Jesus' Bare Word Is Enough

[Presbyterian Continuist]

In John 4:46-51 we have the story of the healing of the nobleman's son. The nobleman had heard of Jesus, and when his son fell ill in danger of losing his life because of a fever, he travelled 30 miles to meet up with Jesus and plead for the healing of his son. He wanted Jesus to come back to his house to speak over the child and heal him. It seemed that the nobleman was expecting Jesus to do something spectacular, and that is why Jesus said to him, "Except you see signs and wonders you will not believe." Then Jesus said, "Go your way, your son lives." The nobleman believed what Jesus told him, and travelled back to his home. Notice that he did not hurry back, because he so believed what Jesus told him, he took his time. On the way back his servants met him and said, "Your son lives". Notice that the servants said exactly what Jesus said. This is a wonderful confirmation that Jesus word is true. When the servants told him the hour that the fever left the child, he knew that it was exactly the same time when Jesus told him, "Your son lives". This shows that when Jesus gives His word, the healing happens immediately and completely. There were no weeks of recovery for the child to recover his strength. He was healed so completely it was as if the fever was never there in the first place.

So what does this story tell us? It tells us that we can believe what Jesus says. He has said much in the Gospels and the Book of Revelation. All we have to do is to believe it. We don't need anything extra like a burst of "revelation", inner "voices", spectacular events, dramatic manifestations, or anything else. If Jesus said it, we believe it, and it happens. That's what genuine faith is all about. Believing what Jesus says.

There are those who cannot accept just what Jesus has said in the written Scriptures. They desire more. They want Him to speak to them directly with some inner voice, or to do something spectacular. Jesus would say to those people, "Except you see signs and wonders, you will not believe." Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. Whosoever believes in Me shall not perish but have everlasting life." As soon as I read that in John 14:6 and believe it, I have everlasting life. I don't need goosebumps up my spine, great emotion of love and joy, shaking, falling down, or jerking. I don't even need to "feel" saved. If Jesus says I am saved because I believe that He is the way the truth and the life, then I am saved. He said it, I believe it, and that's it.

The reason why many cannot accept Sola Scriptura, is that they cannot believe the bare written words of the Lord. They want confirmation from other sources to validate what He has said in the Scriptures. If the nobleman had demanded validation to prove Jesus' words, "Your son lives" through other sources, his son may not have been healed. But the record says that the nobleman believed what Jesus told him, and immediately set off for home. He didn't wait around to question it. His faith was on what Jesus told him, and so he went home expecting his son to be healed. And he was right.

What about the lame man at the Pool of Bethesda? Jesus said, "Take up your bed and walk." The man believed what Jesus told him and immediately got up, took up his bed and walked away. When the Pharisees challenged him about carrying his bed on the Sabbath, he said, "All I did was to do what the Man told me!"

I know I am saved and baptised with the Holy Spirit because Peter, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit said, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit." So I believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, and I immediately got saved and received the gift of the Holy Spirit. I didn't have to wait for any kind of feeling, inner voice, or spectacular bells and whistles, to know that I am saved. The Holy Spirit through Peter said it, I believed it, and I was saved and baptised with the Holy Spirit that instant.

So how do I exercise faith? I read the words of Jesus in the Bible and just believe them. That's all, nothing else.

 

[Guojing]

In John 4:46-51 we have the story of the healing of the nobleman's son. The nobleman had heard of Jesus, and when his son fell ill in danger of losing his life because of a fever, he travelled 30 miles to meet up with Jesus and plead for the healing of his son. He wanted Jesus to come back to his house to speak over the child and heal him. It seemed that the nobleman was expecting Jesus to do something spectacular, and that is why Jesus said to him, "Except you see signs and wonders you will not believe." Then Jesus said, "Go your way, your son lives." The nobleman believed what Jesus told him, and travelled back to his home. Notice that he did not hurry back, because he so believed what Jesus told him, he took his time. On the way back his servants met him and said, "Your son lives". Notice that the servants said exactly what Jesus said. This is a wonderful confirmation that Jesus word is true. When the servants told him the hour that the fever left the child, he knew that it was exactly the same time when Jesus told him, "Your son lives". This shows that when Jesus gives His word, the healing happens immediately and completely. There were no weeks of recovery for the child to recover his strength. He was healed so completely it was as if the fever was never there in the first place.

