The Bible’s Holy Aim

Jordan Atkinson

In addition to affirming the Bible’s holy authorship, Friendship’s statement of faith also confesses the holy aim for which the Bible was written and preserved for us. The Bible has not only “God for its author” but also “salvation for its end.”

The Bible is a big book, and salvation is a big aim. According to Scripture, salvation is both a present and future reality. One passage that discusses both aspects of salvation is 1 Peter 1:3-5. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed at the last time.” Salvation has present benefits: new birth, living hope, and being guarded through faith. But salvation will not be fully realized until “the last time,” which Peter specifies as “the revelation of Jesus Christ” at his second coming (1 Pet 1:7).

The apostle Paul summarized various aspects of salvation in this way: “And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified” (Rom 8:30). God planned salvation from eternity past and saves us as he calls us and declares us righteous in the present, and the final stage of salvation is the glory we will receive in the new heavens and the new earth with immortal physical bodies (cf. Rom 8:18-25).

When The Baptist Faith and Message says that the Bible’s aim is salvation, it is saying that the Bible teaches people how to enter salvation in the present and how to persevere in faith as they await their final salvation. In other words, the Bible seeks to convert sinners and to help Christians become more Christlike.

Much of the Bible is written to people already following God, but the Bible also shows people how to begin following God. In the Old Testament, Psalm 19:7-9 describes the converting power of God’s word: “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.” For us Christians, David’s statement that God’s law is capable of “reviving the soul” may sound paradoxical, given Paul’s statement: “by works of the law no human being ill be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin” (Rom 3:20). But we must remember that David is talking about Scripture when he talks about “the law of the Lord,” and that the Books of the Law (Genesis through Deuteronomy) not only contain commands to obey but also promises of God’s intention to save the world from the sin problem (e.g., Gen 3:15; 12:1-3; 22:17-18; cf. Gal 3:16, 22).

The New Testament also talks about the converting power of God’s word. Paul told Timothy, “But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you have learned it and how 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 Tim 3:14-15). Paul agrees with David: the Bible contains the teaching that, if heeded, leads to salvation through faith in Jesus!

In addition to leading people to begin the salvation journey, Scripture teaches people how to continue along their salvation journey. Paul immediately continues, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and is 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 Tim 3:16-17). Scripture is profitable for things that primarily benefit those who are already converted. Christians do not immediately become perfect people when they trust Christ for salvation. Salvation is an ongoing process that will not be complete until the second coming of Christ! Christians need the Bible just as much as non-Christians do.

Paul encouraged the Romans similarly: “For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope” (Rom 15:4; cf. 1 Cor 10:1-14). The Old Testament is not something from which Christians should unhitch themselves. We need the whole Bible to instruct us and encourage us to endure and to have hope. Christ is revealed clearly in the New Testament, but even the Old Testament predicted him in types and shadows. The frequent disobedience of God’s people in the Old Testament warns us not to be unfaithful to God today.

Written by men so inspired by God that their words were God’s own words, the Bible seeks both to convert sinners and to sanctify saints. May we daily attend to God’s word: reading it, meditating on it, memorizing it, storing it up in our hearts so that we might not sin against God (Ps 119:11).

The Bible’s Holy Authorship

Jordan Atkinson

Friendship Baptist’s statement of faith begins, “The Holy Bible was written by men divinely inspired and is God’s revelation of Himself to man. It is a perfect treasure of divine instruction. It has God for its author, salvation for its end, and truth, without any mixture of error, for its matter. Therefore, all Scripture is totally true and trustworthy.” We gladly affirm the Bible’s holy authorship, holy aim, and holy accuracy. This blog post shows the Scriptural support for the Bible’s holy authorship.

The Bible is a book comprised of 66 smaller books. Each book of the Bible has two authors simultaneously: a divinely-inspired man and God himself. The Baptist Faith and Message rightly affirms the dual authorship of all of Scripture, since the Bible repeatedly claims that it is both a human and a divine product.

No one questions human involvement in the Bible’s production. You may be surprised, though, that the Bible itself often acknowledges the human authors. The fifth book of the Bible begins, “These are the words that Moses spoke to all Israel beyond the Jordan in the wilderness” (Deut 1:1). Many of the Psalms also identify their author in superscriptions, such as David (e.g., Ps 23), Asaph (e.g., Ps 50), the sons of Korah (e.g., Ps 42), Heman the Ezrahite (Ps 88), Ethan the Ezrahite (Ps 89), Moses (Ps 90), and Solomon (e.g., Ps 127).

Similar to Psalms, the Book of Proverbs leaves multiple traces of its human authors and compilers. Proverbs opens by identifying their primary author as “Solomon, son of David, king of Israel” (Prov 1:1). A similar heading appears at Proverbs 10:1. Solomon compiled thirty sayings of the wise (Prov 22:17-24:22) along with additional sayings (Prov 24:23-34). Hundreds of years later, King Hezekiah’s scribes appended additional proverbs of Solomon in Proverbs 25-29. Proverbs concludes with an oracle of Agur (Prov 30) and an oracle by the Queen Mother of Lemuel (an otherwise-unknown middle Eastern king: Prov 31).

All of the Latter Prophets identify their authors by name, as well (the Books of Isaiah through Malachi).

Non-Christians (and even some self-styled “progressive Christians”) deny the Bible’s divine authorship, but the Bible clearly affirms its own divine origins from first to last. Jeremiah claims that “the word of the Lord came” to him six times in his book, and Ezekiel uses that phrase eight times. The Latter Prophets claim “thus says the Lord” 927 times. Well does Peter affirm the divine authorship of the Old Testament: “no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. 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 Pet 1:20-21). Paul is even more direct: “All Scripture is breathed out by God” (2 Tim 3:16).

The New Testament is just as much the word of God as the Old Testament. Jesus promised his disciples that the Holy Spirit would “teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you” (John 14:26; cf. John 15:26-27; 21:24). The eyewitness Gospels of Matthew and John are therefore trustworthy. Mark’s Gospel is written by the spiritual “son” of Peter (1 Pet 5:13). Luke’s Gospel is similarly based on eyewitness testimony (Luke 1:1-4). Interestingly concerning Luke, Paul writes, “the Scripture says, ‘You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain,’ and, ‘The laborer deserves his wages'” (1 Tim 5:18). Paul refers not only to Deut 25:4 but also to Luke 10:7 as “Scripture.” And Peter affirms that Paul’s own epistles are Scripture: “There are some things in them [Paul’s letters] that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures” (2 Pet 3:16, emphasis added).

As Southern Baptists, we are unapologetically people of the Book. We seek to base all our beliefs and practices on Scriptural commands and precedents. We at Friendship Baptist Church gladly affirm The Baptist Faith and Message as our statement of faith because its statements are Scriptural. We believe the Bible was written by men divinely inspired by God not because our statement of faith says so, but because the Bible says so. The next blog post in this series will show how the Bible undergirds our statement of faith’s claim about the holy aim of the Bible.