Okay, Okay, so I am a day late. You can forgive me….today I turn 30. What does that have to do with missing my Baptist Catechism post yesterday? Nothing….just thought that if I am “old” now, I mind as well use its benefits!

Onto the real stuff…

Question: What is the Word of God?

Answer: The holy scriptures of the Old and New Testament are the Word of God, and the only certain rule of faith and obedience (2 Tim 3:16; Eph. 2:20).

I find it interesting, in the progression of the catechism, that the questions run from an assertion of who God is, a demand for belief in Him, and then a movement to His Word. I have quite often heard it said, and thought this way once before myself, that those who reject all truth or all truth claims would have to believe in God’s Word as inerrant and inspired before that person would come to saving faith in Christ alone.

This is not necessarily what this catechism would teach us in the progression of these questions. The One, True, Living God must be made known….belief must be demanded (an opportunity for response in common terms)…and then a teaching and subsequent belief in God’s inerrant Word.

You may choose to disagree, that is your right, but you cannot negate how this is both logically and pragmatically evident in our society today.

The answer of this question is careful to define what is Scripture and what is not. The two testaments known as the Old and the New Testaments are God’s Word. This description is both inclusive (defining what God’s Word contains, as I have stated before) and what God’s Word does not contain (apocryphal writings) and what God’s Word is not (the Book of Mormon, the Quran, etc.).  The sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments in their original language are God’s inspired, inerrant Word.

The answer of this question also sets the foundation for use of God’s Word.  I say foundation because Question 5, next week, will answer it more fully.  It will provide the extent to which the Word of God is to be used.  Again, more on that next week.

For our question this week, however, we are told that the Word of God is the only certain rule for faith and obedience. To best explain this concept, I would direct you to my review of John MacArthur’s Why One Way? book.  There, he lays out that God’s Word is objectively true (outside of ourselves), it is rational (it makes sense), and it is authentic (there is nothing else like it).  Those are three characteristics that support why God’s Word is the only certain rule.

God and His Word are two things that are objectively true, independent of anything else for authentication.  Therefore, the life that He has given us, this life in which we live for Him, should be lived by His standard and His standard alone.  (See Amos chapter 7).

Again, more will be dealt with this topic later.  It has many implications that I will postpone until next week to avoid redundancy.   There is a possibility that next week’s post on the Baptist Catechism will be by a guest author (my brother, Matthew Ewers, whose theological classifications run a mile long - he is truly a difficult man to describe!).  He will include some of these implications for living a life “in manner worthy of the calling with which we have received.”