Lesson 4: Inspiration of Scripture (2 Peter 1:20-21)
Preparation
Read the bible verses that come with the key doctrines. Then study and meditate on the bible verses and the doctrines. Write down any questions that arise so that we can discuss them in our group.
Question 1
Is everything Christian inspired by God? Are hymns, worship songs, or your pastor’s sermons inspired by God in the same way that Scripture is? If not, what is the difference?
Question 2
Does inspiration only mean that there is a moral or spiritual message behind Bible texts? Do we need to be inspired ourselves in order to receive that message?
Question 3
How do we test whether a message is truly from God? If a sermon, a tradition, or an inner impression claims to be from God, what standard do we use to examine it?
Introduction
The Bible is inspired by God through the work of the Holy Spirit, ensuring that the Scriptures are God’s Word to humanity.
Key Doctrines
Under the name of Holy Scripture, or the Word of God written, are now contained all the books of the Old and New Testaments, which are these:
Old Testament New Testament Genesis Matthew Exodus Mark Leviticus Luke Numbers John Deuteronomy Acts Joshua Romans Judges 1 Corinthians Ruth 2 Corinthians 1 Samuel Galatians 2 Samuel Ephesians 1 Kings Philippians 2 Kings Colossians 1 Chronicles 1 Thessalonians 2 Chronicles 2 Thessalonians Ezra 1 Timothy Nehemiah 2 Timothy Esther Titus Job Philemon Psalms Hebrews Proverbs James Ecclesiastes 1 Peter Song of Solomon 2 Peter Isaiah 1 John Jeremiah 2 John Lamentations 3 John Ezekiel Jude Daniel Revelation Hosea Joel Amos Obadiah Jonah Micah Nahum Habakkuk Zephaniah Haggai Zechariah Malachi All of which are given by the inspiration of God, to be the rule of faith and life.
It pleased the Lord at sundry times and in divers manners to reveal himself, and to declare that his will unto his church; and afterward for the better preserving and propagating of the truth, and for the more sure establishment and comfort of the church against the corruption of the flesh, and the malice of Satan, and of the world, to commit the same wholly unto writing; which maketh the Holy Scriptures to be most necessary, those former ways of God’s revealing his will unto his people being now ceased.
Since God is the true author of the Scriptures, they can be and are written with the distant future in mind (Romans 15:4; 1 Corinthians 10:11).
Background for Teachers
This is the most comprehensive lesson in the course. With the doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture, the whole belief in the Word of God, and therefore the whole belief in the being and character of God, stands or falls.
The lesson is organized around four topics:
- The Power of Deception — How Satan attacks Scripture by questioning it.
- Two Tactics of Deception — Creating doubt over words, and adding or changing words.
- The Power of the Truth — God is truth, and relativism is self-defeating.
- Applying the Truth — Engaging unbelievers, dealing with translations, and comparing Scripture with Scripture.
Topic 1: The Power of Deception
False teachers and those who are misled always attack the infallibility of Scripture by questioning the inspiration of Scripture.
Jesus called those who are deceived and those who are deceiving others “children of the devil”:
You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I speak the truth, you do not believe Me.
John 8:44-45 (LSB)
In verse 45, Jesus says that He is the opposite of the lie. In Hebrews 3:13 we learn that Satan is using the “deceitfulness of sin,” or as Ephesians 4:22 describes it, our former conduct, the old man, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit.
Deceiving is Satan’s chief weapon, a weapon he has used multiple times. Already at the first time the Bible mentions Satan he starts deceiving. The very first words recorded from him are “Did God really say” — and this is Satan’s main approach: discrediting and questioning God’s Words.
As soon as humans start doubting God’s Word, as soon as they start judging God’s Words, they fall into the deceitfulness of sin. They are corrupting themselves in accordance with the lusts of deceit.
Questioning the Word of God is questioning God’s capability of providing us with His absolute truth as He recorded it in Scripture, and therefore it is questioning God Himself. Questioning God’s Word, and therefore God Himself, is sinning against God’s authority and God’s Lordship.
The Bible mentions the word Lord over 7,000 times, mostly referring to God’s own authority. This important word clearly and distinctively divides those who call themselves “Christians” into two groups:
- Those who question Scripture vs. those who submit to the Word of God.
- Man-centered worship vs. God-centered worship.
We have already discussed “the Bible is God’s Word” in Lesson 1 and “the infallibility of Scripture” in Lesson 2. To establish whether Scripture is infallible, we must first establish whether we believe that Scripture is God’s Word, and therefore that God inspired every word in Scripture.
