Handling Scripture - Part 3

Inspiration

Wrestling with Inspiration: Jesus, Scripture, and the Breath of God

This is the final installment in a three-part introduction to handling Scripture. This series is not meant to be exhaustive or to demand anyone change their views. My hope is simply to invite us into the long tradition of wrestling with God and faith - a hallmark activity of God’s people throughout Scripture.

Kids with Swords

As a child in Awana, I was taught “sword drills” - racing to find verses in our Bibles, which our teachers reminded us were our “swords.” I still have a snapshot in my memory of these events: kids with their Bibles, learning that by memorizing passages, we were ready to fight evil!

Nearly 30 years later, Awana still runs with this idea. A recent Awana event declares:

Bring your Bibles (those are your swords)!!!!!

Sword Drills are finding Bible verses quickly... we are sharpening our swords so we can slay evil with God's mighty words!

One memory verse from my Awana days was Hebrews 4:12:

Indeed, the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

We were taught to hear this as a warning: God’s Word - the Bible - “cuts” to our innermost secrets, knowing everything about us. The lesson was clear: Scripture was more than just text - it was our judge.

But years later, re-reading Hebrews 4:12 as an adult, I was stopped cold by the next three words in verse 13: “And before him…”

Suddenly the focus shifted - this sword that was sharper than any sword was not a “thing” (the Bible), but it was a person: Jesus, the one who is the focus of the whole book of Hebrews, and really the entire Bible.

The Word Is a Person

It turns out the word “it” isn’t even present in the Greek of Hebrews 4:12. The passage actually reads:

For, the Word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until dividing soul from spirit, joints from marrow - able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And before him…

The next verse describes standing “before him” - not “it.” The passage is not talking about the Bible as such, but about Jesus, the living Word, who dissects us with precise words we need to hear.

Traditionally, I’d always heard “Word of God” meant the Bible. Some even insist, “If it’s not in the 66 books of the Bible, God didn’t say it.” But reading Hebrews closely makes it clear: the Word of God is a person - Jesus - who is alive and active, not merely ink on a page.

Scripture Points Beyond Itself

This realization cracked open other verses from my youth. Take Isaiah 55:11:

so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;
it shall not return to me empty,
but it shall accomplish that which I purpose
and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

I was raised to think “the word” in Isaiah was “Scripture.” If you put Bible verses up on signs - even angry ones - God would use those words to convict and save. I remember an interview with a man who’d spent two decades marching on sidewalks with signs of God’s judgment. Now he brings his young son with him. He quotes Isaiah 55:11 as his justification for his approach of condemnation. When asked how many lives had been changed by all those years, he quietly admitted, “Well… none.”

The verses fell flat for me as well, and I unplugged from church when I was young.

In Comes Jesus

But something changed when I returned to faith in my 30s. For the first time, I could see how Isaiah 55:11 was fulfilled - not in ink, but in a person. In John 17, Jesus prays:

I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do… But now I am coming to you… so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves… All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I have been glorified in them. (John 17:4, 13, 10)

Jesus, the Word, is sent from God, accomplishes his purpose, and returns not empty, but glorified. Isaiah 55:11 comes to life in Jesus’ own story and in Jesus’ work with me.

Again and again, the New Testament writers insist: Jesus is the Word of God - God’s fullest, truest, most complete self-expression.

Michael Ramsey once put it:

“God is Christlike, and in Him is no unChristlikeness at all.”

Or as C.S. Lewis said:

“Jesus is all God has to say.”

The Question of Inspiration

So, what then do we make of the inspiration of Scripture? Paul writes:

All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that the person of God may be proficient, equipped for every good work. (2 Timothy 3:16–17)

The Greek word rendered “inspired” - theopneustos, “God-breathed” - only appears here in the Bible, and its true meaning is suspect. We don’t know what it means.

Paul clarifies it though.

Paul does not use the Greek rhema that would refer to individual words. Rather, Paul uses the Greek graphe which shifts the focus to documents as a whole. Paul did not have Scripture broken down into verses and words as we do, he had a Scripture that consisted more broadly of a collection of writings (documents).

This makes sense when in the passage before it uses the Greek gamma that is used to refer to “letters” or documents as well. 2 Timothy 3:15-16 tell us that the “sacred writings” (consecrated documents) are the same collection as the God-breathed Scripture to which he refers.

And in its purpose, the collection of sacred writings - those God-breathed Scriptures - are not declared by Paul to be flawlessly error free down to every word for all scientific accuracy, for absolute historical clarity, and other things that we think about in our modern, western world.

Paul is saying that the collection of writings are beneficial to salvation (2 Timothy 3:15), and to make us ready to the good works of salvation by instructing us, convincing us, restoring us, and growing us into what is religiously right (2 Timothy 3:16-17).

Nowhere is Paul laying claim that every word within Scripture is accurate. He is not contending that the details are true when Scripture speaks of the earth have four corners or being flat and set upon great pillars. Neither is he declaring Scripture to be true when it speaks of literal gates in the sky that let cosmic water pour in or it tells of the sun walking and standing through the sky. Paul is not taking a side on whether it is God who made David sin and count his army (2 Samuel) or Satan made David do it (1 Chronicles).

Paul is saying that the package of Scripture is conducive to our salvation and being ready to do good things.

This is despite the seeming imperfections or contradictions in Scripture. But are they really imperfections or contradictions if they are the mile markers of the human history journey toward realizing more and more what God is really like?

A Progressing Conversation

The story of Peter at the Transfiguration comes to mind. He tries to set Moses (the Law), Elijah (the Prophets), and Jesus on level ground. But God interrupts, announcing, “This is my Son… listen to him!” In Luke 24, Jesus meets two discouraged disciples and “opens the Scriptures to them” - showing how all the words, all the history, are fulfilled in himself.

Scripture has been a conversation into which God has certainly breathed - he has spoken. Peter sees a reflection of the thousands of years of conversation as he sees the Law and the Prophets having a conversation with Jesus.

But Scripture has no life; Jesus is the life. Scripture is not God; Scripture leads us to the living Word.

A Higher View of Scripture

Some worry that seeing things this way lowers our view of Scripture.

However, of those who align with the ideas in this three part blog series, they would contend that this is the higher view. It elevates Scripture to its true purpose and service, to point to Jesus as the single and perfect Word of God. It places Scripture above arguments of inerrancy and such debates. It allows Scripture to exist within the cultures of its creation, rather than attempting to appropriate our facts obsessed culture upon it.

The reasons go on.

For now, Brad Jersak offers a beautiful summary of what we hold for sure:

“The Word of God is inspired, inerrant, and infallible - and when he was 18, he grew a beard.”

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Here is a rendering of Jesus most accurately may have looked like: