Tag: Jesus Christ

The real truth about human nature

The all-knowing Creator who made humankind “in his image” is the one – the only one – capable of telling us who we really are as human beings. Of course, there are billions of different versions of humans throughout the globe; yet there is a commonality to our humanity that our Creator knows well. His kind wisdom gives us the vital indications we need in order to understand ourselves truly.

These indications, revealed in the Bible, were well grasped by the great French thinker Blaise Pascal, and his “thoughts” are very illuminating on this theme.  He calls people to “know… what a paradox you are to yourself. Be humble, impotent reason! Be silent, feeble nature! Learn that man infinitely transcends man, hear from your master your true condition, which is unknown to you. Listen to God. Is it not clear that man’s condition is dual?” 

Pascal encourages humility, which means to consider ourselves according to truth. Pride is considering ourselves as better than we are. Discouragement comes from considering ourselves as worse than we are. Humility strikes the balance, seeking both to assess and to accept the true reality of who we are. And Pascal’s profound insight is to recognise that this our human reality is “dual”. There are two essential sides to our human nature.

 “There are two equally constant truths”, writes Pascal: “one is that man in the state of his creation, or in the state of grace, is exalted above the whole of nature, made like unto God and sharing in his divinity. The other is that in the state of corruption and sin he has fallen from that first state and has become like the beasts. These two propositions,” he concludes, “are equally firm and certain” (Pensée §131/434). It is wisdom for us to recognise both these aspects of our human nature.

Realising how our self-image impacts our mental health, Pascal comments further, “It is dangerous to explain to man how like he is to the animals without pointing out his greatness. It is also dangerous to make too much of his greatness without his vileness. It is still more dangerous to leave him in ignorance of both, but it is most valuable to represent both to him” (Pensée §121/418). So we really need to take on board both features of our reality – our nobleness and our vileness. We are great – the greatest of God’s creation, made in the likeness of God; yet we are perverted, twisted, fallen from our pristine glory. And that is true of you as it is true of me.

A final more amusing thought from Blaise Pascal: “Man is neither angel nor beast, and it is unfortunately the case that anyone trying to act the angel acts the beast”! (Pensée 678/358) He would thus pinprick the bubble of our pride. We are both wonderful, yet wicked; both marvellous and malevolent; both glorious in humanity’s origin and yet tragically fallen from such grace.

So what can we do with this vital double assessment? Realise, first of all, that God does not love you because he finds you perfect, but he loves you in his grace despite your sinfulness. Secondly, when we invite our Saviour, Christ, to come and dwell in our hearts by faith, the Holy Spirit progressively develops within us the desire to overcome our sins and to grow in Christ-likeness. The biblical Christian is encouraged to “put off the old self which… is corrupt through deceitful desires, and put on the new self, remade in the likeness of God in righteousness and holiness” (Ephesians 4.22-24).

Clive Every-Clayton

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Who am I really?

A great thinker of the 20th century, Francis A. Schaeffer, summed up man’s situation thus: “The dilemma of modern man is simple: he simply doesn’t know why man has any meaning. He is lost. Man remains a zero. It is the damnation of our generation. If a man cannot find any meaning for himself, that is his problem”. 

The difficulty was compounded by Jean-Paul Sartre’s insistence that we have to create our own meaning, which contributed to confusion in the search for self-understanding and later to the supposed possibility of inventing one’s identity. The problem with that is we are simply not able to invent ourselves; rather, from the very moment of our birth, we exist as “given”; the wisdom of the serenity prayer counsels that while we should change what ought to be changed, we must accept what cannot be changed. 

We first have to reckon that we come from somewhere; we have a back story. We cannot abolish the past – our past. We are caught in existence at this moment in history.

If we want to re-invent ourselves, we find we drag our past with us and we can never be dissociated from it. Rather, as we seek to understand ourselves properly, we need light to guide us, truth to correct us where we’ve gone wrong. “Know thyself” is not a banal piece of advice: it is of the essence of our happiness and our survival. But that means we have to assess ourselves as we are, as objectively as we can (which is not easy when we are the subject). We have to assess judiciously how other people consider us: we all know how their opinions can do much harm in damaging our self-esteem, and how sometimes their praise does us much good, boosting our morale. In fact, unknown to our own hearts, what we really need is for someone who knows us truly and who loves us dearly, who can tell us who we are, why we are here and what the meaning is to our existence. That person exists! We must listen to him! 

