The Authority of the Holy Scriptures
By Graham Bidston
Graham Bidston (1935-2024) belonged to a generation of ministers who were noted for their godly faithfulness and unflinching commitment to God’s Word. After serving as pastor of West Woolwich Baptist Church, he was appointed Deputation Speaker of the Trinitarian Bible Society, serving throughout Wales and London and the south-east, and later, on the London General Committee. This two-part article is reproduced by permission from Mrs Audrey Bidston. It was given first at the 111th Annual Meeting of the Bible Spreading Union in 2001. The sermonic style has been retained.
I want to direct you to 2 Peter 1:21: “For 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.” It is the question of the authority of the Scriptures that I want us to consider together, and, at the beginning, let me say that I am not attempting to give any definitive preaching or teaching on the subject of the authority of Scripture. I am not here to present some learned discourse on that subject, but my heart’s desire is that we might together, simply and yet directly, consider the relevance of such a doctrine.
Important
The authority of Scripture is so important and so vital, and ought to underlie anything and everything that we, the Lord’s people, do. Sadly, we are living in days when that is not the case, and therefore it seems to me that this is a relevant subject for us to consider very simply and very basically. I am not attempting to do any more than that.
Authority by itself is a problem. I suppose it would be true to say that it has always been a problem, but it is certainly a problem today. Men do not like authority; they certainly do not like to use the word “authority,” and they do not like being under authority. This, I suppose, has always been true of an evil world, but it is surely particularly true today. Men do not want to be governed in any way; they want to please themselves; they want to be able to go about and do whatever they wish, regardless of the consequences, and we can surely see this all around us in our world today. We see the breakdown in so many areas of this world in which we are living: a breakdown in family life; a breakdown in business life; a breakdown in school life; and we could go on adding to this list. A breakdown in our land; a breakdown in our world; a breakdown everywhere, in these and in many other areas; and sadly, it is true within the professing Christian church.
Sad
That ought to be a sad thing for us to say, but we have to say it. We cannot tum away from it. It is sadly true of the professing church. Almost anything is acceptable today in the so-called Christian church. It is D.I.Y. day as far as the church is concerned. You can do what you like, how you like. It does not matter what you do. When we look into this, we see that there are many professing Christians who, it would seem, are unhappy and confused about authority, about discipline in the church. Many people simply have no idea about these things. Many churches have given up on things, and surely it would be true to say that one of the reasons for this weak and indeed, apostate state, of the church today can be put down to the loss of any real adherence to the authority of the Scriptures.
From verse 16 of this chapter, the apostle Peter deals with authority – his own authority, that of all the apostles, and in particular the authority of the message which they brought of the Lord Jesus Christ – the final verses bring him to this. He began with this description of what the lives of Christians are to be, the virtues
which they are to manifest in the world. He challenges Christians as to whether, in fact, they are like this; challenges them to make their calling and election sure (verse 10), and so on, until eventually he comes to speak of the whole question of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself and the great fact that they saw Him in that supernatural way on the mount.
Testimony
He gives this great testimony, that he heard a voice from God, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” He says in verse I8, “And this voice which came from heaven we heard, when we were with him in the holy mount,” and then he goes on, “We have also a more sure word of prophecy,” And in these final three verses, he comes to make this great and majestic statement, “For 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.”
Now, in passing, we ought to make it clear what he means when he says, “We have also a more sure word of prophecy.” It is important to spend time on this. There are those, for instance, who say that this is in contrast to what he says in verse I6, “We have not followed cunningly devised fables,” and that now he says he does not have cunningly devised fables but a more sure word of prophecy. Clearly, by emphasising the words that are written, it cannot possibly mean that, because then that would tell us that these fables are a sure word of prophecy. So it is not a contrast to the fables that he is speaking of. The fables are not sure. They are fables, they are not truth. So, whatever he is saying, he is not contrasting it with the fables.
Contrast
Obviously, he is intending to make a contrast with the words which he has just spoken about what they saw on the mount. They saw the Lord and heard God speaking. They heard God’s Word uplifting and exalting His Son, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” He says that “this voice which came from heaven we heard, when we were with him in the holy mount.” So he is giving a testimony. He is an apostle; it is not that which the normal Christians saw and heard, nor is it that which normal Christians see and hear today. Let us be quite clear about this. This is something that was, and remains, apostolic.
But what he goes on to say is something wonderful, “we have also a more sure word of prophecy.” God spoke directly on the mount, but what he is now referring to is the Scriptures. He says he can tell you what they heard and saw, but “we have also a more sure word of prophecy.” That is why it says in verse 20, “Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture,” and in verse 21, “For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man.”
So here, he is touching on the great truth that we can depend on this which is more sure. It is more sure as the days go by; it is more sure than anything else. When you examine verse 21 in its context, you realise what it is that Peter is saying, and I trust we realise why the authority of Scripture is so important. Why is it so important? The answer is given to us in verse 21, this great and majestic statement, “For 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.” Why is the doctrine of the authority of Scripture so important? It is because of what it says in this verse. And therefore we have to consider it.
