The Bible: It’s Sufficiency And Supremacy

January 2020 — Grace & Truth Magazine


The Bible – Its Sufficiency And Supremacy

Some, we are aware, would seek to persuade us that things are so totally changed since the Bible was penned that we need other guidance than that which its precious pages supply. They tell us that society is not what it was; that the human race has made progress; that there has been such a development of the powers of nature, the resources of science, and the appliances of philosophy, that to maintain the sufficiency and supremacy of the Bible can only be regarded as childish, ignorance or imbecility.

Now, the men who tell us these things may be very clever and learned, but we have no hesitation whatever in telling them that, in this matter, they do greatly “err, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God” (Mt. 22:29 KJV). We cannot listen for a moment to men, however profound their reading and thinking, who dare to treat God’s book as though it were man’s book and to speak of those pages that were penned by the All-wise, Almighty and Eternal God as though they were the production of a shallow and short-sighted mortal.

God has written a Book for man’s guidance, and we argue that the Book must be amply sufficient for man, no matter when, where or how we find him. “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God ... that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works” (2 Tim. 3:16-17).

We believe that the Bible, as written in the original Hebrew and Greek languages, is the very word of the only wise and true God. With Him, one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day. He saw the end from the beginning – and not only the end but every stage of the way. We therefore hold it to be nothing short of positive blasphemy to assert that we have arrived at a stage in which the Bible is not sufficient, or that we are compelled to travel outside its covers to find ample guidance and instruction for the present time or for any moment of our earthly pilgrimage. The Bible is a perfect chart in which every urgent matter of the Christian mariner has been anticipated. Every rock, every sandbank, every shoal, every strand and every island has been carefully noted down. All the needs of the Church of God, its members and its ministers, have been most fully provided for. How could it be otherwise if we admit the Bible to be the Word of God? Could the mind of God have divided, or His finger sketched an imperfect chart? Impossible! We must either deny the divinity or admit the sufficiency of the Book. We are absolutely shut up to these alternatives. There is not so much as a single point between these two positions. If the book is incomplete, it cannot be of God; if it is of God, it must be perfect. But if we are compelled to go to other sources for guidance and instruction – as to part of the Church of God, its members or its ministers – then we say the Bible is incomplete, and being such it cannot be of God at all.

We want a perfect standard, and this can only be found in a divine revelation: our most precious Bible. What a treasure! How we should bless God for it! How we should praise His name for His mercy that He has not left His Church dependent on the deceptions of human tradition but on the steady light of divine revelation!

It is better, if it must be so, for the believer to stand like a marble statue on the pathway of obedience than to reach the most desirable ends by transgressing a plain precept of the Word of God. However, let none suppose that one must be like a statue on the path of obedience. Far from it! There are rare and precious services to be rendered by the obedient one – tasks which can only be rendered by such and which owe all their preciousness to their being the fruit of simple obedience.

The grand business of the servant is to obey, to simply do what he is told. This makes all plain; and moreover, it will make the Bible precious as the depository, or vault, of the Master’s will, to which he must continually go to know what he is to do and how he is to do it. The all-important inquiry is: “What saith the Scripture” (Rom. 4:3). This settles everything. From the decision of the Word of God there must be no appeal. When God speaks, man must bow. It is reverent adherence to the Word of God. May God, the Author of the Bible, produce in the writer and reader of these lines a more ardent love for the Bible! May He enlarge our acquaintance through experience with its contents and lead us into more complete subjection to its teachings in all things, that God may be more glorified in us through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

By Charles H. Mackintosh (adapted)