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Clip Art Image: The Holy Bible (Tinted Blue Back)

As believers and as followers of Jesus Christ, we need the refreshing power and wisdom of the Holy Bible, God's Word.  Christian believers have recognized this since the days of the apostles.  In fact, the apostle Paul wrote, in a letter to Timothy (a young man who served as Paul's assistant in Gospel ministry), "...the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.  All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work."  (2 Timothy 3:15-17, NKJV)

Some Christians wonder why we need the Bible, since we already have God's own Holy Spirit living inside.  "After all," they say, "Jesus Himself is the living Word, as John wrote in his Gospel account (Gospel of John, chapter 1).  And the same apostle John also wrote that the special anointing we have by God's Spirit directs us into all truth. (See the letter of 1 John, chapter 2 — before the Book of Revelation near the end of the New Testament.)

The answer is simple. If God's Holy Spirit was all that we had inside of us, then we would be just fine, so far as wisdom and truth are concerned.  God never leads us wrong.  Jesus is truth, and the Holy Spirit of God is perfect in all wisdom and understanding.  But people (even Christian people) are not spirit only.  We are flesh and blood.  The finest and most sincere Christian believer still has a body (including a brain) of flesh and blood.

Paul warns in the book of Galatians that the human nature (our flesh) opposes the things of God, and that the Holy Spirit of God opposes the desires of the old human nature: "I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh.  For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish."  (Galatians 5:16,17 NKJV)

We benefit, then, by having a record of what God has been saying and doing from the beginning.  We know that God's truth will never change.  We have many examples in the Scriptures of what God says is right and good, and what He says is wrong and bad.  This helps us to know what God is doing today.  The New Testament gives very clear teaching on how Christians should live and behave.  We know, then, that God's Spirit will not lead us in ways that are different from what He has shown us in Jesus Christ and in the apostles.

As Paul the apostle wrote to the early believers in Rome, "For whatever things were written before were written for our learning, that we through the patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope." (Romans 15:4, NKJV)