8 Things Your Bible Says About Itself by MATT SMETHURST for The Gospel Coalition
There are only two options when it comes to knowledge of a divine Creator: revelation or speculation. Either he speaks, or we guess.
And he has spoken. The God of heaven and earth has “forfeited his own personal privacy” to reveal himself to us—to befriend us—through a book. Scripture is like an all-access pass into the revealed mind and will of God.
By virtually any account the Bible is the most influential book of all time. No shortage of ink has been spilled on writings about it, whether in favor or against.
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But what claims does the Bible make about itself? Here are eight.
1. The Bible Is Inspired
When Christians claim Scripture is “inspired,” what do they mean? Inspiration is about the relationship between God and the Bible’s authors. These men weren’t inspired in the way we typically use the word today—it’s not as if the apostle Paul saw a gorgeous sunset and then wrote Galatians. Nor does it mean he would enter some catatonic state, recite a bunch of words to a friend, then pick up the parchment and say, “Let’s see what God wrote!”
First and foremost, inspiration has to do with the fact that the Bible’s ultimate author is God.
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. (2 Tim. 3:16–17)
The entirety of the Bible is “God-breathed”—exhaled from God. No wonder it’s commonly referred to as God’s Word.
If God authored it, though, then what were Moses and David and Paul and John and all the rest doing? Weren’t they writing Holy Scripture, too? Exactly. The Bible was written by God and humans—or, more precisely, by God through humans. The apostle Peter explains it this way:
Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation of things. For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. (2 Pet. 1:20–21)
In other words, God made sure the human authors wrote exactly what he wanted them to write—no more, no less.
These authors weren’t passive robots, however. God didn’t erase their personalities or commandeer their minds. They wrote as thinking, feeling human beings. God worked through their unique personalities and educations and backgrounds and experiences to enable—to inspire—them to write divine truth. Theologian Robert Plummer summarizes it well: “Each word in the Bible is the word of a conscious human author and at the same time the exact word that God intends for the revelation of himself.”
The Creator of the universe has spoken—in human history, in human language, through human beings. So, who wrote the Bible—humans or God? The Bible itself answers, “Yes.”
2. The Bible Is True
Okay, so Scripture is completely inspired. But is it completely true?
God’s Word is true because God’s character is true. He is not a liar; the God of truth cannot speak false words. To doubt the truthfulness of God’s Word is to doubt the truthfulness of God himself.
