I’m going to make a somewhat controversial statement. The primary reason I believe the Bible is the Word of God is because I believe in Jesus. I don’t believe in Jesus primarily because I believe the Bible is the Word of God. Sure, I have a long list of reasons why I believe the Bible is divinely inspired, but ultimately the foundation is Christ. This was not always the case for me. As a child, I was taught by my parents, pastors, and Christian school teachers that the Bible is the Word of God. I trusted these sources of authority and had no reason to doubt them. When I was a child, I thought like a child. This was good and right and normal. But then it happened.
In my mid-20s, while reading through John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, my entire world fell apart. As I read through a passage of the book on God’s judgement, terror ran through my entire body. I came under an incredible sense of God’s judgement coupled with fear that my time of grace had passed. This fear was so intense that I laid in bed shaking the entire night, barely getting an hour of sleep. Although I had pursued God for much of my life, there were periods of significant sin and rebellion. My sense of security was gone - or perhaps it was just revealed that no security ever existed. In the midst of everything going extremely well in every area of my life (worldly speaking), I was brought to my knees.
I pursued security in Christ with every fiber of my being. Plagued by doubt and fear, each day was a massive struggle. As I pursued Christ and devoted my all to him, I was soon faced with my first test of faith. Could I trust my entire being to the person of Christ? Would he prove himself true? This led to a second, but similar question of whether or not I could trust the Bible. Talking about the reliability of the parachute is one thing when you are sitting on the ground. Trusting its reliability after you leap out of the plane is quite another.
The faith of my childhood, while not discarded, had to be reestablished. However, this time it could not be built on the foundation of my parents, teachers, or pastors. When I was a child, I thought like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. (1 Cor. 13:11).
I spent years in painstaking study, literally traveling around the country taking graduate courses under some of the leading Christian philosophers and apologists in the country. It was becoming increasingly clear that the foundation of my faith could not be a system which held a book at its center (although I do believe in the Christian system with a book at its center). I initially believed the Gospel because I believed the Bible was God’s word. But as I sought to understand how I could know the Bible was God’s word, I found that Christ was the key to solving my knowledge crisis.
To help you make sense of this, consider how someone outside the Christian community comes to faith in Christ. They are not first convinced the Bible is God’s word, then by process of deductive reasoning, come to faith in Christ. NO! Through the preaching of the Word, they begin to see the divine nature of Christ. His life, actions, teaching, and resurrection compel their mind and heart he is worthy of trust and lordship. They see a divine reality sufficient to win their allegiance. Soon they learn that Christ is the centerpiece of all the Scriptures, he taught they were God’s word, and the church he established embraces them as such.
Perhaps I am rather hard headed, but it took me years to grasp this reality. Christ is the center, the core. He is the Word made flesh. I believe the Bible is God’s word because it points to him, speaks of him, and prophecies his work. I believe the Bible because through Christ, I see it’s saving beauty, glory, and grand moral truth. I believe the Bible because the Church he founded has almost universally embraced its divine nature. I believe the Bible because Christ believed it, embodied it, and became it. I believe the Bible because I believe in Jesus.
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