Several months ago The Pneuma Review and I became acquainted.  We connected and I felt a kindred spirit in Raul Mock.  After Raul reviewed my blog it became evident to both of us that, in light of my background, it would be fitting for me to do a review of Michael Brown's Authentic Fire, his response to John MacArthur's Strange Fire. After a couple of revisions it finally published on the site yesterday.  I look forward to healthy interaction with friends from all sides via various venues.  Click the link below to go directly to the site and read the review.

The Sufficiency of Scripture AND the Ministry of the Spirit

Introduction

One of the hardest things for a believer who embraces the sufficiency of Scripture or Sola Scriptura is the idea that the Bible might not contain everything we need to follow Jesus.  To most of my reformed friends, that statement seems almost blasphemous.  I used to argue with forceful vehemence that if a believer thought they could find anything else for their life in Christ outside of the Bible, then they were listening to doctrines of demons.

Then I thought more about that.

And then I thought a lot about that.

I'm not there anymore.  And here's why.

The Sufficiency of Scripture Defined

The teaching of the sufficiency of Scripture, is based on 2 Timothy 3:16-17 and Jude 3

"All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right.17 God uses it to prepare and equip his people to do every good work." (2 Timothy 3:16-17, NLT)

"Dear friends, I had been eagerly planning to write to you about the salvation we all share. But now I find that I must write about something else, urging you to defend the faith that God has entrusted once for all time to his holy people." (Jude 3, NLT)

"In other words, the Scriptures are sufficient in the sense that they are the only (“once for all”) inspired and (therefore) inerrant words of God that we need, in order to know the way of salvation (“make you wise unto salvation”) and the way of obedience (“equipped for every good work”)."

"The sufficiency of Scripture does not mean that the Scripture is all we need to live obediently."

"And I will put my Spirit in you so that you will follow my decrees and be careful to obey my regulations." (Ezekiel 36:27, NLT). 

"I will pour out my Spirit upon all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your old men will dream dreams, and your young men will see visions. In those days I will pour out my Spirit even on servants—men and women alike." (Joel 2:28-29, NLT).

The Holy Spirit is God Himself.  When Jesus Christ died, rose from the dead, and ascended to heaven, He gave us the Holy Spirit, the Father's gift to us.  And His work, inside of us, is to lead us and guide us and minister to us.  He takes the ministry of Jesus Christ and applies it to us and in us.  He does that in ways that we can't possibly comprehend.  Read John 14-16 to see what Jesus Himself taught about this.  And read Romans 8 to see what Paul taught.  These two passages just scratch the surface.

The Bible is Not the Promised Holy Spirit

Now, notice something important.  Jesus and Paul (and others for that matter) never taught that the Scriptures were the promise of the New Covenant.  The Holy Spirit Himself was.

Shocking, I know.  It was quite a paradigm shift for me to go through personally, and it took me several years to become "okay" with that fact.  The Bible, the closed canon of Scripture, is not God's promise to us.  The Holy Spirit is.  And to make matters even worse, and perhaps even more conflicting, the Bible doesn't contain a promise to us anywhere that speaks of itself as a fulfillment of any promise, for that matter.  To do so is, honestly, reading something into the Bible that's just not there.

That's because that's not the Bible's function.  Paul tells us that the function of the Bible is to teach, correct, rebuke, and instruct in righteousness (2 Timothy 3:16).  And it further says that the Scriptures are theopneustos, or God-breathed.  That means that the Bible is the result of a divine and mysterious work of God working with and in a human to write truth that somehow ends up being a perfect representation of God's revelation of Himself to us.  

But that's not the same as saying that the Bible is a fulfillment of God's promise to us.  Instead, the Bible is a record of those promises to us.  The Bible records those promises through stories, poems, prophecies, and instructions. It is not a dictionary or encyclopedia of every revelation and instruction God has or ever will make about Himself to humanity.  Rather, once again, it is a book of stories, poems, prophecies and instructions about Him revealing Himself to humanity.  The fact that it is "inspired" by the Holy Spirit means, therefore, that the Bible is the most objective standard of God's revelation of Himself to humanity.  But that does not mean that the Bible is the only means by which God reveals Himself to humanity.  

