Examining "A More Christlike Word"
by Brad Jersak
“For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough.” (Paul’s concern from 2 Corinthians 11:4)
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The False Filter |
The Biblical Filter |
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The word OR the Word |
The Word THROUGH the word |
I have called my testing of BJ’s book a journey because it is now part of my life story. Testing the teachings in A More Christlike Word is forcing me to travel through someone else’s thoughts. However, it is only one of the things God is doing in my life. I’m still having my morning time with God in his word and prayer. I’m still serving God’s people as a home church pastor and assisting my wife with our in-home family daycare. I’m still sharing encouragement from my time with God online, journaling my journey through this book, and looking for opportunities to talk to people about the true Lord Jesus Christ as often as I recognize them. And, of course, showing people how we can get to know God in a real and personal way as we interact with his word, the Bible, as his "living and active" word.
I say this because this journey is not merely about trying to understand the mind of someone I thought was a false teacher. It’s about including it as one facet of God’s work in my life that will harmonize with all the rest. So, even though the topic BJ has set before me is the canonicity of the Scriptures, I first meet with God in his word to find out what topic he has in mind for each day.
And today he gave me some
things to share that clearly affirm Jesus’ relationship to the Scriptures as
the word of God so I can show these things to my hiking group before we set off
for the day. This comes with the reminder that BJ’s teaching about the
inspiration, inerrancy, infallibility, and authority of the Scriptures lacked references
to Scripture! So, here are some Scriptures that stood out in my time with God
this morning in the very next section of God’s word I came to, Matthew 10. And
those Scriptures continue to show that BJ’s book is definitely not “plumb”!
First, as Jesus is instructing the Twelve
disciples regarding their first mission without him (physically), he made a
reference to an event he treated as historical, not fictitious or figurative.
He told them,
And if anyone will not receive you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet when you leave that house or town. Truly, I say to you, it will be more bearable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah than for that town. (Matthew 10:14-15)
1. Jesus spoke of what the Old Testament Scriptures wrote about “Sodom and Gomorrah” as true history (he equated what happened there with what would happen in the real-life scenario that some of the towns might refuse the disciples). Even his use of "truly" adds emphasis that there is no room for fictional or figurative interpretations!
2.
Jesus
was treating the disciples as his representatives who were to follow his
instructions so they were doing the same things as he was doing (the whole
context bears this out clearly).
3.
Jesus
spoke of God’s judgment on a town that rejected his disciples as greater than
what history told of God’s judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah.
4.
In
doing this, we do not have the Christlike person of God correcting the
unChristlike Yahweh of the Scriptures, but Jesus taking what Yahweh did to
Sodom and Gomorrah (wiping out all the people in his judgment against them) and
declaring even greater judgment on any of the towns or cities of Israel that
rejected his disciples.
5.
Conclusion: in simply reading the text as
it is written, it describes Jesus treating an event of history as real, not
figurative; he spoke of what would happen to certain towns as real, not
figurative; and he spoke of the judgment of God in the Scriptures as not only
approved by Christ, but the Christ was going even further by declaring greater
judgment on the contemporary towns and cities that rejected his disciples. None
of that is treating history figuratively, treating God’s judgment on the
nations as unChristlike, or viewing the justice of God as anthropomorphic. And
I got all that just from my daily time with God in his word and prayer!
Second, Jesus clarified this about what the
disciples would speak in his name,
When they deliver you over, do not be anxious how you are to speak or what you are to say, for what you are to say will be given to you in that hour. For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you. (Matthew 10:19-20).
1. This is Jesus speaking, so that makes his words “the word of Christ”.
2. What Matthew recorded is Scripture because it is the written version of what the Word spoke as “the word of God”.
3. Jesus said that what the disciples were to say would be “given” to them, which means their words were coming from a higher authority (which is why towns and cities would be judged so severely).
4. Jesus clarifies that it would not be the disciples speaking, “but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.”
5. This is a description (I’m smiling at what a delightful gift this is) of what it looks like for God to breathe out the Scriptures by men being carried along by the Holy Spirit. It would be “the Spirit” speaking through them, but as “the Spirit of the Father”, which means what Jesus said about the Spirit speaking only what he was given by the Father, which means this is the Father speaking! And the scriptural account of this is as much “the word of God” as Jesus speaking those words to his disciples!
6. This might sound redundant, but the glory of this gift is growing even as I interact with it. The Father will be speaking. He will be speaking through his Spirit. His Spirit will be giving the disciples what they are to say. When the disciples speak to the towns and cities, they will be speaking “the word of God”. It is Jesus, the Word of God, telling us this. It is now recorded as his words in the word so we now have the Scripture of what the Word spoke.
7. And the whole Triune God is involved in telling us this in the harmonious layers of both the spoken and written word so that, just before we hike into BJ’s mind about canonicity, God has made sure that everyone knows “we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God's word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone's conscience in the sight of God” (II Corinthians 4:2).
8. Conclusion: What Jesus said here about the disciples as they were preparing for their first mission’s trip without him is parallel to what Peter later wrote in Scripture about how the Scriptures came about: “For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (II Peter 1:21). Jesus said that “it is not you who speak,” and Peter said that nothing we have in Scripture “was ever produced by the will of man”. Jesus said that what the disciples would be given to speak was “the Spirit of your Father speaking through you”, and Peter wrote into Scripture that Scripture came as “men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit”. This settles that “all Scripture is breathed out by God” in the writing of the apostles (not in the reading of the readers), and that there is no way BJ is correct to claim that “breathed out by God” includes a mix of what God tried to say to men and what those men ended up writing down with whatever errors and misunderstandings they added to the mix (because God foolishly let his kids do the writing). This is what God wanted me to see before looking at what BJ is going to do with “canonicity”!