So what does this story tell us? It tells us that we can believe what Jesus says. He has said much in the Gospels and the Book of Revelation. All we have to do is to believe it. We don't need anything extra like a burst of "revelation", inner "voices", spectacular events, dramatic manifestations, or anything else. If Jesus said it, we believe it, and it happens. That's what genuine faith is all about. Believing what Jesus says.

There are those who cannot accept just what Jesus has said in the written Scriptures. They desire more. They want Him to speak to them directly with some inner voice, or to do something spectacular. Jesus would say to those people, "Except you see signs and wonders, you will not believe." Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. Whosoever believes in Me shall not perish but have everlasting life." As soon as I read that in John 14:6 and believe it, I have everlasting life. I don't need goosebumps up my spine, great emotion of love and joy, shaking, falling down, or jerking. I don't even need to "feel" saved. If Jesus says I am saved because I believe that He is the way the truth and the life, then I am saved. He said it, I believe it, and that's it.

The reason why many cannot accept Sola Scriptura, is that they cannot believe the bare written words of the Lord. They want confirmation from other sources to validate what He has said in the Scriptures. If the nobleman had demanded validation to prove Jesus' words, "Your son lives" through other sources, his son may not have been healed. But the record says that the nobleman believed what Jesus told him, and immediately set off for home. He didn't wait around to question it. His faith was on what Jesus told him, and so he went home expecting his son to be healed. And he was right.

What about the lame man at the Pool of Bethesda? Jesus said, "Take up your bed and walk." The man believed what Jesus told him and immediately got up, took up his bed and walked away. When the Pharisees challenged him about carrying his bed on the Sabbath, he said, "All I did was to do what the Man told me!"

I know I am saved and baptised with the Holy Spirit because Peter, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit said, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit." So I believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, and I immediately got saved and received the gift of the Holy Spirit. I didn't have to wait for any kind of feeling, inner voice, or spectacular bells and whistles, to know that I am saved. The Holy Spirit through Peter said it, I believed it, and I was saved and baptised with the Holy Spirit that instant.

So how do I exercise faith? I read the words of Jesus in the Bible and just believe them. That's all, nothing else.

You sound like a Red letter Christian

Our Mission & Our Story – Red Letter Christians

 

[returntosender]

And yet they believe in God which is even harder to believe.
I think they question because so many say Jesus speaks to them and some say you aren't Christian if you don't hear Jesus. It's condemning and not right.

 

[RickReads]

You sound like a Red letter Christian

Our Mission & Our Story – Red Letter Christians

Yes. Don't let him win.

 

[Allen of the Cross]

Thankfully Jesus also spoke through the Apostle Paul.

 

[Presbyterian Continuist]

And yet they believe in God which is even harder to believe.
I think they question because so many say Jesus speaks to them and some say you aren't Christian if you don't hear Jesus. It's condemning and not right.

Jesus told the story about the rich man and Lazarus. He had Abraham tell the rich man when asked by the rich man to send Lazarus from the dead to warn his brothers not to come to the horrible place where he was, that, "They have Moses and the Prophets (ie: the written Scriptures) and if they won't believe them it won't make any difference if someone rose from the dead to warn them." So what Jesus was doing was giving total support to the written Scriptures to be the exclusive word of God that needs to be the basis of faith. If people won't accept the written Scriptures as God's word, then receiving inner or audible "voices" purporting to be Jesus won't make any difference to their direction toward hell.

