Spirit and Scripture
Message by the Rev Jeffrey Khoo to Berith BPC on Reformation Sunday, 31 October 2010
After our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ completed His redemptive work on earth, He did not leave us alone without any help. He gave two precious things: the Holy Spirit and the Holy Scriptures. These two in their respective ways are the visible and invisible Witnesses of God’s salvation grace. We cannot do without them. May we never despise the Scriptures nor the Spirit. If we are to be saved from our sins, and be helped in our Christian life we need them both. The trouble with Christians today is that they fail to understand the role of the Spirit and the function of Scripture in their lives. That is why many are tired of their faith, unhappy in their life, ignorant of God’s will, disturbed and confused by the world.
Holy Spirit
“But ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things. I have not written unto you because ye know not the truth, but because ye know it, and that no lie is of the truth. … These things have I written unto you concerning them that seduce you. But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him” (1 John 2:20, 21, 26, 27).
The Lord Jesus Christ our great High Priest has anointed us with the Holy Spirit. “Now he which stablisheth us with you in Christ, and hath anointed us, is God; Who hath also sealed us, and given the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts” (1 Cor 1:21, 22). This anointing happens when we believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and accept Him as our Lord and Saviour, and are born again. The Holy Spirit at that moment indwells us and remains in us forever. The Holy Spirit taking residence within us makes us children of God. “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God” (Rom 8:14-16).
You do not need anyone to tell you whether you are a child of God or not. You know it yourself by the inward testimony of the Holy Spirit in your heart. That is why I am not bothered when my enemies call me a heretic for believing and teaching the perfect preservation of the Holy Scriptures (Ps 12:6-7, Matt 5:18). You would think I should be greatly troubled or distressed. For a heretic is not saved, a heretic is cursed by God, a heretic is on his way to hell. Should not I be worried? Why should I when the Reformers themselves suffered the same fate. John Wycliffe, John Huss, William Tyndale were all falsely accused and condemned as heretics by the Roman Catholic Church. What caused them to be labeled so? It was because they preached the Gospel of Jesus Christ believing that salvation is by faith alone, and not by works. It was because they affirmed that the supreme and final authority of a Christian’s faith and practice is the inspired and preserved Scripture alone, and not any man or institution, certainly not the Pope nor the Church. It was because they translated the Bible and encouraged the reading of it by everyone who desired to know the truth. For these “heresies”, many of the Reformers and their followers were persecuted, tortured, and burned at the stake. Till today, the Roman Catholic Church by virtue of the Council of Trent continues to condemn the doctrines of Sola Gratia, Sola Fide, Solus Christus, and Sola Scriptura as heresies, and considers those who believe such doctrines to be under God’s curse.
So, dear friends, if you are called a heretic because you believe like the Reformers did in the promise of God and the power of God not only to inspire His Words but also preserve His Words perfectly so that the Holy Scriptures you have today are totally infallible and inerrant, and by the logic of faith consider these very infallible and inerrant Words to be none other than the Holy Scriptures of the Protestant Reformation, the very Scriptures the Reformers preached from and died for, then count yourselves privileged to be found in such esteemed company of faithful saints, “Of whom the world was not worthy” (Heb 11:38).
Jesus told His disciples in John 14:16, 26, “And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; … But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.” In John 15:26, Jesus said, “But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me.”
Jesus Christ did not leave His disciples destitute when He returned to heaven. He promised “another Comforter,” ie the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Holy Trinity. The Greek word for “Comforter” is Parakletos. It is a legal term used with reference to an advocate—a lawyer whose role is to counsel and guide his client with regard to the demands and requirements of the law. The Holy Spirit is our Comforter and Counsellor. He protects and defends us when we are falsely accused by the devil and his agents. He encourages and strengthens us in times of distress and discouragement in our pursuit to live a holy life for Christ.
The Holy Spirit is called the Spirit of truth because He works in conjunction with the Word of Truth—the Holy Scriptures. Jesus prayed to the Father in John 17:17, “Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.” All of God’s elect have become His children “through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth” (2 Thess 2:13).
Holy Scriptures
God has not only given us His infallible Spirit, but also His infallible Words—the Holy Scriptures. For “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works” (2 Tim 3:16-17).
