Living Word Lutheran Church
PO Box 242, New London, MN 56273
Phone: 320-796-0742
E-mail:
pastor@livingwordlutheran.net
Website: www.livingwordlutheran.net
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One of our sessions in confirmation instruction is dedicated to having the
students ask questions. (It seems like almost every topic we cover brings up
questions, but we have one class devoted to just questions they have.) To get
them started, I give them some prompts like “What do we believe about....., Why
do we ....., and Why did Jesus.....”
The above question came after the “Why do we believe....” prompt.
The question actually has a bit of clarification. “Why do we believe the Bible
... and not the books other religions are based on?”
It’s a great question. It gets at the heart of our faith. And faith is at the
heart of the answer. The message of the Bible really comes down to faith. And
the Bible is clear that we don’t come by that faith naturally. For example we
are told,
“No one can say, ‘ Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit.”
(1 Corinthians 12:3) When we have faith that the Bible is the true and accurate
revelation of God, the Holy Spirit gets the credit for bringing us to that
conviction.
But the fact that we “take it on faith” doesn’t mean that we have a “blind
faith” - or that there is no evidence for what we believe. In fact, just the
opposite is true. There is evidence for the truth of the message in the Bible.
For starters, in a court of law a point can be taken as fact on the agreement of
as little as two witnesses. God used no less than 40 different authors to record
his revelation. 40 different witnesses to the same truth. Compare that with the
sacred writings of most other religions which are typically penned by only one
person. One person whose writings are basically ideas and thoughts. Whereas the
message of the Bible is grounded in events that took place in verifiable
history. For example, the exodus in the Old Testament and the crucifixion and
resurrection of Jesus in the New Testament.
It’s one thing to believe what one person says “because what they say makes
sense.” (All sorts of things that don’t work in reality seem to make sense “on
paper.”) It’s a whole different
thing to believe writings that are grounded in historical fact.
The apostle Paul goes so far as to say that the entire Christian message stands
or falls on the historical event we call the Resurrection of Jesus. Paul says
(in 1 Corinthians 15) that if this event didn’t really happen, then we are fools
and liars. But that if Jesus really did rise from the grave, then we can be sure
that our faith in Jesus is placed in the right place.
At the time of the Resurrection even the enemies of Jesus admitted that the tomb
He was placed in on Friday was empty on Sunday. All they had to do was produce
the body of Jesus in order to prove the Christian religion to be false. They
were not able to produce His body, because He had indeed risen from the grave
and was no longer dead. We have further evidence of the truth of the
Resurrection in the ten disciples who were put to death for their conviction
that Jesus had risen from the grave. It has been correctly said that those
disciples would not have been willing to die for a lie or “pie in the sky.” They
were willing to die for their belief in Jesus’ resurrection because they had
seen Him alive again.
In short, we trust in the message of the Bible because the Holy Spirit has
brought us to faith in it, and because there is evidence to back it up.
Thanks for
asking,
Send your questions to pastor@livingwordlutheran.net
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