Crucial Bible Quotes

The Scientific Revolution has not been a revolution of knowledge. It has been above all a revolution of ignorance. The great discovery that launched the Scientific Revolution was the discovery that humans do not know the answers to their most important questions. Premodern traditions of knowledge such as Islam, Christianity, Buddhism and Confucianism asserted that everything that is important to know about the world was already known. The great gods, or the one almighty God, or the wise people of the past possessed all-encompassing wisdom, which they revealed to us in scriptures and oral traditions. Ordinary mortals gained knowledge by delving into these ancient texts and traditions and understanding them properly. It was inconceivable that the Bible, the Qur’an or the Vedas were missing out on a crucial secret of the universe – a secret that might yet be discovered by flesh-and-blood creatures.

At this crucial point, for the Roman Church to reach a compromise between this myth of Mithra and the Hellenistic Christianity of St. Paul, it was necessary to have a sudden change of events or an altered version of Jesus's life, and it was here that the Roman Church began to implement a psychological process known today as Cognitive Dissonance. In a few words, this happens when a group of people produce a false reconstruction of an event they want to continue to believe in, a literary strategy also known as the Reconstructive Hypothesis. This theological notion is equally known as Apotheosis or the glorification of a subject to divine level such as a human becoming a god. In the case of Jesus, this process was copied in its entirety from the religion of Mithra where their 'divinisations' were practically the same.

And to belove God, to center in God, has an additional crucial meaning. To belove God means to love what God loves. What does God love? The answer is in one of the most familiar Bible verses, John 3.16: “God so loved the world…

Jesus commands us to love God first, with everything we have, not only because God deserves our love and is worthy of it, but because he knows how crucial it is to our long-term well-being. God knows that whatever we love the most will rule our lives. That’s why the Bible counsels us to let the love of Christ control us (see 2 Corinthians 5:14), not the love of lesser things.

In the Bible there are three human institutions that stand apart from all others—the family, the church, and the state. There’s nothing in the Bible about how schools should be run, even though they are crucial to a flourishing society.

The main reason to address moral issues is that they have become a barrier to even hearing the message of salvation. People are inundated with rhetoric telling them that the Bible is hateful and hurtful, narrow and negative. While it’s crucial to be clear about the biblical teaching on sin, the context must be an overall positive message: that Christianity alone gives the basis for a high view of the value and meaning of the body as a good gift from God. In our communication with people struggling with moral issues, we need to reach out with a life-giving, life-affirming message. We should work to draw people in by the beauty of the biblical vision of life.

One crucial thing to keep in mind as you read any Hebrew narrative is the presence of God in the narrative. In any biblical narrative, God is the ultimate character, the supreme hero of the story.

From matters as crucial as the death of Jesus, to those as mundane as eating and drinking, the Bible presents the glo ry of God as the ultimate priority and the definitive criterion by which we should evaluate everything.

Knowledge precedes faith. This is crucial in understanding the Bible. To say (as a Christian should) that only that faith which believes God on the basis of knowledge is true faith, is to say something which causes an explosion in the twentieth-century world.

From the Bible we can surmise that God will ask us two crucial questions: First, “What did you do with my Son, Jesus Christ?” God won’t ask about your religious background or doctrinal views. The only thing that will matter is, did you accept what Jesus did for you and did you learn to love and trust him? Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”17 Second, “What did you do with what I gave you?” What did you do with your life — all the gifts, talents, opportunities, energy, relationships, and resources God gave you? Did you spend them on yourself, or did you use them for the purposes God made you for?

Third, you must reach out for help. Repentance is crucial. Remembering the Bible is essential. But as important as it is to be armed with these powerful graces, you are not designed to fight the battles of sin and temptation alone. You must call in reinforcements. You should have several people you’ve talked with in advance who will hold you accountable, people you can call when you are in trouble. I often tell people that I want them to feel comfortable calling me at any time of the day or night. They might wake me up in the middle of the night, but it’s better to do that than to sin. Reaching out to others immediately in the midst of temptation will often be difficult to do because sin loves the darkness and is skilled at presenting attractive excuses. You must fight these temptations and expose the darkness to the light.

Rejoicing in Christ is also crucial because idols are almost always good things. If we have made idols out of work and family, we do not want to stop loving our work and our family. Rather, we want to love Christ so much more that we are not enslaved by our attachments. “Rejoicing” in the Bible is much deeper than simply being happy about something. Paul directed that we should “rejoice in the Lord always” (Philippians 4:4), but this cannot mean “always feel happy,” since no one can command someone to always have a particular emotion. To rejoice is to treasure a thing, to assess its value to you, to reflect on its beauty and importance until your heart rests in it and tastes the sweetness of it. “Rejoicing” is a way of praising God until the heart is sweetened and rested, and until it relaxes its grip on anything else it thinks that it needs.