That's why we need the Holy Spirit.  Jesus says that the Spirit is our teacher (John 14:26).  He takes what belongs to Jesus - most of which we see in the gospels - and He somehow, mysteriously, but truly, applies it to our souls, our hearts.  Thus, the Bible is more or less the harvest of truth and the Holy Spirit is the divine chef who takes from the harvest what each person especially needs and specially prepares and serves it in a way that meets each person where they are.  

To say that the Bible is all we need is like saying that a harvest of food is all you need.  Someone's got to prepare the food and cook it.  And what's more, it's always more enjoyable when someone serves it with real class, in a way that makes you go, "WOW!"  The Holy Spirit takes God's Word and does that for each person in the family of God.  And that's why the Bible, though necessary for every Christian, does not provide everything we need to follow Jesus.  The Holy Spirit does.  

While the Holy Spirit often, though not always, starts with the Scriptures He inspired, He always brings God's people to Jesus Christ and reveals truth about Jesus in a way that is always guided by Scripture, and never contradicting it.  Ever.  That would be crazy.  He's never going to say something opposite of what He's already said.  He'll never say anything contradictory to what He said.  

Apologies & Corrections

I would offer a heartfelt, "I'm sorry" to friends whom I would label charismaniac, because they believe the Holy Spirit can and will and does reveal new truth to people that's not even rationally or remotely connected to anything in the Bible.  But I can't genuinely offer that apology.  You need to stop saying, "Thus says the Lord," if you're not reading your Bible following that statement.  And you need to stop saying God revealed things to you that in no way lead people back to Jesus Christ and what He taught in the Scriptures.  You're leading people away from Jesus, and the Holy Spirit will always lead people to Jesus.  That means you're doing the false prophesy thing.  Return to the Scriptures. It's the best and safest place to start afresh.

I'm also tempted to offer the same apology to my Roman Catholic friends who, whether they know it or not, are led by a church who believes that Roman Catholic church tradition is somehow equal to the Bible and can trump the Bible through the Pope.  But again, I can't offer that apology, even though I know that there are tons of genuine believers in the Catholic church.  They probably just don't know what their church really believes and teaches.  No traditions or speeches of man can compare to the Scriptures.  None.  And no words of a human being, even those we may look at as God's divinely appointed leader, can trump the Scriptures or change what the Bible says.  None.  Again, return to the Bible itself.  It's the best and safest place to start.

So there's my friendly corrective to those who threaten the sufficiency of Scripture in their approach to following God.  And here's my friendly corrective to those who exaggerate the sufficiency of Scripture.  Stop saying, teaching, preaching, and writing that the Bible is the end-all-be-all for the follower of Jesus.  It's not.  Jesus said the Holy Spirit was.  Paul said it, too.  Following Jesus is about being led by the Holy Spirit.  And we know that He's leading us when the things He says to us sound like the things we hear in His Word, or sound very similar to them and in a way that is guided by the Scriptures.  

A Challenge to My Reformed Friends

My reformed friends unfortunately seem to make the Bible an idol.  Faithfulness to God is ironically reduced to their exaggerated view of Scriptures.  For them, you know you're a real believer when you see the Scriptures as they do.  And this is where the Holy Spirit is the silent attendee in reformed audiences and meetings.  He hasn't left the building.  But He's unfortunately been relegated to something like a fixture in the room.  We know He's there, but since we've got His Word we're basically good-to-go.  

But the Bible isn't God, is it?  It's a book.  God is not a book.  That Book is about God, but it is not the substance of God.  It doesn't even contain God.  It's a record of the revelation of God.  It's only the foundation of truth about God.  But it's not God Himself.  My reformed friends would be wise to remember that when so much emphasis is placed on the exegesis, hermeneutics, exposition, and homiletics of Scripture, God is not the one being worshiped.  The Bible is.  And that's not what God wants.  