(continued in next blog)

Clive Every-Clayton

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My spiritual birthday

This week I celebrate my spiritual birthday. “What,” you may ask, “is a ‘spiritual birthday’”? The idea comes from one of Jesus’ vital but rather obscure teachings. The Son of God declared categorically: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3.3).

One has to admit, it’s not obvious what Jesus was meaning, and his interlocutor responded with incredulity: “How can a man be born when he is old?” Jesus went on to explain he was speaking of a spiritual birth, the beginning of a new spiritual life in a person’s heart. Elsewhere in the Gospel it is called being “born of God” – born anew as God’s child when God grants new life to a human soul. 

In John’s Gospel (1.10-13) it says that when Jesus came into the world, there were many who did not recognise him nor welcome him; but “to all who did receive Jesus, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God”. That is an amazing blessing, but the passage adds that those who believe in Jesus and receive him by faith as their Lord and Saviour are “born of God”.
What does that mean? Let me back up a little first. When a baby is born, all the family rejoices: it receives a human life which will go on to develop as he or she grows. Yet when it matures, albeit marvellously endowed, it becomes evident that there is selfishness and unkindness when bad attitudes and actions become visible in its life. In biblical terms, it is born with a sinful disposition that produces behaviour that is sometimes aberrant.

Human experience testifies that however hard we try, we cannot efface this sinful tendency from within us. That’s why the Bible says we are all “sinners”: we all know what it is to have a guilty conscience; no-one is perfect.

What can change us? Well, Jesus proposes giving us a renewed Christian life by a new spiritual birth. He means that his own Holy Spirit will make us born again. As the text above states, this is for those who believe in Jesus and who receive him as Lord and Saviour. This new birth occurs as people turn away from sin, trust in Jesus, and commit to following and obey him.

The day I was born again, it was Easter Sunday; I had heard a preacher explain that when Jesus died on Good Friday, he took on himself, out of compassion for the likes of lost sinners like me, all my faults and all their punishment. He suffered in my place; he died the death that was the “wages of sin” for my disobedience. He did it because he loved me; and now, alive and risen from the dead, he called me to receive him as my personal Saviour, to forgive me, to change me, to come and give me new life, to come and live in me by his Holy Spirit. So I prayed and committed my life to Christ.

Thus was I “born again”: in the weeks that followed I developed a relationship with Jesus as my best and closest friend, my helper to enable me to overcome the temptations that were on my path, and to put away various sinful attitudes and habits.

I cannot more strongly encourage all my readers to do the same. Become a “born again Christian” – that’s the kind of Christian Jesus wants and he will give you that new life if you ask him.

Clive Every-Clayton

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The “endarkenment”

In the Middle Ages, proud intellectual philosophers dared to think that they could find the answers to questions about the meaning of life, the universe, and everything while rejecting the prevailing biblical consensus of the time. That period was called the “Enlightenment”.

After several centuries of intellectual effort the result is one of confusion, humiliation, and the recognition of failure. Having abandoned the wisdom of Jesus who declared that he was “the Light of the world”, philosophers who hoped for enlightenment by their own rational powers ended up plunging the world into hopeless darkness; I call this the “endarkenment”.

The truth is that only the Creator of the whole universe who placed on earth human beings made in his image – only he can enlighten our darkness. “God says: It is I who have made you and I alone can teach you what you are” (Pascal). 

The true enlightenment came when God sent into the world his Son, who proclaimed: “I am the light of the world; whoever follows me shall not walk in darkness but shall have the light of life” (John 8.12). What a claim! The Gospels tell us that he was “the true light which enlightens everyone” (John 1.9). Jesus’ light “shines in the darkness” (John 1.5); but Jesus lamented that “people loved the darkness rather than the light”. Why? Jesus tells us: “because their deeds were evil; for everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed” (John 3.19-20). In other words, Jesus’ light includes moral absolutes; these condemn our sins, and we don’t like that, so we “switch off” the light. That’s why Jesus was rejected and crucified by evil men.

