I just did the Jr High/High School message at my church this morning. We're in the middle of a short series called "Bible 101", and my topic today was Divine Inspiration. While writing the message, I had a few thoughts that I don't recall having before, and I wanted to share them here.
First off, while researching "God-breathed", I discovered that the Greek word is theópneustos (theh-op'-nyoo-stos). It comes from “theos” – God – and “pneo” – meaning “breath” or “to breath out.” A couple of the sources I looked at speculated that Paul had actually coined this word, creating it to describe Scripture in just the right way.
And in thinking about the breath of God, my mind suddenly snapped to Genesis 2...the creation of man.
"Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature." - Genesis 2:7
God breathed into Adam and made him live. None of the other animals are created this way, which tells me that this is where get not just our life, but our souls and spirits: From the very breath of God. God took an earthly thing – a pile of dirt – and made it something more, something spiritual and living.
And I don’t think it’s an accident that we see Paul describing Scripture in the same terms. They are God-breathed, and that’s what the breath of God does. God’s breath makes things come alive. It makes them more than what they should be. God breathed into Adam and he became a living being, and he breathed into the words of Scripture and they became the words of God.
That was the first thing that struck me. And the second?
I think that Scripture is a kind of incarnation.
In discussing the relationship between Scripture being the words of God, and also the words of man, it struck me that the reasoning was somewhat similar to that of Christology, and the relationship between Jesus' divine and human natures. And just as the ultimate baseline of orthodoxy is to affirm that Jesus is both 100% man and 100% God, I think the same holds true for the Scriptures.
They are both the writings of human authors about God, as well as God-breathed Truth that we can trust and rely on. Scripture was written by the people of God in a variety of situations by a variety of different people, all bringing their own experiences, voice, and personality to the table. And at the same time, it is timeless truth about the Creator of the heavens and the earth, and it remains true and relevant for us today.
It is both at the same time: An incarnation. But instead of The Divine Word becoming flesh, it is the words of God becoming the words of man, entering our reality as this Book of books.
That was how I ended the message on Sunday, and I hope it was helpful to them. It was definitely a lot of fun to prepare the message... Let me know what you think!
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