Why I Believe the Bible is the Word of God: It Alone Remedies Man's Greatest Need

In the final analysis, the only real quest of the human soul is to be right with God. Man, being made in the image of God, was made to be in relationship with God. Humans are made to love and enjoy the love of, God.

Not only is this what the Bible teaches from cover to cover, it is what the heart of Man desires from womb to tomb. Man is--to use John Piper's pleasing phrase--"homesick for God". In the words of Augustine's prayer: "Lord, You have made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You."

All humanity's restless search for meaning, for true and lasting love, for peace of conscience and soul, is the product of our being made to be in right relationship with the One who made us, but from whom we have wandered in foolish and wicked rebellion.

Sin has ruined Man's soul and come between him and the One he desires. Therefore, it can rightly be said that this sin--and finding a remedy for it--presents humanity's greatest need.

It is at this point that I discover my next reason for believing the Bible is the Word of God: Because the Bible alone provides the answer for Man's deepest need: sin This argument will take two days to unpack.

The Bible proclaims words of eternal life and real reason to hope for forgiveness, declaring a gospel that offers grace to sinners without trivializing human sin on the one hand or divine justice and wrath on the other. No other Book/religion presents a way of salvation in which the justice due to sin and the mercy needed by sinners come together and kiss.

Every other religion and religious book presents a "way to God" that simply cannot be true because it simply cannot work. The way to God presented by these faiths invariably reduces to this in some form or another: "God (or karma, or "The One") wants you to be good. Be good enough and all will be well between you and God. Get it right and you will get peace with God and peace of soul."

The problem with this idea is that it unavoidably commits two errors. First, it exaggerates human virtue. It credits our efforts to be good with too much worth and value. It assumes we can be good, and it assumes that sooner or later we can be good enough.

The problem here is that we cannot be good, never mind good enough. To imagine that a human can be good is to assume that his pitiful attempts at being good--defiled as they invariably are by proud motives, desire for a pat on the back, half-hearted love, and a thousand other imperfections--rise to a level of actual goodness.

But folks, a good work done with a bad heart is at best what one has called--"a bad good work". To think that any human can ever amass sufficient good good works (good not only in external act but in internal motive) to make himself right with God is folly. We must exaggerate our virtue to ever place faith in our efforts to restore ourselves into relationship with God.

We must also trivialize God's holiness and justice. In order for us to think that we can satisfy a holy God with our bad good works we have to minimize God's holiness expectations and we have to believe that God is neither as holy as He really is nor as angry with sins as He really must be if He is holy.

Salvation by human morality forces us to think that God grades on a curve, winks at sin, doesn't really care about perfection, is indifferent to what is really and truly good. If my bad good works are really all it takes to please God, and to appease Him for my bad bad works then God is not really as good and holy as He's cracked up to be. He's a morality wimp; the ultimate Moral Pushover.

All other "ways to God" are dead ends. The Bible alone presents a way that allows God to save and reconcile sinners to Himself without exaggerating our goodness or trivializing His.

Come back tomorrow and I'll explain.