God has Authority
We understand that, since God has all authority, His Word also has all authority. Having authority means having “power to influence or command thought, opinion, or behavior.”1 Just like God does not conform to some higher truth standard but is Himself the standard, so God does not draw His authority from a higher power but is Himself the highest authority. MacArthur writes:
Original and ultimate authority resides with God and God alone. God did not inherit his authority—there was no one to bequeath it to him. God did not receive his authority—there was no one to bestow it on him. God’s authority did not come by way of an election—there was no one to vote for him. God did not seize his authority—there was no one from whom to steal it. God did not earn his authority—it was already his.2
Romans 13:1 says, “There is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.” Though Paul writes this in the context of politics, it extends to every area of authority. Any governing authority man has ultimately comes from God, but He is subject to no one. What He decrees is what we must obey. And, though many may disregard His authority, all will one day be subject to it in judgment. The fact that God has authority means He has the right to dictate how we live. His standard is the only standard that will matter in the end.
Scripture is bursting with descriptions of this truth. First, we understand that God is authoritative because He created everything (Gen. 1-2). God is sovereign over everything because everything in existence came from Him. There is nothing on this planet that isn’t here because of God’s divine creative work. In fact, the earth itself, the solar system, and the entire cosmos are only here because of God. Paul describes this in Colossians 1:16-17, saying, “By Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist.”
Everything is from Him. Creatures, plants, people. Stars, comets, planets. Maple trees and flower gardens. Angels. But Paul goes on to say that the ruling authorities are also created by Him. God not only created the stuff, He also created the thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers. He created authority. And He is before everything. Again we’re reminded why God has authority—nothing exists apart from Him.
The second reason we know God is authoritative is that He owns everything. This is closely connected to the previous reason. God created everything, and because of that, He owns it all. Psalm 24:1 says, “The earth is the LORD’s, and all its fullness, the world and those who dwell therein.” Note, David says world is God’s, but he also says the people who dwell in the world are God’s. He owns us, which means He can tell us what to do and how to live.
Third, we understand that everything will eventually be consumed by Him. Peter describes this in his second epistle: “But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements will melt with fervent heat; both the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up.” God is the implied actor here. This is the end of the earth, to be consumed in God’s final judgment. Again, this connects to the facts we’ve already established. God created everything and owns everything, so He can also destroy everything in the end. Romans 11:36: “For of Him and through Him and to Him are all things.”
Now, all of this may make God seem stiff, cold, and dictatorial. But we know that He is not just a stern judge. Though He does have rightful authority over our lives, He is also merciful and good. As has often been observed, God asks us to do what is for our own good. His goal is not to make us suffer unnecessarily; He does not leverage His authority to make us miserable. The things He commands are good, and He uses His authority to give us what is best for us. Who better to tell us how to live our lives than the One who made us? Who can better lead us to what we desire the most than the One who shaped our hearts?
To button this up, we understand that God is Lord over everything. He is sovereign, in control, in authority. And every soul will answer to Him in the end. We will all submit in worship (Phil. 2:10), and we will all be subject in judgment (2 Cor. 5:10). All authority is God’s.
Scripture has Authority
The immediate question, upon realizing that God has all authority, is to ask how we can know what He asks from us. God has the right to command our lives, but how do we know what He wants? That leads us to Scripture—God’s written, authoritative Word. It is the summation of what God requires of men. Now, it contains much more than just commands on how we are to live, it also tells us what to believe. That is, God’s Word is not simply a rule book; it tells us what to believe. It shapes both our beliefs and our behaviors.
At the risk of getting off track, I’d like to go a little further on that one. We can easily make the mistake of reading the Bible just to find out what we must do to please God, to live a godly life. And we should. But a comprehensive understanding of the Bible takes us beyond moral teaching. It gives a reason for our morality. The message of the Bible is much more than “Do these ten things and you’ll be saved.” If we extract only the applications we usually end up with a works based, morally upright, spiritually dead gospel.
