The
First Article of Faith
 We
believe that the Holy Bible was written by men
divinely inspired, and is a perfect treasure of heavenly instruction;
that it has God for its Author, salvation for its end, and
truth without any mixture of error for its matter; that it
reveals the principles by which God will judge us; and therefore
is, and shall remain to the end of the world, the true center
of Christian union, and the supreme standard by which all
human conduct, creeds, and opinions shall be tried.
This is
the first Article of Faith of a great many Baptist churches
in our Southland. The first statement is, "We believe
that the Holy Bible was written by men divinely inspired."
This brings us at once to the subject of the inspiration of
the Scriptures. The word inspiration is derived from the Latin
word inspiro which means "to breathe on"
That is the literal meaning of the word.
The theological
meaning is to breathe on or to breathe into for the purpose
of conveying the Holy Spirit, in order that those inspired
may speak or write what God would have spoken or written.
That is inspiration.
A Scriptural
example of this is found in John 20:22:
And
when he said this he breathed on them and saith unto them,
Receive ye the Holy Spirit.
That gives
us the true conception of inspiration. Following that, verse
23 gives the result:
Whosoever
sins ye forgive, they are forgiven unto them; whose soever
sins ye retain, they are retained.
That is,
an inspired man can declare exactly the terms of remission
of sins, and the terms upon which sins can cannot be remitted,
because he is speaking for God .
The book
that a man, so breathed on, writes is called a theopneustos,
a Greek word meaning God-inspired." Example:
From
a babe thou hast known the sacred writings, which are to
make thee wise unto salvation, through faith in Christ Jesus.
Every scripture is inspired of God (2 Tim. 3:15-16a).
After
God Breathed into Man
After
God breathed into man the Holy Spirit in order that he should
accurately write the things which God wanted written then
the book that he wrote was called theopneustos. So that this
second passage is a very important one in discussing inspiration,
probably the most important in the whole Bible.
If the
book is God-inspired, then it is God's Book and not man's
book.
Another
illustration is found in the second chapter of Genesis:
And
Jehovah God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed
into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living
soul.
The body
was present, but it was dead. It had no vitality. The distinction
between a body that is in-breathed and a body that is not
in-breathed is the distinction between death and life. Therefore,
a man's book is a dead book. I don't care how lofty its thought,
how fine its argument, or how perfect its rhetoric, the book
will pass away. It has not the principle of eternal life.
But books that are God-breathed are called the "living
oracles" (Acts 7:38). It is impossible for a God-book
to die.
The oldest
book that was ever God-inspired is as much living as the latest
one, and it will be unto the end of time a living oracle.
What Is
An Oracle?
But what
is an oracle? In Greece there certain shrines - certain deities
- such as the oracle of Apollo at Delphi. There was a priestess
that ministered at that shrine. Men would stand before her
and ask a question, and the priestess would fall into an ecstasy.
While in that ecstasy here answers were called oracles. Heathen
oracles are dumb, but these God-inspired oracles are living.
They are
not only called living oracles, but they are called the oracles
of God, as we see from Romans 3:1-2:
What
advantage hath the Jew? Much every way, for first of all
they were entrusted with the oracles of God.
The advantage
is that these Old Testament books were entrusted to them,
not as man's books, but as containing the speeches of God,
as well as the works of God.
Now, I
will briefly set forth the inspiration of both the Old and
the New Testaments. Second Timothy 3:15-16 covers all the
Old Testament. Paul says to Timothy: "From a babe thou
has know the sacred writings." Any other writing is what
is called profane writing, not in our modern sense of profanity,
but means not divine, but rather human or secular. "Thou
hast know the sacred writings, which are able to make thee
wise unto salvation. Every Scripture is inspired of God."
etc. He first speaks of the books of the Old Testament in
groups, ta hiera grammata, the sacred writings. Then he speaks
of then disturbutivley, pasa graphe. Every one of these sacred
writings is God-inspired.
We may
stand on that one declaration to affirm the inspiration of
every one of the Old Testament books.
Another
passage bearing on Old Testament inspiration is 2 Peter 1:20:
No
prophecy of Scripture is of private interpretation. For
no prophecy ever came by the will of man: but men spake
from God, being moved by the Holy Spirit.
