The Cost of Rejecting the Bible’s Authority
We cannot submit to the authority of Jesus Christ if we’re standing in judgment over the written Word of Christ. Today, R.C. Sproul illustrates the grave consequences of rejecting the Bible’s authority.
I had an interesting conversation a few weeks ago in Philadelphia with an old friend, a fellow I went to college with. We were very close in college. We used to study the Scriptures together. By previous agreement, privately, two of us or three of us would meet almost every night to spend some time in examination of the Scriptures and then some time in personal devotions, prayer, and that sort of thing. And we had a very close personal relationship as we were growing as young and zealous Christians.
Then we left college. We went our different ways. I went on to study theology. He went on to a life of career work in the church. He went on and got a seminary degree. And we hadn’t seen each other for fifteen years. We got together a few weeks ago. This was an interesting get-together because in spite of the fact that we hadn’t seen each other for fifteen years, there was instantly that sense of warmth and understanding and fellowship and brotherly love that we had spent so many years building together.
Yet, it was obvious after we had talked for five or ten minutes that where he was theologically and where I was theologically was on the total different ends of the theological spectrum. Yet, because of the intensive relationship we once enjoyed, we were able in a warm and cordial and charitable spirit to dialogue through some of these things. I wasn’t interested after all these years, after all the debates I’ve been in theologically, to debate him as just another liberal coming down the street who’d rejected the authority of Scripture and all that and get into a big fight with him.
He was first of all my friend at this point, and I said to him, I said, “I’m really interested to hear the history of your pilgrimage. The last time I saw you, you held up the view of the infallibility of Scripture and that sort of thing and had a very high view of Scripture, committed to all these things. You were actually a fundamentalist, if I can be accurate in my evaluation. Now, you’ve set aside all those views. And I’m sure that you think that that’s because of growth, et cetera, and a broadening of your own experience. But I’d really like to hear how and why you made that change.” Here I am, after fifteen years, maybe more educated, maybe more obstinate, maybe all those things, I’m still believing the same thing I believed fifteen years ago, and maybe total evidence that no one could change a bullheaded man or something like that. But I said, “I’d really like to know why you changed.”
He started telling me his history, his pilgrimage, and the things that he had given up and why he had given them up. And so, when he was all done with this, I said, “Well, what I’d really like to know now is, is there anything left with what you started with?” I said, “What is left?”
And the first thing he said to me, I’ll never forget it. He said, “Well, the first thing that’s still left,” he says that, “it’s a nonnegotiable item in my Christian faith is the lordship of Jesus Christ.” It was a thrilling testimony of this man’s conviction and his submission to the lordship of Jesus Christ. Five minutes earlier, he had been telling me how radically he disagreed with Paul’s views of culture and women and all the rest of the things that get Paul in trouble these days, and how he believes that the Bible is filled with errors, et cetera.
I said, “Well, what I’d like to know is, where do you find the authority of Christ now? How does Christ exercise real authority over your life right now? Now that you’ve jettisoned the authority of Scripture, you stand in judgment and criticism over the Scripture, over the Apostolic testimony, but yet you still have Christ as your authority.” I said, “Where do you find any content to that authority?” He looked at me and he said, “Through the decisions of the church.”
I think he knew as soon as he said it that he shouldn’t have said it. I don’t think this was a conviction that he came to through careful thinking, but it was something that he had to say because I caught him off guard when I asked him this question, where I really challenged his verbal profession of faith in the lordship of Christ that really, in a sense, challenged him for saying that that’s an empty statement that has no content. There’s no content to that authority. There’s nothing real about it. You still do what you darn well please. You consult the secular authorities, et cetera, and then you try to dress that up in the name of Jesus Christ.
“I want to hear, tell me where you get the insight as to what the mind of Christ is?” And so, quickly he says, “It’s decisions of the church.” I said, “Which church? The Methodist Church? Presbyterian Church? Episcopal Church?” He was shaken, and we were close enough as friends that I could pursue it this way and not playing the diplomatic games of circling around the issues, but really getting right down to it. I told him, I said, “I urge you to go home and really think through the implications of your rejection of Apostolic authority. Because I really don’t think you can have your cake and eat it too.” But that’s why I’m convinced we’re in such malaise and such confusion in our church today. We try to, on the one hand, elevate the authority of Christ, and then on the other hand, stand in judgment over the content of that which He has presumably historically endorsed as His commission were.
