The Sufficiency of Holy Scripture
Have you ever thought that your faith would be much stronger and your life more holy if only you could have walked with Jesus Himself as the apostles did—if you could have seen His miracles, heard His teaching and followed Him around through Galilee and Judea? Peter tells us in II Peter 1:19 that we must not think that way when he calls Holy Scripture a “more sure word of prophecy.” We have something better (“more sure”) than the apostles had who were “eyewitnesses of his majesty.” Think of that! Can you imagine any stronger statement of the value and sufficiency of Holy Scripture?
Let us look at what Peter says. In II Peter 1:16-18, Peter is talking about the transfiguration of Christ. Not long before His death, Jesus was “transfigured” on a mountain in Galilee. You will find the story in Matthew 17:1-8, Mark 9:2-8 and Luke 9:28-36. There the three disciples (Peter was one of them) not only saw Jesus and Moses and Elijah, but they heard the voice of God Himself testifying of Jesus. What is more, they saw Jesus in His heavenly glory, as we will see Him when He comes again. That is why Peter speaks of seeing His “power and coming” in verse 16. What could be better than that?
Peter knew we would think that way. He knew we would ask, “But what about us? How can we know and be sure? We did not see Him. We were not eyewitnesses of His majesty.” Peter answers these questions before we even ask them, when He tells us that Scripture is a “more sure word of prophecy.” It is “more sure” than an eyewitness account or than being an eyewitness! That is part of what we call the sufficiency of Scripture: in Scripture we have everything we need for faith and life.
But do you know why Scripture is a “more sure” word? Peter explains that too by talking about the inspiration of Scripture. He says, “The prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost” (21). In other words, Scripture was not written because the authors of the various books wanted to write. They were not the ones, finally, who decided what to write and how to write it. In all their remembering, consulting of sources, planning, actual writing and editing, the Holy Spirit “carried” them. That is what the word translated “moved” really means. They were “carried.” The real author of Scripture is the Holy Spirit.
The result is that Scripture is “a light shining in a dark place” (II Pet. 1:19). This world is the land of the shadow of death, darkened by the Lord’s wrath (Isa. 9:2, 19). Scripture tells us there will be “no night” in the new heavens and earth (Rev. 21:25), but here there is no day. Spiritually, this world is darkness—only ever night—and in these last days that darkness deepens. Yet in that darkness the light of Scripture shines, and until Christ, the Day Star (II Pet. 1:19), arises, it is the only light we have.
Take heed to it, therefore! Its light does not shine when its covers are left closed. Read it daily. Study it with the prayer that God will make its light shine in your heart. Meditate on its precious truths and follow it as a light on your life’s pathway. Rev. Hanko
Working Out Our Salvation
“Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil. 2:12).
While the reader of our newsletter did not send a question along with the request to consider this text, it seems as if the idea is that we deal with the urgent admonition of the text to work out our own salvation. This request is based, I think, on the further question: “How is it possible for Scripture to admonish us to work out our own salvation, when Scripture is so insistent on the fact that salvation is only God’s work? Does not an admonition of this sort imply that man plays a role in the work of salvation?”
Without going into detail concerning the precise meaning of the admonition to “work out our own salvation,” it is sufficient for our purposes to note that here the Scriptures do indeed lay a heavy and urgent responsibility upon us. To work out our own salvation surely means that we bring the salvation which we have received to expression in our lives. We are to make that salvation our own so that we live in the consciousness of it; and we are to reveal in our lives that we are among those who are saved by God.
This brings us sharply before the question: “What is the relation between God’s sovereign work of salvation and our own calling?”
Let it be clearly understood, first of all, that the very admonition implies that we are already saved. We are to work out that which we have already received. We are to work out a salvation which is our possession.
This salvation has been received by grace without any work of ours. It is given by free grace, without our cooperation or labour. Even our will plays no role in this work, for we are saved by grace, through faith, which is not of ourselves, but is the gift of God (Eph. 2:8). All Scripture testifies of this truth.
The point of this admonition (and hundreds like it) is that God saves us as rational and moral creatures.
