Sufficiency of Scripture

The first doctrinal message of the Here We Stand series treats the nature and authority of Scripture. Pastor Martin argues that a church's view of the Bible determines everything else in its confession, then expounds the necessity, nature, purpose, and proper attitude toward Scripture, grounding inspiration in 2 Timothy 3:16 and 2 Peter 1:20-21 and drawing out the corollaries of authority, inerrancy, perspicuity, sufficiency, and Christocentricity.

Pastor Martin turns from the agency of sanctification to the pattern of sanctification, asking by what standard the believer is to evaluate growth in grace. He unfolds the first three strands of the biblical fourfold pattern: God Himself (Be ye holy for I am holy), the moral law of God epitomized in the Decalogue (Romans 7:12 — holy, righteous, and good), and the entire spectrum of God's revealed will in Scripture, including the apostolic instructions, Old Testament biography, and even the principles woven into the civil and ceremonial law (1 Corinthians 9, 10; 2 Timothy 3:16). The fourth strand — Christ as the law incarnate — is held over for the next message.