Sunday Sermon: By Scripture Alone (Sola Scriptura)

You're listening to the preaching ministry of Gabriel Hughes, pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church in Casa Grande, Arizona. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday on this podcast, we feature teaching through a New Testament book, an Old Testament book on Thursday, and our Q &A on Friday.

Each Sunday we are pleased to present our sermon series. Here is Pastor Gabe.

Romans 3 and the Five Solas

In honor of the word of the King, would you please stand. As I read here from the English Standard Version, Romans 3 21, hear the word of the Lord. Now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it.

The righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith.

This was to show God's righteousness because in his divine forbearance, he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

You may be seated as we pray. Heavenly Father, as we consider what we are reading this morning, as we consider even the history of what makes us a Protestant church and why that's important. What is the basis of our faith?

What is it that we have staked even our very lives upon? I pray that you will bless this series and not as something that would just be a series of lectures over why we are the way that we are, but that it would be a concerted and heartfelt effort to search the scriptures and know what your word has said and what you expect of us.

That we give the glory to no man, but all the glory belongs to God. That we rely not on ourselves or on our works, but we rely solely upon the work of Christ and what he accomplished on the cross for us.

And we find these things stated by no earthly wisdom, but these things have been revealed to us by your spirit according to your word, which is our highest authority. And so Lord, that you would bless our searching the scriptures in these things for it is by your word that we have come to faith and it is by your word that we are grown in this faith as well.

And may we continue as Paul instructed the Philippians to work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, doing so to the glory of God. It is in the name of Jesus that we pray and all God's people said, amen.

So just to quickly show you, and as I said, we'll come back to this text again in the coming weeks and look at it more intently, but perhaps as you were reading through it, you saw those five doctrines presented.

In the very beginning in Romans 3 21, now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, talking about Jesus Christ, but the law and the prophets bear witness to it. And that is a statement regarding the word of God, that it is the scriptures that point to us the savior and how Jesus fulfills all the law and the prophets.

And this is only according to the scripture alone. Next in verse 22, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe and that being sola fide by faith alone, for there is no distinction.

All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. God's glory being proclaimed here in this passage as well, being solely day O Gloria. And we are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.

The grace of God alone being what saves us. We considered that when we were in Titus chapter three, and that being the doctrine that we call a sola gratia verse 25, whom God put forward. Christ is a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith.

And this was to show God's righteousness because in his divine forbearance, he had passed over former sins. And this is only in Christ alone. So we have solus Christus. And then finally, verse 26, it was to show his righteousness at the present time so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

A statement regarding God's glory and that all credit and honor and praise go to him alone. So you can see how even from this passage in Romans three, we can glean from it an understanding of even these five doctrines of the Protestant Reformation.

Number of years ago, I was sitting with a pastor at lunch, and I had just finished a series through this. This was actually in 2017, because it was in that year, that was the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation.

And it was also by God's providence in that year that October happened to have five Sundays. So I was able to use each one of those Sundays and go through all five of these particular doctrines. I was sitting with a pastor at lunch, as I said, and he, not knowing much about our church, had said something to the degree of, well, you're obviously a reformed church, and we really weren't.

We were Southern Baptists, but our statement of faith was not a reformed statement of faith. I might have been Calvinistic in my soteriology, but that's different than stating that we were a reformed church on a reformed confession.

So I simply disagreed with him. I said, well, we're not actually a reformed church. We're every bit as Protestant as your church. And he said, well, you just went through the five solos. I saw that was the teaching series that you went through in your church.

I said, right, but not because we're reformed, because we're Protestant. And he said, well, I don't, I mean, that's more of a reform thing. I don't know about that. And I said, hey, if you're Protestant, you have to believe those five doctrines.

Or what else are you gonna do, submit yourself back to the slavery of Rome? And that is the very thing that the Protestant reformers sought to break away from, were those things that Rome was imposing upon people, contrary to what God's word said.

It is widely accepted that the Protestant Reformation began on October 31st, 1517, when a monk named Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of All Saints Church in Wittenberg, Saxony, or what is today called Germany.

