Our understanding of the origin and nature of Scripture significantly influences the way we read and treat the Bible. If the Bible were a human book, written just like any other book put together by fallible human beings, we could not trust it. Under such circumstances, it certainly would not carry divine authority. To be fair to the Bible, we need to allow the writers of the Bible themselves to define and explain what they think about their writings and thus allow the Bible to determine the basic parameters of how it should be treated. The writers of the Bible claim that their message is not humanly invented. Instead, the Bible is divinely revealed and its content inspired by God.
Our understanding of the process of revelation and inspiration is crucial for our approach to God’s Word. Because God uses the medium of language to communicate with human beings, divine revelation is capable of being written down. The Holy Spirit enables the writers of the Bible to faithfully and reliably commit to writing what He has revealed to them. This divine inspiration gives the Bible its divine authority and guarantees the unity that we find from Genesis through the book of Revelation. Although penned by human beings, the Bible is, nevertheless, the Written Word of God. In this divine-human dimension, there is a certain parallel between Jesus Christ, the Word of God, who became flesh, and the Written Word of God, the Bible. We grasp and appreciate this reality only by faith.
Part II: Commentary
Imagine a purely human book that is written by many different authors over a period of hundreds of years. Imagine that these diverse authors would reminisce in their writings about God and their religious experience. Their differing perspectives would grant their writings little authority beyond their personal opinions. They would carry only some human authority, if any. But the Bible is not like that. It claims that the ultimate author is God. God communicates through His Holy Spirit with the writers of the Bible, delivering the content that He deems important for us to know. The biblical God is a God who speaks. He created human beings with the ability to speak and to understand verbal information. Thus, He uses language to communicate with humankind. These divine messages are not given in an artificial heavenly language that only angels understand. They are given in the very language of the writers of the Bible. They also are given for practical purposes, so God’s people “may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:17, NKJV). Hence, the collective biblical books are aptly called the “holy scriptures” (Rom. 1:2, 2 Tim. 3:15).
Thus, the authority of Scripture is a shorthand for God’s authority, speaking in and through Scripture. In order for the Bible to play its divinely intended role in one’s personal life, as well as in the life of the church, we must take its claim of divine origins seriously. It also means we must listen to all of Scripture, as it is written.
If we exclude some parts of Scripture as allegedly uninspired and thus merely human, we have no more than a selective authority of the Bible. Rather than standing above Scripture and judging Scripture, we should take our stand under Scripture, thus allowing Scripture to judge us.
In 1 Thessalonians 2:13 we learn something important about the attitude with which the believers in Thessalonica received the Word of God. Read 1 Thessalonians 2:13 and reflect on how the believers in Thessalonica received God’s Word. What does their reception of Scripture tell us about how we should receive the biblical message when we read or hear it?
Scripture
We see God’s highest and most explicit revelation in the incarnation of His Son Jesus Christ. Apart from that, the most efficient and widely used form of divine revelation is divine speaking. In the Bible we find repeated references to the God who speaks. His Word is given to His spokespersons the prophets. The numerous occurrences of phrases such as the “word of the Lord” or “thus says the Lord” or the “word that the Lord spoke” testify to this fact. This divine speaking produces the Word of the Lord and eventually leads to its embodiment in a written document. The writing down of God’s Word also is the result of God’s initiative (see Exod. 17:14, Exod. 24:4, Josh. 24:26, etc.).
What is the purpose for God’s written revelation? It is a constant reference point for His people. It enables God’s people continually to hear it in an unaltered way and to be careful to do what it says (see Deut. 30:9, 10). A written document can be preserved better and more reliably than an oral message. There is greater permanency with a written text than with an orally spoken word. A written document can be copied and multiplied and thus made available to many more people in many different locations than any oral message could ever be. It also is available across time and can be a blessing to readers and listeners many generations later. As a permanent written record, it remains a norm for the veracity of the biblical message throughout the ages.