Don’t hear me say applications are unimportant. They are vital; without life applications we are also spiritually dead (Rom. 6, James 2). But works done for the wrong reasons are equally useless. Paul has good reason to spend the first 11 chapters of Romans sketching the gospel before he starts applying it. If we get “salvation by grace through faith” wrong, we will most certainly get the rest of the Christian life wrong. Unless we understand the magnitude of God’s grace to us through Christ, our applications—even if they agree with the Bible—are horribly wrong. We need Scripture to teach us what we must believe (the gospel) before we learn what we must do.
Back to the subject at hand, we understand that God is the ultimate authority, and the details of what He has asked of us are vested in a collection of writings we call the Bible. By reading the Bible, we can understand everything God wants us to know about Himself and about the Christian life. And, if we oppose that written Word, we oppose God Himself. Grudem’s definition is concise and quite helpful; “The authority of Scripture means that all the words in Scripture are God’s words in such a way that to disbelieve or disobey any word of Scripture is to disbelieve or disobey God.”3
This truth places the Bible front and center for the Christian. While the Bible is not an end in itself, it is a necessary step between us and God. Some divide the written Scriptures from the living God, but this is a false division. It’s true that intellectualism isn’t enough; we can have a perfect understanding of the Bible and still not know God. But it’s also true that we can’t have a relationship with the Living God without a right understanding of His Word. We need the Bible in every area of our lives, because we need God in every area. And we can’t expect to believe the right things or live the way we should if the Bible is secondary in our spiritual lives. This isn’t Bible-worship; it’s God-worship. But we can’t say we are worshipping God if we don’t know who He is. The Bible is the sole authority, teaching us about God so we can truly worship Him.
We need more of the Bible in our lives. Again and again the Bible warns us that forsaking the truth is forsaking God; neglecting right doctrine leads to apostasy and eventual unfaithfulness. Doctrine is not opposed to faithful, vibrant Christianity. Doctrine—rooted in the authoritative Word—preserves faithful, vibrant Christianity.
A right understanding of the authority of the Word has repercussions in many spheres of the Christian life, but it’s especially evident in how preachers handle the Word. Grudem notes:
Throughout the history of the church the greatest preachers have been those who have recognized that they have no authority in themselves and have seen their task as being to explain the words of Scripture and apply them clearly to the lives of their hearers. Their preaching has drawn its power not from the proclamation of their own Christian experiences or the experiences of others, not from their own opinions, creative ideas, or rhetorical skills, but from God’s powerful words. Essentially they stood in the pulpit, pointed to the biblical text, and said in effect to the congregation, “This is what this verse means. Do you see that meaning here as well? Then you must believe it and obey it with all your heart, for God himself, your Creator and your Lord, is saying this to you today!” Only the written words of Scripture can give this kind of authority to preaching.4
And only the written words of Scripture can give any kind of spiritual life to the Christian. We need the Word in its proper place as the source of all things related to God.
The Bible Must be Obeyed
Really, the truthfulness of Scripture cannot be divided from the authority of Scripture. Earlier we noted that if the Bible is true, it must be believed. And here, looking at authority, we understand that the Bible must also be obeyed. But the authority of Scripture covers both what we believe and what we obey. The fact that the Bible is true means we should obey it, but the fact that it is authoritative means we must obey it. We can disregard the truthfulness of the Bible and only be ignorant. But disregarding the authority of the Bible makes us rebellious. A true record of things is beneficial, but an authoritative record demands our obedience.
If we want to obey God, we must obey His Word. Or reversed, if we don’t obey the Bible, we demonstrate that we don’t believe it has authority. And if we reject its authority, we either reject that God has authority or we reject that the Bible is from God.
Practically, this means we can’t afford to keep the Bible in our periphery; it must be central. God has all authority, and we must obey Him. We obey by knowing and following His Word. So, if we want to live God-honoring lives, we need the Word of God saturating our lives. We need to know it, believe it, and obey it.
- “Authority,” Merriam-Webster, accessed December 2, 2019, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/authority.
- John MacArthur, Biblical Doctrine: a Systematic Summary of Bible Truth (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2017), 101.
- Wayne A. Grudem, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2008), 73.
- Grudem, Systematic Theology, 82.