But in fact, Luther had published two works. The first was published a month before, and it was entitled Disputation Against Scholastic Theology. That was 97 theses, which was critiquing the way that medieval theology had been done in the Catholic Church for centuries.

But that work gained very little attention, so he drafted his second publication in October, which was 95 Theses Against the Power of Indulgences. And to be sure that that document was seen and would be responded to, he walked up to the castle church door and nailed it to the door.

Scripture Alone and the Reformation

Now, when Luther mounted his protest, he was addressing a church that already accepted the authority of the scripture as being the word of God. So what was the issue then that was so offensive to the Roman church that Luther would protest anything?

Well, because Luther dared to say that the scriptures are our ultimate authority, not the pope. Or as one teacher summarized it, while popes and councils err, scripture alone does not. And Luther used the example of the practice of indulgences that were going on in the Roman Catholic Church at that time to show how popes and councils err, and that these very things could not be found in the word of God itself.

Today, the doctrine that we're gonna be focusing on is the doctrine of sola scriptura, or in English, scripture alone. We'll continue to reflect upon the importance of the Bible to the Protestant Reformation and the role of scripture.

Then we'll consider the authority of scripture itself. And lastly, we'll do application of scripture. How is the doctrine of sola scriptura meaningful for us as a Christian? Why is this even important?

And why would we consider it on a day such as this? So first of all, let's consider the role of scripture. Luther's nailing of his 95 Theses to the door of the church may be the act that we attribute to setting off the Protestant Reformation, but a reformation of the church had been stirring for well over 100 years before.

Over 150 years before Luther was born, there was a man named John Wycliffe from England who became the first to translate the Bible into English. Wycliffe knew no Greek or Hebrew, and those are the original languages that the Bible was written in, but he did know Latin, so he attempted to translate his English version of the Bible from St. Jerome's Latin Vulgate.

That word Vulgate, by the way, is the same word that we get the English word vulgar from. Now vulgar might have a different connotation today, but essentially for Jerome to call his Latin translation of the Bible the Vulgate was to simply mean that it was of the common people.

Jerome in the late 4th and early 5th centuries translated the Bible from its original languages into a common language, into one language that the church would use to teach the people. The Old Testament was originally written in Hebrew and Aramaic.

The New Testament was written in Koine Greek. So Jerome translated it into one language, which was Latin, and any copied versions of the text were only in Latin for 1 ,000 years. Anyone who wanted to read the Bible, they were permitted to read it, if you understood Latin.

But by the 14th century in which Wycliffe lived, only the theologically educated could read and understand Latin. The common person could not. So 1 ,000 years earlier, Jerome translated it into a common language, but it was no longer the common language among everyday people.

In the Western world, the reading and interpretation of the Bible was totally controlled by the Roman Catholic Church, who made it illegal to translate the scriptures into any other language. In fact, they would consider it blasphemy.

And so Wycliffe's effort to translate the Bible into English was considered a blasphemous act. Now, Wycliffe was a Catholic priest. Every once in a while, you might encounter a Roman Catholic who will try to claim that of some of these Protestant reformers.

Well, you guys claim Wycliffe was a Protestant. He was actually a Catholic. Yeah, that's cuz there was nothing else at the time. But Wycliffe had an opposition to the things that the Roman Catholic Church was teaching and was doing.

It wasn't just his translation of the Bible that upset the Roman Catholics, but even many of the doctrines that he taught as well. He was a priest, but also a professor at the University of Oxford. And his desire was to translate the Bible into a language his own students and even his own countrymen could read and learn from.

But he didn't set about doing this till almost at the end of his life. By the time he finished his translation, it was in the year 1384, the same year in which he died. And had he remained alive, he surely would have been persecuted for his work.

In 1401, the Archbishop Arendelle fumed about Wycliffe, quote, the pearl of the gospel is scattered abroad and trodden underfoot by swine. This pestilent and wretched John Wycliffe of cursed memory, the son of the old serpent, unquote.

Though Wycliffe escaped persecution, his colleagues did not. And anyone who defended and fought to preserve Wycliffe's translation was burned at the stake. Even 40 years after his death, Wycliffe's bones were dug up, burned into ashes, and scattered into the River Swift in England.

Unfortunately for Rome, there was no book in England more popular than the Wycliffe English Bible. To this day, his translation remains the most common manuscript literature preserved in Middle English.

An organization named in his honor, the Wycliffe Bible Translators, committed to translating the Bible into every known language in the world. They have been instrumental in translating the Bible into over 3 ,000 languages so far.

100 years after Wycliffe came William Tyndale. He received a master's degree from Oxford, which allowed him to start studying theology. But he quickly became frustrated with his courses, because they did not permit a systematic study of the Bible, which was what he wanted to do.

He wrote, quote, they have ordained that no man shall look on the scripture until he is modeled in heathen learning, eight or nine years, and armed with false principles with which he is clean shut out of the understanding of the scripture, unquote.

Tyndale was much more learned than Wycliffe, having become fluent in eight languages, including Greek and Hebrew. He was accepted to the University of Cambridge, where he became a chaplain in the home of Sir John Walsh and began to tutor Walsh's children.

This was in 1521, now four years after the start of the Protestant Reformation. Tyndale taught Walsh's children things that angered his fellow clergymen, things that were contrary to the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church.

And especially, Tyndale opposed the primacy of the Pope. In Fox's Book of Martyrs, John Fox wrote of an exchange that Tyndale had with another clergy who said, we had better be without God's laws than the Pope.

And Tyndale replied, I defy the Pope and all his laws. And if God spares my life ere many years, I will cause the boy that driveth the plow to know more of the scriptures than thou dost. Tyndale would later journey to London before coming to Germany, where he settled for a time in Wittenberg, the same place where Luther nailed his 95 theses just seven years before.

It was there that Tyndale began working on his own English translation of the New Testament, which he completed in 1525. It was printed in Worms, the same city where Luther had been put on trial, and then was smuggled into England and Scotland.

In October of 1526, the translation was condemned by Bishop Cuthbert Tunstall, the Bishop of London, and almost every copy of Tyndale's New Testament was seized and burned at Paul's cross, which was the open air pulpit at St. Paul's Cathedral.

Now, this did not have the effect that the bishop hoped that it would. The very idea of burning the word of God made the people just repulsed by it. And it ignited in their hearts a fire that would continue to burn in those early years of the Protestant Reformation.

These guys are willing to burn the word of God? And so, the people recognized there was a problem here. Nonetheless, Tyndale was condemned as a heretic, and he would eventually be betrayed by a friend into the hands of the authorities.

Even while in prison, Tyndale continued to work on translating the Old Testament from Hebrew into English. Refusing to recant on his work or his words, as Tyndale was a staunch proponent of justification by faith alone.

He was sentenced to death. And on October 6, 1536, 488 years ago today, Tyndale was strangled and burned at the stake in Vilvoord, which is today in Belgium. Before being strangled, it was said that his last words, cried out with a loud voice, were these, Lord, open the king of England's eyes.

And less than 70 years later, King James VI commissioned a new English translation of the Bible, which would be completed and printed in 1611. And it all began with courageous, God-fearing men willing to risk their lives for the word of God.

You have a Bible in your hand today, thanks to the Protestant Reformation. I can't even begin to tell you the number of times that a smart Alec Romanist has said to me that Catholics gave us the Bible.

Nonsense.

If Roman Catholics had their way, you'd be put to death for owning a Bible and for owning one in a language other than Latin. Now, the church in Rome is obviously adapted to how ubiquitous the Bible has become.

Not only can you own many printed editions of the Bible, you probably have more than one translation in your home. But you have it even right there on your smartphone. One of the most popular podcasts in the world is a Roman Catholic read-through-the-Bible-in-a-year podcast.

So sure, they'll let Catholics read the Bible, as long as you listen to what they say that the Bible says. In answering Luther's declarations, Pope Leo X appointed Dominican theologian Sylvester Piraeus to offer a response.