Understand
In order to understand it properly, we must know something about the previous verse, verse 20. “Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the Scripture is of any private interpretation.” If we do not understand what that means we will not have any idea what verse 21 means. We will never see the wonder of verse 21 if we do not understand the meaning of verse 20. These two verses stand together. Note that verse 21 begins with the word “for.” “Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation, for the prophecy came.” They are linked together. We cannot understand the one without the other. What then does verse 20 mean? What is the right interpretation of the verse? As soon as you ask this question you have to say that there have been many interpretations over the years. We could get bogged down with this, but let me set before you four interpretations quite briefly. There is no need to take much time with this, but it helps us to see what is the right interpretation.
Rome
One explanation with which you are all familiar is the interpretation given us by Rome. They base much upon this. Their whole position with regard to Protestantism is, to a great extent, governed and coloured by this verse 20. The Roman Church says that these words here mean there is to be no private judgement by the people in the church. That is, in a nutshell, what they teach; that only the church can interpret Scripture. It has been said much down the years that it is a dangerous thing for the Bible to be placed into the hands of men and women. It is the church alone, through its pontiffs, cardinals and the rest of the hierarchy, that has the authority to interpret; we, the people, must not interpret. That, they say, is what this means. If you and I were being governed according to Romanism then I would say to you, “I do not want you to open your Bibles. Listen to what I am saying; do what I say, that is enough. Do not read a Bible. You do not need a Bible and if you have one, close it.” That is still the Roman interpretation of this verse.
Wrong
This interpretation is wrong, of course if only for this reason, the church is not the final authority. The Word of God itself is the final authority and the church (I am not just talking about the Roman church), the church, whichever church, must be judged according to the Scripture. If you want to test whether your church is a church or not, the test is in Scripture; Scripture judges us. We are not above the Scripture, no church is. So Romanism is wrong.
Protestants
Now among Protestants there are various interpretations. One such interpretation says that the prophets were not able to understand all that they said, and 1 Peter 1:10,11 is quoted for this, “Of which salvation the prophets have enquired and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you: Searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow.” The prophets did not understand all that they were saying. They were not able to understand these things. We are told they could not understand; there can be no private interpretation. Now it is true that the prophets did not understand all that they said. But that is not the meaning of the text, that is not the explanation that we need to see as we look at verse 20.
Then another interpretation says that no prophecy must be interpreted by itself.
It must always be interpreted in the light of the whole range of prophetic Scripture. In other words, you do not choose one sentence and say that is it – regardless, you have to understand it in the light of Scripture as a whole. That is a great principle for us. It is a great principle for preachers, as oftentimes we are guilty of producing a text from nowhere, it would seem, and it has nothing to do with anything else. Scriptures have to be linked. This surely is what exposition is all about. So this is a true principle that no prophecy must be interpreted by itself but always in the light of the whole range of prophecies. That is true, but that is not what this text means.
And then a fourth interpretation is that prophecy cannot be understood by human
reasoning; it can only be understood through the Holy Spirit. Now we would all say “Amen” to that, but that is not the truth that is conveyed in the text.
So the Roman interpretation we reject totally; it is wrong. The other three understandings of the text by Protestants contain the truth, but do not get at the meaning of verse 20. This is because they all take verse 20 by itself without any reference to verse 21. But as we have already noted, verse 21 begins with the word “for.” Therefore, whatever is our interpretation of verse 20, we have to see it in the light of what the apostle Peter goes on to say in verse 21. Thus, my point is that verse 21 tells us what verse 20 means. Verse 21 not only says why the authority of Scripture is so important. It does that, but it also tells us what verse 20 really means. Peter is talking about the authority of the Scriptures. He is not talking about how the Scriptures are to be received, like the four points we have mentioned. The two issues are different. They come together as these two verses come together, but this is something that is of crucial importance.
How the Scriptures came into being
We should be concerned with the authority of Scripture because of how the Scriptures came into being? How did they? Peter puts it first in the negative. He tells us how the Scriptures did not come. He says, “For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man.” This means it was not of human origin; it was not something devised by man. It was not a man, or a group of men, who gave us the Bible. That is what he is saying. The Bible did not come into being by the will of man. It is good for us to remind ourselves that we have the Scriptures, but in them we do not have, thank God, the ideas of men.
We do not rely upon the works of Mao Tse Tung and other such men; we do not rely upon the Book of Mormon, we do not need Joseph Smith to tell us what to do, or how he dug up plates buried in a field. Thank God we are not in the hands of such charlatans: “The prophesy came not in old time by the will of man.” It was not of human origin, or, as verse 20 has it, not of any private interpretation. That is what it means – from the beginning. It is not of private interpretation. You say, well, what is the Bible? What are the Scriptures? Well, they are the words and the thoughts – no, they are not of private interpretation. And you see, unless we understand it from the beginning then we are in a mess. And we are in a mess today, because the professing church has given up the Divine authorship of the Book, and if you give up that, you are in a mess. Here is Peter putting it negatively. Of what value would the ideas of men be to us, my dear friends? Of no value whatever. Where is the authority in the ideas of men? There is no authority at all in them. So there it is negatively. The Scriptures did not come into being by the will of man.
(To be Concluded)