God's Hammer (10): Unbreakable Scripture (Part 1)

So far we have seen that God's hammer (Jer. 23:29), the "more sure word" of Scripture (II Peter 1:19), has its origin in God and not man (II Peter 1:21) for it is God-breathed (II Tim. 3:16). Because Scripture is God-breathed, it has certain perfections or characteristics, one of which is inerrancy.

The inerrancy of Scripture has been a battleground between conservatives and liberals for the last 150 years. Controversies have raged in churches, missions, theological seminaries and religious societies often bringing disruption and division. A large number of books, pamphlets and sermons have been spawned by the inerrancy debate and even some heresy trials. Today the majority of instituted churches and professing Christians don't even see it as an issue worth considering. Evolution and higher criticism, they believe, have made it impossible for modern man to confess the inerrancy of Scripture. They say, "Sure everybody knows that there are mistakes in the Bible. And anyway whether you believe the Bible is inerrant or not doesn't make any real difference to the Christian life." Thus inerrancy is both intellectual suicide and spiritually unnecessary.

But these are just the slippery words of compromisers who have been conformed to the world. Jesus did not believe that inerrancy was intellectual suicide, for He urged it in a theological debate with the Jewish religious leaders. Jesus did not believe that it was spiritually ‘unnecessary', for He used it in defence of His claim to Deity. These are the words of the incarnate Son of God: "the scripture cannot he broken" (John 10:35).

Christ had been teaching that He was the Son of God (36): "I and my Father are one" (30). The Jews rightly understood Him to be claiming Deity (33) and so they are about to stone him (31). Jesus uses two arguments against them. First, He states that His good works sustain His claim (32). Second, He reasons from the OT Scriptures. He quotes Psalm 82:4: "Is it not written in your law, I SAID YE ARE GODS?" (34). Then he identifies the ones addressed as "gods:" "he called them gods unto whom the word of God came" (35). Finally, he makes a deduction: "If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken; say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God?" (35-36). Note the linchpin of the whole argument: "the scripture cannot be broken" (35). Do you quote all Scripture's declarations with absolute confidence? Those who deny inerrancy can't for they don't believe that scripture cannot be broken. This is Christ’s way of wielding God's hammer; it must be our's.