And so concerning the power of the Pope, Piraeus said, He who does not accept the doctrine of the Church of Rome and the Pontiff of Rome as an infallible rule of faith, from which the Scriptures too draw their strength and authority, is a heretic.

In other words, the Pope himself has primacy over the Word of God. According to the Council of Trent held in response to the Reformation, it was said in session four, No one relying on his own skill shall, in matters of faith and of morals pertaining to the edification of Christian doctrine, resting the sacred Scripture to his own senses, presume to interpret the said Scripture contrary to that sense which Holy Mother Church, whose it is to judge of the true sense and interpretation of the Holy Scriptures.".

More recently, the Second Vatican Council held in the 20th century said the following in their doctrine on divine revelation called De Verbum. They said, It is not from Scripture alone that the Church draws her certainty about everything which has been revealed.

Therefore, both sacred tradition and sacred Scripture are to be accepted and venerated with the same devotion and reverence. Now, that might be what they say, but that's not what they mean. Again, any interpretation of the Scripture is subject to the tradition of.

The Church.

Therefore, the tradition is over the Scripture itself. So sure, you can study the Bible, but you can only believe what Rome tells you to believe. The Roman Catholic Church, under the Pope, with his cardinals and bishops and priests and all their traditions, they believe that they hold greater authority than the Word of God itself.

To them, Jesus has said, Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. In vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.

You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men. And as we go on, even through this series, you'll see that more and more, as I will draw examples from the Roman Catholic Church as to what they teach and impose upon people and how contrary it is to the Word of God.

The Meaning and Authority of Sola Scriptura

So having considered the role of the Bible in the Protestant Reformation, let's consider next what we mean when we use this term sola scriptura. What does it mean and what does it not mean? And also the authority of Scripture itself.

So we're considering the authority of Scripture and what it means that it has authority over us and even over others. But first of all, what is sola scriptura? What does it mean to believe in Scripture alone?

Very simply, it means that the Bible, which we would agree is God's Word, is our only chief, supreme, and ultimate authority. There is no word higher than God's, even as it pertains to not only our faith, but the church, to our traditions, as it pertains even to the governing authorities, as it pertains to the existence and salvation of our very souls.

God's Word alone has authority over all, and that word is written down in the 66 books that we call the Bible. As scholar Michael Kruger defines it, sola scriptura is the conviction that the Scriptures alone are the Word of God.

I got into an exchange with a Roman Catholic just about a month ago in which he was ripping on the whole concept of the doctrine of sola scriptura. And I just simply responded to him and I said, do you believe the Scriptures are the Word of God?

And he said, yes, I believe that. And I said, that's really sola scriptura, that that's the Word of God, and therefore being God's Word is authoritative over every other word, and we are to be subject to that word.

And he said, that's what I believe, that's what the Roman Catholic Church believes.

I said, oh, really?

That's not my understanding. And I'm arming myself with references that Roman Catholics use to reference tradition, but he goes ahead and offers up his own defense and says, tradition itself is the Word of God.

So I said, tradition's the Word of God? Yes, and I tried to understand, so where does that end? Like, you just basically, you call it tradition and therefore it's God's Word? How do you justify what belongs in tradition and what does not?

There are things that Roman Catholicism has said was tradition and then later jettisoned that tradition. So did it stop being the Word of God? As we read earlier this year in 2 Timothy 3 .16, all scripture is breathed out by God.

There's nothing in the Bible that says all tradition is breathed out by God. Scripture is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

This we affirm in our own confession. The Holy Scripture is the only sufficient, certain, and infallible rule of all saving knowledge, faith, and obedience. Isaiah 40 verse 8 says, the grass withers and the flower fades, but the Word of our God will stand forever.

In Matthew 5 .18, Jesus said, for truly I say to you until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot will pass from the law until all is accomplished. In Mark 13 .31, Jesus said, heaven and earth will pass away, but my Word will never pass away.

In 1 Peter 1 .22 -25, Peter said, having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart since you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable through the living and abiding Word of God.

For all flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass, the grass withers and the flower falls, but the Word of the Lord remains forever. My friends, our traditions will rise and fall, but it is the Word of God that remains forever.