Today, Jesus’ light remains the only ultimate answer to our human predicament, and our refusal to listen to him damns us to remain in our existential darkness.

A powerful passage in the New Testament unveils the deep darkness of our human condition; sadly, we are too proud to envisage its truth. It speaks of all people as “walking in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity” (Ephesians 4.17-19). It takes serious humility to accept such an accurate assessment of our human condition!

Another penetrating and devastating analysis of our human darkness is to be found in the first chapter of Paul’s letter to the Romans. It describes how people “became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools… They exchanged the truth about God for a lie… and… did not see fit to acknowledge God”. Such behaviour brings down God’s holy wrath against us sinners, and the passage shows that an element in that righteous judgment is that God abandons sinful people to their “dishonourable passions”; specifically “women exchanging natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise giving up natural relations with women and being consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error” (v26-27).

In other words, bad thinking leads to bad living. God’s light not only answers our existential questions: it provides moral truth we need, to deliver us from the hellish slippery path of relativistic moral thinking. 

Jesus, however, offers truth and the promise of eternal life.

Clive Every-Clayton

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A better story

I have been busy these last weeks preparing and giving lectures here in the Highlands of Scotland on a better way to conceive of our human reality.

Whether we like it or not, we in the West live in an atmosphere fashioned by a secular mind-set, and through this grid we seek to understand the way people think and behave. Some months ago, certain leading intellectual thinkers, politicians and academics meeting in London insisted that we have not been well served by the modern secular “story” – the worldview beclouding our western society with its morose and unhelpful ideas about our human meaning and value.

These thinkers are proposing a different approach, and although not all would adhere to a religion, there is a basic realisation that without a Transcendent framework, society tends to descend into a kind of hopeless moral relativism that brings on the anguish we see increasingly in the West.

As a Christian, I wholly concur that we need a “better story”, and my lectures have been addressing that need in various areas of our self-understanding. My basic thesis has been that the atheistic materialism underlying the secular story is unhelpful and psychologically damaging. It is a factor contributing to people’s confusion about their human reality, the rise of mental ill health, and the prevailing sense of hopelessness and despair. It is the hidden cause of a lot of the deterioration of our modern society that we have been sadly witnessing these last fifty years or more. 

Why is the materialist-atheist scenario so harmful? Because it proclaims that we all have come ultimately from an impersonal beginning – an immense explosion of energy and matter which, over billions of years, instead of obeying the second law of thermodynamics and deteriorating progressively into total disorder, has somehow managed – by some unaided process – to actually bring about the world we see around us with all its life, variety, beauty, and splendour. The essential blind spot of this “story” is its absence of any original personal Creator as the valorising ground of our human personality.

Dr Francis Schaeffer discerned this years ago, when, commenting on the thesis that “man is the product of the impersonal, plus time plus chance”, he wrote: “no-one has succeeded in finding personality on that basis, though many have tried. It cannot be done”.

This means that if you begin by adopting the atheistic materialist explanation of the origin of all things in an impersonal explosion of matter and energy, there is no way you are going to be able to establish the reality of human personality. That first assumption leads inexorably to an understanding of the human condition which cannot account for – and indeed undermines – all the marvellous enjoyable realities of our personal existence: our intelligence and rationality, our emotional nature, the reality of love, freedom to choose and to exercise our own will, our ability to communicate, and our moral sensitivity. All these much appreciated aspects of our personal lives have no real basis following the story told by secular materialism; it contradicts our well-known reality and would undermine our true personhood. This makes evident the falseness of that story: we know that our personal faculties are real and precious, so any explanation that cannot account for them must be wrong. 

Instead of assumptions that do not explain in positive terms who and what we are – but rather confuse us – what a relief to turn to the “better story” that an infinite and personal Creator made humankind in his image; that both valorises us and truly explains who we really are.

Clive Every-Clayton

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What’s good about Good Friday?

Jesus told us to repent and to believe the “Good News” (which is what the word “Gospel” means). But we may well ask, what’s so good about this Good News? And why at Easter do we celebrate the day Jesus suffered the awful agony of his crucifixion, as “Good Friday”?

Jesus’ coming into the world should be seen as the greatest act of kindness possible for our holy Creator who is also our loving Saviour. Why? Because instead of intervening in human history to bring cataclysmic judgment for human sins, he came, Jesus affirmed, “to seek and save the lost” (Luke 19.10). 