If we cannot accept the idea that the total of Scripture comes from God, if we doubt the truthfulness of even a small portion of God’s Word, we set ourselves on the judgment seat of God, defining for ourselves what is truth and what is not.
Many have tried this, and many are still deceiving.
The Root of All Error
Every false teaching about Scripture begins with the same question: “Did God really say?” The form changes across the centuries, but the strategy does not. If you can be persuaded to doubt even a small part of God’s Word, you have placed yourself above it. That is the first step away from God.
Discussion
When you hear someone question a part of Scripture, what is the first thing you should ask? Ask whether they are submitting to the Word of God or sitting in judgment over it. The answer to that question reveals the direction of their heart.
Topic 2: Two Tactics of Deception
There are two forms of extremely successful tactics Satan uses to question the Bible’s authority:
- Creating doubt over words not found in Scripture, although their concept is clearly defined.
- Adding or changing words so that the power of verses is lost.
Tactic 1: Creating Doubt Over Words Not Found in Scripture
A very familiar example is the word “Trinity.” Although the word “Trinity” itself is not written in Scripture, the Trinity itself is clearly defined in Bible verses such as Matthew 3:16-17, Matthew 28:19, John 10:30, John 14:26, and 1 Peter 1:2.
The Concept Is in the Text
The absence of a word is not the absence of a doctrine. The Trinity is woven into the fabric of Scripture: the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are each fully God, and yet God is one. The word “Trinity” is a faithful summary of what Scripture teaches. Denying the doctrine because the word is absent is a tactic, not an argument.
Tactic 2: Adding or Changing Words So That the Power of Verses Is Lost
Attempts to weaken Bible verses often come through word translations that are technically correct but clearly distort the text. Here are three examples.
Example 1: Translating ἔλαβον as “Accepted” Instead of “Received”
A very clear example is the translation of the word ἔλαβον (elabon), the aorist form of λαμβάνω (lambanō). The Lexham Analytical Lexicon to the Greek New Testament gives the following possible translations:
λαμβάνω (lambanō), receive; take.
In all quality Bibles, the word ἔλαβον is translated as receive, whereas untrustworthy translations translate the word as accept.
Unfortunately we are all too familiar with the calls to decide to follow Christ and to accept Him as your Savior. It is the call to a better life, to become a better person, to make the right decision; a call to use your free will to do the right thing. It is the basis for liberal and man-centered Christianity that dominated the Western world.
The man-centered Christianity that claims that we decided to follow Christ, and now that we made this decision, Christ has to deliver. He has to reward us for our righteous choice by giving us a better life, improving our careers, paying our bills, and healing our sicknesses. Although it is not wrong to pray for these things, God surely doesn’t owe us anything. Anything we receive from God is an undeserved blessing He gave us out of love, and this distorted “gospel” of “deserving” anything as a “reward” for our “righteous” choice is a total distortion of Christianity that dominates and destroyed Christianity in Europe.
Let’s look at a biblical example of how absurd the false translation is. The LSB translates the Greek text of John 17:8 as:
for the words which You gave Me I have given to them; and they received them and truly understood that I came forth from You, and they believed that You sent Me.
John 17:8 (LSB)
The New International Version, the German Schlachter 2000, and even the Dutch Herziene Statenvertaling translate the word ἔλαβον as “accepted.”
Can you see how absurd this translation of the word ἔλαβον is? The chain of giving is entirely divine: the Father gives to the Son, the Son gives to the disciples, and the disciples receive.
By changing the translation of the word ἔλαβον to “accepted,” which is, as we read from the Lexham lexicon, technically correct, the translators are opening the door for confusion.
Now we can ask the question: did the disciples decide to accept these words? Did they sit in judgment over what the Father had given to the Son and choose whether to approve it? The context makes this impossible. Jesus is not describing a human decision. He is describing the fulfillment of a divine purpose. The Father gave the words to the Son. The Son gave them to the disciples. The disciples received them. There is no moment of human deliberation in this chain. There is only the outworking of God’s initiative.
To translate ἔλαβον as “accepted,” “angenommen,” or “aangenomen” introduces a decision that the text does not contain. It makes the disciples the active agents who approve what God has offered. But Jesus is describing something that happened to them, not something they chose. They received because the Father had given. Their receiving was the result of the divine giving, not the cause of it.
By using a translated word that suggests a different meaning, not only is the Bible text distorted, it now distorts the whole gospel. Now, weak and unfaithful Christians have biblical support for their claim that we decide to follow Christ, that our salvation is based on our own good works. And as you can see, the infallibility of Scripture is thereby attacked, because the distortion suggests that, although Jesus received the words from God, these sovereign words need our approval to become valid.
