God's Closed System: The Sufficiency of Scripture Text: Deuteronomy 12:32
Introduction: The War for Authority
We live in an age of cosmic tinkering. Every man has his own soldering iron, and he believes it is his divine right to pop open the back of God's ordered universe and start messing with the wiring. Our generation is defined by its rebellion against fixed definitions, against revealed boundaries, against any and all authority that originates outside the self. The modern man wants to be his own god, which means he wants to be his own lawgiver. He wants to edit the terms of service for reality. He wants to take God's Word, which is a sharp, two-edged sword, and use it like a lump of modeling clay.
He adds to it when it suits him, inventing new sins for his political opponents and new sacraments for his own tribe. He subtracts from it when it offends him, tearing out pages that speak of judgment, hellfire, or the created order of male and female. The result is not a more compassionate or enlightened faith, but a bespoke religion, custom-fitted to the contours of one's own sin. It is a god created in our own image, a pathetic idol that cannot speak, cannot save, and cannot judge.
Into this chaotic workshop of autonomous man, Moses speaks a word of shattering clarity. The context is worship. God has just commanded Israel to utterly demolish the pagan altars, pillars, and groves. The Canaanites had a very creative, open-source approach to religion. They would worship any god, on any hill, under any green tree, with any detestable practice that came to mind, including the burning of their own children. Their worship was an expression of their depraved imaginations. God's response is absolute. He says, in effect, "You will not do that. You will not worship Me the way they worship their gods. You will not worship Me in the way that seems right to you. You will worship Me only in the place I choose and only in the way I command."
This brings us to our text. This verse is not a dusty regulation for an ancient cult. It is the foundation of Sola Scriptura. It is the bedrock of what the Reformers would later call the Regulative Principle of Worship. It is God building a fence around His Word and His worship, not to keep us out, but to protect us from the ravenous wolves of human autonomy and demonic religion. This is God's closed system, perfect and complete. To add to it is arrogance; to subtract from it is rebellion.
The Text
"Whatever I am commanding you, you shall be careful to do; you shall not add to nor take away from it."
(Deuteronomy 12:32 LSB)
A Closed Canon and a Complete Command (v. 32a)
The first part of the command establishes the total scope of God's authority.
"Whatever I am commanding you, you shall be careful to do..." (Deuteronomy 12:32a)
The word "whatever" is all-encompassing. It leaves no room for loopholes, no space for personal exemptions. God's commands are not a buffet from which we can pick and choose. We are not religious consumers browsing the aisles of revelation for what appeals to us. We are servants of the living God, and our task is to obey the whole counsel of God, not just the parts that flatter us. As James tells us, to stumble in one point of the law is to be guilty of all (James 2:10). This is because any act of disobedience is an attack on the Lawgiver Himself. It is a declaration that we know better than God.
Notice the posture required: "you shall be careful to do." This is not a casual, haphazard, or flippant obedience. It requires diligence, attention to detail, and a holy fear. The Hebrew word here means to guard, to watch over, to keep. We are to be watchmen on the wall of God's revelation. We are to handle the Word of God with the same care a bomb disposal expert handles an explosive device, because it is just as powerful. It is living and active, and it brings either life or death.
This carefulness is the mortal enemy of pragmatism in worship and in life. The pragmatist asks, "What works? What will draw a crowd? What will make people feel good?" The faithful man asks, "What has God commanded?" Nadab and Abihu were pragmatists. They offered "strange fire" before the Lord, fire which He had not commanded them. It probably seemed like a good idea at the time. It was innovative. It was authentic. And it was deadly (Leviticus 10:1-2). God will not be worshipped according to our bright ideas. He will be worshipped according to His explicit commands.
The Sin of Addition (v. 32b)
Next, God forbids us from supplementing His perfect Word.
