Sufficient for what?

The question you finished with (avoiding the obvious, bunny rabbit answer ‘the Bible’!) is an interesting one but before I think about it, there were two other things that made me think as I went through this chapter.

The first was the statement on page 130, talking about the church age.

“After the death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ, and the founding of the early church as recorded in the New Testament, and the assembling of the canon, no further central redemptive acts of God in history (acts that have direct relevance for all God’s people for all subsequent time) have occurred.”

This excited me for two reasons – firstly and trivially that I’ve been trying to say the same thing for a year and not been able to word it anything like that neatly! More importantly, though, it’s great to think that no “central redemptive acts” have occurred – or will occur until the return of Jesus. This means that however much the world or church changes, the Scriptures will be relevant and sufficient until that day. We in the church age also have an amazingly privileged position in history, as none of those who lived before saw the work of God or the character of God revealed as clearly as we have in the person of Jesus, the work of the cross and the words of the Bible. What a joy!

The second was from pages 132-133 (D5) where Grudem talks about the fact that “nothing is sin that is not forbidden by Scripture either explicitly or by implication”. This gives us great freedom in how we live – as long as we are within the bounds of Scripture. On the other hand, Grudem points out that when we make up non-Scriptural rules for ourselves it can result in frustration, false guilt and legalism. This was surely the case in Colossae where the teaching was “Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch” (Colossians 2:21) and Paul was – to say the least – unimpressed: “These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh” (2:23). I’ve been thinking about Colossians this week, which is probably why I particularly noticed that point of Grudem’s.

To your question though, what does the sufficiency relate to? It seems to me that – according to Grudem’s definition on page 127 – it is only about absolutes, things which are the same for all people at all time. So your assumption that the scope of Grudem’s comments are ‘doctrinal & moral’ questions seems to hold. That said, I was also surprised that he didn’t address the issue of choices which aren’t directly guided by the Bible – even though it isn’t in his definition of sufficiency this would seem like the chapter to do it. Maybe there was going to be a chapter 8a: The Insufficiency of Scripture, but editors removed it?! More seriously, I think in later discussion of the Spirit and spiritual gifts it will come up.

To take your example of what job to do, I think all we could say for certain from this chapter is that no choice would be sinful unless it directly contradicted the Bible. Since the other means we would use to make a decision (in question 3 Grudem lists advice, sermons, conscience, feelings, leading of the Spirit, etc.) are all fallible, so it is a great encouragement to know that everything we need to know to please God by trusting and obeying him is recorded inerrantly in the Bible. The most important decision we’ll make in any day is whether to continue to trust the gospel, so it is not surprising that that is the primary question Scripture is devoted to answering.

As a side note, I recently overheard a snippet of a conversation between a pair of Christians who seemed to be worried about missing God’s will for their lives by making the wrong career decision. Though this is an important decision and it is well worth praying about it, asking God for wisdom, talking with mature Christians and so on I wanted to jump in and encourage them that they were over worried – though the fact that I didn’t know them and only overheard them as we were on the same pavement meant I decided just praying for them would be better. I would have said that God “establishes our steps” (Proverbs 16:9) and that for Christians “all things work together for good” (Romans 8:28). I don’t think we can miss God’s best for us by stuffing up a decision, unless it’s one where the right answer is clear from his word.

Agree or disagree?