WCF 1.5
As we continue with the confession of our faith, let me ask you one question: How do we know the Bible is the Word of God?

From the previous sections of chapter one, we learned that we have the testimony of the Church throughout the ages; we have testimony from the word itself proclaiming it to be the word of God. Evidence including its perfection, its unity, majesty, authority, its completeness of material found within the Old and New testaments in revealing God, man’s salvation, and its ability to teach us to give all glory to God…

But even with all these evidences, why doesn’t everyone recognize the Bible as the word of God? It is because evidence is one thing but the ability to understand is something else.

1 Corinthians 2:11 No one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. We as Christians have been given the Spirit of God so that we may understand the things freely given us by God. We know that the bible is the word of God because the Holy Spirit works in our minds and hearts so that we might rightly respond to the truth that God has given us. Without the Spirit, man is foolish and unable to discern that which is spiritual.

So how do we know the bible is the infallible and divine word of God? Because the Holy Spirit bears witness to this in our hearts. This is what Chapter 1 section 5 of the Westminster Confession of Faith teach us.

5. We may be moved and induced by the testimony of the church to a high and reverent esteem for the Holy Scripture. The heavenly character of its content, the efficacy of its doctrine, the majesty of its style, the agreement of all its parts, the scope of the whole (which is to give all glory to God), the full disclosure it makes of the only way of man’s salvation, its many other incomparable excellencies, and its entire perfection, are arguments by which it gives abundant evidence that it is the Word of God. Nevertheless, our full persuasion and assurance of its infallible truth and divine authority is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit bearing witness by and with the Word in our hearts.