John Wycliffe - Trinitarian Bible Society

Trinitarian Bible Society – Quarterly Record
We use the word Inspiration to describe that process: the breath of God, God the Holy
Spirit coming upon specially prepared and chosen men. In 2 Peter 1.21 it says He acted through
these men to write His Word, not by the will of man: ‘but holy men of God spake as they were
moved by the Holy Ghost’. It should never cease to amaze us, the marvel and the miracle of the
way that God the Holy Spirit worked through these men, causing them to write down the very
words He wanted them to write just as surely as if their writing implements were in His own
hand, ‘not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth’
(1 Corinthians 2.13). It was the Lord revealing and dictating His Truth and the men writing it
down according to their individual writing styles.
This was not a mechanical thing, it was an organic thing. The Lord directed them to write
exactly what He wanted them to write and yet they were free enough to express this God-given
truth in their own particular and individual styles. We read, for instance, that ‘the Holy Ghost
by the mouth of David spake’ (Acts 1.16), and yet David said the words. Thus you see that God
was the writer in effect and yet David was the one who expressed it in his own form, different
from the writing styles of the other authors of the Bible, and this produced Scripture. Such a
marvellous, seamless interface between the Sovereign work of God and the very real work of
His chosen penmen produced Scripture. It was not simply that the men were inspired, but their
writings were inspired. Thus Scripture is Divine and Divinely-authoritative. So God wrote the
Bible, the Scriptures.
Let’s see one further thing here. God gave the entire Bible: all Scripture. Now it could be
argued that all this verse means is the entire Old Testament because, if you go back to verse 15,
Paul reminds Timothy ‘that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to
make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus’. It is very likely that this
refers to the Old Testament Scriptures that were part of Timothy’s nurturing. Therefore, some
say Paul cannot be referring to the New Testament as well when he says ‘all scripture’.
An answer to this was pointed out by B. B. Warfield. It is not the extent of Scripture in verse
16 that is being referred to, but the nature of Scripture. We have seen that Scripture has God for
its Originator and God for the One who instrumentally wrote it down. If the New Testament
could be termed ‘Scripture’, then it would qualify to be included in this ‘all scripture... given by
inspiration of God’. As a matter of fact, the New Testament is called Scripture in this sense. If
you turn to 1 Timothy 5.18, you find Paul writing to his young friend concerning the material
support of the elders in the churches; ‘for the scripture saith, Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that
treadeth out the corn. And, The labourer is worthy of his reward’. Both these are called
‘Scripture’. The first, ‘thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn’, is from
Deuteronomy 25.4. But when he goes on to say that ‘the labourer is worthy of his reward’, he is
quoting our Lord’s words from Luke 10.7 in the New Testament. So, as far as Paul is concerned,
the New Testament qualifies as being Scripture as surely as the Old Testament.
Another passage is 2 Peter 3.16. Here Peter refers to the Apostle Paul’s letters: ‘As also in all
his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood,
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Issue Number: 565 – October to December
which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto
their own destruction’. Peter sees Paul’s writings as ‘Scripture’ along with the Old Testament. It
seems quite clear that when the Apostle writes ‘all scripture’, he is including the emerging New
Testament in that term; in fact, most of the New Testament Scriptures were written by this
time. So God gave the entire Bible.
Putting these things together, we have no reason to rationalise and try to explain how it
was that God actually brought the Scriptures into being through human penmen. Neither do
we have anything to do with degrees of inspiration, to suggest that the writers were inspired but
the actual Scriptures they produced were not. ‘All scripture is given by inspiration of God’: we
believe in the Bible’s own doctrine of inspiration: verbal, every word, plenary, full and complete.
It is as Dean Burgon once said,
‘The Bible is none other than the voice of Him that sitteth upon the throne. Every
book of it, every chapter of it, every verse of it, every word of it, every syllable of it,
every letter of it is the direct utterance of the Most High…The Bible is none other
than the Word of God. There is not some part of it that is more, some part of it less,
inspired, but all are alike the utterance of Him who sitteth upon the throne: absolute,
faultless, unerring, supreme.’
Thank God for the origin of this Bible! We trace it up to Him Who is in heaven, the God of Truth
who has given the Word of Truth.
The Benefit of the Bible
Let us look secondly at the Bible’s benefit: ‘and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for
correction, for instruction in righteousness’. Now God has given us His Word to do us
good. Here is the truth of the inspiration and authority of Scripture applied to us, and
woe betide us if we only hold this as a doctrine. Woe betide us if we only support the Trinitarian
Bible Society because it circulates our favourite Bible version and little more. God in giving us
His Word intends that what we believe about this Word is applied to our hearts and applied to
our lives, and that it transforms us by the renewing of our minds to prove that good and acceptable
and perfect will of God (Romans 12.2).
Let us see now something of the application. The Bible is ‘profitable for doctrine’. The
essence of the Reformation, the essence of Protestantism, is teaching, and teaching from one
source, the Scripture of Truth. Real religion is knowing and feeling the things that are in Holy
Writ. Rabbi Duncan said that the Bible is the great medium through which we know God on
earth. As we grow in grace as Christians we find that the teachings of the Bible, all the various
doctrines in it, are almost like piecing together the parts of a jigsaw puzzle. We commence the
Christian life and experience knowing a little, and as we grow, more pieces are fitted in and we
have fuller, clearer views of truth. Before long the scheme of things becomes clearer and clear-
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