GOD wants to be worshiped.  Jesus said in John 4 that the Father is seeking worshipers.  He said the Father wants those who worship in spirit and truth.  When I was reformed-only, I redefined "truth" to refer to the Bible, and therefore essentially redefined worship.  So I worshiped the Bible instead of God.  Too much reformed worship today, in my opinion, is Bible-worship.  And because it's misunderstands the function of Scripture, the Holy Spirit is devalued...and therefore, dismissed.

In my view and experience, the reformed view of the sufficiency of Scripture needs a downgrade.  Unfortunately, conferences, seminars and workshops keep giving it an upgrade.  Consequently, the Holy Spirit is the One who keeps getting downgraded.  That's how we end up with conferences like Strange Fire (#StrangeFire).  Man ends up unwittingly exalting God's Word over and above God, making the Bible equal with God, while doing so in the name of genuinely worshiping God.  

A return to the promise of the New Covenant and Jesus' teaching on the Spirit and its fulfillment at Pentecost will elevate God above the Bible.  Such a return will cause people to discontinue the practice of using the Bible as a means of attempting to contain God and define what He will and will not do any longer.  Honestly, it's only an erroneous view of Scripture that uses Scripture to say that the miraculous works of God found in the Scripture are things God no longer needs or wants to do today.  It's a stunning and speechless display of un-submitted intellectualism to say the Scriptures teach that much of what's in the New Testament Scriptures are no longer happening because we have the Scriptures. 

The church needs more of the Holy Spirit.  HE Himself is the promise of God to us.  The Bible tells us so.  We believe the Holy Spirit is the fulfillment of that promise found in the Bible.  We do not believe the Bible is the fulfillment of the promise of the Holy Spirit, nor that the Bible is the equivalent of that promise. The thing the Holy Spirit inspired is not equal to or above the person of the Holy Spirit Himself.  Rather, it is the tool the Holy Spirit uses to teach us, correct us, rebuke us and instruct us...about Jesus Christ.  

Conclusion: Some Practical Help

How do you see the Bible?  How do you use the Bible?  Are you led by the Holy Spirit?  Or are you led by your Bible? There is a difference, believe it or not.  The distinction can honestly be found in how much more you pray than study your Bible.  If you study your Bible more than you pray, you probably worship the Bible instead of God.  You probably tend toward rooting your relationship with God in your brain, your ability to discover, decipher and formulate the truth that's found in the Bible.

But if you pray more than you study your Bible, you probably worship God.  You probably understand better than others what it means to be led by the Spirit and to walk in the Spirit.  You understand that you must hear from Him about how to obey the things Jesus taught you in the Scriptures.  You realize that while the Bible is a table full of harvest, the Spirit must help you understand it and how to specifically apply it and obey it in your personal life and context.  

The amount of time I spend with the Bible and in prayer is the most easy way I've found to tell the difference and help me in my own life.  It may oversimplify things.  But not necessarily.  Jesus told us that following Him is about childlike faith.  Children don't naturally gravitate toward studying a book.  They gravitate toward reading it and then attempting to pretend to live out the stories in it.  That approach more closely resembles the life Jesus intends for His children, I believe.

The Scriptures are sufficient.  They contain the foundational revelation we have of God and His Son, Jesus Christ.  But the Bible also contains a trajectory for the kind of revelation the Spirit will continue to make about God. The Holy Spirit is the person who actually takes that revelation of God and makes it mean something to us and inside of us. And He will continue to reveal more about God to us, but always in a way that is in keeping with what He's already said about God.  I'll end this post with the prayer Paul prayed which points us in this very direction.

"I do not cease to give thanks for you, or remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him,  having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe..." (Ephesians 1:16-19, ESV).

