I wonder if many of us seek God’s will for our lives in a way that forgets the sufficiency of Scripture. For example, many of us long for God to reveal to us exactly where we should live, who we should marry, or what career to pursue. Because that kind of explicit guidance doesn’t appear in Scripture, we may expect God to reveal it to us by some other supernatural means – by inward “nudges”, perhaps, or audible voices. But that is not how the Lord has told us to seek His will. God has given us in Scripture the principles we must follow when we are making decisions, and we are free to choose any option that does not violate those principles.
Is the Bible all we need to live life well? Today, Barry Cooper explains that Scripture tells us everything we must believe in order to be saved and what we must do in order to please God.
Is Scripture all we need to live life well?
In an earlier episode of Simply Put, we talked about the inspiration of Scripture, which is something the Apostle Paul describes in Second Timothy: “All Scripture is breathed out by God”, he says.
But then he goes further. Scripture he says, is “profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”
The “completeness” Paul describes here, the fact that Scripture is able to completely equip a believer for every good work, is what theologians call “the sufficiency of Scripture”.
Paul is saying that the Bible is sufficient, in itself, to tell us everything we must believe in order to be saved and what we must do in order to please God..
Now of course, we need to do a little work in terms of understanding what Scripture says, and then applying that truth to our lives, but the sufficiency of Scripture tells us that we need no other kind of “special revelation” in order to live the Christian life well.
As we’ve already seen, the Bible doesn’t speak exhaustively on every subject. You will look in vain for verses that tell you how to prepare an omelette, treat a blister, or produce a podcast.
That’s obviously not what Paul means when he says that Scripture equips us for every good work. What he means is that Scripture gives us sufficient guidance so that we can live lives that are pleasing to the Lord in every way. So even if there are no specific instructions relating to omelettes, Scripture does contain what we need to know in order to make that omelette to the glory of God.
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