God is the author of what Scripture records;
the Bible is the very Word of God.
Revelation and inspiration are not the same. Revelation is the message, and inspiration is the primary method of delivering that message to mankind. Inspiration is the act of the Holy Spirit in revealing to human writers God’s message that makes up the content of the Old and New Testaments.
What Inspiration Is Not
In order to make this definition clear, let us look at what inspiration is not. First, inspiration is not a high level of human achievement. Think of Homer’s Odyssey, Dante’s Divine Comedy, Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, or Shakespeare’s tragedies. Some people say the Bible is inspired in the same way those great works of literature were inspired. In other words, the Bible is just the product of genius. The Bible is the result of natural inspiration; therefore, it contains errors—fallible material that we can’t believe. These people acknowledge that the Bible has high ethics and morals and great insights into humanity; but it is, after all, only a human achievement on the same level as other great writings.
The problem with that view is it asserts that God didn’t write the Bible—smart men did. Would smart men write a book that condemns people to hell? Would smart men write a book that provides no human means of salvation apart from the perfect sacrifice of Jesus Christ? The answer is no. Man writes books that exalt himself. He doesn’t write books to damn himself. The Bible cannot be understood as simply a product of human achievement.
Second, inspiration is not limited to the thoughts of the writers . Some say that instead of giving the writers specific words, God supplied the writers only general ideas, while the choice of vocabulary was theirs. This view pictures God as one zapping Paul with a thought about how nice love is; and then in response, the apostle sat down and wrote 1 Corinthians 13. According to this view, the writers of Scripture were free to say what they wanted. Thus, though the overall truths of Scripture are divinely inspired, mistakes do appear in the Bible.
That view doesn’t square with what the Bible teaches. Paul wrote, “We also speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches” (1 Cor. 2:13). The “words” are the words of the Spirit, Paul declared. Inspiration was not only in concepts and in thoughts, but in words as well.
Jesus said, “I have given to them the words which You have given Me” (John 17:8). Some 3,800 times in the Old Testament, expressions such as “Thus says the Lord,” “The Word of the Lord,” and “The Word of God” appear. These hardly express mere wordless concepts.
Take the case of Moses. When he tried to excuse himself from God’s call on the basis of a speech problem, God didn’t say, “I will inspire your thoughts.” Rather He promised, “I will be with your mouth and with his mouth, and I will teach you what you shall do” (Ex. 4:15). God didn’t inspire thoughts; He inspired words.
That is why forty years later Moses was so insistent on giving verbatim instructions to the people of Israel: “You shall not add to the word which I command you, nor take from it, that you may keep the commandments of the Lord your God which I command you” (Deut. 4:2). “Don’t add to the word and don’t take away from the word,” Moses was saying. Why? “Because God gave me these specific words for you,” Moses would answer.
One of the greatest arguments against “thought inspiration” is found in 1 Peter, where we read this about the work of the Old Testament prophets:
Of this salvation the prophets have inquired and searched carefully, who prophesied of the grace that would come to you, searching what, or what manner of time, the Spirit of Christ who was in them was indicating when He testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow. ( 1 Pet. 1:10, 11)
The Spirit gave prophecies to the writers who wrote them down, read them, and tried to figure out what they meant. You might ask, What is so amazing about that?
The amazing part about it is the prophets received words without understanding them. They recorded what they were told, but they didn’t fully understand what they were writing. God didn’t just give them thoughts that they then expressed in their own words. God gave them the words. This is why pronouns, prepositions, and conjunctions, those parts of speech that seem insignificant, are important in the Bible. Jesus said, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will by no means pass away” (Matt. 24:35).
All Scripture is given by inspiration of God.
— 2 Timothy 3:16 —
The exchange between Peter and Christ supports the word-inspiration idea. When Peter said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” Jesus answered, “Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 16:16, 17). Peter was speaking right off the top of his head what God was revealing in his mind. God gave him specific words, not just thoughts.
One writer has said, “Thoughts are wedded to words as soul to body.” As far as thoughts being inspired apart from the words which give them expression, we might as well talk about a tune without notes or a sum without figures. We cannot have a melody without music or a divine record of God without words. Thoughts are carried by words, and God revealed His thoughts in words. We call that verbal inspiration.
There is a third thing that inspiration is not. Inspiration is not the act of God on the reader. There are some who teach what we could call existential inspiration, which means that the only part of the Bible that is inspired is the part that zaps you. You read along and you get “goose bumps,” meaning that a particular word or passage is inspired for you . It becomes God’s Word when it hits you. If you get ecstatic and emotional, convicted or confronted, then it is God’s Word to you. But if you sit there unresponsive, it is not the authoritative Word of God for you.
