"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." Genesis 1:1
Genesis 1In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.And the evening and the morning were the third day.And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.
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"‘Thy word is truth’ (John 17:17)
Biblical infallibility is a subject of crucial importance for us and the whole church of Christ. There are people who say that evangelical Christians make too much of the Bible. They dismiss the phrase, ‘The Bible says,’ with the comment that anything can be proved from the Bible. They patronise us, speaking in terms of admiration for our orthodoxy and zeal but saying that the greatest weakness of evangelical Christians is to trust in an infallible Bible. They believe that this doctrine is utterly unacceptable in the modern age, that it is scientifically and intellectually impossible for Christians to believe it.
They think it wrong to try to unite around a book or a doctrine. ‘Let us unite,’ they say, ‘around the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the Truth.’ We are, of course, very happy to unite around the person of our Lord Jesus Christ and to make him our authority, to say with the apostle, ‘For me to live is the Lord Jesus Christ’. In fact, it is because of him that we find ourselves also uniting around an inerrant Scripture.
Firstly, let us consider the person of our Lord Jesus Christ
Who is this extraordinary person? He is the one who claims that one day he is going to judge the world, and he is going to separate all mankind as a shepherd separates his sheep from the goats. Men are going to receive their eternal destinies from His lips. Consider something more than this; that the criterion by which men and women are going to be judged is their relationship to Himself. Have they obeyed Him? Have they bowed to Him? Have they been ashamed of him? Their destinies are all going to depend upon that. More than that, he claims preexistence.
‘Before Abraham was I am,’
he says. More: he claims absolute equality with God,
John’s Gospel begins,
‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God’ (John 1:1–2),
and it ends with Thomas saying, ‘My Lord and my God,’ (John 20:28). This, then, is the Jesus Christ of the Bible. He is the Maker of heaven and earth. He designed the human brain. He upholds all things by the Word of his power. If the sparrow is going to fall then Jesus Christ must give the word of command. If a meteor will burn up in the earth’s atmosphere, the Lord will decree the occurrence. Nothing can happen without him. I believe all the laws of the universe are his. When our children bring home their textbooks from the new school with the forbidding heavy volumes of mathematics and physics, those books are simply the attempt of men to describe the world Christ made and sustains. One day He will come again in power, majesty and great glory to take apart this universe atom by atom. He will also put it all together again, a whole new universe in which righteousness will dwell.
Everyone must stand before Him. We shall meet Him and receive from His lips the destination where we will spend eternity. When we see Him we meet ultimate and final reality. I believe He is the only God there is. He is the whole form of God and the very Glory of God. In Jesus Christ all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are found infinitely and immeasurably. We do confess the infallibility of Jesus Christ, and that means for us He can say nothing wrong. He speaks on marriage, and on divorce. He speaks on creation both primary of all things from nothing, and then secondarily of those creatures he made out of the dust of the earth—the animals and man. He speaks on the human predicament and explains why people kill other people. He knows the heart of man as none other and all its devices. He speaks on death; he knows the eternal world.
The Lord Jesus pronounces inerrantly on every single item that you and I will meet in life. He alone was free from all the prejudices, misconceptions and traditions that cluttered His age. We are creatures of our time. He was not a creature of his time. Some religious people living then thought that it was wrong to eat ears of corn on the Sabbath day. Some believed it was wicked to eat food without first correctly and ceremonially washing their hands. Others thought it was right for a man to divorce his wife for any reason if she offended him. There were also those who thought they might be freed from the responsibilities of caring for aged parents by simply pronouncing the word, ‘Corban,’ meaning ‘my help to you is a gift of God.’ There were those who thought it was acceptable to love their neighbours and then to hate their enemies. Jesus was surrounded with the confusion of people who were children of their time. He was not a child of his time. He was God’s ‘Holy Child Jesus,’ and He corrected His generation on all such issues and many more. He stood against the tide and against his foes, even if it meant that they crucified Him. He could never be bought nor bribed. He could not be won by a smile or intimidated by a frown. He never taught error. This is the Son of God who said,
and it is around this Christ that men want us to unite. We have no objection at all to be doing that. Then let us go on and ask this question …
Secondly, how did this infallible Christ view the Scriptures?
It would be incredible if He were silent or merely noncommittal on so crucial a matter. We observe that he used the Old Testament Scriptures in all sorts of circumstances. He took them up in temptation when there was a full-frontal attack upon him from the devil. He overcame the devil by quoting from the book of Deuteronomy three times. ‘It is written,’ the Son of God said as the ultimate answer. He quoted the Bible pertinently and reverently throughout his temptations to triumph over Satan. He also used Scripture to answer His enemies. He appeals to the Bible when they are arguing about divorce, or about the right attitude to the Sabbath. He says to his opponents, ‘You err, not knowing the Scriptures’. He encouraged people in their faith through the Bible. There was a man, Cleopas, and his companion, who were distraught walking along the road to Emmaus. The Lord Jesus Christ had been murdered two days earlier and the bottom of their lives had fallen out. Jesus helped them get on with their lives and trust in God completely by opening up the Scripture. He began with Moses and then appealed to all the writing prophets. He showed the two men all the details about himself which were there in the Old Testament, and he judged them to be ‘foolish and slow not to believe the Scriptures.’ Again, he used Scripture to express His own faith. When he preached in Nazareth it was that the Scriptures should be fulfilled. When He was betrayed by Judas it was that the Scriptures should be fulfilled. When they put Him to death, Scripture had said the Messiah would thus die. When they hung Him upon a cross, it was because that very Scripture—‘cursed is he who hangs upon a tree’—should be fulfilled. When He is dying He quotes from Psalm 31 and also Psalm 22. Scripture must be fulfilled. He totally trusted the Word of God. He wholly obeyed the Bible. His faith is Bible faith. He never used any other book extant at his time. He never quoted from the apocryphal books on a single occasion. His appeal was to Scripture continually and alone."
Trusting the infallible Word
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