 

[Presbyterian Continuist]

Thankfully Jesus also spoke through the Apostle Paul.

True. Jesus did say that when the Helper, the Holy Spirit will come, He will lead us into all truth. This was fulfilled through Paul, Peter, John and Jude. Reading the Holy Spirit inspired Epistles is the same as reading the words of Jesus, because the Holy Spirit will inspire only what Jesus has told Him. Therefore what the Holy Spirit inspires is in no way inferior to what Jesus has said directly during the time He was in the world.

Jesus said only what the Father told Him, and the Holy Spirit inspired the Apostles only what Jesus told Him; therefore the written Scriptures in their entirety has come from the Father. Therefore, accepting the written Scriptures as the Word of God is the sole basis for faith. Peter says that the Scriptures are the only "sure word of prophecy", and he refers to the letters of Paul as Scripture.

 

[Mr. M]

So how do I exercise faith? I read the words of Jesus in the Bible and just believe them. That's all, nothing else.

To believe in Jesus is to confess that He is the only
begotten Son of God, and the Messiah, Holy One
of Israel. To go beyond that and say that all that
is required is to read his words and believe them
totally contradicts the very word He spoke:
John 14:
23 Jesus answered and said to him,
If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word;
and My Father will love him, and We will
come to him and make Our home with him.
24 He who does not love Me does not keep
My words; and the word which you hear is
not Mine but the Father’s who sent Me.

OBEYING HIS WORD IS TRUTH, AND THE
TRUTH WILL SET YOU FREE.
"The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it"
is good old fashioned name it, claim it word
of faith fallacy.
Hebrews 5:9 And having been perfected,
He became the author of eternal salvation
to all who obey Him.
John 14:
15 If you love Me, keep My commandments.
16 And I will pray to the Father, and He will
give you another Helper, that He may abide
with you forever—

 

[Skye1300]

You sound like a Red letter Christian

Our Mission & Our Story – Red Letter Christians

Wow, it started in 2007. When will people learn that we don't need anymore new denominations?

 

[Guojing]

Wow, it started in 2007. When will people learn that we don't need anymore new denominations?

Well I find that many churches preach almost exclusively from the 4 gospels, so I see this movement as a formalization of that.

 

[Presbyterian Continuist]

To believe in Jesus is to confess that He is the only
begotten Son of God, and the Messiah, Holy One
of Israel. To go beyond that and say that all that
is required is to read his words and believe them
totally contradicts the very word He spoke:
John 14:
23 Jesus answered and said to him,
If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word;
and My Father will love him, and We will
come to him and make Our home with him.
24 He who does not love Me does not keep
My words; and the word which you hear is
not Mine but the Father’s who sent Me.

OBEYING HIS WORD IS TRUTH, AND THE
TRUTH WILL SET YOU FREE.
"The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it"
is good old fashioned name it, claim it word
of faith fallacy.
Hebrews 5:9 And having been perfected,
He became the author of eternal salvation
to all who obey Him.
John 14:
15 If you love Me, keep My commandments.
16 And I will pray to the Father, and He will
give you another Helper, that He may abide
with you forever—

I just knew that someone would bring out the obedience issue. Of course I believe that we should obey Jesus' commandments. They are quite clear. James says it clearly when he says that if someone says he has faith, that James would show that he has faith by what he does. A person who has genuine faith in the words of Jesus in the Scripture will work towards holiness. That was never in doubt. Just having a mental assent to His words is not true belief in His words. True belief in His words and the resulting faith has to have its outworking in action. A person who says he believes in what Jesus said and taught and still goes on to continue living the sinful lifestyle is a hypocrite and not a true convert. A person who truly believes the words of Jesus will repent of his sins, turn away from the works of the flesh and seek to walk in the Spirit which indwells him.

