What Do They Mean When They Say, The Bible is Inspired

I have been on a journey to discover what “biblical inspiration” actually means.

Scholars and theologians said it means that the Bible is “God-breathed.”

I’ve spent more than thirty years reading, searching, researching, studying, analyzing, and contemplating the words of the Bible. After years of what I would call “obsessive” study of the Bible, I came to recognize that whatever the Bible was, it was not “just” God-breathed, but it included that.

Before you cast this statement aside and consider me a “nutcase,” allow me to explain.

I would like to use two passages of scripture as my bases for what I’m about to unpack.

Revelation 19:10 “The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy,” and 1 Peter 1:10-11 “Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories.”

I believe that these two passages alone encompass “biblical inspiration.”

If I were to ask you, what is the story of the Bible, would you be able to tell me?

Now I would like to prove how both Revelation 19:10 and 1 Peter 1:10-11 are the whole of inspiration.

Soon after God creates a perfect Heaven and Earth, along with a perfect humanity, we find them seeking to hide in shame from the Giver of their identity. Then we hear this: “Because you (the serpent) have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field; on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” Genesis 3:14-15.

In the last sentence above, we find “the testimony of Jesus.” And from this point forward in scripture, we discover that through Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Joshua, various judges, and King David, partially through Solomon, in Elijah, Elisha, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and on and on down the line until Jesus of Nazareth, 1 Peter 1:10-11 is “unfolding.”

The “testimony of Jesus” means that the person of Jesus Christ is being “witnessed” on the pages of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. Meaning that the Holy Spirit is “breathing” into the pages the story of Jesus CONTINUALLY. And the way we see this playing out in scripture is through the various “heroes” of the Bible who “trample on” the multiple villains seeking to destroy the “Seed of the Woman” from the Garden of Eden. Meaning that Jesus Christ, who is the ultimate and final offspring of the woman that was predicted in Genesis chapter three to be the one who would crush the head of the serpent, has been “foreshadowed” through every representative of God’s goodness on earth from Abel onward.

Do you see how, in just two passages of scripture, the entirety of scripture is encapsulated?

This theme and story, which began in the Garden of Eden, finds its end in a brand new Garden of Eden in a brand new Heaven and Earth, with humanity once again connected to the identity that was lost many, many years ago.

This, I want to argue, is the definition of the inspiration of scripture and how the Bible is “God-breathed.” While everything in between is part of the package, the Holy Spirit from Genesis to Revelation is constantly “testifying” to the identity of Jesus Christ. And the identity of Jesus Christ is summed up in the gospel story that saves the world. It is the repeated theme of all that is scripture, whether it’s Abraham who is willing to lay his son on an alter of wood, or it’s the lamb that was slain in the book of Exodus, or Sampson the judge who lays down his life to destroy the enemies of Israel (ie. the enemies of God, the Philistines who represent the serpent), or young David (who represents Jesus), who stands up against the Philistine Giant Goliath (who represents the Anti-Christ), or … I could go on and on with what is known as “Christ types” found all throughout the Bible. Another name for all of this is “the pattern of prophecy.”

That is how the Bible is “God-breathed.”

On the other hand, we find that within this “mix” are lots and lots of words. We find men and women interacting with one another, thinking, reasoning, and having all kinds of conversations with each other. We see the Apostle Paul writing letters and answering questions from churches that are dealing with issues, issues we are missing information about because we don’t know the backstory. We see Luke, in the gospel of Luke, gathering information to write his gospel. And Mark, who compiled the sayings of Peter. And Matthew, who copied from Mark but also added more material. I could go on and on with examples of how, while the Bible is God-breathed in “one sense,” it is also very human in another. Anyone honest enough with the things they come across in the Bible will eventually have to ask this question: “Was that inspired?” When I read the Bible carefully, I see a book that is both God-breathed and man-breathed. I see God and men working side by side. What I don’t see is a book dropped out of heaven. Instead, I see God using man’s mind, culture, history, Jewish background, man’s reasoning, and mental processes, AND his “limitations” all as “part of” this book we call the Bible.

Finally, if someone were to ask me, in what way is the Bible inspired? I would answer

The Testimony of Jesus, that is, God-breathed