Why Believe the Bible?

How can we know that the Bible is the inspired and infallible Word of God? First, God in his Word claims to be its author. Second, He provides evidence of this claim in the Bible. Third, He gives us His Holy Spirit, who shows us His hand and voice in all of Holy Scripture.

 

1. God in His Word Claims to Be Its Author

 

The first reason for believing the Bible is God’s Word is that the Bible claims to be God’s Word. Throughout the Bible, God testifies repeatedly that He is speaking through the writers of the Bible. In the Old Testa¬ment alone, the expression “thus says the Lord” appears almost 2,000 times. The writers of the Bible were well aware that they wrote God's Word. King David, who wrote most of the Psalms, says: “the Spirit of the Lord spoke by me, and His word was on my tongue” (2 Samuel 23:2).

 

The most important testimony in the Bible to its own inspiration and infallibility is the witness of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who regarded the Scriptures [writings] of the OT in their entirety as the infallible word of God. Jesus said of the Scriptures in His day (which had to be hand-copied for over 1500 years), “The Scriptures cannot be broken” (John 10:35). To be broken means to be proven wrong. The Scriptures cannot be proven wrong! The Bible has never been proven wrong. The Bible can never be proven to be wrong, because it is the Word of God – and God is never wrong.

 

Jesus also promised that the Scriptures would never pass away: “For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one title will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled” (Matthew 5:18). Jesus said the same thing about His own words, making His own words equal with Scripture: “Heaven and earth will pass away, by My Words will by no means pass away” (Luke 21:33). This means there would have to be a New Testament. If Jesus’ words were not going to pass away they would have to be written down and preserved for all generations. Jesus gave His words to His apostles (John 17:9) so that His apostles would commit those words to writing. Jesus promised that the same Holy Spirit who inspired the writers of the Old Testament would be given to His apostles so they could write the books of the New Testament. Jesus promised His apostles: “when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth” (John 16:13). “He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you” (John 14:26).

 

All 27 books of the NT were either written or approved by an apostle. The Apostle Paul wrote 14 out of the 27 books. All the writers of the NT knew they were writing the Word of God. Paul told the Corinthians: “the things which I write to you are the commandments of the Lord” (1 Cor. 14:37). Paul told the Thessalonians: “when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you welcomed it not as the Word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God” (1 Thessalonians 2:13).

 

2. The Evidence within Scripture Confirms the Claim That the Bible Is God's Word

 

God not only makes the claim that the Bible is His Word. He provides within the Holy Scriptures abundant evidence to support that claim.

 

a. Unity. The Bible is a compilation of 66 books written by 36 different authors over a period of 1,600 years. The authors did not sit down as a committee to decide what to write. They were separated by great time and distance. Yet their books are in complete harmony. The OT points forward to the Savior to come. The New Testament tells of the Savior who has come (Luke 24:27). Only one reasonable explanation exists for this marvelous unity—there was one mind that conceived the plan, one hand that wrote the words: the mind and hand of God.

 

b. Fulfilled prophecy. One of the most remarkable evidences of the Bible’s inspiration is the prophecies of the OT fulfilled in the NT. 800 years before Christ’s birth the prophets declared that Christ would be born, how He would be born, where He would be born, what kind of person He would be and what kind of work He would perform. For example, 800 years before Christ was born, Isaiah said that the Messiah would be born of a virgin: “The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel [God with us]” (Isaiah 7:14). Micah prophesied that Christ would be born in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2). Isaiah prophesied of the sufferings of the Messiah for our sins. “He was wounded for our transgressions” (Isaiah 53:5). The NT records the fulfillment of all these prophecies. Jesus Himself claimed to be the fulfillment of prophecy (Luke 4:21; 24:27). Jesus told the Jews of His day: “You search the Scriptures…and these are they which testify of Me” (John 5:39). 

 

c. Basic message. The Bible’s basic message is the story of man's complete ruin in sin, of his inability to save himself, and of the power of God's grace alone to save him. This is a humbling message that the human mind would not naturally think up. When left to himself, man has always invented another kind of religion. All human religions teach that man is not completely sinful and that he can somehow, in some way, save himself. The Bible teaches that man is dead in sin, cannot save himself, and can be saved only by the grace of God through the crucifixion and death of the Son of God. This is contrary to the proud thoughts of the natural man. We don't naturally admit our failures and inability. To teach about our sin and need for salvation is evidence that the authors of the Bible were controlled not by their own spirit but by God's Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:21).

 

3. The Testimony of God's Holy Spirit in Our Hearts

 

How can some people read the claims of the Bible to be the Word of God and study the evidence for such claims, only to reject the Bible as God’s word? It is not due to a lack of evidence. The evidence is there. The problem is that people are blind to the evidence. The fact that a blind person cannot see the sun does not mean the sun is not shining! By nature we are spiritually blind; we cannot see the truth. To be more accurate, our heart is so hard that we do not want to see the truth. When Jesus did miracles right in front of the Pharisees, the Pharisees said: “you must have done that by the power of Satan.” They did not want to see the truth. The reason why we do not want to see the truth is because then we would have to humble ourselves and change our ways. We would have to give up the control of our life. But we do not naturally want to give up the control of our life.

 

Our heart is so hard that only God Himself is able to overcome our blindness and resistance and enable us to believe His Word. And this is exactly what He does. The same God who spoke by the mouth of the prophets speaks to our hearts and assures us that the Bible is His Word. If you do not have unshakable confidence that the Bible is the Word of God, then you must pray for the help of God's Holy Spirit, and He will help you. If you sincerely want to know that the Bible truly is the very Word of God, you will find the answers. Jesus Himself said, “Seek and you shall find.”

 

There are no answers apart from the Bible. Try to explain the meaning of life apart from the Bible: what is man? Where did we come from? Why are we here? What are we suppose to be doing with our lives? Where are we going when we die? There are no answers apart from the Bible. “The wise men are ashamed…Behold, they have rejected the word of the Lord; so what wisdom do they have?” (Jeremiah 8:9) There is no wisdom apart from the word of God.

 

We will either trust in the Lord’s Word or man’s word to give us the answers. “He who trusts in his own heart is a fool” (Proverbs 28:26). “Thus says the Lord: Cursed is the man who trusts in man,…Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord” (Jeremiah 17:5, 7).