But I still say that believing in the words of Jesus is believing His teaching as recorded in the Gospels and the Book of Revelation. It is not believing in some disembodied, extra-Biblical "voice" from an imaginary Jesus. Demons are experts at impersonating Jesus and will use that impersonation to deceive gullible people. Our only protection is trusting totally in the written word over and above any "voice" or impression from an imaginary personage that represents himself as Jesus.

By the way: The nobleman obeyed Jesus when He said to him: "Go your way. Your son lives." The nobleman didn't stay around to argue. He turned around and started of home in obedience to what Jesus told him. It was his obedience that proved his faith in the words of Jesus.

 

[Mr. M]

I just knew that someone would bring out the obedience issue. Of course I believe that we should obey Jesus' commandments. They are quite clear. James says it clearly when he says that if someone says he has faith, that James would show that he has faith by what he does. A person who has genuine faith in the words of Jesus in the Scripture will work towards holiness. That was never in doubt. Just having a mental assent to His words is not true belief in His words. True belief in His words and the resulting faith has to have its outworking in action. A person who says he believes in what Jesus said and taught and still goes on to continue living the sinful lifestyle is a hypocrite and not a true convert. A person who truly believes the words of Jesus will repent of his sins, turn away from the works of the flesh and seek to walk in the Spirit which indwells him.

But I still say that believing in the words of Jesus is believing His teaching as recorded in the Gospels and the Book of Revelation. It is not believing in some disembodied, extra-Biblical "voice" from an imaginary Jesus. Demons are experts at impersonating Jesus and will use that impersonation to deceive gullible people. Our only protection is trusting totally in the written word over and above any "voice" or impression from an imaginary personage that represents himself as Jesus.

By the way: The nobleman obeyed Jesus when He said to him: "Go your way. Your son lives." The nobleman didn't stay around to argue. He turned around and started of home in obedience to what Jesus told him. It was his obedience that proved his faith in the words of Jesus.

Thank you for your reply brother. I appreciate how well
you express your faith. My post was needed for clarification
for others who would take OP's such as yours and decide
"that sounds easy enough, I'll go with that", and then sit
on their hands. Good job!

 

[Lost4words]

As John said, there wouldnt be enough books in the world to contain all of the words of Jesus.

The Apostles knew a lot more than what has been written.

Sola scriptura is dead in the water as they never used it. They never heard of it.

Word of mouth was how the word was preached, for nigh on 400 years before the bible was assembled. And even then, people had to be preached to. Many couldnt read.

 

[Skye1300]

As John said, there wouldnt be enough books in the world to contain all of the words of Jesus.

The Apostles knew a lot more than what has been written.

Sola scriptura is dead in the water as they never used it. They never heard of it.

Word of mouth was how the word was preached, for nigh on 400 years before the bible was assembled. And even then, people had to be preached to. Many couldnt read.

Exactly! People forget that for the early part of church history, most people couldn't read, so sola scriptura wasn't even possible. Also if they could read, Bibles were not mass printed till the printing press was invented. So Bibles were few and far between.

 

[Presbyterian Continuist]

As John said, there wouldnt be enough books in the world to contain all of the words of Jesus.

The Apostles knew a lot more than what has been written.

Sola scriptura is dead in the water as they never used it. They never heard of it.

Word of mouth was how the word was preached, for nigh on 400 years before the bible was assembled. And even then, people had to be preached to. Many couldnt read.

Paul's letters were widely circulated around the churches before the end of the First Century AD. They would have been read to the people. So it wasn't really word of mouth. Seeing that 25,000 Greek manuscripts have survived to this day, it would be quite obvious that many more existed that have not survived. The earliest surviving manuscript dates back to the 4th Century and there would have been many circulated around the churches before that.

Copies of the Hebrew Torah would have been in every Jewish Synagogue and would have been read to congregations in every Sabbath service.

It was only when church congregations no longer had access to Greek manuscripts, and the only written Scriptures were in Latin, which most rank and file church members couldn't read, that control over what people were led to believe was in control of the local priests. Therefore these priests could preach what they chose, and the people would not have know whether they were preaching the truth or stuff made up to support the policy of the established church hierarchy.

