What About the Apocrypha?

 But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work (2 Tm 3:14–17).

Sometimes people wonder about "full" Bibles, copies of Holy Scripture that contain the apocryphal or deuterocanonical books.  Should we revere as God's Word more than the sixty-six books we commonly read?

The 1689 London Baptist Confession speaks briefly and plainly to the matter:
1:3 The books commonly called Apocrypha, not being of divine inspiration, are no part of the canon or rule of the Scripture, and, therefore, are of no authority to the church of God, nor to be any otherwise approved or made use of than other human writings. (Luke 24:27, 44; Romans 3:2)
The term "deuterocanonical" means "second canon." In short, these books were never part of the original canon, being added later by the Catholic Church as part of the counter-reformation.  Looking back in the annuls of church history, we see every early canon excluding these books.  As there is no evidence of inspiration and Christians have rejected the Apocrypha throughout the ages, then there is no reason to view them as approved for faith or practice above any other work of man.
1:4. The authority of the Holy Scripture, for which it ought to be believed, dependeth not upon the testimony of any man or church, but wholly upon God (who is truth itself), the author thereof; therefore it is to be received because it is the Word of God. (2 Peter 1:19-21; 2 Timothy 3:16; 2 Thessalonians 2:13; 1 John 5:9)
Someone might object that if a Pope or Catholic council approved these books for Christian use, then they become as such.  However, no man has the ability to transform that which is human in origin into something divine.  God determines the canon by inspiring Scripture, and the church must bow her knee to truth of God.

As such, you won't find us preaching from the Apocrypha on Sunday mornings.  We want to know precisely what God written for our benefit, not confusing ourselves with the sinful, fallible ideas of people.

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