"...you shall not add to it..." (Deuteronomy 12:32b)
The sin of addition is the sin of the Pharisee. It is the sin of taking God's perfect law and encrusting it with man-made traditions, regulations, and pious-seeming improvements. Jesus confronted this head-on. He told the Pharisees, "You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men... thus making void the word of God by your tradition" (Mark 7:8, 13). They thought they were building a hedge around the law to protect it, but they were actually burying it under a pile of their own religious rubbish.
This is the root of all legalism. Legalism is not simply having high standards; legalism is adding our standards to God's and treating them as divine. When your church's unwritten rules become more important than Scripture's written commands, you are guilty of adding to the Word. When you bind the consciences of men where Scripture has left them free, you are a neo-Pharisee.
In worship, this is the essence of the Roman Catholic error and the error of much of high-church Anglicanism. Where did God command crucifixes, prayer to saints, incense, or priestly vestments? These things are not commanded, and therefore they are forbidden. This is the regulative principle. It is not that we must do only what is not forbidden; it is that we must do only what is commanded, either by explicit statement or by good and necessary consequence. To add our own inventions to the worship of God is to offer strange fire. It is to imply that God's wisdom is insufficient, that His commands were incomplete, and that our gaudy religious trinkets can somehow improve upon the simple, powerful, Word-centered worship He has ordained.
The Sin of Subtraction (v. 32c)
The twin sin is that of subtraction, of taking away from what God has said.
"...nor take away from it." (Deuteronomy 12:32c)
If the sin of addition is the sin of the Pharisee, the sin of subtraction is the sin of the Sadducee and his modern-day descendants, the theological liberals. This is the rebellion of the editor, who takes his red pen to the Word of God. He finds the miracles unbelievable, so he snips them out. He finds the sexual ethics too restrictive, so he deletes them. He finds the doctrine of hell offensive, so he rips that page out. He finds the substitutionary atonement to be cosmic child abuse, so he erases it.
What is left is not the gospel, but a hollowed-out husk. It is a Christianity that has been declawed, defanged, and neutered. It has no power to save because it has no cross. It has no power to sanctify because it has no law. It has no power to warn because it has no hell. It is, as Machen said, a different religion altogether.
This is the great temptation of our age. We are embarrassed by the Bible. We are ashamed of the hard sayings of Jesus. We want to be respectable in the eyes of the world, and so we quietly drop the offensive bits overboard, hoping no one will notice. But God notices. The Bible is not a collection of suggestions; it is a covenant document. To alter the terms of the covenant is an act of profound rebellion. This is why the Bible ends with the same warning with which it began its legal instruction: "If anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book, and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his share in the tree of life" (Revelation 22:18-19).
Christ, the Fulfiller of the Word
So where does this leave us? If we are honest, we are all guilty. Who among us has not, in his heart, wished a particular command were not there? Who has not been tempted to soften God's hard edges or supplement His simple commands with our own pet projects? We have all added and we have all subtracted. We have all broken this foundational command.
And this is why the gospel is such glorious news. For there was one Man who kept this command perfectly. Jesus Christ did not come to add to the law or to take away from it. He said, "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them" (Matthew 5:17). He did everything the Father commanded Him. He was careful to do it all. He never once added a human tradition to the divine requirement, and He never once subtracted from the divine demand. He is the perfect Word of God made flesh, the one who embodies the perfect obedience we have failed to render.
And on the cross, He took upon Himself the curse that we deserved for our cosmic tinkering, for our additions and subtractions. He bore the penalty for our rebellion. And He gives to us, by faith alone, His perfect record of law-keeping. We are accepted by God not because we have perfectly kept His Word, but because Christ has kept it for us.
This does not, then, free us to go back to our editing. It frees us to obey for the first time out of love and gratitude, not out of a slavish fear or a desire to justify ourselves. Because we are secure in Christ, we can now receive the whole counsel of God with joy. We can embrace the hard sayings. We can submit to the uncomfortable commands. We can rest in the sufficiency of His Word, because we are resting in the sufficiency of His Son. The Word of God is a closed system because the work of Christ is a finished work. You cannot add to it, and you dare not take away from it.