Here again
is the idea of inspiration. An inspired man speaks, does not
speak his will. When he writes, he does not speak his will,
but he speaks and writes for God, being moved by the Holy
Spirit.
The
New Testament
Now let
us take up the New Testament. In John 14:26 we find that a
promise was made, before inspiration was given, that they
should be inspired:
But
the Comforter, even the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will
send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring
to your remembrance all that I said unto you.
Again
in 16:12-13:
I
have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear
them now. Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come
he shall guide you into all the truth; for he shall not
speak from himself; but what things soever he shall hear,
these shall he speak; and he shall declare unto you the
things that are to come.
That is,
Christ in His lifetime did not complete the revealed truth.
They were not prepared to receive it all. But he made provision
for the revealing of the truth by promising the Holy Spirit
who would teach them all that it was necessary for them to
know. What Christ said in His lifetime, which they had forgotten,
the Holy Spirit enabled them to remember and guided them into
the completion of the truth. So, after His resurrection, Christ
breathed on them and said unto them, "receive ye the
Holy Spirit" (John 20:22). This is inspiration and fulfills
His promise to them. This same thought is emphasized in 1
John 2:27:
But
the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you,
and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same
anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and
is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide
in him.
One other
passage, a very important one, is 1 Corinthians 2:6-13:
Howbeit
we speak wisdom among them that are perfect: yet not the
wisdom of this world, nor of the princes of this world,
that come to nought: But we speak the wisdom of God in a
mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before
the world unto our glory: Which none of the princes of this
world knew: for had they known it, they would not have crucified
the Lord of glory. But as it is written, Eye hath not seen,
nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man,
the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.
But God
hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth
all things, yea, the deep things of God. For what man knoweth
the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him?
even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of
God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but
the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things
that are freely given to us of God. Which things also we speak,
not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the
Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual.
The
Promise
Here is
the promise again clearly stated: that what is to be communicated
through this inspiration is something eye could not see, ear
could not hear, nor the heart of man conceive. It is a revelation,
and it comes through the Spirit that knoweth the things of
God. As your spirit alone can know you (your neighbor does
not know you as well as you know yourself), so the Holy Spirit
alone know the will of God, and that Spirit has communicated
it to inspired men in man's words. Mark this verbal inspiration:
"Combining spiritual things with spiritual words."
It has
always been a matter of profound surprise to me that anybody
should ever question the verbal inspiration of the Bible.
The whole
thing had to be written in words. Words or signs of ideas,
and if the words or not inspired, then there is no way of
getting at anything in connection with inspiration. If I am
free to pick up the Bible and read something and say, "That
is inspired," then read something else and say, "That
is not inspired," and someone else does not agree with
me as to which is and which is not inspired, it leaves the
whole thing unsettled as to whether any of it is inspired.
What is
the object of inspiration? It is to put accurately, in human
words, ideas from God. If the words are not inspired, how
am I to know how much to reject, and how to find out whether
anything is from God? When you hear this silly talk that the
Bible "contains" the word of God and is not the
word of God, you hear fool's talk. I don't care is he is a
Doctor of Divinity, a president of a university covered with
medals from universities of Europe and the United States -
it is fool-talk. There can be no inspiration of the book without
the inspiration of the words of the book.
Proof
of the Inspiration of the Bible
Very briefly
I have summed up the inspiration of the Old Testament and
of the inspiration of the New Testament, and now I will give
you some Scriptures on both Testaments together. Hebrews 1:1-2:
God,
who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time
past unto the fathers by the prophets, Hath in these last
days spoken unto us by his Son ...
In old
times there were inspired men; but the culmination or completion
is in the Son. That covers both. Hebrews 5:12 also cover both:
For
when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need
that one teach you again which be the first principles of
the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of
milk, and not of strong meat.
Here the
New Testament is called "oracles" as well as the
Old Testament. Those were Christian people who had learned
the first principles of the oracles of God and stopped. Another
passage is 1 Peter 4:11:
If
an man speaketh, speaking as it were the oracles of God.
Peter
is here talking about the Old and New Testaments. If a mans
gets up to speak, let him remember that there is a standard,
and that that standard is fixed. he must speak according to
the oracles of God. These Scriptures cover both.
