Is the Bible truly God's Word?

The Bible is God's own Book, His Divine and perfect Revelation, His living Voice speaking to men, in all ages. It should be read prayerfully, listened to reverently, received believingly, obeyed implicitly.

The Bible states clearly that it is the word of God: it assumes verbal plenary inspiration and therefore infallibility. Let us thank God that He has been pleased to reveal Himself to man in such a reliable way. The Bible is the safest point in the universe: "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away" (Lk. 21:33).

If the Scriptures claim to be inspired of God, and they do, and if that claim is true, and it is, then the Bible must be the best of books, a book standing altogether by itself, the fountain head of divine revelation, a book coming to us with nothing less than the authority of God Himself.

By inspiration we mean that which is God-breathed. We are told "all [or every], scripture is given by inspiration of God." It might be rendered "every scripture is God-breathed." (2 Tim. 3:16.) The scriptures are therefore a revelation from God; and their force or authority to our hearts and consciences flows from that fact. If scripture be not God's word, it has no more value to us than the writings of good men; but it is His word, hence it comes to us with the authority, love, wisdom and holiness of God. Though its pages run over thousands of years, take us back before time was, and lead our thoughts on to the eternal state, and some of its books were written more than three thousand years ago, it is unlike any other book, for it is always new. Take up an ordinary volume of human composition, written two or three hundred years ago, or even go back to one of the Fathers, and you will find you have scarcely patience to read a few pages; but scripture, as we have said, though old, is always new. It carries with it a freshness and power to the heart and conscience, as no other book does; and all the changes in the world and in mankind never seem to affect it. It warns us against "men" and their "philosophy," ritualism and its imposing ordinances, and of putting "tradition" in the place of authority instead of Christ. While addressing itself to the heart and conscience, it has always a voice of instruction and blessing to those who believe and receive its words from the mouth of God. Those who do not believe, cannot understand it, for "by faith we understand." Such only know its blessedness. "The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him," and we have "joy and peace in believing." To the rationalist scripture is inexplicable, to the ritualist it is confusion, to the infidel it abounds with mistakes, to the literary man there are inaccuracies and contradictions. Such, however, little know that God has said that "the natural man receives not the things of the Spirit of God, neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned." (1 Cor. 2:14.)

The Bible is the only book that faithfully tells us what we are, and that even to the discerning of the thoughts and intents of the heart. This shows it to be divine, for God only searches the heart. It also truly reveals God, so that when the word is received, it brings our souls into the consciousness of God having to do with us. This also shows its divinity, for "the world by wisdom knows not God." The variety of aspects in which the Son who came forth from the Father to save sinners is presented to us ― His personal glory, moral perfectness, finished work, walk, words, ways, life, death, resurrection, ascension, glorification, present offices, and future judgments and reign ― as the leading truths of scripture, give it also a divine character. Its unity, too, carries with it the stamp of divinity as nothing else could. The way in which the different parts are adapted to each other; types in the Old Testament having their antitypes in the New; a multitude of prophetic statements in the former having their accomplishment in the latter, and the immense number of quotations in the New from the Old Testament, to prove the soundness of the doctrines taught, combine to give it a divine character which is incontestable. It is not then surprising that an inspired writer should commend "the word" to us as if in its operations it possessed divine attributes. "The word of God is quick and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." (Heb. 4:12.)

Translation again, like interpretation, as well as editing the text from the varying witnesses, belongs to the responsible use of scripture, and is quite distinct from the fact of its divine inspiration. No doubt the conviction that God inspired every scripture would act powerfully on the spirit of every believer who undertook a work so serious, and is intended to make him feel his dependence on God in the use of all diligence and every means duly to attain the end in view. But inspiration means, as one of those employed in it says, that men spoke from God, moved (or, borne along) by the Holy Spirit. Hence scripture is not of man's wit or will, but of God, as no one more clearly than our Lord ever shows, and so of final and divine authority. Hence too the danger and evil for any one to give, whatever the cause of failure, his own mind and not God's in editing, translating, or interpreting. What God communicated is able to make one wise unto salvation through faith that is in Christ Jesus. "Is it not written?" if truly applied is absolutely conclusive in His judgment Who will judge living and dead. "And the scripture cannot be broken."

The Word of God reaches us in the Holy Scriptures. Should someone ask us why we accept the Bible as the Word of God, we might well reply: Is not that word, which lives and is powerful, which penetrates and discerns the hidden and secret things, the Word of God? It is indeed. Is not the Bible marked by exactly those features? Without any question it is. Then what further need of proof have we, that the Bible is the Word of God?

Scripture claims to be the communication of the mind of God to man, not setting aside the character or circumstances of the writers, but giving the full and absolute truth of God in and through all. Such is the doctrine asserted in 1 Cor. 2; 2 Tim. 3; and with this agrees the uniform use of the passages cited for special purposes throughout both the Old and the New Testaments. So above all said He Who spoke as never man spoke; and no wonder; for He was God as well as man, and man as truly as God. But it is to be feared that unbelief as to the written word bodes ill for the faith which is professed in the Word, the personal Word of life. In both cases it is the Infinite brought into the finite by grace; of which the ruinous speculations of unbelief would deprive us, as their authors have been themselves deprived of it by an enemy subtler than they are. Thus, if incarnation be the Word made flesh (a divine person yet a real man, "that Holy Thing," born of His mother, and this by the power of the Spirit), revelation is the mind of God in the language of man, but perfectly guided and guarded by the Spirit. It were to lose the truth in both respects, if we accepted the foolish cheat of Satan that the finite drags down the Infinite. Not so; both were given in God's love to meet the finite in its actual state of sin, degradation, and distance from God; and in both the finite is so governed by the Infinite, which has joined it to itself in holy and perfect union, that grace and truth alone exist and appear without the smallest admixture of human evil or error.*

Scripture then, that is, everything which comes under the designation of scripture, is inspired of God; not merely holy men of God spoke, borne by — under the power of — the Holy Spirit; but every thing written in the Spirit with a view to permanent guidance of the faithful is inspired of God. Thus simply believed must necessarily exclude error from holy writ; for who would say that God inspires mistakes, great or small? Those who so think cannot really believe that every scripture is inspired of God. Time was when God's word was of course inspired but not yet written; now it is in infinite mercy written by His gracious power Who knew the end from the beginning, and would provide an adequate and perfect and permanent standard for every need spiritually on earth. Hence it is written, and, to be divinely authoritative, is inspired of God: not the sacred letters of the Old Testament only, but the writings of the apostles and prophets of the New Testament the foundation on which the church is built (Eph. 2:20).

All such thoughts are below the truth, and the Scriptures are injured thus by those who sincerely desire to be its friends. The fact is, nothing was left to the vessel — the words, not merely the truths or doctrines, were given by the Holy Ghost. Were it otherwise, we could have no divine certainty. Where should we draw the line between the human and divine? And is it likely that all would agree as to the line to be drawn? Not that a human element is altogether denied. Paul has his style, and Peter his; for the Spirit took up the men as He found them; nevertheless, every word thus written was from Himself.

The original writers of Scripture then were fully and absolutely guided by the Spirit of God in their writing, and preserved totally from any human error, though in many cases, if not all, they were unaware at the time that they were actually writing Scripture that would endure for eternity. It is important that we too who may minister the Word of God to others, should learn to depend on the leading of the Spirit of God, and not on any human intellect, in so speaking; though we know absolutely that our speaking now cannot ever result in being actual Scripture, for the Word of God is complete.