I think it is important for all of us to periodically revisit our thoughts and assumptions about God and His Word. We are all; hopefully, growing in our knowledge and understanding of His Word. With that growth, it is useful to consider how it might impact our underlying assumptions. For instance, how do we understand the words of Christ compared to the rest of Scripture?
I used to believe that the words of Christ were just a little more accurate or truthful than the rest of Scripture because His words removed the middle-man. I didn’t really consider what this implied about the doctrine of inspiration and, indirectly, about my understanding of God.
What can we learn from Scripture about inspiration? Let’s start with what Scripture directly tells us:
- But he (Jesus) answered, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God’ “(Matt 4:4).
- But he (Jesus) answered them, “My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it” (Luke 8:21).
- If anyone thinks that he is a prophet, or spiritual, he should acknowledge that the things I am writing to you are a command of the Lord (1 Cor 14:37).
- All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness (2 Tim 3:16).
- For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:21).
Scripture being God-breathed narrows our understanding of inspiration. God is the direct source of Scripture; it isn’t just a collection of writings from godly people about God. It is also important to note, particularly relative to my original question, that all of Scripture is described as having the same source and value.
The passage from 2 Peter may move us a little closer to understanding the nature of inspiration. A prophet’s words are from God (“men spoke from God”) specifically under the direction of the Holy Spirit. This statement doesn’t definitively prove that the specific words of Scripture are inspired by God, but it certainly supports verbal inspiration.
All Scripture inspired
Jesus refers to Scripture as the “word of God” and specifically as the “word that comes from the mouth of God”. Similarly, in the passage from 1 Corinthians, Paul makes the claim that the words he writes are a command from God. Clearly neither Jesus nor Paul has any issue with attributing the words in Scripture to God. This understanding is important because a key question regarding inspiration is whether the specific words in Scripture come from God, or if it is only the concepts that come from God, and the words are merely a person’s best attempt to convey that concept. Once again, Scripture supports the idea that the words, not just the ideas, are from God.
Both Jesus and Paul use Scripture in a manner that only makes sense if the specific words are inspired and 100% accurate:
- Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your Law, ‘I said, you are gods’? If he called them gods to whom the word of God came—and Scripture cannot be broken— do you say of him whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’? (John 10:34-36)
- But Jesus answered them, “You are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God: “I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob”? He is not God of the dead, but of the living” (Matt 22:29-32).
- Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say, “And to offsprings,” referring to many, but referring to one, “And to your offspring,” who is Christ. This is what I mean: the law, which came 430 years afterward, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to make the promise void. For if the inheritance comes by the law, it no longer comes by promise; but God gave it to Abraham by a promise. (Gal 3:16-18)
Jesus’ response to the Pharisees in John chapter 10 is predicated on the word “gods” in Psalm 82 being plural. His rebuttal in Matthew 22 is based in the tense of a verb in Exodus 3. Paul’s description of how Gentiles are included in God’s covenant, and therefore saved, is based on the word offspring (or seed) being singular in Genesis 12. None of these passages make sense if Jesus and Paul didn’t believe that the specific words in Scripture were inspired and accurate. This also returns us to the earlier point about all Scripture being God-breathed. The inspiration for all of Scripture has to be considered equal; whatever we conclude about the passages that Jesus and Paul reference must be true for all of Scripture.
Let’s take a look into how inspiration is described in the Old Testament:
“‘I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. And I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him. And whoever will not listen to my words that he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him. But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name that I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die.’ And if you say in your heart, ‘How may we know the word that the Lord has not spoken?’— when a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word that the Lord has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously. You need not be afraid of him (Deut 18:18-22).
This passage from Deuteronomy is even more specific about the inspiration of the specific words. God says, in this passage, that He puts His words in the prophet’s mouth. God calls these words His own. The most reasonable conclusion that one can draw from how Scripture describes itself is that the specific words in Scripture are directly inspired by God.
This same passage in Deuteronomy also tells us something about the accuracy of Scripture. The passage tells us that if a prophet attributes something to God that is not completely true, God commands that this prophet be put to death. If God’s inspired word is anything less than completely accurate, wouldn’t God be holding himself to a lower standard than He demands of His prophets?
The possibility of error entering into the inspiration process also raises the question of the power of God in His interaction with people. Is God’s power limited because He is working through imperfect people? When everything else is stripped away, I believe this question is at the core of deciding whether God’s word must be trusted to be completely accurate. If God’s power is limited by sin and/or the will of people, then it is likely that inspiration is an imperfect process. If God is more powerful than sin, then there is no reason to believe that God-breathed words could be erroneous.
I find it interesting that the first temptation for mankind was to question the accuracy of God’s words:
Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” (Gen 3:1).
Now it is fashionable, even in many churches, to deny the accuracy of God’s Word. When the words in Scripture clash with the “enlightened” views of society, our view of inspiration is put to the test. Scripture tells us that all of the words contained inside are God’s and that we can fully trust the accuracy of those words. We can’t believe Scripture and simultaneously conclude that some passages are more inspired or accurate than the others.
It isn’t just the red words that are directly from God. †
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