This why there was solid resistance, when the printing press was invented, to having the Scriptures printed and circulated in German and English. This was because the church hierarchy would have lost doctrinal control as more people in the regions were able to access the Scriptures for themselves to compare what the priests were preaching, and what the Scriptures actually said.

Once the Scriptures became widely available to people in Germany, France, and England, the Roman Catholic church lost ecclesiastical and political control as people read the Scriptures for themselves and made their own judgments about what was true and what was mythological. This mean that before long, the Catholic church became just another denomination in the Christian spectrum, and its assertion that it is the true Church is no longer taken seriously by most believers outside of the Catholic denomination.

 

[Presbyterian Continuist]

Chris Rosebrough says that if God is speaking to Chuck Pearce, then we're doomed!

 

[Jipsah]

You sound like a Red letter Christian

Our Mission & Our Story – Red Letter Christians

My first thought was that Red Letter Christianity sounds like very appealing concept. Fortunately I followed the link you gave and discovered that the organization linked to has a nasty racialist agenda. They would have me believe that my family members who are "people of color" are Good but my white kinfolk are Bad. Now I suspect they're not any too fond of Asians, either, since we're Too White for comfort, and of course "hapas" (New speak for half Asian half white people like myself, pidgin English for "half") are simply white for woke purposes. In my extended family, there are 3 races and 5 ethnicities represented, but the folks who claim the term Red Letter Christians would have us at odds with each other. So I cordially invite those " RLC" folks to take a !ong flying jump.

 

[Presbyterian Continuist]

My first thought was that Red Letter Christianity sounds like very appealing concept. Fortunately I followed the link you gave and discovered that the organization linked to has a nasty racialist agenda. They would have me believe that my family members who are "people of color" are Good but my white kinfolk are Bad. Now I suspect they're not any too fond of Asians, either, since we're Too White for comfort, and of course "hapas" (New speak for half Asian half white people like myself, pidgin English for "half") are simply white for woke purposes. In my extended family, there are 3 races and 5 ethnicities represented, but the folks who claim the term Red Letter Christians would have us at odds with each other. So I cordially invite those " RLC" folks to take a !ong flying jump.

Actually, all I referred to were the types of New Testament that had Jesus' words in red. Nothing more. Our friend has decided to be contentious and went one plus one equals three.

 

[Presbyterian Continuist]

You sound like a Red letter Christian

Our Mission & Our Story – Red Letter Christians

If you are saying that I am somehow linked to this nasty racist organisation, you are very far off the beam.

 

[Presbyterian Continuist]

I went back and read Hebrews 1:1 &2 more carefully.
Here's what it says:
"On many past occasions and in many different ways, God spoke to our fathers through the prophets. But in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, and through whom He made the universe.…"

This shows that it is important to read what the Bible is actually saying to us. Notice that God has spoken to us by His Son, not "God is speaking to us by His Son." What this is saying is that God has already spoken by Jesus. Everything that God has spoken by His Son has already been spoken. Where do we find it? In the written Scriptures!

What this means is that the idea that God is still speaking to people by Jesus, is not supported in Scripture. God does not contradict Himself. If He has said that He has already spoken, then He is not going to contradict Himself by continuing to speak new revelation through inner "voices", dreams, visions, visits to heaven, prophecies, etc. Therefore if we want to know what God has already spoken, there is only one place to go - to the Bible. And if we want to do what Jesus has commanded, we do the Bible.

Therefore, to say that Jesus is continuing to speak to people, giving new "revelation" that is not already set out in the Bible, is to twist the Word of God to say something that it does not say. There is a vast difference between "has spoken" and "is speaking".

What this means is that most, if not all the "this is what the Lord is saying" type prophecies are mainly false, and the speaker is taking the Lord's name in vain - a very serious and salvation threatening sin if not repented of.