The average person thinks that the purpose of religion is to give us a list of rules and techniques or to frame a way of life that helps us to be more loving, forgiving, patient, caring, and generous. Of course, there is plenty of this in the Bible. Like Moses, Jesus summarized the whole law in just those terms: loving God and neighbor. However, as crucial as the law remains as the revelation of God’s moral will, it is different from the revelation of God’s saving will. We are called to love God and neighbor, but that is not the gospel. Christ need not have died on a cross for us to know that we should be better people. It is not that moral exhortations are wrong, but they do not have any power to bring about the kind of world that they command. These exhortations and directions may be good. If they come from the Word of God, they are in fact perfect. But they are not the gospel.

Premodern traditions of knowledge such as Islam, Christianity, Buddhism and Confucianism asserted that everything that is important to know about the world was already known. The great gods, or the one almighty God, or the wise people of the past possessed all-encompassing wisdom, which they revealed to us in scriptures and oral traditions. Ordinary mortals gained knowledge by delving into these ancient texts and traditions and understanding them properly. It was inconceivable that the Bible, the Qur’an or the Vedas were missing out on a crucial secret of the universe – a secret that might yet be discovered by flesh-and-blood creatures. Ancient traditions of knowledge admitted only two kinds of ignorance. First, an individual might be ignorant of something important. To obtain the necessary knowledge, all he needed to do was ask somebody wiser. There was no need to discover something that nobody yet knew. For example, if a peasant in some thirteenth-century Yorkshire village wanted to know how the human race originated, he assumed that Christian tradition held the definitive answer. All he had to do was ask the local priest.

The Cost and Expectation of Leadership Leviticus 7:33–35 Aaron, like many leaders throughout history, received a divine calling. God chose Aaron and his sons to serve as Israel’s priests and charged them with carrying out rituals and sacrifices on behalf of all Israelites. Scripture gives meticulous detail to their ordination and calling. Their conduct was to be beyond reproach—and God made it crystal clear that failure to uphold His established guidelines would result in death. Numerous accounts in the Book of Leviticus demonstrate the high cost and expectation that goes with a holy calling to leadership positions. As the high priest, Aaron was the only one authorized to enter the Most Holy Place and appear before the very presence of God. The Lord set Aaron apart for his holy work. Despite his high calling, Aaron struggled with his authority and later caved in to the depraved wishes of the people. He failed at a crucial juncture and led Israel in a pagan worship service, an abomination that led to the deaths of many Israelites. Aaron had been set apart for God’s service, but he chose to live and lead otherwise. The failure of a leader usually results in consequences far more grave than the fall of a non-leader. On the day Aaron failed, “about three thousand men of the people fell [died]” (Ex. 32:28). When leaders fail, followers pay the price.

Adventists urged to study women’s ordination for themselves Adventist Church President Ted N. C. Wilson appealed to members to study the Bible regarding the theology of ordination as the Church continues to examine the matter at Annual Council next month and at General Conference Session next year. Above, Wilson delivers the Sabbath sermon at Annual Council last year. [ANN file photo] President Wilson and TOSC chair Stele also ask for prayers for Holy Spirit to guide proceedings September 24, 2014 | Silver Spring, Maryland, United States | Andrew McChesney/Adventist Review Ted N. C. Wilson, president of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, appealed to church members worldwide to earnestly read what the Bible says about women’s ordination and to pray that he and other church leaders humbly follow the Holy Spirit’s guidance on the matter. Church members wishing to understand what the Bible teaches on women’s ordination have no reason to worry about where to start, said Artur A. Stele, who oversaw an unprecedented, two-year study on women’s ordination as chair of the church-commissioned Theology of Ordination Study Committee. Stele, who echoed Wilson’s call for church members to read the Bible and pray on the issue, recommended reading the study’s three brief “Way Forward Statements,” which cite Bible texts and Adventist Church co-founder Ellen G. White to support each of the three positions on women’s ordination that emerged during the committee’s research. The results of the study will be discussed in October at the Annual Council, a major business meeting of church leaders. The Annual Council will then decide whether to ask the nearly 2,600 delegates of the world church to make a final call on women’s ordination in a vote at the General Conference Session next July. Wilson, speaking in an interview, urged each of the church’s 18 million members to prayerfully read the study materials, available on the website of the church’s Office of Archives, Statistics, and Research. "Look to see how the papers and presentations were based on an understanding of a clear reading of Scripture,” Wilson said in his office at General Conference headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland. “The Spirit of Prophecy tells us that we are to take the Bible just as it reads,” he said. “And I would encourage each church member, and certainly each representative at the Annual Council and those who will be delegates to the General Conference Session, to prayerfully review those presentations and then ask the Holy Spirit to help them know God’s will.” The Spirit of Prophecy refers to the writings of White, who among her statements on how to read the Bible wrote in The Great Controversy (p. 598), “The language of the Bible should be explained according to its obvious meaning, unless a symbol or figure is employed.” “We don’t have the luxury of having the Urim and the Thummim,” Wilson said, in a nod to the stones that the Israelite high priest used in Old Testament times to learn God’s will. “Nor do we have a living prophet with us. So we must rely upon the Holy Spirit’s leading in our own Bible study as we review the plain teachings of Scripture.” He said world church leadership was committed to “a very open, fair, and careful process” on the issue of women’s ordination. Wilson added that the crucial question facing the church wasn’t whether women should be ordained but whether church members who disagreed with the final decision on ordination, whatever it might be, would be willing to set aside their differences to focus on the church’s 151-year mission: proclaiming Revelation 14 and the three angels’ messages that Jesus is coming soon. 3 Views on Women’s Ordination In an effort to better understand the Bible’s teaching on ordination, the church established the Theology of Ordination Study Committee, a group of 106 members commonly referred to by church leaders as TOSC. It was not organized