What must we know about the Holy Scriptures? First, we must know that the divinely inspired Words of Scripture are the original language Words of Hebrew and Greek. The Westminster Confession of Faith (1.8) states, “The Old Testament in Hebrew (which was the native language of the people of God of old), and the New Testament in Greek (which, at the time of the writing of it, was most generally known to the nations), [are] immediately inspired by God.” In other words, the nature of the Holy Scriptures is tied strictly to the nature of God Himself. The Holy Scriptures are the product of divine inspiration, the work of the Holy Spirit Himself. The Words of Scripture are therefore not humanly inspired but Spirit-inspired Words. Since God is holy, perfect, infallible, faithful and true, so must His Words be. There are no two ways about it.
There is no question that God gave His Holy Scriptures without any error in the past by divine inspiration, but do we have the same Holy Scriptures today that are totally infallible and inerrant without any mistake? The Westminster Confession answers this question in the affirmative, for the inspired Scriptures are “by His singular care and providence, kept pure in all ages, are therefore authentical.” The proof text used was Matthew 5:18, “For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.” The work of biblical preservation is clearly God’s work, and God makes no mistakes in preserving His inspired Words “by His singular care and providence” throughout history. So we can be very sure that we in the 21st century have the very same Words the Prophets, the Apostles, the Church Fathers, the Reformers had. The Words of God are not corrupted and no Words are lost. This is what we call Verbal Plenary Preservation which means “the whole of Scripture with all its words even to the jot and tittle is perfectly preserved by God without any loss of the original words, prophecies, promises, commandments, doctrines, and truths, not only in the words of salvation, but also the words of history, geography and science. Every book, every chapter, every verse, every word, every syllable, every letter is infallibly preserved by the Lord Himself to the last iota.”
Next question is: What and where are the inspired and preserved Words of God today? They must be the very Words the Westminster pastors and theologians regarded “authentical,” “so as, in all controversies of religion, the Church is finally to appeal unto them.” And the authentic and authoritative, infallible and inerrant Scriptures are the traditional Hebrew Masoretic Text and the Greek Textus Receptus of the 16th century Protestant Reformation. These traditional Hebrew and Greek texts are the good old texts of the good old faith which the liberals and modernists tried to replace and displace with their new texts, especially the corrupt Greek text of Westcott and Hort (1881) which was based on scandalously corrupt manuscripts which the Church had long rejected. Most of the new and modern versions of the Bible are translated from these corrupt texts and manuscripts. For this reason, we reject these new versions, and stick to the good old Reformation Bible and the Traditional Texts.
How then can we benefit from the Scriptures if we do not know Hebrew and Greek? The Westminster Confession tells us how, “But, because these original tongues are not known to all the people of God, who have right unto, and interest in the Scriptures, and are commanded, in the fear of God, to read and search them, therefore they are to be translated into the vulgar language of every nation unto which they come, that, the Word of God dwelling plentifully in all, they may worship Him in an acceptable manner; and, through patience and comfort of the Scriptures, may have hope.”
The Reformation did one good thing. It put the Bible into the hands of the common folk, a Bible they can read for themselves in their own language. Since the 16th century, the Bible has been translated into many languages based on the inspired and preserved Traditional and Reformation Texts. According to David Cloud, “Many good translations were made during the Protestant Reformation. These include German, Spanish, French, Slovenian, Finnish, and Italian. Good translations were also made from the Received Text into the major languages of Asia, Africa, and elsewhere during the great missionary era of the late 1700s, the 1800s, and the early 1900s.” The English language has pretty much become the global lingua franca, and the Lord had used 54 of England’s best in scholarship and spirituality to produce the KJV of 1611. This blessed Bible will be 400 years old in 2011. This is nothing short of God’s marvelous providence and preservation.
God has kept His promise and we are kept by His power evinced by His Spirit and His Scripture—two infallible Witnesses that give us certainty and security in these very troubling days of unbelief and apostasy. As Spirit-indwelt and Spirit-filled Christians, we are sure and certain about His inspired and preserved Words. Jesus said, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me” (John 10:27).