Now anyone with a sensitive conscience can see two things: they are not perfectly righteous, but rather guilty of many sins; and that before a holy and righteous divine Judge, they cannot say they have been so good as to deserve heaven. So facing the coming of the divine Son of God is a fearful prospect. Yet when Jesus did come into the world, he said, “I came not to judge the world but to save the world” (John 12.47).

In the Bible we read these astounding words with a universal scope: “This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners” (1 Timothy 1.15). I had to acknowledge that I was a sinner in God’s sight; but as I did so, I realised that therefore Jesus came into the world to save me. (And you can have the same assurance).

Jesus’ way of saving sinners can be considered in two stages: first of all, our sin has to be paid for, for we are guilty in God’s eyes. But the only way we can pay is in hell for ever – that’s what our sins deserve. But Jesus came in order to pay for our sins. He did this by suffering our hell, condensed in his infinite person as he suffered on the cross. The God-forsakenness of hell is what Jesus suffered as well as the physical horror of crucifixion, for as he bore our sin, he cried out, “My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?”

We cannot fathom the depth of what Jesus suffered, but the Bible sums it up: “He bore our sins in his body on the cross… Christ suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, so that he might bring us to God” (1 Peter 2.24, 3.18). Without our just punishment being borne out of love by our saviour, we could never be justly forgiven. That’s why Good Friday was Good News!

But then, to be forgiven and saved, every individual must appropriate it for themselves. It is not automatically given to everyone. The way to receive it is to repent (see previous blog) and to “receive Christ” as your personal Lord and Saviour. That’s what “believing in Christ” really means: not just believing that he existed, or that he came from God, though that is essential. But also believing that Jesus’ death on the cross paid for your salvation and that he rose from the tomb, showing God’s full approval of his saving work; and then coming in prayer to Jesus to ask him, “Come into my life and be my Lord and Saviour; I thank you for loving me so much as to die for my salvation; in return I will follow you and live for you and grow in faith to love and trust you more and more as I read your word”. You may count on Jesus to answer that prayer as you commit yourself sincerely to him.

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How does God feel…

What do you think passes through the mind of God as he looks down on his world and us, the human creatures he gives life to? Is it sorrow, seeing how we neglect him so much? Is it eager desire to intervene and put things right? Is it holy anger at the horrible deeds so many of us do? Or may it be complacency, suffering long over our moral madness but still managing to smile? Or compassion, looking forward to the time when he would come to our aid?

How would he desire to improve things? By cataclysmic judgments to bring us in repentance to his footstool? By tears of love, showing his desire for us to be better and to reform our ways? Or would it be by flattering us with “well-done” and smiling benignly at our efforts? Rather, wouldn’t he seek to gather us together and calm us down long enough for us to pay attention to what he wants to say to us?

At least one thing should be clear in the light of his dealings with human failings in Bible times: His feelings would show his divine love, his pure holiness, and his profound wisdom. He has feelings he would want to convey, he has a judgment he would righteously render, and he has advice that would bring the necessary improvement.

In fact, when he sent his Son Jesus into the world, these were the services he rendered to humanity in those days; and as human nature hasn’t essentially changed over the centuries, we may well listen and learn from the divine wisdom that Jesus brought: it is still there for us to read in the New Testament.

“The time is fulfilled,” was his first big public statement; “the kingdom of God is at hand” – meaning he himself was the King of glory come to open up the Kingdom of God to all believers. Then he gave two vital pieces of advice in succinct bullet-form: “Repent and believe the Gospel, the Good News” (Mark 1.15).

This means that when God looked down on humankind in those days, he saw their need to repent and to hear some good news. I’m sure that as he looks down on our society today, he has the same attitude and would repeat the same message, so let’s think about it.

To “repent” means essentially two things, but both are an appeal to change. To repent is first of all to re-think. Jesus didn’t need to do an in-depth study of the thought forms of his day, quizzing the lecturers on what they were teaching the people. Whatever they were saying, Jesus with his divine insight knew that it was wrong: they hadn’t got it all together. Indeed, they were in darkness and he proclaimed himself to be “the light of the world” (John 8.12). He would bring us truth that we could never grasp without his revelation – and how much we still need that truth!

