The Book Is Enough

I'm not a scholar. I forget. That's why the Bible stays on the desk. Left to myself I obey the loudest voice in the room, and there are plenty of those.

Sola Scriptura doesn't mean me and my Bible in a locked room, sneering at the church and the dead saints. It means Scripture is the only infallible rule. Creeds help. Pastors help. Old books help. They help when they say what God already said.

Breathed out

Paul's phrase is almost physical. Breathed out by God. These pages aren't a record of impressive religious feelings. They're speech. God talking, written down, because His people wouldn't remember otherwise.

That's why we read it to the children when we're tired. That's why I sit under preaching even when I think I know the passage. God isn't wasting breath.

For this life, not a hypothetical one

People ask if the Bible is enough for modern problems. They usually mean, does it speak to my particular fog. It does, though not always by handing me a technique. It gives me God, the gospel, a people, a hope, and enough wisdom to obey the next thing.

It will not flatter me. It will not make me a mascot of my tribe. It will kill me and raise me. That's what I want in the morning. Not a mirror.

Open it. Ask for help. Then do what it says. The God who breathed it out can make it live, even in a man as slow as I am.