I’m enjoying sharing with you some thoughts about why the Bible really matters. Yes, the Bible reflects the individual personalities and temperaments of the human writers. Yes, their individual writing styles are apparent. Yes, the writers were entirely human, and themselves prone to errors of every stripe. But here’s the thing: we believe that the Bible is divinely inspired. 100% divinely inspired! That means that God was absolutely sovereign over how every verse came together (including the entire compilation of the Biblical canon, which I outlined last week). For the most part, God didn’t dictate the words, but He made certain that the words were precisely what He desired to be recorded for us.
The Bible’s words are, ultimately, God’s words. Because they are God’s words, they are without error. By the testimony of the Bible itself, its words are “God-breathed” (2 Timothy 3:16). That term is the literal Greek translation. It means that God used human agents, but that God spoke the words! 2 Peter 1:21 gives us a little more insight into how this happened: “… men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”
And we know from the rest of the testimony of Scripture that what Peter says about the origin of the Old Testament also applies to the New (John 15:26; Acts 1:8; 5:32), because the same Holy Spirit has done it all! I believe that’s the secret to understanding and accepting the inspiration of the Bible as a whole. As God, the Holy Spirit has used people to accomplish exactly what He desired, so that every recorded word is the word that God intended. This is a marvelous thought, friends: God can use our whole being and personality and still cause us to carry out His perfect purposes! Can I get an “amen” on that one? Though it might be hard to wrap our minds around this, God doesn’t destroy or invalidate our will – but He makes us spiritually alive (instead of spiritually dead, which is where we would be without Him; see Ephesians 2:1-10) and bends our will in the direction that we need to go. I’d like to quote a Lutheran scholar, Robert Preus, who is now with the Lord: “It may seem utterly inconsistent that the Spirit of God could in one and the same action provide the very words of Scripture and accommodate Himself to the linguistic peculiarities and total personality of the individual writer so that these men wrote freely and spontaneously. But this is precisely what took place according to the Biblical evidence and data.”
I’m still breathless. What say you?
The more we study the Bible, the more we discover that the Bible testifies loudly of its own authority. Though our Lord’s words were widely disregarded, Jesus spoke clearly of His own death and resurrection at least three times before Calvary. As the baseball pitcher Dizzy Dean quipped, “It ain’t braggin’ if you can do it.” I don’t know about you, but I believe that the same Holy Spirit whispers “Yes!” in your ear and mine when we read the words of Christ (John 5:39): “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me.” The power behind the Word is nothing less than Jesus!
And here’s why. When it’s all said and done, the Bible’s words come from more than forty human writers from almost every walk of life, and from many different parts of the known world. Some of the writers were untrained, uneducated, and unsophisticated. Some of the writers penned eloquent poetry. Some were distinguished leaders. Others were kings, celebrated worldwide for their wisdom – or prominent advisors to government officials. A highly educated Pharisee was in the mix. One was brought up as the prince of the most powerful and learned nation on Planet Earth. Some were simple fishermen. Others were goat herders from nowhere. Disobedient Jews. Undeserving Gentiles. Some exposed ruthlessly the flaws of their nation and leaders. Others were seemingly a bit more cheerful in their approach to life. Some were traitors. But the final mix is nothing short of a strikingly beautiful kaleidoscope of soul-stirring contribution, just as our God intended and superintended. The Bible was written over a time span of about 1500 years. Its literary forms include narrative history, drama, biography, letters, poetry, parables, wisdom literature, and narrative stories. Yet the Bible tells one cohesive story, because the Bible ultimately has but one Author.
The story of the Bible is the good news of God’s redeeming grace in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ.
This is my story, and this is my song!
Pastor Charles
Leave a Reply