RECOVERING JESUS’ VIEW OF SCRIPTURE by Rutledge Etheridge for Core Christianity
As a teacher, I appreciate when students put extra effort into their assignments. If a paper is carefully thought out and well composed, I’ll write an encouraging message next to the grade: “Outstanding!” or “Really well done!” or “There’s no way you wrote this—see me after class!”—all statements recognizing especially good work.
I’ve read some truly brilliant papers (and plagiarisms). Never, though, have I ever thought about writing atop one of them: “This is the breath of God.” I don’t care how spectacular the work, or how much the student offered to pay; I could never sincerely give that kind of praise to merely human words. It would be a ridiculously high compliment to the author, and (you would think) an outright insult to God. Yet the apostle Paul uses that exact expression to describe a particular collection of human compositions. He writes, “All Scripture is breathed out by God” (2 Timothy 3:16).
Scripture Is God’s Word to Us
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In Paul’s day, “Scripture” was what we now call the Old Testament. Each Old Testament book was written by one or more flesh-and-blood, fallible human beings. But Paul had no problem calling these human compositions “God-breathed.” Did Paul have a low view of God, then? Hardly. Paul praised God as the being “who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light” (1 Timothy 6:16).
In his limitless reverence for God, Paul joined a long line of prophets before him. In their bones and in the depths of their souls, they felt something of God’s universe-filling immensity, his boundless, unsettling majesty. Their hearts trembled at God’s holiness, a word that mainly means otherness. They knew that God’s ways were higher than their ways, his thoughts higher than their thoughts. Yet still, Paul called the Old Testament—words written by humans—“God-breathed.” This description of Scripture applies to the New Testament as well (2 Peter 3:15-16).
