Is the Bible True? 25,000 Reasons to Trust It

We live in a world that tells us everyone gets their own truth. You can have your truth, and I can have mine. And that sounds nice until we act or speak on that truth. Then real life and real disagreement show up. All of a sudden, someone has to be right…someone has to have the truth.

If you’d rather listen or watch this message, you can catch it on the Lead Biblically Podcast or over on YouTube.

Balancing Grace and Truth

We live in a culture where grace means accepting everyone’s version of truth as equally valid. I get why that sounds kind. We want to love people well. But grace without a fixed truth to stand on doesn’t stay kind for long.

In the Gospel of John, we read that Jesus, the Word, became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14) The call to Christians is to hold that grace and truth together at the same time, the way Jesus held them.

Grace alone starts as wishful thinking. Because it turns into confusion the moment two people disagree about something important.

Coming Back to the Bible

Before we can continue our discussion about grace, we need a truth we can trust. So, let’s spend some time walking through the evidence for why the Bible is an authoritative source for truth. Can we really build our lives on Scripture?

• We have over 25,000 manuscript copies of the New Testament alone, more than any other ancient document by a wide margin.
  • Compare that to Caesar’s Gallic Wars, which survives in nine copies, or Tacitus, which survives in two.
• Then there’s the Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered near Qumran in 1947, including a complete scroll of Isaiah dating back to 125 BC.
  • When scholars compared it to our modern Old Testament, a thousand years newer, it matched more than 95 percent, word for word.

People have spent their lives making sure that the text stayed accurate. That kind of devotion was initiated and sustained by something deeper.

Grace and Truth Have To Travel Together

The Apostle Paul tells the Ephesian believers to grow up by speaking the truth in love. (Ephesians 4:15) Truth alone can easily become a weapon. But grace alone becomes a wish that also gets weaponized when it faces the first real disagreement.

We need both, held together, the same way Jesus held them.

Over the next several weeks, I’ll be tackling hard questions on topics like abortion, gender and sexuality, and M.A.I.D., to name a few of the biggies. But we won’t get to tackle any of those until we settle where truth comes from. And how to carry it with grace!

If you’ve walked away from church because someone used truth like a hammer, I understand. That is not who Jesus is. He is full of grace and truth, both at once, and that is still the invitation today.

Join the Conversation; Answer This Question

• Where do you currently go to find truth on the hard questions: a podcast, a friend, scripture, or somewhere else entirely?