Secondly, to repent means to change our ways, to quit doing evil things, to turn from sin and start out on a new path, learning to live in righteousness and holiness. How we need that challenge today! 

The false ideas we hold to and the sins we keep committing are the source of our problems; so God wants us to change and calls us to repent.

But there’s “Good News” that God wants us to receive and believe: he’s keen to forgive us and to remake us as we commit ourselves to Christ and to that he calls us too.

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Pride!

Pride is one of the seven deadly sins, but there are two kinds of pride. There is justifiable pride in, say, the successes of a child in studies or sports, or a job well done. But there is the pride that considers oneself above others, that looks down with disdain on what are considered the weaknesses or faults of others, believing in one’s own superiority. That is not a good attitude.

As human beings seek answers to our profound questions, our pride can get in the way of finding the authentic answers we need. We so easily dismiss proposals that call in question our preferred ideas; why? Because we suffer from intellectual pride and we are unwilling to admit we may have got things wrong. 

Why does Jesus call us to be humble and to repent? Because he knows that human pride causes us our own worst problems: it cuts us off from the attitude we should have to enjoy the answers that will give us true fulfilment.

Let me share this gently with you: you will never find the authentic answers you seek unless you humble yourself like a little child and adopt an attitude of openness to receive truth from God himself, brought by Jesus. Otherwise, pride will go before a fall – and a terrible final fall it will be unless there is a change of mind!

Who could ever find a better story, a more desirable vision, a more appropriate worldview? There is nothing to compare with the profound simplicity of the Christian revelation. You will never find anything more life-affirming, love-inspiring, heart-uplifting, soul-stirring, and conscience-cleansing as the message of God’s grace, revealed in his Son, our saviour. We who know the story so well know that nothing can compare with God’s purpose for our lives when we are brought into harmonious relationship with him.

Who could invent anything approaching the sublime profundity and the enriching simplicity of the greatest love-story in the world – the love of Christ for us wayward men and women? The Lord of glory incarnate condescended to be treated on earth by wicked men as the most criminal blasphemer. Why? Because his judges were so blind and proud they couldn’t admit that their judgment on Jesus might be wrong! Jesus humbly came, he said, to serve mankind – and mankind did away with him. Knowing what was going to happen to him, he came “not to be served but to serve and to give his life” to pay the ransom to free us from evil and save us from an eternity in hell. By his horrendous suffering, freely endured on our behalf, he demonstrated unfathomable divine love and compassion for the wicked rebels we were, who deserved his just condemnation. He came to save us from the suffering we deserve, by taking that suffering on himself; only thus could a righteous and just God deliver us from the righteous condemnation that otherwise must fall on us, sinners that we are in his sight.

Where else do you find love like that? Love so amazing, so divine is absolutely unique – and it has been demonstrated once for all in the historic person of Jesus, our Lord and Saviour. And his resurrection proves it must have been of God.

Did you ever realise you were loved like that? Certainly it humbles us to acknowledge our unworthiness and shame; we are so far from deserving love of that kind. Better to humble ourselves and enter into that glorious eternal love relationship that Jesus proposes than to remain proud, stiff-necked, and end up in eternal torment.

Clive Every-Clayton

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A child’s faith

Jesus once declared that unless you become like a child you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. He probably meant we need the humble simplicity of a child who accepts what you tell them without distrust. Their kind of simple childlike faith is what we need to receive God’s message.

In my last blog post I mentioned that the Bible’s message is simple enough for a child to understand, so let me show how this is true by summarising it at a child’s level.

God is an invisible but all-powerful person, and in the beginning he made everything that exists. He made the stars, the mountains, the oceans, the trees, and the animals, and he even made angels. 

When he made human beings, he created them to be like himself, able to talk to him, and he loved them and placed them in a wonderful garden. But one of the angels rebelled against God and he became the devil. He came into the garden of God and tempted the first woman, Eve, and her husband Adam. God had told them they could eat from any fruit tree in the garden except one, but the wicked devil encouraged them to eat it, and they disobeyed God’s order. They followed the devil’s ideas instead of God’s wise instructions for them. They had been perfectly good, made like God in goodness and love, but now they became bad and they were punished by being expelled from the garden where they had been in harmony with God.

