He said to them,
How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.Luke 24:25-27
As Christians, we have no right to hold a different view of Scripture than that held by Jesus himself. This is the first fact we must hold in mind as we consider the authority of the Word. To put it another way, the authority of the Bible rests squarely upon the authority of Jesus Christ himself. To be a Christian means that we have fully accepted the authority of Jesus. If we have not, we are not Christians — except in name only. It is an utter inconsistency to say that we accept what the Bible says about Christ and reject what he says about Scripture. We cannot say of Jesus that he is the image of the invisible God, but he is quite wrong about Adam and Noah and Jonah and the rest of the Old Testament. You see the utter inconsistency of that position? We cannot call him Lord, and say he has the right to choose our mates, and to pick our line of work, and to govern our life in all its attitudes and ways — even to trust our eternal destiny into his hands — but we cannot believe him when he speaks of the creation of man, or the sanctity of marriage, or the sinfulness of certain sexual acts. We are utterly inconsistent if we do.
We need only to read the New Testament to see that the Lord Jesus casts the mantle of his authority over all of the Old Testament, and, by anticipation, over all of the New. Over and over again he quotes from the Old Testament, usually the very books and passages which the scholars say are in dispute. But our Lord receives them, quotes freely from them, uses them as authority. In his own ministry, it was with the written Word of God that our Lord turned the tables on the enemy when he came to tempt him in the wilderness, and utterly defeated Satan in his attack upon him.
You may be an old and experienced Christian with a thorough knowledge of the Bible, or you may be a brand new Christian who hardly has any knowledge at all of what it says and have many questions about various aspects of it, but if you are a Christian at all, and have received eternal life through believing on Jesus of Nazareth, you must, by that very act, also be subject to his authority in this matter of accepting or rejecting the Scriptures.
Lord Jesus, I place myself under the authority of your Word. In calling you my Lord, I choose to trust your view of Scripture as the written Word of God. Amen.
Life Application
Do you separate your submission to the person of Jesus Christ from your submission to the Word of God? Get to know what Jesus himself said about Scripture.