Saturday, February 15, 2014

Grudem on the Sufficiency of Scripture.

A few of us at work are reading Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology: An Introduction. He has a chapter on the Sufficiency of Scripture that I enjoyed. Here are some quotes from the book. I'm book-ending his quotes with two key passages that teach this doctrine.

2 Timothy 3:16-17
All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. (ESV)
The sufficiency of Scripture means that Scripture contained all the words of God he intended his people to have at each stage of redemptive history, and that it now contains everything we need God to tell us for salvation, for trusting him perfectly, and for obeying him perfectly. (p.127, Grudem)
If there is any “good work” that God wants a Christian to do, this passage indicates that God has made provision in his Word for training the Christian in it. Thus, there is no “good work” that God wants us to do other than those that are taught somewhere in Scripture: it can equip us for every good work. (p.127, Grudem)
Nowhere in church history outside of Scripture has God added anything that he requires us to believe or to do. Scripture is sufficient to equip us for “every good work,” and to walk in its ways is to be “blameless” in God’s sight. (p. 134, Grudem)
The sufficiency of Scripture reminds us that in our doctrinal and ethical teaching we should emphasize what Scripture emphasizes and be content with what God has told us in Scripture. There are some subjects about which God has told us little or nothing in the Bible. We must remember that “The secret things belong to the LORD our God” (Deut. 29:29) and that God has revealed to us in Scripture exactly what he deemed right for us. We must accept this and not think that Scripture is something less than it should be, or begin to wish that God had given us much more information about subjects on which there are very few scriptural references. (p. 134, Grudem)
Psalm 119:1
Blessed are those whose way is blameless,
who walk in the law of the Lord! (ESV)

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