From time to time in these podcasts we try and think a little together about specific

Christian doctrines. Sometimes the word doctrine is heard as though it were a slightly nasty

word, but it's far too important in the Bible for that to be true. Knowing biblical doctrine

I think is rather like having the architect's drawings for a building. Of course the building

is put up in a building site, but if you don't have the architect's drawings, you don't

know what you're building and you're not going to be very successful in building it.

And if you've got bad drawings, the building is going to be faulty. And the same is true

in the Christian life. There's a very close relationship between our understanding of Christian

doctrine and the way we live the Christian life. I know people often say doctrine divides,

experience, unites. But actually if you think about it that's not only far from the truth that's

almost the reverse of the truth. The reality is that true doctrine unites and the New Testament

itself teaches us that. And actually when you think about it, in order to describe your

experience, your spiritual experience, you need to use words. You're describing your spiritual

experience in doctrinal terms. So doctrine is important. And I want to think first of all

today about what do we think about the doctrine of the Bible?

I remember years and years ago I was reading a document called the Scott's Confession. It was

written in 1560 and you'll know the name of at least one of the authors. If you need a clue to

guess his name, here's an unusual one. There were six authors and they all had the Christian name

John. John Wynram, John Spotyswood, John Willock, John Douglas, John Roll, and John, yes, John Knox.

For essentially this confession was a kind of guiding light to Scottish Christians pointing

them to Christ and the faith once delivered to the saints. And in the introduction to it,

this is what struck me. Knox and his friends wrote that if anyone found anything in the confession

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