Some say there are myths in Scripture and thus try to “demythologize” the Bible. They want to eliminate what they think is untrue. With this reasoning, they edit out Christ’s preexistence, virgin birth, deity, miracles, substitutionary death, resurrection, and ascension. They maintain that all of that is historically false. To reject the historical character of Scripture and maintain that it can still say something spiritually meaningful and can come from God doesn’t make sense. If the Bible lies from beginning to end about history, why should we believe its spiritual message? If the Bible is lying when its recorded events are verifiable in history, why should we believe it in its spiritual content when we can’t easily verify it? It seems to me that if God wants us to trust the spiritual character of the Bible, He would make sure that its historical character is also trustworthy.
Jesus said, “Your word is truth” (John 17:17). Inspiration is not the inspiration of the reader.
To conclude what inspiration is not: Inspiration is not mechanical dictation. The Bible writers were not robots, writing in a semicomatose state, cranking it out without using their minds.
It is true that God could have used dictation to give us the truth—He didn’t have to allow men to express their thoughts. God could have spoken His Word into existence and dropped it on them like revelatory rain. But we know that He didn’t do it that way because when we open the Bible, we find human personality. Every book has a different character. Each author has a unique style. There are variations in language and vocabulary. And when we read the various books of the Bible, we can feel the emotions the writers were experiencing at the time.
But how can the Bible be the Word of God and at the same time, for example, the words of Paul? God formed the personality of the writer. God made Paul into the man He wanted him to be. God controlled his heredity and his environment. When the writer reached the point that God intended, He directed and controlled the free choice of the man so that he wrote down the very words of God. God literally selected the words out of each author’s own life, out of his personality, his vocabulary, and his emotions. The words were man’s words, but that man’s life had been so framed by God that they were God’s words as well. So we can say that Paul wrote Romans, and we can say God wrote it. Both statements are correct.
David testified, “The Spirit of the Lord spoke by me, and His word was on my tongue” (2 Sam. 23:2). It came out as God’s Word. Holy men of God were moved along by the Holy Spirit (2 Pet. 1:21). They were authors, not secretaries. We read Jeremiah, the weeping prophet, and we can feel his emotion. We read about the fires of judgment expressed by Amos, and we can almost experience it. Personality comes through every part of Scripture.
To sum up, inspiration is not a high level of human achievement; it is not confined to thoughts alone; it is not the act of God on the reader; and it is not mechanical dictation.
The Elements of Inspiration
To understand the real meaning of inspiration, we need to look at a key passage on the subject. “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God” (2 Tim. 3:16). That could be translated, “All Scripture is God-breathed,” because the Greek word theopneustos comes from the words God and breath. The expression means that which comes out of God’s mouth—His Word.
As we study the doctrine of inspiration, we discover that this is the method by which God has spoken. Earlier we saw that natural revelation came about by the breath of God: “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made; and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth” (Ps. 33:6). God breathed the universe into existence. Then God breathed the Bible into existence. Special revelation comes about in the same way natural revelation did—by the breath of God. Whatever the Scriptures say, God said. Sometimes the word “Scripture” is used in place of the word “God.” “And the Scripture… preached the gospel to Abraham beforehand, saying, ‘In you all the nations shall be blessed’ ” (Gal. 3:8). And, “the Scripture has confined all under sin, that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe” (Gal. 3:22, author’s italics). Here the Bible speaks and acts as the voice of God.
We find the same in the Old Testament. In Exodus we read that God said to Pharaoh, “But indeed for this purpose I have raised you up, that I may show My power in you, and that My name may be declared in all the earth” (9:16). That is God speaking. Paul referred to this conversation in Romans 9:17, “For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, ‘For this very purpose I have raised you up’ “ (author’s italics). When the Scripture speaks, God speaks. When God speaks, the Scripture speaks. In every sense, when you pick up the Bible and read it, you are hearing God’s voice.
The Bible writers in both the Old and New Testaments were commissioned to write the revelation of God in God’s own words. When Isaiah had a vision of the Lord sitting on His throne, he recorded the words of God, “I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, ‘Whom shall I send, And who will go for us?’ “ (Is. 6:8).