About the Author: Rob is a follower of Jesus at Jubilee Church.  From there he pursues Jesus' mission at Revive Consignment as the Business & Operations Development Director, as well as at Jubilee Church of Atlanta, in Woodstock, GA. From there he envisions and pursues missional-shaped business for the kingdom. He and his wife Sherri have been married for 20 years and together have three sons and a daughter. Rob believes the mission of the gospel is summed up in four simple phrases: know God, obey Jesus, make disciples, and plant churches. This is the pursuit of his life, as well as the point of his blog.

There just ain't no doubt about it and no gettin' around it. This is a stinkin' long post, as my redneck brothers would say. But I double-dog dare you to work through it and see what you think.

A dear friend and I were talking today about the fears commonly and inherently associated with the continuationist position among cessationists. The fear is basic. It is subjectivism.

Subjectivism is opinion guided by one's own experience. To be fair, this has guided much of the charismatic movement when it began. Weighing Scripture by one's experience became a common practice. The meaning of a text no longer matters as it seemed to come under the spell of a neo-neo-orthodox approach, which teaches that the Scriptures mean what they mean to each individual person. As a result crucial issues like hermeneutics, exegesis, and exposition melted like wax under the heat of personal experience and subjectivism.

Thankfully that is changing. Among movements like Acts 29, Sovereign Grace Ministries, and Association of Charismatic Reformed Churches there is a return to the healthy and imperative respect Scripture deserves. No text is a wax nose to be fashioned according to our experiences. Authorial Intent in any and every text is important. What God said through His agents needs to be interpreted correctly in light of when He said it, why He said it, where He said it, how He said it, and to whom He said it.

However, the danger too easily becomes another pendulum swing. We go from one extreme to another when we swing away from "Experience Interprets Theology" to "Theology Interprets Experience." But that's where cessationism as a whole seems to have swung. And I was a Tarzan in my own jungle once swinging on that same vine. Now, I've seen the value in just hanging on the vine until it finds a theological equilibrium.

At present I believe the gospel is that equilibrium. It is the place where experience and theology marry and get along with each other. It is the home where both of these "spouses" help mature and encourage one another and live in harmony. Sure there will be family fights, quarrels, disagreements, and "issues" each will have with the other. But until we face the fact that they are married and should be married, we will be treating each like they are divorced tax collectors, prostitutes, and sinners who have apostasized from the family of God.

Theology and experience get along fine with each other...as long as we let them. But when we pit one against the other we create family fights that really shouldn't exist. We intrude into this home of the gospel, take a side, and begin picking fights with the other side. If any man arbitrarily intruded into my home, took a side with me on an issue where there were no "sides" and starting picking a fight with my wife, I'd be liable to do something unchristian to him! But we tolerate it in this house where theology and experience long to be happily married to each other if the nosy neighbors would just keep to their own business.

When I say the gospel is the home where theology and experience are happily married, I merely mean that the gospel is the foremost place in which they meet and fall in love with each other. Think about it for a second. As lost people we had one view of the Bible: it's boring. Oh sure, we may have carried it with us to church when our parents made us go. Or we have may have carried it with us so we wouldn't look like a dolt at church as everybody else is carrying theirs in the building. But the long and short of it is that lost people don't like God's Word. It's not that they don't want to read it. They hate it! It's boring! It carries no interest for them whatsoever. And that's their theology, plain and simple. God is a God who is "out there" if He's there at all. And the Bible is a book filled with stories about people who followed God. That's nice for them. But it was boring for me. And it always is for lost people.

Yet what happened when the Holy Spirit showed up? He brought a new "experience" with him. It was called regeneration! It blasted its way through my "theology" and saved me from my own delusions and from the wrath of God headed my way because of those delusions. So experience rushed headlong into my "theology" and tackled it! And then married it. Now look at it from the other perspective.

My experience ruled my heart. I knew what I knew and that’s all I needed to know. I didn’t need anybody telling me what to do. “We don’t need no education! Teachers leave us kids alone!!” “All I know is the way I feel, and if it’s real I’m gonna keep it alive!” Songs like these still have a residue left on my brain because they appeal to my life before Christ. It’s experience and subjectivism plain and simple.

