God's Word is flawlessly pure. You don't need to add a thing to it.
Proverbs 30:5–6 (NIV)
5 “Every word of God is flawless;
he is a shield to those who take refuge in him.
6 Do not add to his words,
or he will rebuke you and prove you a liar.
Listen to passage & devotional:
Belgic Confession of Faith, Article 5: The Authority of Scripture
We receive all these books [of the Bible]
and these only
as holy and canonical,
for the regulating, founding, and establishing
of our faith.
And we believe
without a doubt
all things contained in them—
not so much because the church
receives and approves them as such
but above all because the Holy Spirit
testifies in our hearts
that they are from God,
and also because they prove themselves
to be from God.
For even the blind themselves are able to see
that the things predicted in them
do happen.
Summary
You've probably been to a place where seemingly expensive gold jewelry was being sold at amazingly low prices. But after only a few days of wearing your beautiful new bargain, the luster began to wear off, and maybe even your skin gained a greenish hue where the cheap bracelet, ring or necklace rubbed against it. The deal that was too good to be true wasn't true; instead you got a lousy knockoff with a microscopically thin outer layer of gold covering a low quality filler metal.
The Proverbs here use a word to describe the Bible here borrowed from the world of metallurgy: God's Word is flawless / pure. It's not cheap metal made to look precious, rather it's 100% genuine through and through.
Flawless metal has value beyond jewelry. Going into battle, a soldier's shield was his primary defense. His life depended on the purity of its metal. So it is with God's Word. It can be completely trusted as "a shield to those who take refuge in Him."
Dig Deeper
One of the primary tenets of Christianity is that the Bible is completely truthful. We use two words to describe the Bible as such. We say that it's infallible, in that it does not fail to communicate God's truth, especially the salvation that He offers through Jesus Christ. More importantly, we say that the Bible is inerrant, basing our claim on several passages like today's passage from Proverbs which refer to God's Word as "flawless" or "pure." You can completely trust each word you read as absolute truth.
It's easy to see how taking away from God's Word is wrong. Just ignoring what's been written doesn't change the truthfulness of what God has said. But we're far more prone to "add to His words," which is why the Proverb so sternly warns us against it.
Eve added to the command God had given Adam when she answered the serpent in Genesis 3:3. The Israelites added to God's Word by casting a golden calf and worshipping it as God. The Galatians added to the gospel by saying that ceremonial laws needed to be kept in addition to faith in Jesus. The noetic effect of sin tempts us to add to God's Word far more often than it tempts us to take away from it.
You're bombarded by good intentioned efforts to add to God's Word: to magnify God's love over and against His wrath for sin, or to say that activities the inspired biblical writers said happened were just a myth, or things they defined as sin really aren't, because we're so much smarter about things now than they were then.
Don't fall into this trap! Know that you can stand firm on the flawless, pure foundation of God's inerrant, infallible Word.
ACKNOWLEDGE WHO GOD IS: Our Father, whose Word, is flawless and pure;
ALIGN YOUR LIFE WITH GOD'S WILL: Pray for the faith to stand firmly upon this truth, without taking away from it or adding to it;
ASK GOD FOR WHAT YOU NEED:
Read the New Testament in a year! Today: Acts 14
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