And our traditions, whatever they may be, not all traditions are bad. The very order of service that we have this morning is a tradition, but may our traditions be subject to what God's Word says. May we never try to elevate our tradition and put it with the Word of God, lest we actually take God's Word and put it beneath our tradition.

In Psalm 19 .7 -11, we read, The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul. The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes.

The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever. The rules of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold, sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb.

Moreover, by them is your servant warned. In keeping them, there is great reward. About these words, Puritan John Bunyan wrote, The Word of the Lord is called the fear of the Lord, verse 9, because it is the rule and directory of our fear.

For we know not how to fear the Lord in a saving way without the guidance and direction of the scriptures. Psalm 138 verses 1 and 2 say, I give you thanks, O Lord, with my whole heart. Before the gods, I sing your praise.

I bow down toward your holy temple and give thanks to your name for your steadfast love and your faithfulness. For you have exalted above all things your name and your word. Now, Rome would have you believe that this doctrine is a relatively new invention, a fabrication of the Protestant Reformation, but was not in any way held by any of the great theologians who came before.

Nothing could be further from the truth. In a letter to Jerome, who we learned wrote the Latin Vulgate, Augustine said, I have learned to hold only the holy scripture as inerrant. And many other such words Augustine said about the scriptures, fully affirming that he himself would have held to the doctrine of sola scriptura.

The early church fathers believed it. If you stop and think about it for two seconds, it's just common sense. If the Bible is God's word, it alone is the highest word. It alone is without error. And far be it from any man to ever claim his authority could be equal or higher.

Stating that the Pope's authority is higher makes the Pope an antichrist. Now, in proclaiming sola scriptura, we're not professing solo scriptura as if there can be no creeds or confessions, but the Bible.

You know, there are many denominations today that will say something like that. No creed, but Christ. Well, you just uttered a creed. So congratulations. We read from a creed or a confession almost every Sunday.

We're also not saying that there are no other authorities to which we must be subject. Just going through 1st and 2nd Timothy and Titus, we considered briefly how we are to be subject to the governing authorities on earth, which have been appointed by God.

There are even pastoral authorities, the elders in the church that we are supposed to be subject to. You're supposed to be subject to the authority of your boss. Slaves be subject to your earthly masters.

And children, you are to be subject to the authority of your parents. Children, obey your parents in the Lord for this is right. What we are saying when we profess sola scriptura is that the scripture alone is the highest authority that governs and rules over all other authorities.

Now, it also does not mean that the scripture is therefore the authority on every single subject, for not every subject is covered in scripture. You can't learn how to bake bread necessarily, bake a good bread by reading the Bible, although some have tried.

And you can go to the freezer section in the store and find that wonderful Ezekiel bread. And I've always wondered if it's truly Ezekiel bread, are you baking it over dung? Because that's what Ezekiel had to do.

You're not going to learn how to repair a car by reading the Bible or learn rocket science, literally brain surgery. You can't learn that from reading the Bible. But whatever the Bible speaks about, it is the highest authority over any of those subjects.

And we are to be subject to every other authority so long as that authority is subject to scripture. So if your government orders you to do something that defies God, if your church elders go against the scriptures, even if your boss or your parents tell you to do something that would be disobedient to God, then our answer must be with the apostles in Acts 5 .29.

We must obey God rather than men. Scripture alone is supreme and scripture alone is sufficient. The Bible gives us all that we need to test all things according to the truth and to grow us in faith and in godliness.

There would have been no Protestant reformation without the devotion to the scriptures as our highest authority. But how do we know that the Bible is the trustworthy word of God? Don't we need a church to tell us that we can trust the Bible?

Do you need to turn to scholars, to priests? Do we need a Pope? The first reason that we can know that the Bible is trustworthy is because it is self-authenticating. It proves to be what it claims to be.

It claims to be the word of God and it proves to be the word of God. As I heard one preacher say, I've read many other books, but the Bible is the only book that reads me. As John Calvin said, quote, scripture's authority may be established as certain and to banish all doubt, indeed, scripture exhibits fully as clear evidence of its own truth as white and black things do of their color or sweet and bitter things do of their taste.

