Jesus vs. the Bible (a Very Brief Examination)

As if we needed yet another voice piling on to this age old debate, here I am jumping into the scrum. Might as well, I suppose. And as I am the king of prefacing, allow me to preface by saying that there have been literal tons of literature written on this subject, and I am just putting in my jab and then pulling that time-honored naval maneuver known as, “Getting the heck out of there.” Perhaps a more thorough treatment will come later (because, yes, this is indeed a complex topic).

As If They Disagreed

So there's a tried and true kind of line amongst some corners of evangelicalism. Here’s an example: “When things come down to a statement between Jesus and Paul, I choose Jesus every time. Paul was a flawed sinner. Jesus was the perfect Son of God.”

On the top of it, that might seem pretty hard to counter. And by purely superficial standards, the statement is actually true as far as it goes. What I mean by that, is that if Jesus and Paul were physically standing before you, you would bow the knee to Jesus and not Paul. For that matter, Paul would join you. 

Let’s even take it a step further. Imagine that Paul comes to your house, sits at your dining room table, and starts waxing eloquent on some theological subject — but then, just as he’s polishing up his last run-on sentence, Jesus walks in and says, “Hey, Paul, what you said wasn’t quite right.” In that case, of course you would go with what Jesus says. 

But here is the problem: when, in regard to the Scriptures, people say things like, “I choose Jesus over Paul,” they think that they’re in the situation above, sitting at the dining room table face-to-face with both Paul and Jesus. But that’s not how the Scripture works, at least not by the historic standards of Christian orthodoxy. 

According to those standards, when Paul is writing in his apostolic office under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, Jesus is speaking through those words. Christians have, by and large, believed this all along; just read through the Nicene Creed and you’ll get that picture nice and quick. (Also, remember that Peter said even the Old Testament prophets were carried along by the Spirit of Christ.) 

But lest we say, “You’re letting the apostles testify of their own authority, and that doesn’t work,” take heed: Jesus himself said that his Spirit would speak through the apostles (John 16:13-15). So, if we’re going to take Jesus at his own word, then we’re reading Jesus’ words when we read Paul’s words. That is how orthodox Christianity has understood the witness of Scripture for millennia, and that’s the standard by which churches are called to submit themselves (so say we children of the Reformation). 

The Real Problem

So Paul was a flawed sinner, yes — he even went so far as to say that he was the chief of sinners! But when he authored the letters which we now have in our New Testament, God was the Chief Author working through him. So when we say things like, “I choose Jesus over Paul,” we’re not actually pitting Jesus against Paul; we’re trying to pit Jesus against Jesus. And as Jesus himself once said, a house divided against itself cannot stand. 

So our problem is really not with Paul; our problem is actually with Jesus. Our problem is not primarily with the apostles; our problem is primarily with God. And that, of course, has been the case all along for all people in all places. But thanks be to God, his grace abounds even to us — even to the chief of sinners! And we know about such grace precisely because, through men like Paul, Jesus has told us about it himself. So let us go to him with grateful hearts, submitting ourselves to God as he’s revealed himself, rather than trying to make a god in our own image.