Ramifications of The Inspiration of Scripture – Part 1
Over the last two weeks, we have looked at the inspiration of Scripture. In doing this we saw that inspiration refers to the fact that God has spoken His Word, but He has done this through human beings. These humans received revelation from God and were guided as they wrote this revelation down so that what we have in the Bible is the very Word of God. Today I want to begin to give some ramifications of the doctrine of inspiration.
1. Inspiration includes both the authors and what they wrote.
Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation. 21 For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. 2 Peter 1:20–21
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 2 Timothy 3:16
Peter tells us that the human authors themselves spoke from God, and they were ‘carried along by the Spirit’. This means that the Spirit was working in and through the human authors. Paul, on the other hand, tells us that the Scripture itself – what the people wrote – is God-breathed or inspired.
Thus, both the individual authors and what they wrote are ‘inspired’. This is important because it explains how fallible humans could communicate God’s revelation (they were enabled by the Spirit to do so), and how the written words remain the Word of God (the words themselves were inspired by God, not just the individual who wrote them).
- God is the Ultimate Author, but He speaks through men.
The Spirit of the LORD spoke through me; his word was on my tongue. 2 Samuel 23:2
We looked at this point a lot last week, so I won’t belabor it here. But we should understand that when we say the Scripture is inspired, we mean that there are actually two authors. It is proper to speak of Paul, or Moses, or Isaiah, or Peter as being the author of Scripture. They did write the actual words given to us. But we must always remember that God is the Ultimate Author of all Scripture. It is all His Word – regardless of the human through whom He spoke.
Next week we will look at two more ramifications of the inspiration of Scripture.
In Christ,
Bret