Dr. Dan Hayden •
God merely spoke, and the world came into being. Well, God spoke again another time, and the Bible came into being. The Bible is God’s Word – God spoke, and the Bible is what He said.
Have you ever breathed on a pane of glass in the winter and seen your breath take form as the glass fogged up? Well, that’s what happened with the Bible. God breathed out words – and those words took form on the pages of the Bible.
In 2 Timothy 3:16, it says, “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God…”
Now, this is Paul’s answer to the perilous times of the “last days.” People need the Word of God. They need the Scripture which is inspired by God.
The phrase “given by inspiration of God,” is one word in the Greek text. It is the word theopneustos, which means “God-breathed.” Theopneustos is a compound word, with theo the Greek word for God, attached to the word pneustos which means “wind, or spirit, or breath.” We have this word in our English word pneumonia – a disease of the breath, or lungs.
So, this verse literally says that all scripture is “God-breathed.” When you think about it, that’s what words are. They are breath resonated over the vocal chords and shaped by the tongue and lips and teeth. When we speak – it is our breath.
Therefore, all Scripture is God’s breath, or God’s spirit. When the human authors like Moses, or David, or Isaiah, or Paul, wrote Scripture – that Scripture was God’s inspired Word. These men were guided in such a way that what they wrote was exactly what God wanted them to write. God actually spoke through them so that the result was a book that was really written by God. “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God.” It is “God-breathed.”
So – The next time you see your breath on a cold day, think about this verse. The Bible is seeing God’s breath.
For further study, read: BackTrack – Correcting our Course