As I have pondered the last few days of writing, I have been pondering the truth of propositions and especially Scripture, which is propositional revelation. A lot of people in the past haven’t liked the idea of God revealing himself in propositional revelation. That’s not our issue today though. I’m going to take for granted that most of my readers believe that he has done so.
There are some basic truths that we all know about the gospel, but we so easily forget. We forget that salvation is by grace through faith. We forget that we are loved by God. We forget that our past sins have been forgotten. We forget that all things work together for good to those that love the Lord. I could go on, but I would like today to remind us that Scripture is true in what it says.
Of course, I must add a caveat. One can look at the words of Job’s friends and say that their description of God is true or that Bildad’s view of man in Job 25 is accurate. No. The Bible never says the lies of Satan are true for instance. It just records that they happened. In Job, for instance, God shows up at the end and tells Eliphaz and his friends, including Bildad naturally, that they have not spoken what is right about him.
However, we can approach each promise of Scripture and know that it is true. Again though, another caveat must be provided. For instance, if we read “Ask anything in my name and I will give it to you,” it must be understood that that would refer to us being within the will of God in our lives so that if we do ask, it will be given. To misunderstand that would mean God turns into a genie. Such is not promised.
I’m going to hope though that most of you will know not to make such basic errors. I’m going to hope that most of you also take Scripture seriously and are ones to “rightly divide the Word of truth.” With that in mind though, we must remember that exegesis is useless if we do not apply it. In fact, it is to our loss if we learn truth and do not apply it. I have told people that if they study apologetics and it makes no difference in how they live their lives, I would prefer they don’t do it at all.
How different our lives would be if we realized that it is all true. Then we could work to understand, “How does this work?” or “What difference does it make?” We are not under the naturalistic criteria to understand all of Scripture before we believe it of course. In fact, a wonder of the faith is knowing that all truth points to God and the more we study it, the more we will see of God.
This is also why belief in God cannot threaten science. In fact, I think it can make science more rewarding and enriching. The Christian scientist knows that he’s getting to study the work of God and he gets to marvel more at “How does this work?” and “Why did God create it like this?” and “What is the purpose overall of this in the grand scheme of things?”
Next time you read the Scriptures, ponder that you’re reading absolute truth, and see how that changes things for you.
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