An Imperfect Record?

“But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.”

(John 14:26 ESV)

            One of the primary objections people raise, when it comes to Scripture, is that it was written by men.  Men are imperfect, they tell us.  Men make mistakes.  And, for this reason, we cannot trust every word of Scripture.  We cannot rely on it completely.

            They then begin to dissect the Bible.  They look at it, using their own wisdom and understanding, to determine whether its statements are true or false.  And when they find something that challenges them, when they encounter something they don’t want to believe, they declare that God would never say such a thing.

            They are right when they say that men are imperfect.  They are absolutely correct when they say that men make mistakes.  However, they fail to understand the blessing given to the apostles, enabling them to accurately and precisely record the words of Jesus, the things that took place, and to correctly teach the church.

            Before Jesus died on the cross, he made a great promise to his followers.  He promised them the gift of the Holy Spirit.  And, in the above verse, we see how the Spirit of God would help them to correctly communicate the Word of God to the people of their day, as well as to our own.

            According to Jesus, the Spirit of God would enable them to remember all that he’d said to them.  For this reason, they weren’t dependent upon their faulty memory when teaching the people of their day or when writing the gospel accounts.  They remembered everything just as Jesus had said it.

            Jesus also said that the Spirit would teach them all things.  So, as they taught the church, and as they penned the epistles, they communicated right doctrine.  They did not have to deal with flawed reasoning or a false understanding.  Everything they wrote to the people of their day, everything that we have in our Bible today, is right and true.

            If in writing the gospels and the epistles, the apostles were dependent solely upon their human memory and understanding, there would absolutely be flaws.  There would be places where a memory lapse clouded the account.  There would be places where a flawed understanding caused them to impart wrong doctrine.  However, as we’ve seen, they were blessed with a supernatural ability to remember and to understand.

            For this reason, as we read the words of Scripture, let us not critically pick them apart.  Let us not judge them by our own wisdom and understanding.  Let us, instead, rely on them to judge us.  Let us rely on them to correct our natural way of thinking and believing.