In an interview with Julia (Stager) Mayo, former EPM staff member, she quotes A. W. Tozer who said, “Nothing less than a whole Bible can make a full Christian.”

We share some thoughts in this video and the following transcript:

Randy:

Great question. I think God has revealed to us what Scripture calls the whole counsel of God. Paul says in Acts 2:27, “for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God.” We’re not to preach just from our favorite portions of the Word, but all of it.

I think that is so critically important. Thomas Jefferson, who was a deist (not a Christian), had a cut and paste Bible. He literally cut out the portions of the Bible he liked and pasted them into a book. It became kind of the Thomas Jefferson Bible.

Without actually doing that physically, that’s what a lot of us end up doing in practice. We take those portions we like, such as all the portions about God’s love, eternal life, being happy and all these kinds of things, and leave out the irritating or disturbing portions—those pesky little things like suffering, eternal hell, accountability and standing before the judgment seat of Christ.

But we need the whole Bible.

Julia:

It’s tempting to just read the parts that we like. But then, like you’re saying Randy, the danger is living this “less than” Christian life. Because if the whole Bible is the whole counsel of God and all of it is truth, then to live based on half the Bible is to live not full of the truth. It’s only basing your life on half of the real truth.

Randy:

I have a lot of verses in my favorite Bible that I have underlined. Every once in a while I make myself look at the verses I haven’t underlined. I ask myself, “Why didn’t I underline that? What truth does God have for me there?”

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