The prophet Jeremiah wrote, “Then the word of the Lord came to me, saying: ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; before you were born I sanctified you; I ordained you a prophet to the nations’” (Jer. 1:4, 5). “Then the Lord put forth His hand and touched my mouth, and the Lord said to me: ‘Behold, I have put My words in your mouth.’” (v. 9). What would be the result? “Because you speak this word, behold, I will make My words in your mouth fire, and this people wood, and it shall devour them” (5:14).
Ezekiel testified time after time that he spoke the words God had given him. “Son of man, receive into your heart all My words that I speak to you, and hear with your ears. And go, get to the captives, to the children of your people, and speak to them and tell them, ‘Thus says the Lord God’” (Ezek. 3:10, 11).
Paul wrote to the Galatians that it was God who gave him his message: “But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb and called me through His grace, to reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately confer with flesh and blood” (Gal. 1:15, 16). Paul did not get his message from his fellow apostles—it came directly from God.
The same was true for the apostle John and the Book of Revelation. “I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day, and I heard behind me a loud voice, as of a trumpet, saying,… ‘What you see, write in a book and send it to the seven churches’” (Rev. 1:10, 11).
All the authors of Scripture gave clear-cut evidence that what they wrote was from God; it was the breath of God. This is an essential fact of inspiration.
But now the question arises, “How much of Scripture is God-breathed?” Let’s return to 2 Timothy 3:16 and check out another Greek word: “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God.” The word “all”—pasa in the Greek—can be translated “every.” So we see that each and every Scripture is inspired.
Consider this analogy: All ducks waddle. Does that mean that only ducks of the past waddle? No. Ducks still waddle today. What about future ducks? Future ducks will also waddle. In other words, in whatever period of history ducks live, they waddle.
Here is the point: To say Scripture is God-breathed means all Scripture, regardless of when it was written, is God-breathed. This unity of the Scripture was taught by the Lord Jesus when He said, “Scripture cannot be broken” (John 10:35). All Scripture is pure and authentic. The Lord meant all that had been written, all that was being written, and all that would be written. All of Scripture is the holy writings of God.
There is another Greek word we need to examine. It is graphe from which we get the term graphite—the lead in a pencil. Graphe , then, means “writing”—all writing, all Scripture is inspired. Paul wrote to Timothy, “And how from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim. 3:15, nrsv). When we talk about “writing” being inspired, we are talking about the Scriptures only—the “sacred writings.”
What is it that is inspired? The writers? No, the writings. Paul was not inspired, but that which he wrote, his New Testament letters, was inspired.
The Bible never says the biblical writers were inspired, but their message was. That is why a man could write an inspired message at one period in his life and perhaps no other message during the remainder of his life.
Despite that teaching, some people today want to remove certain verses from Scripture. They want to decide what stays and what goes. The principle they follow is something they call the “spirit of Jesus.” Whatever in the Bible fits the spirit of Jesus, they accept. Whatever doesn’t fit the spirit of Jesus, they reject.
Perhaps these people come across the account of our Lord’s cleansing of the temple. They want to deny that this incident took place, claiming it is not really a part of Scripture because it isn’t from the meek and loving spirit of Jesus. Their concept of Jesus is a wimpish character who is so meek and gentle that He has no sense of judgment or justice. They make Jesus what they wish, and they throw out of Scripture anything that doesn’t conform to their “fantasy Jesus.”
But Jesus said, “For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled” (Matt. 5:18). The Greek words refer to a very small mark, similar in size to our punctuation marks, placed under a word like a dot or a comma. Not one mark is unimportant. Yet there are people going through the Bible cutting out whole passages.
Jesus warns, “Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:19). God doesn’t want anyone tampering with His words.
What would it take to change the Word of God? “It is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one tittle of the law to fail” (Luke 16:17). It is easier for the entire universe to fold up than for the smallest mark in the Bible to be altered. God’s Word is eternal.
This doesn’t mean that men won’t tamper with it. Jesus told the Pharisees that they had “invalidated” the Word of God by their tradition which they had handed down (Mark 7:13, nasb). They had destroyed the effectiveness of Scripture by their additions and misinterpretations. In setting aside a part, they were in effect casting aside the whole, for the Bible is a unit that is not meant to be broken.
“The entirety of Your word is truth; and every one of Your righteous judgments endures forever” (Ps. 119:160). Another important passage bears on this matter: “No prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation, for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit” (2 Pet. 1:20, 21). This refers to origin. Scripture did not originate privately.
“But this verse is talking only about prophecy,” someone may point out.