of Drs. Clowney, Packer, Sproul, Norman L. Geisler, Harold W. Hoehner, Donald E. Hoke, Roger R. Nicole, and Earl D. Radmacher labored very hard around the clock to prepare a statement that might receive the approval of a great majority of the participants. Very special attention

a Preamble, a Short Statement, Nineteen Articles of Affirmation and Denial, and a more ample Exposition. Materials submitted at the meeting

and perhaps not even Dr. Sproul, since his text underwent certain editorial revisions. However, this commentary represents an effort at making clear the precise position of the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy as a whole.

The Battle for the Bible. In that little book, Lindsell addressed what had become a huge matter of controversy-the truthfulness and reliability of the Scriptures. In the face of myriad arguments against the inspiration, infallibility, and inerrancy of the Bible, Lindsell took a stand and declared that the Bible remains trustworthy.

application of the doctrine of biblical inerrancy as an essential element for the authority of the church. It was created to counter the drift from this important doctrinal foundation by significant segments of evangelicalism and the outright denial of it by other church movements. In October 1978, the council held a summit meeting in Chicago. At that time, it issued a statement on biblical

place in the fall of 1979, with Drs. Geisler, Hoehner, Nicole, and Radmacher in attendance. It was the consensus of those present that we should not undertake to modify a statement that so many people had signed, both at the summit meeting and afterward. But in order to ward off misunderstandings and to provide an exposition of the position advocated by the ICBI, it was thought desirable to provide a

authority of the church. It was created to counter the drift from this important doctrinal foundation by significant segments of evangelicalism and the outright denial of it by other church movements. In October 1978, the council held a summit meeting in Chicago.

Sproul. These were discussed in a number of ways by groups of delegates from the Advisory Board and in various partial and plenary sessions at the summit. Furthermore, written comments were solicited and received in considerable numbers. A Draft Committee composed of Drs. Clowney,

infallibility, and inerrancy of the Bible, Lindsell took a stand and declared that the Bible remains trustworthy. It was this same desire to stand against the persistent questioning of the Bible's integrity that brought together more than 250 evangelical leaders in Chicago, Illinois, in October 1978. That summit meeting, convened

Ultimately, we believe the Bible to be inerrant because it comes from God Himself. It is unthinkable to contemplate that God might be capable of error. Therefore, His Word cannot possibly contain errors. This is our faith-we can trust the Bible because we can trust God. -R. C.

conducted by the Draft Committee. The present text makes clear exactly what the Council affirmed and denied. Obviously, those who signed the articles do not necessarily concur in every interpretation advocated by the commentary. Not even the members of the Draft Committee

with winsomeness and clarity this great tenet in witness to which we are gladly uniting. -Roger R. Nicole

this should be reflected not only in the articles in their original form but also in the present publication. It was not the aim of those who gathered at Chicago to break relations with those who do not share our convictions concerning the

of a total of 268) affixed their signatures to the Nineteen Articles. It was indicated that the Draft Committee would meet within the year to review and, if necessary, revise the statement.

The Battle for the Bible. In that little book, Lindsell addressed what had become a huge matter of controversy-the truthfulness and reliability of the Scriptures. In the face of myriad arguments against the inspiration, infallibility, and inerrancy of the Bible, Lindsell took a stand and declared that the Bible remains trustworthy. It was this same desire to stand

We must not be naive. The legitimization of same-sex marriage will mean the de-legitimization of those who dare to disagree. The sexual revolution has been no great respecter of civil and religious liberties. Sadly, we may discover that there is nothing quite so intolerant as tolerance.6 Does this mean the church should expect doom and gloom? That depends. For conservative Christians the ascendancy of same-sex marriage will likely mean marginalization, name-calling, or worse. But that’s to be expected. Jesus promises us no better than he himself received (John 15:18–25). The church is sometimes the most vibrant, the most articulate, and the most holy when the world presses down on her the hardest. But not always—sometimes when the world wants to press us into its mold, we jump right in and get comfy. I care about the decisions of the Supreme Court and the laws our politicians put in place. But what’s much more important to me—because I believe it’s more crucial to the spread of the gospel, the growth of the church, and the honor of Christ—is what happens in our local congregations, our mission agencies, our denominations, our parachurch organizations, and in our educational institutions. I fear that younger Christians may not have the stomach for disagreement or the critical mind for careful reasoning. Look past the talking points. Read up on the issues. Don’t buy every slogan and don’t own every insult. The challenge before the church is to convince ourselves as much as anyone that believing the Bible does not make us bigots, just as reflecting the times does not make us relevant.

scripture. Yet a bit of reflection on orthodox Christian theology makes clear that numerous absolutely crucial doctrinal terms are not themselves found in the Bible but were invented or appropriated by the church during the patristic era.

When addressing particular life situations, it is crucial to keep in mind the healing and forgiving grace that God has offered to fallen human beings in Christ. This grace is the constant backdrop of all our reflections. Eternal salvation is not at stake in these situations. Salvation is a gift, already assured in Christ.

Chicago. At that time, it issued a statement on biblical inerrancy that included a Preamble,

significant segments of evangelicalism and the outright denial of it by other church movements.

of the doctrine of biblical inerrancy as an essential element for the authority of the church.

Nicole, and Earl D. Radmacher labored very hard

R. C. Sproul. These were discussed in a number of ways by groups of delegates from the Advisory Board and in

If the Bible is unreliable in what it teaches about these things, the church is left to speculate and has nothing of value to speak to the world.

When the Bible speaks of the will of God, it does not always mean the decretive will of God. The decretive will of God cannot be broken or disobeyed. It will come to pass. On the other hand, there is a will that can be broken: "the preceptive will of God." It can be disobeyed.

We are told in Scripture that it is possible for people, by repeated sins, to lose the capacity for embarrassment and shame. The Bible frequently speaks of the hardened heart, which causes a person no longer to feel remorse for his or her transgression. It is dangerous for us to rely totally on our guilt feelings to reveal to us the reality of our guilt itself because we can quench the pangs of conscience.

Thus, we urge our Christian brothers and sisters of all professions and denominations

Caught! They were caught, and they knew it. These Bible translators had wanted to make it easier to understand the Bible. But they failed at a crucial place. In some of their translations, Jesus was no longer the Son of God![1] So those translators also had to change the verses that call God the Father of Jesus.

Apunte al corazón del niño Oíd, hijos, la enseñanza de un padre, y estad atentos, para que conozcáis cordura. PROVERBIOS 4.1 Los padres deben estar muy claros en esto: El comportamiento no es la cuestión crucial. Un cambio en el comportamiento no va a resolver el problema de raíz del niño. Un cambio en el comportamiento sin un cambio en el corazón no es más que hipocresía. ¿Cómo pueden los padres pastorear el corazón del niño? En primer lugar, los padres deben ayudar a los niños a comprender que ellos tienen corazones pecaminosos. Los propios niños necesitan saber que todas sus malas palabras, pensamientos y acciones surgen de sus corazones contaminados por el pecado, y el único remedio para esto es el evangelio. El corazón de su hijo es un campo de batalla donde el pecado y la justicia están en conflicto. El mayor problema de su hijo no es la falta de madurez. No es la falta de experiencia o la falta de comprensión. Es el corazón malvado. Esas otras cosas agravarán el problema del corazón. Sin embargo, los remedios para la inmadurez, la ignorancia y la inexperiencia no son una cura para el problema principal. Su hijo no va a superar su propia depravación. Como padres, debemos dirigirnos a los corazones de los hijos. El objetivo de la crianza de los hijos no es el control de la conducta. No se trata simplemente de producir hijos con buenos modales. No se trata de enseñar a nuestros hijos a tener un comportamiento socialmente encomiable. No es que sean educados y respetuosos. No es que sean obedientes. No se trata de conseguir que hagan las cosas para lograr nuestra aprobación. No es que se ajusten a una norma moral. No es que nos den, como padres, algún motivo para estar orgullosos de ellos. El objetivo final y el enfoque correcto de la crianza bíblica son redentores. ¿Qué objetivos se ha marcado para conformar a sus hijos a un nivel moral? What the Bible Says About Parenting, pp. 147–148