The sacred scriptures breathe something divine, unquote. As John Owen argued, scripture speaks of itself as a lamp and a light and light authenticates itself. You don't need to prove that light is light.

I don't need to prove to you that there is light in this room. You know that it requires no evidence. It proves itself for what it is. And so isn't it all the more fascinating that the scripture refers to itself over and over again as light.

As we read in Psalm 119, your word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path. The apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthians about the light of the gospel. The apostle Peter said in 2 Peter 119, we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed to which you would do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.

But if the scripture is so self-evident, my brethren, then why isn't everyone a Christian? Shouldn't everyone then just automatically know that the Bible is the word of God? Well, the Bible gives us the answer to that question as well.

As the apostle Paul said to the Corinthians, the God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord. With ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. For God, who said, let light shine out of darkness, has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

Mind-blowing to consider that the very voice that spoke into nothing and said, let there be light, and it was so, is the same voice that spoke to the prophets and the apostles who wrote down the words that we have today in this book.

The very words of the creator of the universe himself, which we have in the Bible. Ultimately, you know that the Bible is God's word because God himself has revealed this to you. As we state in our own profession of faith, our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority thereof is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit, bearing witness by and with the word in our hearts.

As again, referencing John Calvin, he said, it is a wicked falsehood that scripture's credibility depends on the judgment of the church. Scripture, he said, has its authority from God, not from the church.

So even the church must be subject to this word. The church did not come up with this word. As Michael Kruger had pointed out, we didn't invent canon, we discovered it. We discovered which books were written down that were divinely authorized.

And again, being self-authenticating, knew that these books were from God and these other books were not. So these books were included in the canon and there were others that were excluded because they were not divinely inspired from God.

Calvin taught that if the scripture requires something else in order to give it authority, then that other thing becomes its supreme authority. And we've already considered that with Roman Catholicism.

Their tradition reigns over the scripture in their eyes. You cannot truly know what the scripture says and means without the church. But the Bible tells us that you cannot know what the Bible says without the Holy Spirit.

Turn with me, if you will, to 1 Corinthians chapter 2, 1 Corinthians 2 .10. These things, Paul writes, God has revealed to us through the spirit. For the spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.

For who knows a person's thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him. So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God.

And we impart this in words, not taught by human wisdom, but taught by the spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. Let me stop there for a moment. What was going on with the Corinthians at the time that Paul was writing this to them is that they were boasting in themselves.

We see that from chapter one, boasting in what they knew or which teacher they followed. And there was separation. There was disunity in the church because of their boastfulness. They thought that they had found the next hot idea on the street, the Greeks, they love the next new philosophy.

And so here is this teacher named Jesus who's proclaiming this thing called the gospel. And so I'm going to start believing that because now I've got something that's better than what the rest of the Greeks were teaching.

It wasn't that they believed it to glorify God, they believed it to glorify themselves. Now this wasn't of all the Corinthians that were in this church, but Paul treated them as infants, as those who were not mature in faith because they thought this way.

They still thought from their flesh instead of thinking from the spirit and Paul is directing them. And if you're going to understand the word of God given to you, it takes the spirit of God to get it.

For Paul goes on to say, look at verse 14, the natural person does not accept the things of the spirit of God, for they are folly to him. And he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.

The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one for who has understood the mind of the Lord. So as to instruct him, but we have the mind of Christ. Previously in 1 Corinthians 1 .18 it is said, the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.

Our understanding of the scriptures even comes from God himself. To hear the gospel and be blown apart by it and to be filled with tears and to rejoice in God and to be looking forward to a hope that we have not yet seen.

All of this is by the spirit of God working in our hearts. I do not need a Pope to tell me that the Bible is God's word. The scripture itself tells me that it is God's word and the spirit reveals to me its divine truthfulness.

Like the light, the scripture evidences itself. It reveals things unknown to me except by the light of this word. It reveals to me my sin. It reveals my need for a savior. It reveals that Christ is that savior.