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The Reflection Series for this month is adapted from Reasoning the Rest, which you can read or download from the main menu. This month, we’re discussing how we can trust the Bible as the inspired Word of God. 

The Christian belief that the Bible is the inspired Word of God is rooted in four aspects of the Bible.

1. The Consistency of the Message
2. The Consistency of the Effect
3. The Consistency of the Power
4. The Consistency of the Promise

This week, let’s look at how the power of the Gospel helps us trust the Bible as God’s Word.

Humans have an innate desire for answers that corresponds with a desperate need to ask questions. Human history reveals that our accepted ideas about the world and its people vary drastically according to where and when we live. Depending on the culture we were brought up in, we develop certain expectations of ourselves as well as certain limitations. We all are raised aware that certain things are not possible and beyond our reach. The goals that evade us can be personal goals we strive to attain, but are limited by our natural and limited physical or mental ability. Or perhaps these goals could pertain to certain physical or mental obstacles that seem impossible to overcome or change, such as a physical or mental handicap.

While medicine and therapy are limited in their power to change, the miraculous characteristic of the Word of God is its consistent ability to create change where no change was possible. The Word of God has always been able to make a way where we humans confidently proclaimed no way existed. The Word of God makes the blind see, the lame walk, and broken receive restoration. The explanation for this power is that it comes not from the mind of humans with limited knowledge of the problem, but that it comes from the creator himself. The very One who created paradise, witnessed the Fall, brought forth the redemption for the Fall and has never removed his hand from what he loves. We humans are blessed with enormous knowledge and ability. However, only God can know all problems of all people in all nations throughout history. Only God can know the precise way to bring about the needed change in all of these strangers, uniting them in a common mission to heal the world in the power of his name and with the power of His Word. While the human heart is deeply self-absorbed and boastful, to suggest that man, rather than God, is somehow orchestrating the healing power of the Gospel seen in our world since the 1st century would surpass our most exaggerated heights of self-worth.