And if we must take historical blunders in our stride, how will we cope with flat-out contradictions? Did Mary Magdalene at the empty tomb of Jesus see an angel of the Lord [Matthew 28:2] or merely a young man in white [Mark 16:5]? Or was it two men in shining garments [Luke 24:4]? Or two angels [John 20:12]? And how do we deal with the omission of pivotal events? Did Mary see Jesus himself near the tomb, at first mistaking him for a gardener [John 20:14-15]? Surely a sighting of Jesus is critically important evidence of the resurrection, the central mystery of the Christian faith. Yet the encounter at the tomb is mentioned only in the Gospel of John. How could Matthew, Mark and Luke have missed such a crucial point? Historical scholars, and most theologians, recognize that the authors who penned the ancient documents were doing the best they could with the sources available to them, writing in the traditions and expectations of their time, more concerned with presenting a coherent message than with precise historical accuracy. Some biblical scholars, however, even to this day maintain the inerrancy of scripture. They see the Bible as the Word of God, divinely inspired and supernaturally protected from error down the centuries. Unless one reads without comprehension (a distressingly common affliction), a belief in biblical inerrancy demands considerable mental gymnastics. Adherents typically construct a unified account of the gospel stories, not by resolving conflicts, but by adding together all the elements from the different narratives. Thus, Mary Magdalene visited the tomb several times, seeing the different combinations of divine presences on different occasions. For some inscrutable reason, God chose to drop the accounts of those visits into different gospels instead of presenting them logically in a single document.

The Bible views us as recipients of God’s perfect love, already charged with an important life mission (seeking first the kingdom of God), and thus the decision to marry, though crucial, won’t define us. Nor will who we marry define us.

It has been said that necessity is the mother of invention. It might be better to say that experience is the mother of invention. It was the experience of seeing the risen Lord that created the inner circle of Jesus, and the coming of the Spirit that birthed the church. In other words, naturalistic historical explanations alone will never adequately explain the crucial events that led to the rise of the inner-circle leaders within the Christian movement and the rise of the movement itself.

International Council on Biblical Inerrancy was a California-based organization from 1977 to 1987.

not everything happens according to our cultural mindset and we have to make allowances in our mind for that – we have to question every single assumption we make about people who are separated by time, language, geography and culture.  And we must especially question ourselves when those assumptions are about the Bible and the life, and times, and way of thinking of those in first century Israel.  There is almost nothing more crucial in this life than understanding what our Messiah was talking about,

If we partake of Christ as the real manna, we shall find it difficult to lose our temper....This heavenly food causes our lusts to be restricted. It also deals with our selfish ambition. On the one hand, the heavenly manna nourishes us and heals us; on the other hand, it eliminates the negative things in us. Because eating is such a crucial matter, the regulating of man’s diet is another basic concept in the Bible.

He is the author of more than sixty books, including The Holiness of God, Chosen by God, The Invisible Hand, Faith Alone, A Taste of Heaven, Truths We Confess, The Truth of the Cross, and The Prayer of the Lord. He also served as general editor of The Reformation Study Bible and

He is the author of more than sixty books, including The Holiness of God, Chosen by God, The Invisible Hand, Faith Alone, A Taste of Heaven, Truths We Confess, The Truth of the Cross, and The Prayer of the Lord. He also served as general editor

In the affirmation ofArticle III, the words "in its entirety" are significant. There are those who have claimed that the Bible contains revelation from God here and there, in specified places, but

not prohibit an appropriate quest for literary sources or even oral sources that may be discerned through source criticism, but it draws a line as to the extent to which such critical analysis can go. When the quest for sources produces a dehistoricizing of the Bible, a rejection of its teaching,

affirmation speaks to the relevance of the doctrine of inerrancy

considerable discussion, the Draft Committee's submission received

are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by

by the Draft Committee. The present text makes clear exactly what the Council affirmed and denied. Obviously, those who signed the articles do not necessarily concur in every interpretation advocated by the commentary. Not even the members of the Draft Committee are bound by this, and perhaps not even Dr. Sproul, since his text underwent certain editorial revisions. However, this commentary represents an effort at making clear the precise position of the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy as a whole. In the editing process, we strove to take account of the comments that were forwarded to us. In some cases, we could not concur with those who made comments, and therefore the

meeting had been prepared by Drs. Edmund P. Clowney, James I. Packer, and R. C. Sproul. These were discussed in a number of ways by groups of delegates from the Advisory

labored very hard around the clock to prepare a statement that might receive the approval of a great majority

At this crucial point in world history, everyone should be seeking an answer to the question, “What is God like?” Everyone should ask it, and everyone should make very sure of the answer . . . The Bible says, “. . . God has shown it to them” [Romans 1:19 NKJV].

three subsistences, with three distinct persons. They subsist within the being of God. THE SPIRIT’S PERSONAL NATURE The fact that the Holy Spirit is a person is seen in a multitude of ways in Scripture. One of the primary evidences is that the Bible repeatedly and consistently

