Last week, we considered some of the internal evidence that causes Baptists to believe in the divine inspiration of the Old Testament. This week, we look at some of the internal evidence that affirms the New Testament is also “God-breathed.”
That means the Bible is unlike any other book. Because it has “God for its author, salvation for its end and truth, without any mixture of error, for its matter” (Baptist Faith and Message, Article I), the Bible is “a perfect treasure of divine instruction.”
Scholars frequently begin looking at what the New Testament says about itself by turning to John 14. There, in verse 26, Jesus told the disciples the Holy Spirit would teach them all things and remind them of everything He had said to them. Since Jesus alerted the disciples that God’s Holy Spirit would be at work in and through them, no one should be surprised when His words prove true.
Acts 2 begins with the disciples experiencing the filling of the Holy Spirit. And as a direct result, the apostle Peter preached authoritatively about Jesus, the need for repentance and how Christians should live together. When the Jews of Jerusalem asked, “What shall we do,” Peter did not hesitate. He declared, “Repent and be baptized.”
Peter did not doubt that he was preaching a message straight from God. Neither did those who heard his words. Today Peter’s message, recorded in Acts 2, is still as divinely inspired as it was the day his words echoed off Jerusalem’s stone walls. There is no difference in the inspiration of his spoken words and their written record.
Divine inspiration and authority were claimed for the earliest writings of Jesus’ followers. Perhaps the earliest writing comes from the Council of Jerusalem as recorded in Acts 15. When a dispute erupted about whether one had to be a Jew before becoming a Christian, the matter ended up before the church fathers in Jerusalem.
When the council sent its verdict — one did not have to be a Jew in order to be a Christian — it said, “It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us” (v. 28). Thus the council claimed divine inspiration and authority for its decision, which was conveyed in writing to the Christians at Antioch.
The apostle Paul’s writings are filled with claims of divine inspiration and authority.
In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul wrote, “My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power so that your faith might not rest on men’s wisdom but on God’s power” (1 Cor. 2:4–5).
Eight verses later, he added, “This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words.”
To the Thessalonian believers, the apostle wrote, “And we also thank God continually because when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as it actually is, the word of God, which is at work in you who believe” (1 Thess. 2:13).
Paul believed his message was God’s word. It was divinely inspired and authoritative. That is why he did not hesitate to pronounce condemnation on anyone who preached a gospel different from the one he preached (Gal. 1:8–9).
Again whether the words were proclaimed by voice or pen made no difference. Both were considered divinely inspired and authoritative. In 1 Corinthians 14:37–38, Paul wrote, “If anybody thinks he is a prophet or spiritually gifted, let him acknowledge that what I am writing to you is the Lord’s command. If he ignores this, he himself will be ignored.”
In the final verses to the Romans, Paul described his writings as “prophetic writings by the command of the eternal God” and “able to establish you by my gospel and the proclamation of Jesus Christ” (Rom. 16:25–26). There can be no doubt how Paul viewed his writings.
And there can be no doubt how others viewed them either.
Often quoted are the words of Peter that Paul’s writings “contain some things that are hard to understand” (2 Pet. 3:16). What is frequently overlooked is Peter’s view of those writings. In verse 15, Peter said Paul wrote “with the wisdom that God gave him.” Peter then added that “unstable people distort” what Paul wrote “as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction” (v. 16).
Here Peter placed Paul’s writings alongside “other Scriptures.”
Paul also recognized the writings of other New Testament authors as Scripture.
In 1 Timothy 5:18, he quoted two passages and attributed both to “Scripture.” The first comes from Deuteronomy 25:4. The second has Old Testament lineage but is an exact quote of Jesus’ words from Luke 10:7. Evidently Paul was aware of this writing and considered it Scripture.
Both Paul and Peter, near the end of their lives, wrote about the inspiration of Scripture.
Paul wrote to Timothy that “the Holy Scriptures … are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim. 3:15). As stated last week, the primary emphasis of this passage refers to the Old Testament writings that Timothy had known from his infancy. But there can be no doubt that it is the New Testament writings that “make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.” Evidently Paul meant this passage for both testaments.
Likewise Peter wrote about inspiration in 2 Peter 1:19ff. In his day, “the words of the prophets” (Old Testament) had been “made more certain” by the light that shines in a dark place, a reference to the coming of Jesus as the Christ.
When he wrote about men speaking as they were “carried along by the Holy Spirit,” he seemed to be describing his experience as well as giving a theological conclusion.
James Orr, a Scottish theologian of the last century, summed up the matter of inspiration well when he wrote, “The most searching inquiry still leaves them with a Scripture, supernaturally inspired to be an infallible guide in the great matters for which it was given — the knowledge of the will of God for their salvation in Christ Jesus, instruction in the way of holiness and the ‘hope of eternal life, which God, who cannot lie, promised before times eternal’ (Titus 1:2).”
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