Scriptures
By Jerry Batson, Th.D.
Special to The Alabama Baptist
The average person would probably agree that the Bible is a special kind of book even if they cannot explain all that makes it special. As Christian believers we give the Bible a special place in our thinking, but we need to be able to give some explanation of what makes it special and different from other books. This week we begin to look at some of the major reasons the Bible is different from other books and therefore quite special to us.
We begin with the conviction that the Bible is an inspired book. However, by inspired, Christians mean more than might commonly be understood as something creative, rare, timely, brilliant or out of the ordinary, such as an inspiring performance by a musician or a flash of inspiration that brings sudden deeper or clearer understanding of a problem’s solution. Something more than human insight, brilliance and creativity was at work in the writers of the books of the Bible. That something more was actually Someone more, namely the Spirit of God breathing into and through those human authors to produce writings that are powerful and alive, penetrating and Spirit-authenticated.
The opening sentence in the Baptist Faith and Message statement about the Scriptures begins with the confession, “The Holy Bible was written by men divinely inspired.” This conviction gives expression to 2 Peter 1:20–21: “Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation. For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” The biblical writers were God’s instruments whom He carried along in their production of the sacred writings.
This conviction is repeated and enlarged upon in 2 Timothy 3:16: “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God.” The term rendered into English by “inspiration” might be literally translated by the expression “God-breathed.”
We might summarize these claims by saying that inspiration, as descriptive of the Bible, refers to the supernatural influence or activity of the Holy Spirit upon divinely selected men by which the Spirit, through the vocabularies and personalities of those men, brought forth writings that are trustworthy, truthful and authoritative. Or, in the language of Job 32:8, we might understand “there is a spirit in man and the breath of the Almighty gives him understanding.”
Truth we can trust
We are able to draw the further conviction that since the Scriptures were God-breathed in their origin and God-breathed when read and received by sincere believers, the Bible remains a treasure house of truth that we can trust, a Holy Book that the Spirit of truth inspired. In a day when many in the world understand truth to be relative or fluid and thus changeable, people need a touchstone of truth that remains the same yesterday, today and forever.
Based on the conviction that the Bible was inspired by the Holy Spirit in its writing, Christians commonly confess the Bible to be totally true and thus utterly trustworthy. After all, the sacred Scriptures were breathed out by God and received and written down by holy men of old whom God hand-picked.
The breath of God perfumes the words of Scripture, authenticates the truth conveyed by those words and waits to blow upon whose who receive that truth in humility and obedience.
EDITOR’S NOTE — Jerry Batson is a retired Alabama Baptist pastor who also has served as associate dean of Beeson Divinity School at Samford University and professor of several schools of religion during his career.
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