The Inspiration and Sufficiency of Scripture

Followers of Jesus ought to have an uncompromising commitment to the Word of God. Christians are quick to believe every single WORD of Scripture. Christians often encourage their Latter-day Saint neighbors and friends to read and study Scripture, to look at every word, and to trust what it says.

Many people in today’s world believe that the Bible is merely a collection of human records and religious thought, but Christians believe Scripture to be far more than that. 

So, what is the Bible? Why is it that followers of Jesus implicitly trust it and believe it to be totally sufficient for everything we need in our Christian lives?

#1) All Scripture is God-breathed, or inspired.

Paul writes in 2 Timothy that

“All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,” (2 Timothy 3:16).

 Scripture is writings that have been “breathed-out”, or inspired, by God. Both the Old and New Testaments are referred to as Scripture (2 Peter 3:16).

 This means that the Bible is more than just some man-made book…The ultimate origin of Scripture is God Himself.When the New Testament authors quote human-written passages from the Old Testament, they will on occasion attribute those writings to the Holy Spirit.

 We see this in the book of Hebrews, when the author of Hebrews says that Psalm 95 was written both by David (Hebrews 2:7), AND by the Holy Spirit (Hebrews 3:7). So who actually wrote the words of Psalm 95? David, or the Holy Spirit? The answer is both! The Apostle Peter writes in 2 Peter,

“For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” (2 Peter 1:21).

The Bible is a collection of writings that preserve the writing styles, cultures, and personalities of its various authors, all the while being directly inspired by the Holy Spirit. The words these men wrote in Scripture were the very words of God!

Because these Biblical authors wrote the “Word of God”, the God-breathed words of Scripture, we really can trust and rely on the Bible! We can be confident that it doesn’t error and isn’t inconsistent, because God doesn’t error, and God isn’t inconsistent. 

Everything that God intended for His people to have, we have. God hasn’t failed in providing His people with everything they need for faith and life.

#2) Every single Word of Scripture is trustworthy and inspired .

Because the Bible is inspired and finds its origin in God, we can trust every single WORD that it says down to the grammatical tenses of verbs.

Jesus demonstrated this level of trust in Scripture when He was correcting the Sadducees’ thinking about the resurrection. Jesus said,

“And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not God of the dead, but of the living.” And when the crowd heard it, they were astonished at his teaching.” (Matthew 22:31–33).

Jesus hangs his entire argument on the fact that Scripture records God saying “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob”. God didn’t say He WAS the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but that He IS their God currently. Jesus made his entire argument hinge on the tense of a single word! 

If our perfect Lord trusted Scripture enough to argue with the Jewish religious leader using the tense of a single word, then we can also feel confident to trust and rely every individual word of Scripture. 

#3) Scripture is sufficient for all we need in the Christian Life

Paul reminds Timothy in 2 Timothy that

“from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.” (2 Timothy 3:15). 

These “sacred writings” were able to make Timothy “wise for salvation”. But Paul doesn’t limit Scripture’s effectiveness to JUST salvation, he continues on:

“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.” (2 Timothy 3:15–17).

The Bible teaches people, it reproves and corrects them…and trains them in righteousness. Paul says Scripture does all this “that the man of God may be complete”. The Bible is able to make us complete, to make us not lack any good thing that we might need for our Christian lives! We can be equipped for EVERY good work we ought to do through Scripture. 

This means that there are NO rituals and traditions we are obligated to adhere to that are not contained in the Bible! Scripture equips us for EVERY good work that we need to do. New revelation is unnecessary for living a life that is pleasing to God (Hebrews 1:1-2).

As Christians, we don’t require anything but the revealed Word of God to make us wise to salvation, to correct us, and to make us complete and mature in the faith. Psalm 19 also speaks to this same idea:

“The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple; the precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes; the fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever; the rules of the Lord are true, and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb. Moreover, by them is your servant warned; in keeping them there is great reward.” (Psalm 19:7–11).

God’s Law (or God’s instruction) is perfect. It is without error. It never contradicts itself and is never factually incorrect, because it’s chief author is God Himself!

It revives us, gives us new life, it makes us wise, enlightens our eyes, and is more to be desired than even gold or honey. This is why Christians spend so much time studying God’s Word, and even go so far as to learn the original Biblical languages, in order to take what God has revealed seriously.

Anything that boldly contradicts what God’s Word says is simply not true. This is one of the reasons that Christians must reject the Mormon faith: there are numerous teachings of the LDS Church that blatantly violate and contradict what the Bible plainly and clearly says.

Because God’s Word is our ultimate standard of truth, we must reject the LDS Scriptures and Prophets as they contradict what God has previously revealed in the Bible.

As followers of Jesus, if we are ever presented with something in the Bible that contradicts what we’ve previously believed, we need to be humble enough to change our beliefs to match with what God has revealed.

Inspired Scripture is our infallible and inerrant guide, and we can fully lean on it for all that we need in our Christian life.