Notes On The Word Of God

'But I certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man. For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ.' Gal. 1:11-12

The Gospel, and like it the whole Word of God, is neither according to, from, nor through man's notions, standards, inventions, or discoveries; nor is it even subject to his interpretations. Its origin is divine; its channels of communication were divinely chosen and fitted for its conveyance; it neither originated with, nor can it be adequately interpreted by men. It is a revelation of God, and can be understood and received only by a divinely prepared and illuminated mind and heart, to which it thus becomes an individual revelation.

Now, if God be the author of the Bible, we may reasonably expect that it shall reflect, as far as a book can, the natural and moral perfection of its author. We shall see His power, wisdom, eternity, omnipresence, unchangeableness - His truth, righteousness, holiness, goodness, love, mirrored forth there. And inasmuch as He is infinite, and therefore mysterious and inscrutable, we may expect to find there much that passes our comprehension, secret things that forever belong to the Lord our God, and which we must be content not to explore. These secret things will not touch duty, for duty must be clearly revealed-even all the words of this law. But it is inconceivable that God should put upon any book framed on human language the stamp of His Divinity, without also leaving upon it the marks of its infinite and incomprehensible Author. It would not be strange if such a book should have about it a dialect peculiar to itself, if God should have his own way of reckoning time, a calendar of His own; if He should have His own lexicon, terms which He alone can define. We may expect to find paradoxes, contradictions which to our finite view defy reconciliation; double meanings which perplex our simplicity; figures and symbols which, like Ezekiel's wheels, have a height and a rim which are dreadful, and are full of eyes before and behind.

To expect to reduce the Book of God to the level of the book of man, to account for all that it contains, to explain all its enigmas and solve all its problems, to satisfy ourselves as to the reason of all it contains or does not contain, is incompatible with our reception of it as the Word of God. Nay, such an expectation logically involves the surrender of faith in the Bible as the product of an infinite mind, and hence prepares the way of all other lowering of its standard, both of doctrine and of duty.

excerpted from: Another Gospel: Which Is Not Another Galatians 1:6-12;
by A.T. Pierson from WATCHWORD AND TRUTH, January 1900
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Hebrews 11:6 'But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is...'