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124 What Do the Christian Scriptures Claim for Themselves?
And count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved
brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him,
as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters.
There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which
the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do
the other Scriptures. (2 Pet. 3:15–16)
Their Authority Stands with His
The claim of the apostles to speak with unerring truthfulness in Christ
by the Holy Spirit is the organic outgrowth of the Old Testament hope
and of the incarnation of the Son of God as Jesus the Messiah. The
apostles did not thrust themselves on the church with imaginary claims
of prophetic inspiration. They were called and appointed by the Old
Testament–fulfilling, divinely sent Messiah. Their truthfulness and authority
stands or falls with his.
He came to bear witness to the truth (John 18:37) with all the authority
of God (John 17:2; Matt. 28:18). He planned and prepared for
that truth and authority to be preserved through a band of apostles
whom he would guide by his own Spirit into all the truth needed for the
foundation and preservation of his church (John 14:25–26; 16:12–14;
Eph. 2:20; 1 Cor. 2:13). In perfect harmony with God’s will for Christ
and Christ’s will for this church, those spokesmen put their teachings
into writing with a sober, conscious sense that what they wrote for the
church would be her infallible charter till Jesus comes again.
Therefore, in the coming chapters we turn to the question of whether
the Bible’s claims for itself (which we have seen in chapters 5–7) are
true. Is the Christian Bible the word of God in the full sense of inspired,
inerrant Scripture? My answer to that question is yes. And the rest of
this book is my effort to show how we can have well-grounded conviction
that this is so.