(Note: on the morning of learning these
things from the Word through the word I was able to get out for my walk and
make a short video sharing what I learned. If you take the time to watch it you
will be able to hear my “tone” in sharing about these things, and it may help
you “hear” what I sound like if I were speaking the things I have written. The
link is in this footnote[1])
With
all that in mind as God’s prelude to today’s journey, and knowing that thus far
along the garden path BJ is quite fine “tampering” with “God’s word”, turning
“the open statement of the truth” of God’s word into figurative lessons, and
using his own “open statement” of false teachings to make clear how we are to identify
him “in the sight of God”, we press on to examine how BJ thinks we got our
Bibles, and how others agree or disagree.
CANONICITY
Because the issue of “canonicity” is dealing
with how the Bible is recognized to be the word of God, my focus in examining
BJ’s thoughts on this matter begins with our heritage. As with the friend who
was posting scary things that turned out to be from BJ’s way of thinking, all
of us have a heritage that already treated the Bible like the whole thing is
“the Scriptures”, which means it is “the word of God”, which means that
everything related to the Scriptures and God’s words applies, which also means that
the Scriptures are of the same character as the Triune (because they are his
words!).
This means that I believe that God has already
secured in what we call the Old Testament the Scriptures he breathed out to
guide his people to the first coming of Christ, and I believe that he has
secured in what we call the New Testament the Scriptures he breathed out to
guide his people to the second coming of Christ. As BJ addresses issues related
to the history of how these Scriptures were gathered and acknowledged as the
authoritative word of God, we will be looking for how he reasons things out to
justify why he is heading in quite a different direction from our heritage.
Note: I have already had to change my mind
about some things that were part of my heritage in the church when I discovered
what the Bible taught on the matter, but it was Scripture that changed my mind,
not people tampering with God’s word. So too, although I came into this
admitting I already thought BJ was a false teacher, that was not to say I am
unwilling to change my mind through what he shared, but that I already had some
experience testing his teachings with Scripture. I am quite willing to give up
anything from my heritage that is in conflict with the word of God. However, 65
years in, I have never heard of anything regarding treating the Bible as “the
whole counsel of God” that would make me think that I am wrong on this matter.
At the same time, because I am responding to
this out of a lifetime of knowing the Bible was the word of God, and a few
decades of experiencing what happens when we relate to it like God is still
speaking to his children through his word, and because I have never come across
anything discordant to the harmonious message that what we have in “the Bible”
speaks as the word of God from beginning to end, this is a very personal
journey for me because it is like someone wants me to take back what I’ve
already learned and experienced. I am going to test whatever BJ says in this
section honestly, but will likely need to defer to those who have a much
greater understanding of the details of history regarding the collection of the
Scriptures into the Bible.
Obviously, we are seeking to answer the
question of whether the Bible as we have it now is God’s word. We know that the
Scriptures we call the Old Testament are God’s word because that’s what Jesus
called them. We are now dealing with the addition of the New Testament writings
and must settle how we know these are just as much Scripture as the Old.
Now, since I’ve already made a decent day’s journey in our ongoing look at the authority of Scripture, let me set the tone for our next day’s adventure. Of the two senses of authority given in this book, the canonicity of Scripture relates to the second sense of how the Scriptures we have in the Bible were recognized to possess authority. This does not touch on the first sense of authority, that the sources wrote like they had authority, because that is already obviously and objectively established.
However, this
does challenge BJ’s third sense (that wasn’t part of the definition of
authoritative) that the reader is free to decide that scriptures can be taken
figuratively in a moral-of-the-story kind of way. That certainly has no
authority according to the first sense, and does not fit what Israel or the
Church recognized as possessing authority.
So far, BJ has presented nothing to change
my mind that what we have in the Bible is the authoritative word of God. I will
start my day tomorrow meeting with God, listening to his word, paying attention
to whatever the Spirit teaches and reminds me about from God’s word, and
planning to put into practice whatever the Scriptures teach me, reprove me,
correct me, and train me in righteousness (II Timothy 3:16-17).
After all, I certainly want to be fully
prepared for the good work of bringing BJ’s garden path into the light where…
(drum roll please)… God’s word “is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path”
(Psalm 119:105)!
© 2024
Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8
Email: in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the
English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text
Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of
Good News Publishers.)
A More Christlike Word © 2021 by Bradley Jersak Whitaker House 1030 Hunt
Valley Circle • New Kensington, PA 15068 www.whitakerhouse.com
Jersak, Bradley. A More Christlike Word: Reading Scripture the
Emmaus Way. Whitaker House. Kindle Edition.
Definitions from the Bible Sense Lexicon (BSL) in Logos Bible
Systems
[1] The Ways God Speaks for the Ways He Works
A central theme to all my sharing is to testify how God speaks through his word in such personal ways that relate to the very things we are going through. This morning, God taught me some things from Matthew 10 that gave me exactly what I needed to share as I began my next day's journey through a book that is convincing many people to disparage what is written in the Scriptures. For over thirty years, the way God has spoken to me through his word almost every morning has magnified the glory of his words as the way we attach to him in faith and get to know him better every day than we have ever known him before.
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