All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. 2 Timothy 3:16-17
“Again, God needs no defenders. He is the eternal Undefended. To communicate with us in all idiom we can understand, God in the Scriptures makes full use of military terms; but surely it was never intended that we should think of the throne of the Majesty on high as being under siege, with Michael and his hosts or some other heavenly beings defending it from stormy overthrow. So to think is to misunderstand everything the Bible would tell us about God. Neither Judaism nor Christianity could approve such puerile notions. A God who must be defended is one who can help us only while someone is helping Him. We may count upon Him only if He wins in the cosmic seesaw battle between right and wrong. Such a God could not command the respect of intelligent men; He could only excite their pity.
To be right we must think worthily of God. It is morally imperative that we purge from our minds all ignoble concepts of the Deity and let Him be the God in our minds that He is in His universe. The Christian religion has to do with God and man, but its focal point is God, not man. Man’s only claim to importance is that he was created in the divine image; in himself he is nothing. The psalmists and prophets of the Scriptures refer sad scorn to weak man whose breath is in his nostrils, who grows up like the grass in the morning only to be cut down and wither before the setting of the sun. That God exists for himself and man for the glory of God is the emphatic teaching of the Bible. The high honor of God is first in heaven as it must yet be in earth.”
A. W. Tozer (1897-1963) in Knowledge of the Holy, 26-27. Click here to download it freely.
Our Bible passage today tells us that Scripture is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness. In plain terms, it teaches us how to live rightly.
Yesterday, A. W. Tozer taught us that God needs no help or helpers. Today, he adds that God needs no defenders. This stood out to me in my reading because I am at a conference with biblical scholars from around the world.
God has tasked us as biblical scholars to help people understand Scripture, to do research, to deliver papers, and to write commentaries in order to help His people know how to live and to equip them to teach, rebuke, correct, and train others in righteousness.
So to say God needs no defenders for me this week means that I speak truth in love not to defend God but help people understand and know Him and show this by making sure my actions match my words.
You can do that where you are too, and it comes into view as the most generous thing you can do! Practically speaking, you study the Scriptures which train you how to live and then show and tell people about the life-giving way of Jesus.