Does God expect us to be holy? In Leviticus 11:44, 45, God says “consecrate yourselves, and you shall be holy; for I am holy.” In all of this, God is teaching His people to live antithetically. That is, He is using these clean and unclean distinctions to separate Israel from other idolatrous nations who have no such restrictions, and He is illustrating by these prescriptions that His people must learn to live His way. Through dietary laws and rituals, God is teaching them the reality of living His way in everything. They are being taught to obey God in every seemingly mundane area of life, so as to learn how crucial obedience is. Sacrifices, rituals, diet, and even clothing and cooking are all carefully ordered by God to teach them that they are to live differently from everyone else. This is to be an external illustration for the separation from sin in their hearts. Because the Lord is their God, they are to be utterly distinct. In v. 44, for the first time the statement “I am the LORD your God” is made as a reason for the required separation and holiness. After this verse, that phrase is mentioned about 50 more times in this book alone, along with the equally instructive claim, “I am holy.” Because God is holy and is their God, the people are to be holy in outward ceremonial behavior as an external expression of the greater necessity of heart holiness. The connection between ceremonial holiness carries over into personal holiness. The only motivation given for all these laws is to learn to be holy because God is holy. The holiness theme is central to Leviticus (see 10:3; 19:2; 20:7, 26; 21:6–8).

when the Bible speaks of hope, it is not referring to a desire for a future outcome that is uncertain, but rather a desire for a future outcome that is absolutely sure.

What we believe and feel about the word of God are absolutely crucial, if for no other reason than that they should mirror what we believe and feel about Jesus.

What we believe and feel about the word of God are absolutely crucial, if for no other reason than that they should mirror what we believe and feel about Jesus. As we’ll see, Jesus believed unequivocally all that was written in the Scriptures. If we are to be his disciples, we should believe the same.

When we attack sin, we are either attacking idols outside the church and calling sinners to repentance, or attacking idols inside the church and calling sinners to repentance. While there is a crucial difference between talking to a corpse and talking to a resurrected corpse, the sin is still sin. And the sin is always a crutch or a cover: an attempt at finding safety, security, comfort, peace, meaning in something or someone other than Christ. And almost always, those crutches were snatched up from family, friends, television, celebrities, etc., grasping for what looks safe or what looks cool.

Ultimately, we believe the Bible to be inerrant because it comes from God Himself. It is unthinkable to contemplate that God might be capable of error. Therefore, His Word cannot possibly contain errors. This is our faith-we can trust the Bible because we can trust God.

Genesis 1 and 2 don’t provide the Bible’s only creation story. Psalm 74 describes creation as well—as Yahweh’s victory over the forces of primeval chaos. Yahweh brought the world into order, making it habitable for humanity, his people as it were. The creation act as described in Psalm 74 was theologically crucial for establishing Yahweh’s superiority over all other gods. Baal was not king of the gods, as the Ugaritic story proclaimed—Yahweh was.

The deep happiness that marriage can bring, then, lies on the far side of sacrificial service in the power of the Spirit. That is, you only discover your own happiness after each of you has put the happiness of your spouse ahead of your own, in a sustained way, in response to what Jesus has done for you. Some will ask, “If I put the happiness of my spouse ahead of my own needs—then what do I get out of it?” The answer is—happiness. That is what you get, but a happiness through serving others instead of using them, a happiness that won’t be bad for you. It is the joy that comes from giving joy, from loving another person in a costly way. Today’s culture of the “Me-Marriage” finds this very proposal—of putting the interests of your spouse ahead of your own—oppressive. But that is because it does not look deeply enough into this crucial part of Christian teaching about the nature of reality. What is that teaching? Christianity asserts, to begin with, that God is triune—that is, three persons within one God. And from John 17 and other passages we learn that from all eternity, each person—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—has glorified, honored, and loved the other two. So there is an “other-orientation” within the very being of God. When Jesus Christ went to the cross, he was simply acting in character. As C. S. Lewis wrote, when Jesus sacrificed himself for us, he did “in the wild weather of his outlying provinces” that which from all eternity “he had done at home in glory and gladness.” 6 Then the Bible says that human beings were made in God’s image. That means, among other things, that we were created to worship and live for God’s glory, not our own. We were made to serve God and others. That means paradoxically that if we try to put our own happiness ahead of obedience to God, we violate our own nature and become, ultimately, miserable. Jesus restates the principle when he says, “Whoever wants to save his life shall lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 16: 25). He is saying, “If you seek happiness more than you seek me, you will have neither; if you seek to serve me more than serve happiness, you will have both.

Leviticus may seem strange to the modern reader. Unlike most of the Bible, it contains few personalities and stories, and no poetry. Instead, it is crammed full of detailed rules and procedures. Its painstaking ritual is, however, strikingly similar to the procedures surrounding nuclear technology. The specialized clothing, the concern for purification, the precise handling of crucial materials—both nuclear workers and Old Testament priests share these. This similarity gives an important clue to understanding Leviticus.