From then on, all their children and grandchildren were born with an unfortunate twist in their nature; instead of being perfectly good as they were at the beginning, they now had evil thoughts and desires. This explains why we are all a mixture of good and bad, and the bad is called sin: we were created good at the beginning, but became capable of committing sins too. 

Our problem is that God says he will judge us all according to what we have done, and his punishment will come after we die. It is therefore very important to be forgiven of the wrong things we have done, and God wants to forgive us. He wants so much to have us back in harmony with him that he sent from heaven his own dear Son, Jesus, who was born as a baby like us, but he was without any sin. He told us about God his Father in heaven and he told us how we should live a good happy life. But he knew that we all do wrong things, and that we deserve to be punished. As God is the judge of everyone, he must punish sins, but in order to take away our sin and forgive us, Jesus made a difficult decision: he would bear our punishment in our place. That way God would be able lovingly to forgive us freely, without us needing to try to deserve his love by our good deeds.

That was why Jesus let himself be crucified; he died on the cross, but three days later, his Father God raised him from the dead – as much as to say, he was pleased with what Jesus had done.

Jesus taught us the way to a truly good and happy life: it begins by being forgiven, and God forgives those who turn away from sin and who ask Jesus to come into their hearts to live in them and make them good Christians. This is the most important thing you could ever do and it brings new life, eternal life.

Clive Every-Clayton

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What is authentic Christianity?

It appears there are a number of versions of Christianity throughout the world, and it is legitimate to ask which, if any, is the authentic version. Let me begin by saying there is no such thing as a Christian country: while there are countries with a sizeable proportion of Christians, in every society non-believers outnumber the Christians so the moral ethos of a country is never as an ideal Christian society would look like. One should not judge Christianity as evil simply because so-called Christian countries exhibit a very evil and un-Christian lifestyle. The Christians in such countries are the first to lament such ungodliness.

While there are various forms of ecclesiastic organisation (Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox…) each with its own traditions and customs, they all are based on the incarnation of God in the person of Jesus Christ. His historic life, amazing miracles, profound teaching, his ultimate death, resurrection and ascension to heaven are the essential elements of the faith of all Christian churches. These basic facts are recounted in the Bible.

Now the Bible is an extraordinary book, written over a thousand years by about 40 writers, all inspired by the same Holy Spirit of God. While the basic message of the Bible can be understood by a child, it is a long book and contains some passages hard to understand. So the question of how to interpret the Bible has given rise in church history to three different approaches to Christian truth, each following one of three “authorities”.

Some have a great respect for the longstanding customs of their church and are trained to revere those traditions as authoritative. This is notably the position of the Roman Catholic Church, one of whose traditions is to believe in the infallibility of its world-wide leader, the Pope, and another is to honour all the traditional positions raised to the level of official teachings of the Church. In practice, this unfortunately submits the authority of the Bible to the official tradition of the Catholic Church leaders who alone can interpret it. 

All churches have theologians whose task is to study and teach the Bible. In certain church groups, however, some erudite theologians fall into a subtle temptation, holding themselves to be wiser than the Bible. When they believe that by their human thinking they can correct the Bible, adjusting its teaching according to their personal opinions, their work becomes illegitimate. The problem is that human reason ousts the Bible itself as the ultimate authority for Christian faith and life. 

During the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century, the reformers, Martin Luther and John Calvin, saw these two approaches as calculated to undermine the absolute authority of the Bible itself; they understood the Bible as God’s divine word, as did Jesus himself who treated the Bible of his day (our Old Testament) as authoritative for all questions of faith, life, and doctrine. The reformers insisted therefore that the source of authority for Christian truth must be neither the Pope nor tradition, nor human reason, but the Bible itself. They encouraged all Christians to read the Bible for themselves, so that by comparing hard passages with those clearer they would understand God’s Word. The Reformers saw that maintaining the Bible as the supreme authority was the way to faithfully follow Jesus’ example. 

Authentic Christianity is therefore that which shows most love, reverence, and whole-hearted trust in the Bible’s truth, which makes every effort to study it, to understand and teach it faithfully, and which applies it in personal faith and life, submitting to the authority of its commandments.

Clive Every-Clayton

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