Now let
us consider some observations:
First,
the books of the Bible are not by the will of man. Not one
of the books of either the Old or the New Testament would
ever have come into being except by the inspiration of God.
I want to give you a searching proof on that, found in 1 Peter
1:10-11:
Of
which salvation the prophets have inquired and searched
diligently, who prophesied of the grace that should come
unto you: Searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit
of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified
beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that
should follow.
Moved
by the Holy Spirit
Here are
men moved by the Spirit of God to record certain things about
the future, and they themselves did not understand it. They
studied their own prophecies just as we study them. They knew
that God had inspired them to say these things, but they did
not understand. For example: God instructed a prophet to say
that the Messiah should come forth out of Bethlehem of Judea.
To show that these things did not come from the will of man,
the man himself could not explain them. It was a matter of
study and investigation to find out what these signified.
They found out what their prophecies were meant for the future,
that is, for us.
The second
observation is that the propelling power in the speaking or
writing was an impulse from the Holy Spirit. They, the inspired
men, became instruments by which the Holy Spirit spoke or
wrote. Take for instance, that declaration in 2 Samuel 23:2,
where David said:
The Spirit
of Jehovah spake by me, and His word was upon my tongue.
In Acts
1:16, we find that the utterances of David were being studied.
We have a declaration that the Holy Spirit spake by the mouth
of David concerning Judas; and in the third chapter of Acts
we have another declaration of the same kind. Always the speaker
or writer was an instrument of the Holy Spirit.
The third
observation is that this influence of the Holy Spirit guided
men in he selection of material, even where that material
came from some other book, even an uninspired book, the Spirit
guiding in selecting and omitting material.
From such
declarations as John 20:30-31 and 21:25, we learn that Christ
did many things, that if all were written it would make a
book as big as the world; that what ha been written was written
for a certain purpose. The Holy Spirit inspired Matthew, Mark,
Luke, and John to select from the deeds and words of Jesus
that which God wanted written; not to take everything He said,
but only that which was necessary to accomplish the purpose.
The fourth
observation is that inspiration is absolutely necessary in
order to take awaken the power of remembrance. John 2:22 says
that after His resurrection they remembered what He had said,
that is, the Spirit called it to remembrance.
To illustrate,
take the speeches of Christ, for instance, that address delivered
at Capernaum on the Bread of Life, the Sermon on the Mount
and, particularly, the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth
chapters of John.
There
were not shorthand reporters in those days, and there is not
a man on earth who could, after a lapse of fifty years, recall
verbatim et litreatim what Christ said. Yet John, without
a shadow of hesitancy, goes on and gives page after page of
what Christ said just after the institution of the Lord's
Supper. Inspiration in that case was exercised in awakening
the memory so that John could reproduce these great orations
of Christ.
Of the
orations of Paul, take the speech recorded in Acts 13, an
exceedingly remarkable speech, or the one recorded in Acts
26, or the one of Mars Hill, in chapter 17, one of the most
finished productions that the world has ever seen. Inspiration
enabled Luke to report exactly what Paul said. Luke never
could have done that unassisted. Luke, as a man, might have
given the substance, but that is not the substance, it is
an elaborate report, the sense depending upon the words used.
The fifth
observation is that inspiration was to make additions to the
Scriptures until they were completed, in order that the standard
may be a perfect treasure, incapable of being added to, unsusceptible
of diminution. We wand what is there, all that is there, and
no more than is there. Therefore, when we come to the last
book of the Bible, this is said which, in a sense applies
to the whole Bible:
For I
testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy
of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God
shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book:
And if any man shall take away from the words of the book
of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the
book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things
which are written in this book. (Rev 22:18-19)
The
Design of Inspiration
It was
the design of inspiration to give us a perfect system of revealed
truth, whose words are inspired. As an example of verbal inspiration,
take Paul's argument, based on the "seed" in the
singular number. Everything in the interpretation depends
upon the number of that noun. Apart from verbal inspiration,
how on earth would Paul hinge an argument on whether a word
is singular or plural?