He does not save us in such a way that we travel to heaven in a sleeping coach of a train so that we are not even aware of our journey. He does not pull us down the road to glory as a child pulls a mechanical quacking duck by a string along the floor. He saves us in such a way that we are conscious of this salvation and receive it in all its glory already in this life.
That God saves us consciously means also that He saves us in such a way that we do battle with sin which is in us; fight a good fight of faith; lay hold on eternal life; appropriate Christ as our only Saviour. When we walk in sin we lose the consciousness of our salvation; when we walk in obedience to His will, we enjoy the blessedness of that salvation.
God works salvation in us this way so that we may fully understand what it means for Him to deliver us from the sin into which we plunged ourselves by our own foolishness. God wants us to know the great wonder of deliverance from sin. When salvation comes through the way of faith in Christ, we understand more fully the profound wonder of sovereign and free grace.
Yet even all our struggles—our confession of sin, our reliance on Christ, and our careful working out of our salvation—are God’s work. The text itself underscores this when, in the following verse, Paul says: “For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.”
Note that this is the reason why we must work out our own salvation. The text does not say: “Work out your own salvation even though God works in us …” The word that connects these two verses is “for,” or “because.” The point is that we are to work out our own salvation because God is at work in us, making it possible.
Further, verse 13 covers every aspect of working out our salvation. God works in us both the willing and the doing: He makes us willing to work, and He enables us to do the work. Even this is all God’s work.
The Canons of Dordt specifically apply this principle to the work of faith: “Faith is therefore to be considered as the gift of God … because it is in reality conferred, breathed and infused into [man] not because God bestows the power … to believe, and then expects that man should by the exercise of his own free will, consent to the terms of salvation and actually believe in Christ; but because he who works in man both to will and to do, and indeed all things in all, produces both the will to believe, and the act of believing also” (Canons III/IV:14).
It is a question of how God works salvation in us. He works so that we consciously experience it in our own struggles against our sins and in our complete reliance upon Christ. Prof. Hanko
Which Version?
The question we’ve chosen to answer in this issue of the newsletter is: “Which version of the Bible do you recommend?” This question follows from the article on page 1 of the newsletter. If Scripture is the all-sufficient and inspired word of God, it is very important that we use a good version of the Bible.
Before recommending a particular version, consider that the proliferation of modern versions is one way the Bible has been taken away from God’s people. With so many different versions in use, a passage is scarcely recognised when it is quoted or preached. Nor do children learn and memorize Scripture effectively, since they are taught from so many versions. They hear one at home, another at school, another in church, and still others in fellowships and Bible studies—and remember none.
It is also very telling that all of the modern versions have arisen in an age of modernism, apostasy, and doubt, and not during a time when the church was strong and faithful to the word of God. This is, we believe, a good reason to be suspicious of the modern versions. Many of them, in fact, are not true translations or versions at all but paraphrases (e.g., The Living Bible), or something halfway between a paraphrase and a translation (e.g., The New International Version).
It is probably obvious by this time that the only English version we would recommend is the King James (KJV) or Authorized Version (AV). We would recommend it for many reasons, the most important being that it is an accurate and faithful translation of the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures. This is so much the case that the English of the KJV is not really the English of the 17th Century as is sometimes charged, but “biblical English”—the result of the efforts of the translators to be as faithful as possible to the original Greek and Hebrew. The italics that the KJV uses for all words not found in the original Greek or Hebrew are another example of these efforts to obtain an accurate translation.
Nor is it true that the modern versions are based on better manuscripts that the translators of the KJV knew nothing about. They knew of other manuscripts, though they did not have all of those that have been discovered today. What is more, these other manuscripts, though some of them are very old, are also very corrupt, having in them thousands of unique changes and omissions. Most manuscripts (80-90%), by the providence of God, support the so-called “Received Text,” the text on which the KJV is based.
The need for a good, faithful and accurate translation like the KJV is expressed in the words of the translators themselves: “Translation it is that openeth the window, to let in the light; that breaketh the shell, that we may eat the kernel; that putteth aside the curtain, that we may look into the most Holy place; that removeth the cover of the well, that we may come by the water.” Let us, then, be faithful to the Word of God as He in His providence and grace has given it to us, and be satisfied with nothing less than the Word of God. Rev. Hanko
