Scriptures selfattesting authority question doctrine truthfulness Scriptures

In the Miracles of Jesus 249
But where God does his merciful, blindness-removing work (2 Cor.
4:6; Matt. 11:25; John 9:39), Jesus is seen for who he really is, and
the peculiar glory of his miracles becomes a good foundation for wellgrounded
faith. “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood
has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven” (Matt.
16:17). The human heart must be set free from its blinding love affair
with the praise of men (John 5:44), and must will the will of God.
That is, the heart must be conformed to the peculiar way God glorifies
himself in history and in Scripture: through majesty in meekness and
strength in suffering—the wealth of his glory in the depth of his giving.
The Peculiar Glory of the Miracles and the Scriptures
John makes the connection between the miracles of Jesus and the Scriptures.
His own profound apostolic record—the Gospel of John—is the
unfolding of seven signs (miracles). He states the aim of this written
unfolding of these seven signs: “These are written so that you may believe
that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you
may have life in his name” (John 20:31). In other words, John intends
for his writing to put the glory-revealing signs on display for future
generations—for us. Just as the miracles of Jesus displayed the peculiar
glory of Christ in his earthly life, so they do the same for us as we read.
John’s Gospel preserves and portrays them for us. This was clearly his
intention, as he shows in his first epistle:
The life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it
and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and
was made manifest to us—that which we have seen and heard we
proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us;
and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus
Christ. (1 John 1:2–3)
This is how Jesus intended the Spirit-guided Scriptures of his apostles
to work. They would be the way later generations would see what the
first generation saw: the glory of Christ. That’s what Jesus said:
When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth,
for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears