Christ and the Bible

The Living and the Written Word
Christ and the Bible – the Living Word and the written word – are sometimes placed in opposition to one another. The Living Word is (rightly) magnified, but (wrongly) at the expense of the proper honour that is due to the written word. In fact, the very high view that we should have of the inspiration and authority of the Holy Scriptures is inculcated by Christ himself.
John Stott reminds us that we should not think of Christ, the living Word, and Scripture, the written word, apart, for they witness to one another:-
Stott, Authentic Christianity, p 104.
Similarly, Donald Macleod refers to John 10:35 (Christ’s assertion that “Scripture cannot be broken”), and comments:-
A Faith to Live By
Christ in all the Scriptures
J.I. Packer quotes the Puritan Isaac Ambrose:-
1. Christ is the truth and substance of all the types and shadows.
2. Christ is the substance and matter of the Covenant of Grace, and all administrations thereof; under the Old Testament Christ is veiled, under the New Covenant revealed.
3. Christ is the centre and meeting place of all the promises for in him the promises of God are yea and Amen.
4. Christ is the thing signified, sealed and exhibited in the Sacraments of the Old and New Testament.
5. Scripture genealogies are to discover to us the times and seasons of Christ.
7. Scripture-laws are our schoolmasters to bring us to Christ, the moral by correcting, the ceremonial by directing.
8. Scripture-gospel is Christ’s light, whereby we are drawn into sweet union and communion with him; yea it is the very power of God unto salvation unto all them that believe in Christ Jesus; and therefore think of Christ as the very substance, marrow, soul and scope of the whole Scriptures.
Among God’s Giants, 135f.
Christ and the Old Testament
More specifically, Christ:-
1. confirmed the doctrines of the OT. When tempted by the devil, for example, his response was an emphatic, ‘It is written’(on 18 different occasions), and, ‘It is also written,’ Mt 4:4-11.
2. fulfilled the predictions of the OT, Mk 1:15, ‘The time has come’; Jn 5:39, ‘The Scriptures … testify about me’; Lk 24:25 ff, ‘”How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.’
3. set his seal on the ethical demands of the OT, Mt 5:17ff.
None of this can be dismissed as mere ‘accommodation’:-
(E.J. Carnell, The Case For Orthodox Theology, 38, quoting William Lee)
Strange, isn’t it, that those OT scriptures which sometimes offend us never seemed to have offended our Lord:-
(John Bright, Q in L. Morris, I Believe in Revelation, 57)
R.T. France finds sixty-four certain or virtually certain quotations of the Old Testament or allusions to it in the words attributed to Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels. (Q in Morris, I Believe in Revelation, 59)
And even a scholar as radical as Rudolph Bultmann was honest enough to acknowledge that:-
(Jesus and the Word, 61)