THE CONTENT OF THE BIBLE
John 3:16-18 "For
God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes
in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son
into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever
believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned
already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son.
According to the
Christian view, the Bible contains an account of a revelation from God to man,
which is found nowhere else. It is true, the Bible also contains a confirmation
and a wonderful enrichment of the revelations which are given also by the
things that God has made and by the conscience of man… But in addition to such
reaffirmations of what might conceivably be learned elsewhere – as a matter of
fact, because of men’s blindness, even so much is leaned elsewhere only in
comparatively obscure fashion – the Bible also contains an account of a
revelation which is absolutely new. That new revelation concerns the way by
which sinful man cn come into communion with the living God.
The way was opened, according to the
Bible, by an act of God, when, almost nineteen hundred years ago, outside the
walls of Jerusalem, the eternal Son was offered as a sacrifice for the sins of
men. To that one great event the whole Old Testament looks forward, and in that
one event the whole of the New Testament finds its center and core. Salvation
then, according to the Bible, is not something that was discovered, but
something that happened. Hence appears the uniqueness of the Bible. All the
ideas of Christianity might be discovered in some other religion, yet there
would be in that other religion no Christianity. For Christianity depends, not
upon a complex of ideas, but upon the narration of an event. Without that
event, the world, in the Christian view, is altogether dark, and humanity is
lost under the guilt of sin. There can be no salvation by the discovery of
eternal truth, for eternal truth brings naught but despair, because of sin. But
a new face has been put upon life by the blessed thing that God did when He
offered up His only begotten Son.
Christianity
& Liberalism by J. Gresham Machen, pg.69.