While it is true that God inspires thoughts in the writers of the Bible, we would not know anything about these thoughts if they had not been communicated through words, i.e., in human language. Only words give us access to thoughts. Hence the process of inspiration encompasses thoughts as well as the end-product of those thoughts: the written words of Scripture. “Whether inspiration should be attributed to the inspired writers or to the Scriptures written by them is to a large extent a needless dilemma. It is clear that the primary locus of inspiration is in people. The Holy Spirit moved upon people to speak or write; yet what they spoke or wrote was the inspired word of God.”—Peter M. van Bemmelen, “Revelation and Inspiration” in Raul Dederen, ed., Handbook of Seventh-day Adventist Theology (Hagerstown, MD: Review and Herald, 2000), p. 39. Thus, the apostle Paul could write: “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness” (2 Tim. 3:16, NASB, emphasis added).
Illustration
There is an interesting parallel between the Word of God who became flesh (Jesus Christ) and the Written Word of God (the Bible). Just as Jesus was supernaturally conceived by the Holy Spirit, yet born into this world by a woman, so the Bible has the Holy Spirit as its ultimate author, yet was written by human writers.
Jesus Christ became flesh at a specific time and a specific place (i.e., he was born in Bethlehem, not in New York, Tokyo, or Nairobi; he was baptized in the river Jordan, not in the Mississippi, the Nile, or the Ganges). Yet, this particularity did not nullify His divinity, nor did it make Him relative only to a particular time historically. He is the only Redeemer for all people, all around the globe, throughout all time. In a similar manner, the biblical books were given at a specific time and in a particular culture. But as with Jesus, this transmission does not make the Bible purely time-conditioned or relative. The Bible is God’s Word for all people, all over the world, until the end of time.
Jesus became human and lived as a real human being with all the signs of human infirmities. Yet, He was without sin. In a similar manner, the language of the Bible is human language with all its limitations, not a perfect heavenly language. Yet, what the Bible affirms is trustworthy, not misleading!
When Jesus lived on this earth, He wanted to be accepted for who He truly was: the Divine Son of God. In a similar manner, God does not want the Bible to be read as just another book. He wants it to be accepted for what it truly is: the Written Word of God. As such, the Bible carries an innate authority that goes beyond any human wisdom. This qualifies the Bible to be God’s only norm for all doctrine and religious experience.
Of course, Jesus Christ and the Bible are not identical. There are significant differences. The Bible is not an incarnation of God. God did not become a book. We do not worship a book. We worship the Savior who is proclaimed in the Bible. But without the Bible, we would not know much about Jesus at all. The Bible without Jesus would be missing the most important message. But without the Bible we would not know that Jesus is the promised Messiah. We could not accept Him as the assured Savior. We would be lost. Therefore, the Bible is foundational and indispensable to our faith.
Scripture
Not only is Scripture foundational to our faith, but we also need to approach the Bible in faith, if we want to do justice to its divine nature. In Hebrews 11:6 we read that “without faith it is impossible to please God” (NIV). The life-changing message of the Bible is not discerned properly at a critical distance but must be accepted in faith and obeyed with love.
Part III: Life Application
To know that the Bible carries divine authority motivates us to treat it with respect and love. Whatever we love, we will not speak flippantly about. The way we talk about the Bible should reveal our deep appreciation for the Word of God. This appreciation will become evident, not just in the way we carry and hold the Bible, but more importantly, in how we follow and implement its teachings in our lives. Our attitude will be one of gratitude and faithfulness. To be faithful to the Written Word of God is not the veneration of a book. It is rather an expression of our love for the triune God about whom this book speaks. “For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome” (1 John 5:3, NKJV). The Bible acquaints us with the living God and helps us to become more like Jesus.
What would an attitude of gratitude for Scripture and faithfulness to it look like? How does the authority of Scripture differ from that of other literature? Where are you tempted not to follow the Bible because of personal experiences and feelings that draw you in a different direction? How can you gain an attitude of trust?
To be faithful to Scripture is not the same as being faithful to my own favorite ideas about the Bible. In the latter case, I would be faithful only to myself. Rather, faithfulness to Scripture calls for an openness to allow the Bible to shape and transform my thoughts and actions.
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Key Texts: 2 Tim. 3:16; 2 Pet. 1:19-21; 1 Thess. 2:13; 1 Cor. 2:9, 10; Rom. 15:4; Acts 1:16.
