Are the Scriptures Sufficient?

There are those today who would promote the idea that the Holy Scriptures are not enough for man today.  Some of these people state that one cannot live right without a direct influence of the Holy Spirit acting individually upon each person apart from the word.  They use the words “in addition to the word of God,” but even these words show that they believe the Bible is not enough.  Some also claim that the Scriptures are not to be taken as authoritative.  These people claim that we cannot know what God wants from us because we cannot understand what they call “God-speech.” so God had to communicate to us in an imperfect system of “human-speech,” or words.  These doctrines are completely opposed to what God claims for His word in the Scriptures.

The Scriptures claim to give certainty (Luke 1:1-4) and to be sufficient to cause belief in Jesus as the Christ (John 20:30-31).  The Scriptures claim to be sufficient to deal with all teaching, correcting, instructing in doctrine and in living right (II Timothy 3:16).  The Scriptures claim to be enough to make a man “perfect” or complete, and prepared for every good work (II Timothy 3:17).  The Scriptures give us everything we need for life and godliness (II Peter 1:3).

Some say that the only way we can understand God is if the Holy Spirit directly speaks to us and/or influences us directly (apart from the word of God).  The apostle Paul denies this.  He had his message directly from the Holy Spirit, but told those in Ephesus that when they read what he wrote, they would have the same understanding that he did (Ephesians 3:3-5).  This passage proves that God deemed human words sufficient to communicate what He desired to communicate to mankind.  Besides this, notice that it was God who created human language in the first place!  When He created Adam and Eve, they were able to speak because God had created language for them.  When He scattered the people at the Tower of Babel, He confused their languages by creating new ones.  Yet, some people are so arrogant that they claim God cannot communicate using the language He Himself created!

My friends, the Scriptures are not insufficient in any way!  It is only in the Scriptures that you find the gospel.  It is only with the gospel that you can be saved (Romans 1:16).  The Scriptures show how to be saved (Mark 16:16, Acts 2:38) and how to live your life after becoming a Christian (I John 1:7-9, Revelation 2:10).  Since the Scriptures claim to be all-sufficient for every need of man, those who claim the need for additional divine help are wrong.  We ought to believe God rather than man.

-Bradley Cobb

NOTE: this article was written in 2007 and first appeared on the Gravel Hill church of Christ website.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *