Sunday, September 8, 2019
The absolute authority of the Bible over our lives is based in our conviction that this Book does not merely contain the Word of God, but that it IS the Word of God in its sum and in its parts. Our text for the promise of God, this week (2nd Timothy 3:16-17) testifies to this, describing the actual process of this Holy Spirit inspiration:
- It is the word of the Holy Spirit which literally means God breathed. This describes the source of the whole Bible. The Bible is NOT the product of elevated human consciousness or enlightened human intellect, BUT is directly breathed from God Himself.
- 2nd Peter 1:20-21 elaborates this truth and adds that none of what was given was merely the private opinion of the writer and that each writer involved in the production of the Holy Scriptures was moved by the Holy Spirit. This does not mean that the writer were merely robots, seized upon by God’s power to write automatically without their conscious participation. God does not override those gifts of intellect and sensitivity that He has given His creatures.
- 1st Corinthians 2:10-13 expands on this process by which the revelation of the Holy Scriptures was given. Verse 13 says that even the words used in the giving of the Bible (not just the ideas, but the precise terminology) were planned by the Holy Spirit, who deployed the respective authors of the Bible Books to write, “comparing spiritual things with spiritual” (literally, matching spiritual words to spiritual ideas).
This biblical view of the Bible’s derivation is called the plenary verbal inspiration of the Scriptures, meaning every word is inspired by the Holy Spirit of God.
You are loved, Pastor Don
Cornerstone Worship Center 