20“When Aaron has finished making atonement for the Most Holy Place, the tent of meeting and the altar, he shall bring forward the live goat. 21He is to lay both hands on the head of the live goat and confess over it all the wickedness and rebellion of the Israelites—all their sins—and put them on the goat’s head. He shall send the goat away into the wilderness in the care of someone appointed for the task. 22The goat will carry on itself all their sins to a remote place; and the man shall release it in the wilderness. Highlight – Leviticus 16:20–22 Scapegoat The English word scapegoat captures the essence of this crucial ceremony in which a goat symbolically carried all the sins of Israel into the desert. Today the word is applied to anyone who takes the blame for something other people did. 23“Then Aaron is to go into the tent of meeting and take off the linen garments he put on before he entered the Most Holy Place, and he is to leave them there. 24He shall bathe himself with water in the sanctuary area and put on his regular garments. Then he shall come out and sacrifice the burnt offering for himself and the burnt offering for the people, to make atonement for himself and for the people. 25He shall also burn the fat of the sin offering on the altar.

34:6-7. merciful, gracious, slow to anger, kindness, faithfulness, bearing crime and offense and sin. This is possibly the most repeated and quoted formula in the Tanak (Num 14:18-19; Jon 4:2; Joel 2:13; Mic 7:18; Pss 86:15; 103:8; 145:8; 2 Chr 30:9; Neh 9:17,31). The Torah never says what the essence of God is, in contrast to the pagan gods. Baal is the storm wind, Dagon is grain, Shamash is the sun. But what is YHWH? This formula, expressed in the moment of the closest revelation any human has of God in the Bible, is the closest the Torah comes to describing the nature of God. Although humans are not to know what the essence is, they can know what are the marks of the divine personality: mercy, grace. In eight (or nine) different ways we are told of God's compassion. The last line of the formula ("though not making one innocent") conveys that this does not mean that one can just get away with anything; there is still justice. But the formula clearly places the weight on divine mercy over divine justice, and it never mentions divine anger. Those who speak of the "Old Testament God of wrath" focus disproportionately on the episodes of anger in the Bible and somehow lose this crucial passage and the hundreds of times that the divine mercy functions in the Hebrew Bible.

The issue of the Bible’s reliability is crucial. It is via the Scriptures that the church historically has claimed to understand matters of faith and life, from God’s creation of all things out of nothing to the significance of the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ to the ultimate consummation of all things toward which history is moving. If the Bible is unreliable in what it teaches about these things, the church is left to speculate and has nothing of value to speak to the world.

One of the crucial pennies to drop in the minds of those who find their way to faith in their adult years is often the realization that, if there really is a God such as the Bible reveals him to be, then he is smarter than I am and his judgement is more reliable than mine: if he and I differ on a matter, and if he is really God and I am really a creature, then it is more than reasonable to assume that he is correct and I am mistaken. To reach any other conclusion would require a bizarre routine of epistemological gymnastics. Either God is God and I am not, in which case his judgement is to be trusted over mine, or else God is not God, in which case there is no reliable way of satisfactorily arbitrating at all between what is reasonable and what is not.

Jeremiah’s letter to the exiles does not separate the commands to build houses and plant gardens (that internal work of cultivation) from the command to “seek the peace and prosperity of the city.” The commands are intimately connected. The flourishing of a countercultural community is crucial for faithful witness in the world, in part because it provides a space for practicing that witness among brothers and sisters in the faith. Faced with a decision between culture warring and withdrawing, Jeremiah’s letter to the exiles gives us another way.

In making policy on Palestine over most of the past century, leaders in both Britain and the United States were driven primarily by powerful strategic and domestic political considerations, rather than by principle. The strategic considerations included the goals of dominating this crucial piece of territory, keeping it in friendly hands, and denying it to others. The political ones included cold calculations of the considerable domestic electoral and financial advantages to be obtained from supporting Zionism, as against the negligible domestic political costs. There also existed naive sympathy for Zionism among many British and American politicians, based on a particularly Protestant immersion in the Bible. This sympathy was often combined with a laudable desire to make amends for the persecution of the Jews in different parts of Europe (often combined with a less laudable, indeed reprehensible, desire to have the victims of persecution find haven somewhere other than Great Britain or the United States). The result of such attitudes, which necessarily ignored or downplayed vital realities on the ground in Palestine, has been an enduring tragedy.

Returning specifically to Christianity, I must note a central fact of the entire religion:  The Bible is an entirely Jewish document.  Front to back, cover to cover, A to Z, Old Testament and New—the Bible is an entirely Jewish document.  The morality, the theology, the social attitudes, the worldview…all thoroughly Jewish.  The Old Testament obviously so; it was written by Jews, about Jews, and for Jews.  The same holds with the New Testament, although with a slight twist:  it was written by Jews, about Jews, but for non-Jews.  This twist is crucial to the whole Jesus story.

