“the very word of God” 1 Thessalonians 2:13 (NLT)
Do you believe that that Bible is the “very Word of God”?
It really is a quite audacious claim isn’t it? Paul, a “mere man” in his own words, writing to some new believers in the city of Thessalonica, claiming that what he said was the “very Word of God”.
Here’s how I understand this and I recommend this understanding to you. Paul was a brilliant and devoted scholar of the Bible, which for him was the Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible. When he personally met Christ on the Damascus road and subsequently began to live the reality of Christ in him and he in Christ, he then studied the Old Testament anew. His enlightened eyes and mind saw the foreshadowings of Jesus the Messiah in every section of the Hebrew Bible. He then began to proclaim everywhere what God had shown him. This revelation from God about the truth of Jesus in Scripture, taught through the experience of man who personally experienced the living Christ, later recorded in letters becomes a huge portion of what Christians call the New Testament.
“The very Word of God” in Paul’s letters is not God doing the actual writing (for example, Islam claims that Gabriel dictated to Mohammed), rather it is God’s revelation through God’s Holy Spirit through a faithful human being whom God chose to use and who was on the scene during and after the life of Christ and who was among the apostolic witnesses the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
Thank you for this.It is frightening to see believers treating the word of God as a buffet, choosing to accept the tastier morsels and discarding the politically incorrect meat that is harder to digest.The Lord used Paul to warn Timothy and future believers about that very thing in 2 Timothy where we read that"...men shall be lovers of their own selves....Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away..." He says they are :" Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth..." At the end of the 3rd chapter we see the importance of taking God at His word, because"....All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousnes:That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works." Putting ourselves in the position of deciding what scriptures are worth following
ReplyDeleteseems dangerously close to trying to be on the same level as God. Didn't work too well for
Satan, probably won't with us either.