I strongly defend the Reformed doctrine of the
sufficiency of Scripture. But the Reformers saw no difficulty in affirming both
the sufficiency of Scripture and the necessity of the Spirit’s testimony. They
made it clear (for even in their time there were misunderstandings in this
area) that the Spirit’s testimony was not a new revelation; rather, the Spirit’s
work was to illumine and confirm the revelation already given. In Scripture,
the Spirit’s testimony is to Christ (John 14:26; 15:26; 16:9f., 13ff.) and to
the Word of God (1 Cor. 2:4; 1 Thess. 1:5). The Spirit witnesses that the Word
is true, but the Word already has told us that!
Still, Scripture is not reluctant to describe this
work as a work of revelation (Matt. 11:25f.; Eph. 1:17). It is revelation in
the sense that through the Spirit’s ministry, we are learning something to
which we would otherwise be ignorant; we are learning the Word of God. Or, put differently,
we are being “persuaded,” “noetically regenerated and sanctified,” “brought to
cognitive rest.” We are being given a “godly sense of satisfaction.”
The Spirit’s work also helps us to use and
to apply the Word. Obviously, the Spirit cannot assure us of the truth
of Scripture unless He also teaches us its meaning. And the meaning, as we have
seen, includes the applications. We can see this in 2 Samuel 11 and 12 where David
sinned against God by committing adultery with Bathsheba and by sending her
husband, Uriah, to death. Here, David, the “man after God’s own heart,” seemed
trapped in a peculiar spiritual blindness. What happened to David? In one
sense, he knew Scripture perfectly well; he mediated on God’s law day and
night. And he was not ignorant about the facts of the case. Yet he was not
convicted of sin. But Nathan the prophet came to him and spoke God’s Word. He
did not immediately rebuke David directly; he told a parable—a story that made
David angry at someone else. Then Nathan told David, “You are the man>” At
that point, David repented of his sin.
What had David learned at that point? He already
knew God’s law, and, in a sense, he already knew the facts. What he learned was
an application—what the law said about him. Previously, he may have
rationalized something like this: “Kings of the earth have a right to take
whatever women they want; and the commander-in-chief has the right to decide
who fights on the front line. Therefore my relation with Bathsheba was not really
adultery, and my order to Uriah was not really murder.” We all know how
that works; we’ve done it ourselves. But what the Spirit did, through Nathan,
was to take that rationalization away.
Thus David came to call his actions by their right
names: sin, adultery, murder. He came to read his own life in terms of the
biblical concepts. He came to see his “relationship” as adultery and his
”executive order” as murder. He learned to “see as.” . . . Much of the
Spirit’s work in our lives is of this nature—assuring us that Scripture applies
to our lives in particular ways. The Spirit does not add to the canon, but His
work is really a work of teaching, of revelation. Without that revelation, we
could make no use of Scripture at all; it would be a dead letter to us.
Thus in one sense, the Spirit adds nothing; in another
sense, He adds everything. When we are asked to justify our Christian beliefs,
we point not to the Spirit but to the Word, for it is the Word that states
the justification. But apart from the Spirit, we would have no knowledge of
that justification. And it often becomes important, in justifying beliefs, (1)
to give evidence of our own spiritual maturity and thus to indicate our
spiritual qualifications for making the statements we make, and (2) to state
our justification in a properly artful way to help the other person to see
the truth as we do. (John M. Frame, The Doctrine of the Knowledge of
God [A Theology of Lordship; Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian and Reformed,
1987], 156-57, 158)
