Sojourner #005: God Breathed

[16] All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, [17] that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. (2 Timothy 3:16, ESV)

The Inspiration, Inerrancy, and Authority of God’s Word

The fundamental source of all truth is God (Is. 45:19). Jesus confesses Himself to be the “truth” (John 14:6), and the Holy Spirit is the Spirit who testifies of the truth (Jn. 14:17; 15:26; 16:13; 1 Jn. 5:6). The Word of God, or the things that God has said, proceed directly from God. What is true about God must then, by necessity, be true of His Word. Since God is without error, so then must His Word be without error. As the ultimate authority over all things, His Word maintains its authority as the divinely inspired Word of the sovereign Lord and King over all creation. Because God remains forever, so must His Word remain forever. From the Word of God, the believer finds the only source of objective truth available to them. The question is, what is the Word of God?

Throughout the entirety of the Bible’s writings, the claim is made that it is the authoritative Word of the God who never lies (Tit. 1:2). In the Old Testament writings the prophet Zechariah testified that Scripture is “...the law and the words that the LORD of Hosts had sent by His Spirit through the former prophets…” (Zech. 7:12). If the Bible is indeed the Word of God, then the beliefs that an individual has about the Bible reflect what that particular individual ultimately believes about God. In its pages, God reveals Himself savingly to the world and shows His plan of salvation - accomplished through the Son, for His Glory, by the working of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, every Christian must have a proper view of what the Bible is, how it came to be, how they are to engage with it, and why it is that they believe it to be the Word of God. 

Consider the following statement:

“I choose to believe The Bible because it is a reliable collection of historical documents, written by eyewitnesses during the lifetime of other eyewitnesses, reporting supernatural events that took place in fulfillment of specific prophecies and claimed their writings are Divine and not of human origin” (Baucham).

This claim of the divine authorship of Scripture, and its implications, must be examined in light of Scripture itself.

It is the true testimony of the Scriptures that through the direct influence and working of His Spirit, God “breathed out” (2 Tim. 3:16), or inspired, each word that was written by the authors of the Old and New Testament writings, so that they are chiefly the work of God Himself. Accordingly, we can define the term “inspiration” as the “process of divine causation behind the authorship of Scripture” (MacArthur). 

God’s superintendence over the revelation of His Word, which is divine by nature, through the supernatural influencing of the human author by the working of the Holy Spirit, ensures that all the words contained within the autographs, or original documents, are the wholly inspired and true Words of God. Scripture itself testifies to the reality that it was made not by an act of human will but rather by men who were “carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Pet. 1:20-21). Furthermore, the authors, in particular instances, note that the text was not only inspired by the Holy Spirit, but revealed to them as well (Acts 1:16, 1 Tim. 4:1, Heb. 10:15-17). It must also be noted that this verbal, plenary inspiration of Scripture by the Holy Spirit does not disallow the context and individual personality or writing style of the different human writers. 

The Bible is wholly without error, or inerrant, in the original autographs, because it is divinely inspired by the almighty God (Gen. 17:1). In the same way that God cannot do anything contrary to His character, Scripture cannot condone anything that is false or contradictory in nature. With the understanding that Scripture is the result of God’s own sovereign, providential work of divine inspiration, rather than merely the collected works of man, it is necessary that Scripture be inerrant. Moreover, the fulfillment of Scripture attests to the inerrancy of Scripture. The Scriptures claim this level of inspired truthfulness and divine reliability throughout the Old and New Testament writings. The Word of God is self-attesting (2 Tim. 3:16, 2 Pet. 1:20-21), and is proven by the Holy Spirit (Rom. 10:14, 17). In the Old Testament writings it is maintained that God’s Word is not only true but “firmly fixed in the heavens” (Ps. 119:89).  As such, it is shown that the Word of God, His revelation of Himself, is as eternal as the God who authored it.

The implications of the doctrine of inspiration necessitate the doctrine of inerrancy, based upon both the assertions contained within the Scriptures and the very character of the Triune God. This same level of inerrancy is preserved today providentially by God Himself. With evidence today pointing to the reality that today’s translations possess more than 99% of the autographs (Grudem), it will suffice to say that a translation may be considered the inerrant and inspired Word of God to the degree that it is found to be faithful to the original texts.

In the Biblical sense of the word, we may endeavor to define “authority” as follows: power exercised by rulers or others in high position by virtue of their office (Bauer). Following the pattern and testimony of Scripture alone, it is understood that the ultimate authority resides with none other than God alone. Throughout the whole counsel of God, as revealed in Scripture, it is demonstrated that God holds absolute, original, and final authority over His creation. 

As Lord (Deut. 10:17) and Creator (Gen. 1:1), God maintains His sovereign authority over all (Ps. 89:11; 90:2). His Kingdom endures forever and His dominion has no end (Dan. 4:3). Thus, as sovereign, God alone holds the authority to establish the Scriptures as both authoritative and inerrant (Deut. 4:1-2, Prov. 30:5-6, Rev. 22:18-19). Doing so through the testimony and internal ministry of the Holy Spirit in the life of the individual, God proves His Word to be true by His authority as Lord and God over all. This works itself out practically as the Holy Spirit illuminates the truth of the Bible to the believer, enabling them to believe that it is the Word of God that they are reading (1 Jn. 2:20, 27). Bearing witness to this divine reality with such illuminated conviction is a work of God, and this truth regarding the authority of Scripture was further confirmed by Jesus (Jn. 3:5-8; 17:17).

Simply, the Bible is the divinely inspired, completely inerrant, and sovereignly authoritative Word of God. God’s Word demands to be taken as what it is, presenting the same message from One without variation or shadow of turning (Jm. 1:17-18), and was written down by more than forty writers over a period of fifteen hundred years - under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in such a way that God Himself is speaking to us (MacArthur). It finds its authority in the Divine Superintendent who inspired it (Zech. 7:12, 2 Tim. 3:14-17, 2 Pet. 1:20-21), rather than from the men who wrote it down (1 Thess. 2:13). God Himself is speaking to us through His Word.

For these reasons, the believer may have great assurance that they are reading the infallible, inspired, inerrant, and authoritative Word of God Himself - glory to His matchless name.

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Works Cited:

Voddie Baucham, Why I Choose to Believe the Bible (Truth at Work), 1.

Walter Bauer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, rev. and ed. Frederick W. Danker, 3rd ed., based on the previous English editions by W.F. Arndt, F.W. Gingrich, and F.W. Danker (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 353. 

Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1994), 96.

John Macarthur, Richard Mayhue, Bible Doctrine: A Systematic Summary of Bible Truth (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2017), 77.

John Macarthur, Richard Mayhue, Bible Doctrine: A Systematic Summary of Bible Truth (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2017), 119.

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