Part I: Overview
Our understanding of the origin and nature of Scripture significantly influences the way we read and treat the Bible. If the Bible were a human book, written just like any other book put together by fallible human beings, we could not trust it. Under such circumstances, it certainly would not carry divine authority. To be fair to the Bible, we need to allow the writers of the Bible themselves to define and explain what they think about their writings and thus allow the Bible to determine the basic parameters of how it should be treated. The writers of the Bible claim that their message is not humanly invented. Instead, the Bible is divinely revealed and its content inspired by God.
Our understanding of the process of revelation and inspiration is crucial for our approach to God’s Word. Because God uses the medium of language to communicate with human beings, divine revelation is capable of being written down. The Holy Spirit enables the writers of the Bible to faithfully and reliably commit to writing what He has revealed to them. This divine inspiration gives the Bible its divine authority and guarantees the unity that we find from Genesis through the book of Revelation. Although penned by human beings, the Bible is, nevertheless, the Written Word of God. In this divine-human dimension, there is a certain parallel between Jesus Christ, the Word of God, who became flesh, and the Written Word of God, the Bible. We grasp and appreciate this reality only by faith.
Part II: Commentary
Imagine a purely human book that is written by many different authors over a period of hundreds of years. Imagine that these diverse authors would reminisce in their writings about God and their religious experience. Their differing perspectives would grant their writings little authority beyond their personal opinions. They would carry only some human authority, if any. But the Bible is not like that. It claims that the ultimate author is God. God communicates through His Holy Spirit with the writers of the Bible, delivering the content that He deems important for us to know. The biblical God is a God who speaks. He created human beings with the ability to speak and to understand verbal information. Thus, He uses language to communicate with humankind. These divine messages are not given in an artificial heavenly language that only angels understand. They are given in the very language of the writers of the Bible. They also are given for practical purposes, so God’s people “may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:17, NKJV). Hence, the collective biblical books are aptly called the “holy scriptures” (Rom. 1:2, 2 Tim. 3:15).
Thus, the authority of Scripture is a shorthand for God’s authority, speaking in and through Scripture. In order for the Bible to play its divinely intended role in one’s personal life, as well as in the life of the church, we must take its claim of divine origins seriously. It also means we must listen to all of Scripture, as it is written.
If we exclude some parts of Scripture as allegedly uninspired and thus merely human, we have no more than a selective authority of the Bible. Rather than standing above Scripture and judging Scripture, we should take our stand under Scripture, thus allowing Scripture to judge us.
In 1 Thessalonians 2:13 we learn something important about the attitude with which the believers in Thessalonica received the Word of God. Read 1 Thessalonians 2:13 and reflect on how the believers in Thessalonica received God’s Word. What does their reception of Scripture tell us about how we should receive the biblical message when we read or hear it?
Scripture
We see God’s highest and most explicit revelation in the incarnation of His Son Jesus Christ. Apart from that, the most efficient and widely used form of divine revelation is divine speaking. In the Bible we find repeated references to the God who speaks. His Word is given to His spokespersons the prophets. The numerous occurrences of phrases such as the “word of the Lord” or “thus says the Lord” or the “word that the Lord spoke” testify to this fact. This divine speaking produces the Word of the Lord and eventually leads to its embodiment in a written document. The writing down of God’s Word also is the result of God’s initiative (see Exod. 17:14, Exod. 24:4, Josh. 24:26, etc.).
What is the purpose for God’s written revelation? It is a constant reference point for His people. It enables God’s people continually to hear it in an unaltered way and to be careful to do what it says (see Deut. 30:9, 10). A written document can be preserved better and more reliably than an oral message. There is greater permanency with a written text than with an orally spoken word. A written document can be copied and multiplied and thus made available to many more people in many different locations than any oral message could ever be. It also is available across time and can be a blessing to readers and listeners many generations later. As a permanent written record, it remains a norm for the veracity of the biblical message throughout the ages.