Yes, but prophecy isn’t only prediction. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy are prophecies. These books, called the Pentateuch, were written by Moses, and Moses was a prophet (Deut. 18:15). There are predictions to the coming Messiah in them, but basically those books are history. Prophecy doesn’t have to be predictive. Prophecy means “speaking” or “telling forth.” It is a communication from God; and all communication from God came, not by the will of man, but by men used by God as they were borne along by the Holy Spirit.
Inspiration is God’s revelation communicated to us through writers who used their own minds and their own words. God had so arranged their lives, their thoughts, and their vocabularies that the words they chose were the words that God determined from eternity past that they would use to write His truth.
Theologians call that supernatural process the plenary verbal inspiration of Scripture. Plenary means all. Nothing is missing. Verbal means word. So every word in the Bible is God-breathed.
The Results of Inspiration
What logically follows from plenary verbal inspiration? First, the Bible is infallible. It speaks only the truth. If God wrote it, it has to be true. “The Law of the Lord is perfect” (Ps. 19:7).
In addition to being perfect, the Bible is also inerrant in the original manuscripts—the Bible has no mistakes. It is true that as the Bible has come down to us through the generations, there may be slight variations in the manuscripts. These are apparent and generally known to us. But basically, we can look at the totality of the Word of God and say, “This is, as it was in the original language, the Word of God.” Even as He upholds the world by His power, so He upholds the Bible in an infallible, inerrant state.
That should caution us again about tampering with the Word of God. We read, “Do not add to His words, lest He rebuke you, and you be found a liar” (Prov. 30:6). When anyone wants to add a new revelation or claim new inspiration, that person falls into the category of those described in Revelation 22:
For I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: If anyone adds to these things, God will add to him the plagues that are written in this book; and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part from the Book of Life, from the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book. (Rev. 22:18, 19)
In addition to being infallible and inerrant, Scripture is also complete. The Bible is all we need for a right relationship with God. We don’t need a vision. We don’t need a new revelation or a voice from heaven. The Scriptures are “the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3).
The New Testament books demanded (for their authentication) authorship by an apostle or someone close to an apostle. The apostles were the foundation of the church (Eph. 2:20). In the twenty-first century, the foundation is not being relaid. There are no more apostles; therefore, there are no more revelations. Today we enjoy the illumination of Scripture by the Holy Spirit, not by contemporary inspiration.
The Word of God is also authoritative . “Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth; for the Lord has spoken” (Is. 1:2). That says it all. This is God’s voice recorded in Scripture, and we’d better listen to it.
The Bible is sufficient. Because the Word of God is the breath of God, we don’t need anything more. Go back again to that basic text, “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16, 17). The King James Version says, “That the man of God may be perfect.” Is there anything needed beyond perfection? When we say the Bible is sufficient, we mean it is adequate to address the needs of daily living. Paul wrote that Timothy from childhood had known the sacred writings which were able to give him the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus (2 Tim. 3:15). The Bible is all anyone needs to find salvation and to become mature in Christ.
If a person ever troubles you by saying you need this spiritual or mystical experience or that one, don’t believe it. The Spirit of God acting through the Word of God is sufficient to make you fully mature in Christ.
The Bible is also effective . “For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart” (Heb. 4:12). God said, “So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; it shall not return to Me void, but it shall accomplish what I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it” (Is. 55:11). And Paul said to the Thessalonians, “For our gospel did not come to you in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Spirit and in much assurance” (1 Thess. 1:5).
All believers have experienced the Bible’s effectiveness in their lives. It tears me up and puts me back together again. Take the Word of God and the Spirit of God together, and you have spiritual dynamite.
One of the reasons I know God wrote the Bible is that it tells me things about myself that only He and I know, and usually at a depth I didn’t understand before. And then through the Word He rearranges me to be what He wants me to be.
Beloved, we are to stand faithfully and carefully on this inspired Word of God, which is infallible, inerrant, complete, authoritative, sufficient, and effective. But there are many people who don’t. Our Lord tells us why: “He who is of God hears God’s words; therefore you do not hear, because you are not of God” (John 8:47).
One way to tell a saved person from an unsaved one is that one listens to the Word of God and the other doesn’t. Are you listening? Are you studying the Bible with resources like the MacArthur Study Bible? The effort is well worth it, for the Bible is God’s Word to you.
THINK BACK
1. What do we mean by the “inspiration” of the Scriptures?
2. What part did the Holy Spirit perform in that process?
3. What part did human writers perform in that process?