Dikaios1517 on Nostr: Ok, I am going to walk through this, because you seem to be completely missing what I ...

Ok, I am going to walk through this, because you seem to be completely missing what I am saying.

I am NOT saying that the Scriptures ARE God, nor ought we worship Scripture. Our reverence for Scripture ought to be entirely based on our reverence toward God who gave it through the prophets and apostles he inspired to commit it to writing.

That said, the Scripture does not merely point to him. They do point to him, but that is not all. Any human writing may point to Christ, and do so fallibly and imperfectly. The Scriptures, however, are the very Word of God, his infallible and inerrant revelation of himself and his will for us. We see this clearly taught in Scripture itself:

2 Timothy 3:16 - "ALL SCRIPTURE is given by inspiration of God (literally "God-breathed"), and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness." (Caps emphasis mine.)

Psalm 12:6-7 - "The words of the LORD are pure words, like silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. You shall keep them, O LORD, You shall preserve them from this generation forever."

God has preserved his Word in Scripture, and it is the only infallible rule of faith and life. We cannot know God rightly except through his revealed Word.

The Scriptures, therefore, are our highest authority until Christ returns. Yes, Christ is absolutely the center of all things and the one we should worship as our only Savior and Lord, not the Scriptures. Yet, we cannot know Christ apart from the Word. God determined to reveal Christ and the message of the gospel, that salvation is to be found through him alone, by inspiring specially called men to write it down.

Therefore, when Scripture says something, it must not be ignored or treated as a lesser authority than God himself, because it is God who breathed out those words. When Scripture speaks, it is with the same authority as if God himself was speaking audibly.

This is no different from a king dictating a letter to be sent out as a proclamation to his people, and affixing his seal to it. Because the words are his words and it bears his seal, the proclamation is to be considered of the same authority as though the king himself had come and delivered it as a speech. The letter containing his proclamation is not the king, nor should the letter be shown the honor that only the king is due, but its message is treated with the same authority as the king, because it is his word.

So when God inspired Paul to refer to himself as the foremost of sinners, we cannot treat God's words through Paul as any less authoritative as Christ's words. To do so, or worse, to suggest that we should ignore what Paul said, would be to deny that the Pauline epistles are the infallible and inerrant Word of God.

You cannot deny that it is proper for Christians to continue to consider themselves as sinners after their conversion, without simultaneously saying that Paul was wrong to call himself a sinner. If you are stating that Paul was wrong to call himself a sinner, then you are stating that the words of Paul in 1 Timothy are not inerrant. You are left with three options at that point: First, that Scripture is not inerrant, but contains various errors. Second, that 1 Timothy is not Scripture. Or finally, that you are wrong and it is in fact proper for Christians to refer to themselves as sinners.