Yet what happened when the Holy Spirit showed up? He brought a new belief with Him. He brought a theology of the gospel to my experience. It was called faith and repentance. He convinced me intellectually that I was a sinner and accompanied that conviction with sincere guilt and sorrow emotionally over my sins. When He brought these to bear on my mind I was converted! Glory be to God! So it was theology who rushed headlong into my experience and crushed it like a Yugo at a monster truck rally. And then theology married experience.

It was a missionary marriage from the start, wasn’t it. Theology dated, converted, and married my experience. Or was it that my experience dated, converted, and married my theology? Does it really matter?

Is it okay for experience to confirm the reality of something I’m exegeting, interpreting, or theologizing? Cessationists say experience cannot be the judge of anything, but rather Scripture alone should guide us and direct our experience. Even though they are historically inaccurate when they wave the banner of Sola Scriptura over this reasoning, I see some good in it because the other way around is really, really bad. I definitely don’t want experience bossing my theology around.

To be sure, this is a complimentarian approach to this marriage. Theology is the head of the household, and experience is the joyously submissive wife. But they are equals nonetheless. Cessationists would have Theology be the federal head of the house, the king of the roost, dictating for his bride Experience what is and is not of God. Charismaniacs, on the other hand, would have Experience be the egalitarian spouse of the house, constantly preaching to her husband Theology that she is just as, if not more important than he is and he’d do well not to forget it.

In the Charismaniac household, Experience is coming of age and finding her own way in a theological-cheauvanistic society where Theology has ruled the world far too long with his Experience-demeaning teaching and writing. But across the street in the Cessationist household, Theology knows he’s in charge, all bold about his dogma, large and in charge of his wife with a pristine arrogance clouded with the glory of God. I’d rather live in a tent in the middle of the street.

Experience is a joint-heir in the grace of life for theology. She woos her husband, theology, and captivates him with her beauty, majesty, splendor, and mystery of the living God in moment-by-moment activity throughout daily life. She quietly demonstrates for him, without preaching and teaching, the matchless and indescribable beauty and glory in the power of God through His marvelous acts of providence and miracle. The supernatural work of a God who sovereignly intervenes at will in His creation is her silent yet awestriking manifestation.

Her husband loves her. He also gently and faithfully guides her. He washes her with the water of the Word of God, sanctifying her. He lives with her in humble understanding, seeing her as a God-created equal….a divinely ordained help-meet! He needs her! Not to be his theological amanuensis, nor his ever-affirmative “yes man” but a lover and counselor.

I imagine Theology and Experience working and loving together like man and wife in the Song of Solomon. The imagery is rich with application to the subject here at hand. Give it a fresh read only as an illustration of the point I’m making here and see what changes.

The Pharisees had a hard time with this very concept. Their theology conflicted with the experience God introduced into the world in His Son. In Matthew 12 they said, “It is only by Beelzebul, the prince of demons, that this man casts out demons” (v. 24). I’m shaking my head right now, even as I read this again. There is no greater illustration than this passage of the domineering husband Theology.

Jesus, the marriage counselor, patiently counsels the husband who in this story is Pharisee. “Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste…And if Satan casts out Satan he is divided against himself. And if I cast out demons by Beelzebub, by whom do your sons cast them out?...But if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you” (vv. 25-28). This is the story of the unforgivable sin, blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. Regardless of your theological view on this as to whether or not it can take place or not, the meaning is plain. Those who place the source of power for God’s miraculous works at the hands of the devil are speaking blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.

Jesus brings experience to bear on their theology. Their theology, good as it was, stemming from the Torah, made little allowances for the actual man God would come into this world as in order to set up His kingdom. His supernatural activity created new experiences they simply could not cope with. So they killed Him. This is a classic case where they should have allowed experience to influence their theology.