While it is true that God inspires thoughts in the writers of the Bible, we would not know anything about these thoughts if they had not been communicated through words, i.e., in human language. Only words give us access to thoughts. Hence the process of inspiration encompasses thoughts as well as the end-product of those thoughts: the written words of Scripture. “Whether inspiration should be attributed to the inspired writers or to the Scriptures written by them is to a large extent a needless dilemma. It is clear that the primary locus of inspiration is in people. The Holy Spirit moved upon people to speak or write; yet what they spoke or wrote was the inspired word of God.”—Peter M. van Bemmelen, “Revelation and Inspiration” in Raul Dederen, ed., Handbook of Seventh-day Adventist Theology (Hagerstown, MD: Review and Herald, 2000), p. 39. Thus, the apostle Paul could write: “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness” (2 Tim. 3:16, NASB, emphasis added).
Illustration
There is an interesting parallel between the Word of God who became flesh (Jesus Christ) and the Written Word of God (the Bible). Just as Jesus was supernaturally conceived by the Holy Spirit, yet born into this world by a woman, so the Bible has the Holy Spirit as its ultimate author, yet was written by human writers.
Jesus Christ became flesh at a specific time and a specific place (i.e., he was born in Bethlehem, not in New York, Tokyo, or Nairobi; he was baptized in the river Jordan, not in the Mississippi, the Nile, or the Ganges). Yet, this particularity did not nullify His divinity, nor did it make Him relative only to a particular time historically. He is the only Redeemer for all people, all around the globe, throughout all time. In a similar manner, the biblical books were given at a specific time and in a particular culture. But as with Jesus, this transmission does not make the Bible purely time-conditioned or relative. The Bible is God’s Word for all people, all over the world, until the end of time.
Jesus became human and lived as a real human being with all the signs of human infirmities. Yet, He was without sin. In a similar manner, the language of the Bible is human language with all its limitations, not a perfect heavenly language. Yet, what the Bible affirms is trustworthy, not misleading!
When Jesus lived on this earth, He wanted to be accepted for who He truly was: the Divine Son of God. In a similar manner, God does not want the Bible to be read as just another book. He wants it to be accepted for what it truly is: the Written Word of God. As such, the Bible carries an innate authority that goes beyond any human wisdom. This qualifies the Bible to be God’s only norm for all doctrine and religious experience.
Of course, Jesus Christ and the Bible are not identical. There are significant differences. The Bible is not an incarnation of God. God did not become a book. We do not worship a book. We worship the Savior who is proclaimed in the Bible. But without the Bible, we would not know much about Jesus at all. The Bible without Jesus would be missing the most important message. But without the Bible we would not know that Jesus is the promised Messiah. We could not accept Him as the assured Savior. We would be lost. Therefore, the Bible is foundational and indispensable to our faith.
Scripture
Not only is Scripture foundational to our faith, but we also need to approach the Bible in faith, if we want to do justice to its divine nature. In Hebrews 11:6 we read that “without faith it is impossible to please God” (NIV). The life-changing message of the Bible is not discerned properly at a critical distance but must be accepted in faith and obeyed with love.
Part III: Life Application
To know that the Bible carries divine authority motivates us to treat it with respect and love. Whatever we love, we will not speak flippantly about. The way we talk about the Bible should reveal our deep appreciation for the Word of God. This appreciation will become evident, not just in the way we carry and hold the Bible, but more importantly, in how we follow and implement its teachings in our lives. Our attitude will be one of gratitude and faithfulness. To be faithful to the Written Word of God is not the veneration of a book. It is rather an expression of our love for the triune God about whom this book speaks. “For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome” (1 John 5:3, NKJV). The Bible acquaints us with the living God and helps us to become more like Jesus.
What would an attitude of gratitude for Scripture and faithfulness to it look like? How does the authority of Scripture differ from that of other literature? Where are you tempted not to follow the Bible because of personal experiences and feelings that draw you in a different direction? How can you gain an attitude of trust?
To be faithful to Scripture is not the same as being faithful to my own favorite ideas about the Bible. In the latter case, I would be faithful only to myself. Rather, faithfulness to Scripture calls for an openness to allow the Bible to shape and transform my thoughts and actions.