This article is the third installment in our series "Christian, What Do You Believe: The Belgic Confession of Faith". Find the whole series here.
What kind of book is the Bible? Is it merely an ancient document written by men inventing a religion? Is it like our Constitution, a useful guide that can be amended when needed? Is it special like other great writings that reveal the human condition and help us see divinity in the world?
Or is the Bible the very word of God written?
Your view of Scripture determines the role it plays in your life. If the Bible isn’t God’s word, it can inspire, encourage, and advise. But it has no right to govern. If the Bible is just a human book, we may filter out the parts we don’t like. We might use an uninspired Bible as a rule book but overlook the story’s main character and central message: Jesus and the gospel. If the Bible isn’t God’s word, it might help us in this life, but it can say nothing about the life to come.
To accurately understand the Bible and properly submit to it we need to know where it came from and how and why it was written (see Belgic Confession, article 3).
God Spoke to His People
God is a revealer. He shows himself in the beautiful book of nature. From the world he created we can know that there is a God and gain a general sense of what he is like. But to know God as redeemer requires further revelation. And God provides that revelation through his “holy and divine word” (art. 2).
Sometimes God spoke directly to his audience (e.g. Gen. 3:9ff.; Ex. 3:4ff.; Deut. 4:12; Acts 9:4–6). More often God spoke through prophets, who served as his mouthpiece (Jer. 15:19). The prophets’ speech was special divine revelation, augmenting God’s general revelation in nature. This is why true prophets often start their speeches by saying, “Thus says the Lord” (some 420 times). True “prophesy never came by the will of man” (2 Pet. 1:21a). To presume falsely to speak for God was a capital offense (Deut. 18:20).
When the holy prophets truly spoke for God, they were “moved by the Holy Spirit” (2 Pet. 1:21b). Peter’s word for “moved” pictures a ship pushing through water as wind fills its sails with energy. Bible authors sometimes describe the sensation of inspiration. Jeremiah said that God’s “word was in my heart like a burning fire shut up in my bones; I was weary of holding it back, and I could not” (Jer. 20:9).
The way God used his spokesmen is important to our understanding of Scripture as a divine book with human influence. Some people have proposed a mechanical theory of inspiration, as if God’s prophets become robots or courtroom transcribers, their personalities being completely suppressed. But the human qualities of the authors are evident in the portions of Scripture they wrote. Others, advocating a dynamic inspiration, claim that Scripture’s authors were inspired similarly to how you might be moved when viewing a breathtaking landscape. But hearing from God didn’t simply heighten the authors’ creativity; it gave them a definite message. Ezekiel’s experience in a vision is vivid. God told him to eat a scroll and then speak to the people his holy word (Ezek. 3:1).
A better model is called organic inspiration. “The human authors were completely controlled and guided by the Holy Spirit even in their choice of words.” Yet God used them, “as they were, with their character and temperament, their gifts and talents, their education and culture, their vocabulary, diction and style.” Through the messages of the prophets, God’s audiences literally heard his word.
The doctrine of inspiration tells us that “at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets” (Heb. 1:1). But to know how God speaks to you requires understanding the doctrine of inscripturation.
God Recorded His Speech
The Bible is God’s exact word written. He wrote some portions directly—he engraved the Ten Commandments with his own finger (Deut. 5:22; Ex. 31:18). Other portions were recorded by God’s prophets and apostles at critical points in redemptive history. Moses and Jeremiah wrote God’s word as a witness for future generations (Deut. 31:19; Jer. 30:2). Luke used his “perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write…an orderly account” (Luke 1:3) “of all that Jesus began both to do and teach” (Acts 1:1). Jesus told John to write the words of his vision “and send it to the seven churches which are in Asia” (Rev. 1:11).
By the close of the apostolic age God had recorded in the Bible everything we need to know for life and godliness. God spoke more words than are recorded in Scripture (John 21:25). But what he has given us is enough to enable us to truly know him. We shouldn’t expect to hear God speak the same way Isaiah or Paul did. But because of the consolidated record of God’s inspiration we are better positioned to hear God than they were. “We have also a more sure word of prophecy” (2 Peter 1:19; KJV).
God wrote the Bible “because of the special care for us and for our salvation.” Scripture is God’s word to us in “permanent and accessible form.” God used to speak locally, even privately. Even when Jesus preached to thousands, he addressed only a small fraction of the world’s population. Today there are nearly as many Bibles as people. Prior to the writing of Scripture, God’s revelation was passed along through oral tradition. But spoken stories evolve. Writing “prevent[s] distortion.” There are no errors in God’s word. The entire Bible—down to the minutest detail—“is given by inspiration of God” (2 Tim. 3:16). The written word enables even future generations to faithfully know and fervently praise the Lord (Ps. 102:18).
The fact of the Bible’s existence proves God’s love. To truly live we need more than bread; we need to eat God’s word, so to speak (Deut. 8:3). Because he is Scripture’s main character, we eat God’s word by faith and we come to know him. And we become grounded in Scripture’s basic message: Through the blood of his Son Jesus Christ God has provided forgiveness of sins and eternal life for hell-worthy sinners (John 5:38). This message has endless layers—accessible on the outside but inexhaustible rich.
We must come to Scripture with total confidence in God’s wisdom. When we find things in God’s word that grate against our sensitivities, we can know that this is not merely a human book but a divine one. When we are troubled by things in the Bible, we should pray for greater understand even while we submit to what is written. As we read this holy book we can expect God’s blessing; he has promised, “Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words” of this book (Rev. 1:3). These are the very words of God.
Footnotes
Petery Y. De Jong, The Church’s Witness to the World, 1:102.
Article five touches on how the written portions of Scripture came to be gathered into one cohesive book. Here we focus on the act of God’s will becoming written.
De Jong, The Church’s Witness to the World, 1:105.
Jakob Van Bruggen, The Church Says Amen, 31.
