Seven Days Part 3
In my last post (seven days part 2,) I spoke about how many people say the Bible cannot be infallible because it was written by men; that even God’s word admits that all men are liars (Romans 3:4.) They speak about contradictions in the text to prove their point.
I, however, am of the opinion that God is more than capable to getting His absolute truth to us through imperfect beings such as ourselves. He does this through His Holy Spirit.
Layers of Truth
All right, so what about these irregularities? What about those contradictions? We cannot just brush them under the carpet as if they don’t exist.
It is impossible for me in a blog post to go through the entire Bible, point out, and then cross reference every verse. Apart from Bible study and understanding being a life long process, I do not have the resources and time (and, I’m sure, neither do you.) When all is said and done, it is up to each man and woman to decide whether they believe the Bible in its entirety, to reject it completely, or to cherry pick what suits them and their own world view and reject the rest. I have found that cherry picking usually lead to more confusion in the long run. When we take God and His word at face value, understanding tends to get easier.
There are no inconsistencies in the Bible. That, in and of itself, should prove its infalliability. In its original languages of Hebrew and Greek, there are no discrepencies. At times though, we tend to come across words, verses and passages, which on the surface, seem to contradict other parts of Scripture.
Some of the time, the problem is a question of context, misunderstanding a certain time period, failing to look at the intended audience, losing a little of the meaning in translation from Hebrew or Greek, but a lot of the time any irregularities are a question of understanding what I would call ‘layering.’
The Holy Spirit never puts everything there is to say about a certain subject all in the one place. The word of God is given, ‘here a little, and there a little.’ Isaiah 28:10. Truths are sprinkled throughout the entire Bible. Ignore this fact and you will never understand what God is saying correctly, and you are in danger of becoming a one verse or one passage theologian.
I would go as far as to say that our understanding of what God is saying in His word is in a constant state of flux, swinging between misunderstanding and correction our entire lives in order to get to the Truth.
Don’t misunderstand me, the Gospel itself is simple; Jesus Christ died for our sins and rose again, but the rest we have to dig a little deeper for. Jesus Christ is the Truth, and He is the rock and foundation upon which we lay everything else.
With this in mind, let’s go back to those seeming inconsistencies. For an example I will use the seven sayings of Jesus from the cross.
The Seven Sayings of Jesus From the Cross.
‘My God my God why hast thou forsaken me?’
‘Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.’
‘Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise.’
‘Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit:’
‘Woman, behold thy son!’ Then saith He to the disciple, ‘Behold thy mother!’
‘I thirst.’
‘It is finished:’
These seven sayings are recognisable to Christians and to even non-believers. All of them are true and accepted by Christians.. However, not all seven sayings are in a single Gospel account. They are sprinkled throughout the four canonical Gospels. It is only when they are put together that we get a clear picture of what Jesus said at that time. This is what I mean by layering. You can check these scriptures out yourself.
Matthew
‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’
Matthew 27:46
Mark
‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’
Mark 15:34
Luke
‘Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.’
Luke23:34
‘Verily I say unto thee, To day thou shalt be with me in Paradise.’
Luke 23:43
‘Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit:’
Luke 23:46
John
‘Woman, behold thy son! Then saith he to the disciple, ‘Behold thy mother!’
John 19:26-27
‘I thirst.’
John 19:28
‘It is finished:’
John 19:30
You should be able to see from the above verses, that the seven sayings of Jesus are scattered right across the four Gospel accounts, with Matthew and Mark containing just one, and the same one at that. Does this then mean that the Gospels contradict each other? So does this throw into question what Christ actually said?
Some people might say that. However, this is where it is important to read the whole of Scripture as one Divinely Inspired piece of literature. In other words we must take the whole Bible into account.
The four Gospels do not contradict each other at all, but rather they are different parts of the whole story. The seven sayings of Jesus are placed in the text by the Holy Spirit; ‘here a little, and there a little.’ We do not get the whole picture of what Jesus said from the cross until we read all the accounts. It is only then that we know that Christ said seven statements at Calvary.
This is just one fundamental example of this in Scripture, and it contains a valuable lesson. We must approach the whole of the Bible with the same mindset, constantly cross-referencing in order to get the full depth of meaning.
The Bible is deep and richly layered, and yet simple in its Gospel message.
Christ died for us, rose again, and He set out to redeem His whole creation at the same time.
Keeping this in mind, we can now go back and look at Genesis chapter one, in the next post.