Thankfully the Ephesians did not respond this way by killing Paul. Paul, good charismatic that he was, asked them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” (Acts 19:2a). They said they hadn’t, explaining, “No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit” (v. 2b). They were believers. They had been taught good theology. But a missing component…an experiential component…was missing. Experiencing the Holy Spirit better informed, morphed, and shaped their theology.

Experience is the Aquila and Priscilla who, upon hearing Apollos “speak boldly in the synagogue” (Acts 18:26), “took him and explained to him the way of God more accurately.” He had great theology! “He had been instructed in the way of the Lord. And being fervent in spirit, he spoke and taught accurately the things concerning Jesus, though he knew only of the baptism of John” (v. 25, emphasis added). Had he not been humble enough to receive the encouragement of Aquila and Priscilla, he would not have been welcomed by the other brothers (v. 27), nor would he have been able to be of such great and gracious help for the believers (v. 27), nor would he have been able to refute the Jews so powerfully with such good Christology (v. 28).

And what about those two fellows walking back home to Emmaus, so depressed that their friend had just been murdered? Not knowing it, they entertained their dear friend in conversation until nightfall, only to come the full realization of what He was teaching them along that way by an experience! “When he was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened, and they recognized him!” (Luke 23:30). Experience is that instantaneous and supernatural moment when God breaks into our intellects with something so mysterious, forcible and powerful that our theology is forced to bow in worship. Is this not what happened with these men? The burning in the heart they were experiencing was consummated by the revelation of their Savior sitting there in front of them all along!

Other passages come to mind. Acts 2 and Acts 15 in particular. They are monumental texts in the history of the church. Yet buried right there along with everything else in the text is the truth that the experience of tongues is what guided Peter to reshape his theology of Joel. It meant what it meant for the people of God in Joel’s day. But it’s fulfillment was realized through an experience. So also with the council of Jerusalem whose sole job there was reconciling the experience of Gentiles coming to salvation with a theology of Amos prophecies. Here again, experience guided and helped shape this theology. This was predicated, of course, on Peter’s experience in a vision which helped guide and shape his theology about Gentiles and their place in salvation history.

A great place to end this post is Romans 8 where we see the internal work and witness of the Holy Spirit – an almost completely subjective experience – validating and guiding and shaping our theology of the Holy Spirit as described in the Bible. And is this not the source of our experience? It was His work which brought about the tongues in Acts 2, the salvation of Gentiles in Acts 10, the tongues and prophesying of the Ephesians in Acts 19, the enlightening of the two men on the road to Emmaus in Luke 24, the conversion of Paul in Acts 9. And it goes on and on.

The danger today is to think nonsense. It is nonsense to conclude, “That’s what the Holy Spirit did in the Bible. He doesn’t do that anymore today.” And it’s worse to conclude that those similar works of God which the Holy Spirit has in fact done in the world since then are actually ploys of the devil to trick us and make us a dumb group of people who rely more on our experiences than on the Scriptures. I think rather that we are encountering the same devil who wants to come up with the same irrational, illogical excuses like the ones he motivated the Pharisees to use with regard to the same miracles Jesus did in the NT. The ploy of the devil I’m speaking of here comes not in trying to trick us into living by experience more than Scripture. That is a real threat and charismaniacs prove it constantly. I’m speaking rather of the ploy he uses in trying to convince us that dismissing, neglecting, rejecting, ignoring, bashing, reasoning, and suspiciously judging against experience is smarter, more godly, more consistent, and definitely more biblical. The Bible preaches loudly and clearly against this!

Leave Theology and Experience alone, I say! They are happily married and will remain so in our lives and churches and bible studies if we quit trying to intrude into their harmony and pit one against the other. They like each other. No! They love each other! And the gospel is their home. For it is a message that cannot exist without both. A gospel without experience makes our heads blow up. A gospel without theology makes our hearts dry up. A gospel with experience and theology makes us grow up. Sanctification is the beautiful and mysterious outworking of what I am learning with what I am experiencing. And this, in my opinion, is the foundation of biblical-charismatic theology.