3. Without Error

On the night he was betrayed, Jesus prayed for his disciples. In the middle of that prayer he said something about the Bible that every Christian needs to hear:

Sanctify them in the truth. Your word is truth. (John 17:17)

He did not say God's Word contains truth, as though truth were scattered through it alongside error. He did not say God's Word points toward truth. He said God's Word is truth. Where Scripture speaks, truth speaks.

This is what Christians mean when we use the word inerrancy. We mean that the Bible, in its original manuscripts, is entirely true in everything it affirms. Not partly true. Not true on matters of faith but unreliable on matters of history. Not true in spirit while flawed in detail. Entirely true.

This doctrine is not an academic technicality. It flows from the character of God.

God cannot lie. Paul writes of "God, who never lies" (Titus 1:2). Moses says, "God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind" (Numbers 23:19). If God is incapable of falsehood, then God's speech is incapable of falsehood. Inerrancy is not something imposed on the Bible from outside. It is a conclusion drawn from who God is.

Because God is true, his Word is true. The one follows from the other as certainly as light follows the sun.

The psalmist says it plainly:

The words of the Lord are pure words, like silver refined in a furnace on the ground, purified seven times. (Psalm 12:6)

Silver purified seven times has had every impurity removed. There is no alloy of error in God's Word. No dross of falsehood. No residue of human mistake.

Now hear this carefully. Inerrancy does not mean every sentence is a scientific proposition. The Bible uses ordinary language. It uses figures of speech. It uses approximation. It uses poetry, history, prophecy, letter, and proverb. Inerrancy means that every statement, understood in its own genre and context, is true and trustworthy.

This doctrine is under pressure in every generation. Voices always arise saying the Bible is reliable on faith but not on history. Or the New Testament is trustworthy but the Old is primitive. Or the Bible's message is true but its details are not. Each of these positions makes the same mistake. It assumes that God can breathe out a book that contains errors.

But if God is perfectly truthful, then a book breathed out by God is perfectly truthful. To deny inerrancy is not to take a more sophisticated view of Scripture. It is to take a lower view of God.

Why this matters for your soul. When you stand at the graveside of someone you love, you need a Bible you can trust. When you are tempted, you need promises you can stake your life on. When you wonder if God still loves you, you need a book that does not lie.

If God's words could deceive, no promise could be trusted, no command could be certain, no revelation could be relied upon. But he is true. And his Word is true. Which means the love of Christ that Scripture proclaims is certain. Rest there.