Have you ever heard this saying: “We are to worship God, not the Bible”?
Or how about, “Don’t love the Bible, love God”?
We can’t worship God without doing so in spirit and in truth (John 4:23). Since truth is found in God’s Word, our worship of God must involve the Bible. Of course, we do not praise the Bible itself. We praise God, who gave us His Word. Contemporary “worship” sometimes lacks meaningful content and is not genuine worship. (Have you heard of 7-Eleven songs? They have seven words that you sing eleven times.)
We can’t love God without loving His communication to us. Psalm 119 is but one example. The psalmist repeatedly speaks of his love for God’s Word.
Sometimes the Bible is not mentioned, but the sentiment is the same:
“He’s so heavenly-minded, he’s no earthly good.”
“He has a lot of head knowledge but not heart knowledge.”
“Faith in Christ is a personal encounter with Him; believing certain facts about Him is not saving faith.”
“Salvation is a free gift, but it costs you everything.”
“We know you don’t have to believe in irrevocable salvation to be born again because most people in Christianity don’t believe that.”
“God can’t condemn those who never heard about Jesus because I don’t think that would be fair.”
“We know that dispensationalism can’t be true since it wasn’t even developed until the nineteenth century.”
All of those statements suggest that reason guides us, not the Bible.
According to Scripture, you can’t be too heavenly-minded (2 Cor 5:1-11; 1 Pet 1:23).
There is no distinction in the Bible between head and heart knowledge. Romans 12:2 speaks of being transformed by the renewing of the mind.
Faith in Christ is believing in Him for the gift of God (John 4:10ff). It is not some personal encounter.
The Scriptures clearly state that salvation is a free gift; it costs us nothing (John 4:10; Eph 2:8-9; Rev 22:17).
The percentage of people within Christianity who reject a certain doctrine does not determine whether it’s true. Whatever the Bible says is true regardless of how many believe it (Rom 3:4).
The Lord indicated that to have everlasting life, people need to believe in Him for that life while they are living (John 11:26; see also Heb 9:27). There are no postmortem conversions. It doesn’t matter what we think is fair. What matters is what God says is fair.
We do not know whether dispensationalism was taught throughout church history. But since the Bible teaches dispensationalism, it is true regardless of how few people in church history have believed it.
When people make statements about what they believe, listen carefully to how they defend what they say. Do they cite church history? Do they present what seems reasonable to them? Do they indicate that what they say is the consensus view of most theologians today? None of that matters. Scripture matters. What God says trumps church history, what we think is reasonable, and what theologians say.
Seventy years ago, it was common to hear the expression, “Thus saith the Lord.” Today we have Evangelical pastors urging other pastors not to quote Scripture. Don’t name books and chapters and verses. People don’t like that. Just say, “A man named Paul said…”; “Jesus Christ said…”; “King David said…”.
Christianity is a battle for our minds. Transformation does not occur apart from God’s renewing our minds. And He does that by means of His Word (Rom 12:2; 2 Cor 3:18).
