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Holy Trinity Anglican Orthodox Church
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Only Scripture |
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Third
Sunday after Easter May
3, 2009 I have been talking about the onlys of the Bible. To put this in somewhat more elegant language we might say I have been talking about the exclusive claims of the Bible. Christianity is an exclusive religion. That is the main reason why Christians have been ridiculed and persecuted in this world. If we would just smile and say, “you worship God your way and we’ll worship God our way because we’re all going to Heaven by different roads,” the world would accept, and even honour us. But Christianity says, “You worship God your way and we’ll worship God His way,” and the world hates us for that. And yet, we cannot retreat from this doctrine and remain true to our faith. In truth it is not we who say “you must worship God our way to get to Heaven” it is God who says to all humanity that He alone is God and we must worship Him His way, according to His revelation, not according to our own imaginations. Christians do not claim that we are so holy and intelligent as to have discovered this for ourselves. We humbly confess that God has revealed it to all humanity in His word and in Christ Jesus, and that only by His grace and power have we been enabled to receive and believe His revelation. Thus, it is not we, but God who makes the exclusive claims of Scripture. We began by looking at the exclusive claim that only God is God. From that we moved to say that only in Christ can we know God and the way to God. We could say that Christ, as the revelation of God, shows us what to believe about God, and, as the sacrifice for our sins by His death on the cross, is Himself the way to the Father. Today I want to ask the question, “How can we know about Christ? Or, more fully, “how can we know who Christ is and what He requires of us?” The answer to this question is; the Bible reveals it. In the Bible we find all things necessary to salvation (Articles of Religion, VI) and that it is not lawful for the Church, or anyone else to believe or require anything that is contrary to “God’s Word written” (Articles of Religion XX). I quote the Articles of Religion to show that what I say today has always been the faith of the Anglican Church. Our clergy, from the Reformation onward were required to subscribe to the Articles as a true summary of their faith. It should not surprise us that many men took the vows of ordination while not subscribing. Over many generations deism slowly took over the Anglican Church, and now we have reached the point where the Episcopal Church ordains homosexuals and Buddhists as bishops and Muslims as clergy. Nor is this limited to Episcopalians. Rather there is a growing consensus among people who call themselves Christians that the Bible is hopelessly outdated, and that it presents the bigoted and hateful views of past generations, which we have outgrown in our post modern sophistication. To all who call themselves Christians I pose the following question; on what do you base your beliefs? You have risked your eternal soul on what you believe, what assurance do you have that your beliefs are true? A central point of the Bible is that God has given truth by revealing Himself and His will to humanity. There was a time when man walked with God in this world face to face, but man rejected God and separated themselves from Him. They chose to walk in the darkness of their own ideas and values. It is no secret that their little experiment has been a colossal failure. The history of this world, right down to and including the present day, is proof of our failure. Yet, God sent His light into the world. He was not willing to allow us to remain in our darkness, so He sent His truth to us to combat our darkness and show us the way of life. This truth came through the life and prophets of the nation of Israel until it came finally and fully when God Himself became a human being in the person of Jesus Christ. Christ, therefore, is the Word who was God and became flesh. If we have “seen” Him we have seen God. During His time on earth Christ revealed God perfectly in His nature, and also in His teachings and actions. I might add that Christ could not reveal God in His nature without also revealing God in His actions. Nor could He reveal God in His nature and actions without also revealing Him in His teachings. This is precisely where the faith of many “Christians” begins to break down. They are quite willing to say Jesus reveals the nature of God by His attitude of love, and by His actions of feeding the hungry and healing the sick and even by His self sacrificing love on the cross. It is His teachings that they have problems with. They don’t like being called sinners. They don’t like being told they needed Jesus to die for their sins, or that without Christ they are not the children of God but are instead children of wrath. They love it when He says, “Let not your hearts be troubled,” but hate it when He says “not everyone who saith unto me, Lord, Lord, will enter into the kingdom of Heaven, but those who do the will of my Father.” So they say Jesus partook of the cultural biases of His day, and those biases and errors, found their way into His teaching, but that’s O.K. because we don’t have to worry about that, as long as we love one another. That’s all God really wants from us. It is quite obvious to anyone who has ever given the Bible a fair reading that this idea is contrary to everything the Bible teaches. Therefore, we always have to ask ourselves the question, what is the basis of our belief? We will stand on the Bible. It is the word of God. It is truth. Christ taught truth. Christ is the God of all creation and His word is truth, fully, completely, and without error. He taught truth to the Disciples and made them to become His Apostles. They recorded His teachings in the Bible, and the Bible preserves and teaches them to us today. Without the Bible we are running through a minefield in the dark. We have seen this in Church history. Popes and politicians, some seeking to increase their fortunes and power, others sincerely trying to promote their religion, have sought to enforce erroneous views of religion upon their people. In England, after Henry VIII, even the clergy didn’t know what to believe as the succession of kings and queens declared that, because they were Protestant or Roman Catholic, everyone in their realm was also. And so it was that the reformers stood before rulers and people saying, the Bible is the only authority of faith and practice. The Bible is above all kings, all councils, all bishops, all private views of all people. The Bible is the authority. I close with the words our Presiding Bishop includes in every email he sends. They are the words of Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury during the reign of Henry VIII, and compiler of the first Book of Common Prayer: "If there were any word of God beside the Scripture, we could never be certain of God's Word; and if we be uncertain of God's Word, the devil might bring in among us a new word, a new doctrine, a new faith, a new church, a new god, yea himself to be a god. If the Church and the Christian faith did not stay itself upon the Word of God certain, as upon a sure and strong foundation, no man could know whether he had a right faith, and whether he were in the true Church of Christ, or a synagogue of Satan." Almighty God, whose word is truth forever. Grant us grace that we may believe it in all things, through Christ our Lord. Amen. The Rev. Dr. R. Dennis Campbell, Vicar, Holy Trinity Anglican Church,
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