What Is Infallibility and What Does It Mean for Us?

In hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began. (Titus 1:2)

Today’s big question: what is infallibility, and what does it mean for us?

Good parents are constantly concerned about the influences their children come under. I remember my parents always asking me about my friends, what I was learning at school, and being interested in the music I wanted to listen to or the movies I wanted to watch. Everyone is subject to some kind of peer pressure or other influence—and while children are particularly vulnerable, we should never discount the influences we face in adult life as well.

Many of us are open to particular influences in our lives. I know that there are particular Bible teachers that I love to listen to, and it would be hard to say that I am not influenced by them. Sadly, many American adults are persuaded by the new age philosophies or the secular psychology of popular figures in the media—even the philosophies of today’s outspoken atheists.

Yet either extreme—an atheist or someone we deem to be a good Bible teacher—they all have one thing in common as human beings: the ability to mislead and the ability to be misled. We are, after all, human.

There is a great difference with God, however, and it is beautifully displayed in Titus 1:2. God cannot lie. Our hope is secure in a glorious eternity with the Creator because God has promised it, and God cannot lie (John 3:16). It is not even that God won’t lie, or that He does not want to lie, but that He cannot lie. This is the same God who gave us His Word, the Bible. Furthermore, God’s revelation is no lie since God cannot lie.

God’s Word also makes it clear that God is all-powerful (e.g., Jeremiah 32:27), all-knowing (e.g., Psalm 139:2) and ever-present (e.g., Revelation 22:13). We can know there is no power greater than God (Hebrews 6:13), no one more knowledgeable than God, and no one who has been before God or will come after. God cannot err.

Therefore, God cannot mislead or be misled. This is a great comfort of Scripture. This is a great hope of Scripture. We can be sure of scriptural promises and truth, and we can be sure of the hope we have in eternity because of our infallible God and His infallible Word.

Today’s big idea: the infallibility of Scripture is cause for sure and confident hope for every Christian.

What to pray: thank God that there really is none like Him.