There is more than one way to defy the authority of Bible (which amounts to defying the authority of the Lord whose Word the Bible is). I was reminded of this after reading an article about trends today in the United Methodist Church.
The most obvious way is to deny that the Bible really is the 'Word of God', and to say that it’s essentially just the words of men. This is the perspective and practice of the theological “liberal”.
But there are at least two other ways of defying the Bible’s authority, in actual practice. One is to affirm the authority of the Bible in general terms but then, in specific matters, to insist that it can be interpreted in different ways on a given matter, so that the best thing to do is make room for all those interpretations. This is the perspective of a growing number of evangelicals on some of the key ethical issues of the day.
But there’s at least one more way of defying the Bible as 'sufficient rule in all matters of faith/belief and practice' – and that is to, again, officially affirm the authority of the Bible, but then, in actual practice, to let other factors (e.g., pragmatism, personal agenda, people-pleasing 'politics') override the commitment to Biblical principle. This is what you find the Pharisees doing in their interpretation and application of the 5th Commandment – which the Lord Jesus exposes and rebukes in Matthew 15:1-9.
The crucial point to recognize is that in ALL the above scenarios the Word of God has been effectively (to use Jesus’s word) “nullified.” It is bad enough when liberals do it, but it’s surely worse when self-described “Bible-believing evangelicals” thus defy the Scriptures, and the Spirit of God who inspired them. And are we even aware of (or honest enough to admit) the ways that this last category are being played out in the Church today?
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