinity in the Bible, as we have seen, is the teaching concerning the divinity of Jesus Christ.
And related to Him exist are two opinions.
Some people consider him simply as a great religious genius, as the founder of one of the great world religions, as a man who did not mix his own person with the gospel, who did not demand that men have any special idea about him but simply he proclaimed God the Father, who did not ask that men have faith in him but only in God in the same way that he had faith in that God.
According to those who have this idea, Jesus was only a teacher and an example to copy, who opened for mankind a new path to God. This is the idea of the unbelievers.
But there is another idea about Jesus.
According to this idea, the person known in history as Jesus from all eternity he was infinite, God eternal and immutable. Through Him was the vast universe made. He came to this world by his own will. He took our nature, and was born as a man in order to be able to redeem his people on the cross. When he lived on earth, he offered himself to men as an object of faith, and he did not ask them to have faith in God only as he had, but to believe in Him.
He made salvation depend on the faith in Him, completely free. He died on the cross as a sacrifice to satisfy divine justice and reconcile us with God. It is God and man in two different natures and one person, and this is forever. He will come back and we will see Him with our own eyes. This idea of Jesus is for Christians.
We saw that this Christian perspective of Jesus is what he teaches in the Bible, and it is the one that Jesus himself taught in his person.
Did Jesus present Himself while on earth only as an example for the faith of menkind?
Did he just say: "Believe in God in the same way that I believe in Him?
Was He indifferent to what men thought of Him?
These questions are easy to answer if we take the biblical history of Jesus as a whole. The Jesus who presents himself totally in the Bible is evident that he offered himself to men as an object of faith, and that he made faith in his person something essential to achieve eternal life.
But unbelievers do not accept the full presentation of the Bible about Jesus. Well, then, I will say to the unbelieving friends: "Here you have a New Testament, take it and choose the passage you want to show me that the way of thinking about Jesus is right, I know that I do not like the passages that I quote. Let's see, then, what the passages you choose have to say."
In our previous articles we saw that when the unbeliever is invited to choose a passage, he will most likely turn to the Sermon on the Mount. In it, the unbelievers say, we have a non-theological Jesus, a Jesus who gave very high commands and made it clear that these commands could be obeyed whatever the idea that men had about Him.
They do not stop telling us this. Theology, we are told, is not the important thing, not even the theology that deals with Jesus Christ. If, they continue, the men decided only to do what Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, it would be a better man than to reach some agreements regarding him or the meaning of his death.
"Well,"I will say to that incredulous friend, "let's take only that passage that you have chosen, let's see only the Sermon on the Mount, and let's examine if it really presents the idea of Jesus, if in reality it presents us with a Jesus who was just a teacher and an example, and that he did not ask men to have any specific high idea about him.
We take the Sermon on the Mount to examine it from that perspective.
And what do we discover?
Did we discover a Jesus who did not identify his person with the gospel he preached and who did not care what men thought of Him?
We responded in a categorically negative way.
What we described in the Sermon on the Mount was a Jesus who in the most amazing way gave the rewards in the Kingdom of God, a Jesus who placed his commands in complete parity with those of God in the Old Testament, a Jesus who did not say like the prophets, "Thus saith the Lord," but said, "But I say to you, "a Jesus who called blessed those who maintained a certain relationship with Him. "Blessed are you when for my sake they revile you and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you, lying". a Jesus who said about himself that one day he would sit in the very throne of God to determine the final destiny of men so that some would be send to eternal punishment and others to the lasting life.
No, in the Sermon on the Mount we can not find any clue that allows us to elude Christ from the rest of the New Testament.
We do not find in that passage, by favorite that it is for the unbelievers, Not a mere human Jesus who would be indifferent to what men thought about Him and would only ask them to take him as their example to follow on the path to God.
We find in that passage just as in any other passage a Christ and only one, the Christ who was a 100% man and 100% God.
Yes, on the other hand, we find in the New Testament the Christ that others are looking for, a simple leader and an example, a simple discoverer of the path that leads to God.
What good would this Christ do to our souls?
What good would produce a simple guide and example to those who, like us, are dead in our transgressions and sins and are under the righteous wrath and curse of God?
What is the answer from the Christian point of view?
It is very simple. Yes, there is no doubt that the great double commandment of Jesus, "You shall love the Lord God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself" is more than enough for anyone.
Oh, but the case is friends, which is too much, there is the problem. This is the only reason why we are Christians. This stupendous commandment of Jesus is too rigorous; It is so rigorous that we have not succeeded in fulfilling it. If we had loved God and our neighbor, in the most exalted way that Jesus required, everything would have been fine; nothing different than this we would have needed; we would not have needed any doctrine of the Cross of Christ because we would not have needed any cross of Christ; we would not have needed any doctrine of the person of Christ, God and man in two different natures and a single person, because there would have been no need for Christ to become man. We would have been righteous, and we would not have needed a Savior.
But the fact is that we are sinners.
This is the reason why we need something more than a teacher, more than an example, more than just a legislator. This is why we need what the unbelievers despise as mere doctrine, but that we prefer to call the gospel.
For this we cling with all our soul to the great biblical doctrines of the person and work of Jesus Christ.
Suppose I had listened to Jesus only as a great example and legislator. Suppose I had heard him say, "You shall love the Lord God and your neighbor as yourself"; suppose I had heard it said in the Sermon on the Mount, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God."
What could I say then?
I would say: "I thank you, Jesus, this is what I needed to know, I am so happy to know that if I love God and my neighbor and I am clean of heart all will be well and I will enter the Kingdom of God."
My friends, the truth is that I do not know what I would say, although of course it would not be anything like this. I could only say, after listening to the commandments of Jesus: "Oh, I am lost, I have not loved God or my neighbor, I have not been clean of heart, I am a sinner, Jesus, have you nothing, apart from your exacting commandments, to tell me?
When I come to Jesus in this way, as a sinner, confessing that I have not obeyed his commandments and that I have nothing to offer him but that I am completely unworthy and helpless, do you have anything to tell me?
He might simply says: "You have already heard my rigorous commandments, this is all I have to tell you, this is all the gospel that I have to offer you, this is all the doctrine you need."
No, thank God, this is not all it takes to give me that cold comfort of a commandment that I have not fulfilled and can not fulfill.
He gives me more than this. He gives himself to me, He offers himself to me in the Bible as my Savior who died for me on the cross and who now lives as the one I can trust.
He offers himself to me in the great doctrines of his person and work. If it had been different, he could not have saved me and I could not trust him to save me. But since he is God himself, he could save me and saved me and the Holy Spirit has united me to Him through faith.
Do you see it, friends?
This is why Christian insists on the doctrine of the divinity of Christ. They does not consider it as something purely academic, but resorts to it as a castaway who clings to the board that can save him from drowning. No Christ below to the one in the Gospel could save us; this Christ could only save us from eternal death.
From this perspective we are going to focus on what we hope to expose in the following articles. The doctrine presented in the Bible is not for us a matter of curious interest; It is not something to be relegated to seminars or classrooms. It is a matter of transcendental importance; It is a matter of death or life. We are on the verge of eternity. We are sinners. We deserve the wrath and curse of God. Our hope lies only in what God has told us in the Word of the Lord. Let's listen and read it while we have time.
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