Dr. R.C. Sproul is the founder and chairman of Ligonier Ministries, an international multimedia ministry based in Sanford, Florida. He also serves as copastor at Saint Andrew’s, a Reformed congregation in Sanford, and as chancellor of Reformation Bible College, and his teaching can be heard around the world on the daily

In a sense, then, the entire Bible is a story, with a beginning (creation), a crucial turn in the plot (human sin), a divine response (the people of Israel and, out of them, Jesus the Messiah), and an anxiously anticipated end (“a new heaven and a new earth”).

If I am a Christian, those who disagree with me are not by default intellectually inferior, they are not rationally benighted, they do not lack imagination, they are not narrow, weak, or juvenile, they are not medieval, and they are certainly not a virus. They have every chance of being my betters in all these respects. I simply cannot look down on them. It is crucial to emphasize that this is no clever rhetorical flourish. If I claim to be a Christian and do not acknowledge that my “enemies” are very possibly my moral and intellectual superiors, I have simply failed to understand the gospel of Christ. I am still operating according to the performance narrative, not yet according to the grace narrative.20

It might seem somewhat peculiar or peripheral to argue that one crucial consequence of the resurrection is that Christianity is a singing faith.

First, for doctrine, or teaching. That is, it will structure your thinking. That’s crucial, because if you are not thinking correctly, you are not living correctly.

spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:21). Holy Scripture must be acknowledged as the Word of God by virtue of its divine origin.

data usage, I’ve found a few of these apps can and will take up A LOT of storage space. For instance, the offline maps app and audio Bible app

convinced is the biblical doctrine on the great subject of the inspiration of Scripture. In making this confession and presenting this commentary, we hope to dispel

The Bible teaches that if we sin against one point of the law, we sin against the whole law. Does this not imply that sin is sin and that ultimately there are no degrees?

scholarship together with down-to-earth writing, Tabletalk helps you understand the Bible and apply it to daily living. Trusted theological resource— Tabletalk avoids trends, shallow doctrine and popular movements to present biblical truth simply and clearly. Thought-provoking topics—each issue contains challenging, stimulating articles on a wide variety of topics related to theology and Christian living.

We affirm that the Holy Scriptures are to be received as the authoritative Word of God. We deny that the Scriptures receive their authority from the church, tradition, or any other human source.

In discussions among the participants at the summit and because of requests to the Draft Committee, there was considerable sentiment for striking the words “sixty-six canonical books” from the early drafts. This was due to some variance within Christendom as to the exact number of books that are to be recognized within the canon. For example, the Ethiopic Church has included more books in the canon than sixty-six.

We affirm that the Scriptures are the supreme written norm by which God binds the conscience, and that the authority of the church is subordinate to that of Scripture. We deny that church creeds, councils, or declarations have authority greater than or equal to the authority of the Bible.

Infallibility has to do with the question of ability or potential; that which is infallible is said to be unable to make mistakes or to err. By contrast, that which is inerrant is that which, in fact, does not err. Theoretically, something may be fallible and at the same time inerrant. That is, it is possible for someone who errs to not err. However, the reverse is not true. If someone is infallible, that means he cannot err, and if he cannot err, then he does not err. If he does err, that proves that he is capable of erring and therefore is not infallible. Thus, to assert that something is infallible yet at the same time errant is to distort the meaning of infallible and/or errant, or to be in a state of confusion

We affirm that the written Word in its entirety is revelation given by God. We deny that the Bible is merely a witness to revelation, or only becomes revelation in encounter, or depends on the responses of men for its validity.

Though our language, and especially our language about God, is never comprehensive and exhaustive in its ability to capture eternal truths, nevertheless it is adequate to give us truth without falsehood.

authority of the church. It was created to counter the drift from this important doctrinal foundation by

was indicated that the Draft Committee would meet within the year to review and, if necessary,

International Council on Biblical Inerrancy and as Explaining Inerrancy (1996) by Ligonier Ministries. Published by Reformation Trust Publishing a division of Ligonier Ministries 421 Ligonier Court, Sanford, FL 32771 Ligonier.org ReformationTrust.com Printed in North Mankato, MN Corporate Graphics February 2015 First edition, seventh printing All rights reserved. No part of

This one thing, wait with me, was all Christ had asked the disciples to do for Him the night before He died, but even the best men in the whole world had let Him down. Of course they’d all been men. The women around Him never let Him down. The women were always first in and last out, and seemed to have the only understanding of what was going on at all the crucial moments, but precious few bible scholars ever seemed to notice that.

What theological conservatives need to guard against, though, is thinking that because we affirm the Bible to be God’s inerrant and authoritative word, we have therefore submitted to the Bible. We can be conservatively confessional and functionally liberal. In other words, submitting to the Bible is far more than affirming an orthodox statement of Scripture. Affirming such a statement is crucial and essential. We should never minimize that. But affirming a high view of Scripture is only the first step of submission. We fully submit to God’s Word when we accept its authority over our lives as we read it.