The Final Authority, Period.

"Anyone who faithfully and correctly proclaims the Word of God will speak with authority.

It is not our own authority. It is not even the ecclesiastical authority attached to the office of a pastor or teacher in the church. It is a still greater authority than that. Insofar as our teaching accurately reflects the truth of Scripture, it has the full weight of God’s own authority behind it. That is a staggering thought, but it is precisely how 1 Peter 4:11 instructs us to handle biblical truth: “If anyone speaks, let him speak as the oracles of God.”

Of course that is a profound threat to the tolerance of a society that loves its sin and thinks of compromise as a good thing. To speak boldly and declare that God has spoken with finality is neither stylish nor politically correct. But if we truly believe the Bible is the Word of God, how can we handle it any other way?

Many modern evangelicals, cowed by post-modernism’s demand for latitudinarianism, claim they believe Scripture, but then shy away from proclaiming it with any authority. They are willing to give lip service to the truth of Scripture, but in practice they strip it of its authority, treating it as just another opinion in the great mix of post-modern ideas.

Boldly Proclaiming the Word of God: An Interview with D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

"In this legendary 1970 interview British journalist Joan Bakewell discusses the biblical truth about man with D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones. Please spend a little time watching it and studying the way Lloyd-Jones proclaims the word of God.

I would like to use something that Lloyd-Jones emphasized in this interview as a launching point to briefly discuss the nature of the authority by which we proclaim biblical truth, and the necessity of us as Christians refusing to compromise or give any ground whatsoever to those who would challenge the truth of the gospel.

One truly striking aspect of this interview is that Bakewell appears to genuinely enjoy interacting with Lloyd Jones. I suggest that she enjoys Lloyd-Jones so much because when she challenges him with questions to which she would expect some kind of attempt to accommodate or compromise with a differing point of view, Lloyd-Jones is utterly and yet winsomely uncompromising.

Lloyd-Jones is necessarily dogmatic about two main points: First, he rejects the secular view that mankind is autonomous, self-determining, and merely a highly evolved animal. He confesses, in opposition to this, the biblical view that man is created in the image of God, and that man was originally created perfect and righteous but sinned against God. As a result, man is a rebel against God, and that is the reason for all of his troubles. He asserts that man can only function truly and be truly happy when he “lives his life under God.” That is, he submits to and obeys God from his heart. That is the purpose for which he was originally created.

Second, Lloyd-Jones asserts that the gospel of Jesus Christ is not about giving us a better life or making us more wealthy or comfortable, as it was so often falsely portrayed by segments of the professing church in both his day and still is in ours. The gospel of Christ is about “reconciling us to God”(Rom. 5:10).

Loving God With All Your Mind

Reason & Revelation- Reason is indispensable for the Christian life because without understanding spiritual growth is impossible. God designed us to be converted and conformed to Christ through mind renewal.

Romans 12:1-2 lays out the importance of the this process: I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, so that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

As God’s truth permeates our minds, it imparts objective facts and it impacts our subjective thought process. In other words, God’s truth forms the basis for what we think and fashions how we think. Scripture provides us with the truth we need to inform our thinking and to shape our wisdom. For this reason, and many more, an unreasoned Christian life is a deficient Christian life—the mind must be engaged.

That being said, we must never allow our reasoning to rise to the level of authority. What does this mean? J.I. Packer incisively explains: But all its many varieties spring from a single principle, namely, that the final authority for my faith and life is the verdict of my reason, conscience, or religious sentiment as I examine Scripture “with an open mind,” and measure it by what I have learned from other sources, historical, philosophical, religious and scientific. What under these circumstances reason and conscience say, what I find that “I feel,” that God says (Packer, Fundamentalism and the Word of God, 50).