The Bible is the Word of God. The words therein are not the basis for something mystical; they are to be taken for what they truly are, God’s chosen words, every last one of them. To read the Bible is to hear the very voice of God. If we doubt this, then we doubt everything Jesus Christ ever said, for when He spoke, God spoke.
The apostle Peter spoke plainly about such things.
For when He received honor and glory from God the Father, such an utterance as this was made to Him by the Majestic Glory, “This is My beloved Son with whom I am well-pleased” — and we ourselves heard this utterance made from heaven when we were with Him on the holy mountain. So we have the prophetic word made more sure, to which you do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star arises in your hearts.
But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.
— 2 Peter 1:17-21
Peter makes two key statements here: “no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation” (v20) and “no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will” (v21). The Bible is self-authenticating. It makes no apologies, nor did its human writers, about being divine. To think any less of the Bible is to venture into the modern skeptic’s viewpoint that it can/should be interpreted as written by fallible man.
Man certainly wrote the Bible, but he is not the author. God is.
We find proof of this in the passage we just read above. The language that Peter uses is very important. For starters, he says, “But know this first of all.” This is his way of saying, “this is of first importance; it’s critical you never forget what I’m about to say!” He then writes those aforementioned statements, wiping out any attempt by man to usurp the authority of Holy Scripture, “no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will.” Peter essentially removed the possibility of an honest man taking any responsibility for the contents of the Bible. Now, it’s at this point that he explains exactly how the Bible was authored, “but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.” The Greek word, phero, translated “moved” here means “to bring, to carry, to be borne,” also translated “made” in v17. Warfield commented on this word, describing the Holy Spirit as the “bearer” of responsibility for Bible authorship.
The term used here is a very specific one. It is not to be confounded with guiding, or directing, or controlling, or even leading in the full sense of that word. It goes beyond all such terms, in assigning the effect produced specifically to the active agent. What is “borne” is taken up by the “bearer,” and conveyed by the “bearer’s” power, not its own, to the “bearer’s” goal, not its own. The men who spoke from God are here declared, therefore, to have been taken up by the Holy Spirit and brought by His power to the goal of His choosing. The things which they spoke under this operation of the Spirit were therefore His things, not theirs. And that is the reason which is assigned why “the prophetic word” is so sure. Though spoken through the instrumentality of men, it is, by virtue of the fact that these men spoke “as borne by the Holy Spirit,” an immediately Divine word.
— Benjamin B. Warfield
This same Greek word, phero, is translated as “driven along” in Acts 27:15, denoting the absolute power of the one doing the driving. In the same way that the Holy Spirit “carried” the writers of the Bible, depositing them at a place of His own desire, the ocean “carried” a ship in the illustration Paul gives us when caught in a storm at sea. He and his shipmates had to surrender completely to the sovereignty of it, accepting wherever it chose to take them.
When a moderate south wind came up, supposing that they had attained their purpose, they weighed anchor and began sailing along Crete, close inshore. But before very long there rushed down from the land a violent wind, called Euraquilo; and when the ship was caught in it and could not face the wind, we gave way to it and let ourselves be driven along. Running under the shelter of a small island called Clauda, we were scarcely able to get the ship’s boat under control.
— Acts 27:13-16
Skeptics may cry, “To err is human!” In this thing, they are positively correct. Thank God the Bible was not “made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God” (2 Peter 1:21).
When God speaks, He speaks with absolute authority, regardless of the medium used. ”For when [Jesus] received honor and glory from God the Father, such an utterance as this was made to Him by the Majestic Glory, “This is My beloved Son with whom I am well-pleased” (2 Peter 1:17). Want to guess what Greek word is used for “made” in v17? Phero. Why? The concept is identical. God spoke to Jesus the same way He speaks to us through scripture, with inerrancy. His words are no less authentic or divine when He uses writers instead of His own voice.
Whatever was written by the writers of the Bible was perfect because God “made” them write it that way, to His glory. To suggest anything less is to cast doubt on the entire canon of Holy Scripture, something Satan and the kingdom of darkness would love!
Love in Christ,
Ed Collins