The next
observation is that inspiration was to give different views
of the same person or thing by different writers, each perfect
according to its viewpoint, but incomplete so far as the whole
is concerned, all views being necessary in order to complete
the view. There is a Gospel by Mark, written for the Romans,
beginning with the public ministry of Christ. Then there are
the Gospels of Matthew, Luke, and John, and a gospel by Paul.
Each of them is perfect according to the plan which the Spirit
put in the mind of the writer. They are perfect so far as
the whole thing is concerned, but incomplete so far as the
whole thing is concerned. We have to put them side by side
in order to get a complete view of the life of our Lord. That
is what we mean by harmonical study. Each is infallibly correct,
but it takes the blended view of all to make the whole thing.
The
Design of Genealogy
Apart
from inspiration, no man on earth can account for Genesis.
Just see in what small space there is given the history of
the world up to chapter 11 - how much is left out. We see
the same plan all through the book. It first takes up the
wicked descendants, give their genealogy a little way, then
sidetracks them and takes up the true line. Then of their
descendants it follows the wicked first a short way and eliminates
them and goes back and takes up the true line and elaborates
that. That principle goes all through the Bible.
For instance,
the first missionary period of Paul's life covered a greater
period of time than any other, and there is no record of it,
just as single reference to it in Acts. So with his fifth
missionary journey. There are only a few referenced to it
in Timothy and Titus. But the intervening three journeys are
elaborately given.
Now we
come to an important point. When these inspired declarations
were written, they were absolutely infallible. Take these
Scriptures: John 10:35, "The Scripture cannot be broken;"
Matthew 5:18, "Till heaven and earth shall pass away,
one joy or tittle shall in no wise pass away from the law,
till all things be accomplished:" Acts 1:16, "It
was needful that the Scripture should be fulfilled."
That is
one of the most important points in connection with inspiration,
that the inspired word is irrefragable, infallible; that all
the powers of the world cannot break one "thus said the
Lord."
Another
observation is the power that comes upon the inspired word.
Hebrews 4:12:
For
the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than
any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder
of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is
a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.
The
Object of the Word
Yet another
observation is the object of the Word. There are two objects.
John sets forth the first one when he says that they are written
that we might believe, and, believing, have life, or, as Paul
says to Timothy, "which are able to make thee wise unto
salvation." They are both expressed in the nineteenth
Psalm:
The law
of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul; the testimony
of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple."
The last
observation is on the sufficiency of the Word; that the inspired
record is complete; that is all-sufficient. That is presented
in two Scriptures, Luke 16:29: Abraham said to the rich man
in hell who wanted a special messenger sent to his brothers:
Abraham
saith unto him, They have Moses and the prophets; let them
hear them. And he said, Nay, father Abraham: but if one went
unto them from the dead, they will repent. And he said unto
him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will
they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.
The Other
is 2 Timothy 3:17:
Than
the man of God may be complete, furnished completely unto
every good work.
Let me
say further that only the original text of the books of the
Bible is inspired, not the copy of the translation.
Second,
the inspiration of the Bible does not mean that God said and
did all that is said and done in the Bible. Some of it the
Devil did and said. Much of it wicked men did and said.
The inspiration
means that the record of what is said and done is correct.
It does not mean that everything that God did and said is
recorded. It does not mean that everything recorded is of
equal importance, but every part of it is necessary to the
purpose of the record, and no part is unimportant. One part
is no more inspired than any other part.
It is
perfectly foolish to talk about degrees of inspiration. What
Jesus said in the flesh, as we find it in the four Gospel,
is nor more His Word than what the inspired prophet or apostle
said.
That is
the folly of the Jefferson Bible. He purposes to take out
of the four Gospels everything that Jesus said and put it
together as a Bible.
What Jesus
said after He ascended to heaven, though Paul or any other
apostle, is just as much Jesus' word as anything He said in
the flesh.
Here are
some objections:
First,
"only the originals are inspired, and we have only copies."
The answer to that is that God would not inspire a book and
take no care of the book. His providence has preserved the
Bible in a way that no other book has been preserved.
The
second objection is, "We are dependent upon scholars
to determine what is the real text of the Bible." The
answer is that only an infinitesimal part of it is dependent
upon scholars for the ascertainment of the true text, and
if every bit of that were blotted out it would not destroy
the Holy Scriptures.
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