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There are many things that we might say to help doubting Christians, or skeptical non-Christians, trust the Bible. We could note that the person of Jesus Christ is mentioned several times outside the Bible, including in Roman sources such as Suetonius, Tacitus, and Pliny the Younger and in Jewish sources like Josephus and the Talmud. We could talk about archaeological evidence from the past half-century that has demonstrated the existence of Pontius Pilate, the Pool of Siloam, and the town of Geresa on the Sea of Galilee. We could talk about the manuscript evidence for the text of the Bible, which is by leaps and bounds better than anything we have for any other ancient book.
All these are worthwhile avenues to explore when it comes to examining the trustworthiness of the Bible. But I want to take a different and simpler route. I want to examine what Jesus thought about the Bible. Granted, citing the Bible will not prove to skeptics that the Bible is trustworthy. The authority of Scripture is ultimately a matter of the inner testimony of the Holy Spirit and the supernatural work of God whereby the sheep hear the voice of their Shepherd in the Scriptures. And yet we can prove that if, on any level, we trust Jesus, then we must believe in the trustworthiness of the Bible. Consider four passages that highlight how Jesus viewed the Scriptures.
Matthew 5:17–19. Here in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus announces that He did not come to abolish one iota or one dot from the Law or the Prophets. That Jesus mentions these small written marks tells us that He is thinking of written Scripture. You can just as easily set aside something from the Word of God as you can get rid of heaven and earth.
Matthew 12:38–42. In arguing with the scribes and Pharisees, Jesus references the story of Jonah as true history. Jesus is not merely citing a piece of literature. The men of Nineveh cannot rise up in judgment on the last day if they are mere fictional characters. Throughout the Gospels, Jesus treats biblical characters and biblical history—from Abel and Noah and Abraham to Elijah and Elisha and the widow of Zarephath—as real people engaged in real historical events.
Matthew 19:4–5. Jesus quotes from Genesis 2 as to what “he who created them . . . said.” The passage from Genesis 2 does not include a direct quote from God. But that doesn’t matter for Jesus. The fact that He is quoting from the Bible means that He is quoting God. For Jesus, what the Bible says, God says.
John 10:35. Here Jesus states matter-of-factly that the “Scripture cannot be broken.” Jesus is arguing about one word in Psalm 82. He’s not citing the exodus story or some famous verse in the Old Testament. He is referring to one word in an obscure psalm. And yet Jesus believes—and can state without fear of being opposed by any serious Jew—that no word in the Scriptures can possibly be broken. Jesus is teaching—or better, He’s assuming what everyone already knew—that nothing taught in the Bible can be set aside, nullified, or annulled.
How should we think about the Bible? Surely, the only appropriate response for Christians is that we believe about our Bibles what Jesus believed about His Bible. Jesus affirmed every bit of law, prophecy, narrative, and poetry in the Scriptures. He shuddered to think of anyone overturning, rejecting, or disbelieving any portion of the Scriptures. He gladly embraced the authority and inspiration of the Scriptures down to the sentences, to the phrases, to the words, to the smallest letter, to the tiniest speck. Jesus accepted the chronology and miracles and history of the Bible as straightforward facts.
There is no doubt that Jesus believed in the total trustworthiness of the Scriptures—in every detail and in every truth that it means to affirm. And if Jesus trusted the Bible, who are we to think otherwise?