Not only does this support Arminianism — that we have a free will to decide to do good — it is also the basis for Pelagianism.
The Slide from Arminianism to Pelagianism
In Pelagianism, the fact that Adam’s sin has any spiritual effect on his descendants is denied. Pelagius taught that humans are born morally neutral, with the same capacity to choose good or evil that Adam had. There is no inherited corruption, no spiritual death, no inability. A person can live a sinless life by their own free will. This was condemned as heresy in the fifth century.Arminianism is a softer form of the same man-centered logic. Classical Arminians affirm total depravity and the need for grace. But they define grace as a universal enabling that restores to every person the ability to choose Christ. The decisive factor in salvation becomes the human will’s response to that grace. Man becomes the final determiner of his own salvation.
Although Pelagianism was already condemned by the early church fathers, Arminianism supported the re-introduction of Pelagianism. Pelagianism is similar to the modern idea that man is inherently good, and this idea has its intellectual roots in the Enlightenment. The idea was most famously articulated by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who argued that humans are naturally virtuous and are only corrupted by society. This was a deliberate departure from the classical Christian doctrine of original sin.
A lot of churches weaken the idea of original sin, and some even dare to say it out loud, such as pastor Eric Johnson of Bethel Church, who claimed that:
Eric Johnson, Bethel Church: “You’re not born evil. It’s amazing how many teachings and theologies start with that thought. Anytime you start with that you will create a controlling, manipulative environment. Every government, every structure… every system fundamentally and theologically must start with the concept and the idea that people are good and they mean to do good. Even if they are not saved, we have to start from that premise.”
Example 2: Translating δοῦλος as “Servant” Instead of “Slave”
The same tactic of choosing a technically possible but theologically distorting translation appears with the word δοῦλος (doulos). Quality translations render it as slave. Weak translations render it as servant.
The difference is not stylistic. It is theological.
A servant chooses his own master. He can leave when he wants. He negotiates his terms. He retains his autonomy. A slave is property. He has been bought. He belongs to the one who purchased him. He has no claim on his own life.
The New Testament consistently describes believers as δοῦλοι of Christ. This is not an accidental word choice. It is the language of redemption:
For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body.
1 Corinthians 6:20 (LSB)
But now having been freed from sin and enslaved to God, you derive your benefit, resulting in sanctification, and the outcome, eternal life.
Romans 6:22 (LSB)
When translators render δοῦλος as “servant,” they soften the force of these texts. They turn a bondslave into an employee. They obscure the fact that we were purchased at the cost of Christ’s blood. They make the Christian life sound like a voluntary arrangement rather than a redemption.
This matters because the servant translation fits the same man-centered framework as the “accept” translation of λαμβάνω. If I am a servant, I chose my master. If I am a slave, I was bought. The servant translation preserves human autonomy. The slave translation preserves divine initiative.
The translation choice is not neutral. It either confronts the modern reader with the radical claim that he belongs to God because God bought him, or it domesticates that claim into something the autonomous self can accept without offense.
Example 3: The “New Apologetic” and the Word “Contained”
In this example it was not a Bible verse that was attacked, but a confession that helps people define their belief. This very successful tactic was not a translation choice. It was a change to a confession.
In the late nineteenth century, the Free Church of Scotland adopted what became known as the “New Apologetic.” The movement was led by men who were convinced that a modern approach to Scripture would make Christianity more appealing to an educated age. They did not openly deny the authority of Scripture. They changed the wording of their confession.
The original Westminster Confession of Faith says that Scripture is the Word of God. The New Apologetic party added the word “contained”: Scripture contains the Word of God. The change was small. The consequence was enormous.
If Scripture is the Word of God, then every part of it is authoritative. If Scripture merely contains the Word of God, then some parts are authoritative and some parts are not. Someone must decide which parts are which. That someone is the human reader.
The word “contained” gave every theologian, every church, and every individual reader the right to decide which parts of Scripture are trustworthy and which parts can be set aside. It opened the door to questioning the historicity of Genesis, the miracles of the Old Testament, the words of Christ, and eventually the resurrection itself.
The New Apologetic party did not stop with their own denomination. They pressured other Reformed churches to adopt the same wording. The Scottish Presbyterians were among those who were forced to accept it. The result was a steady erosion of confidence in Scripture across European Protestantism.
This is the pattern. First, create doubt about the meaning of a word. Then, change the wording of the confession so that the doubt is institutionalized. Finally, let the human reader decide what is true. This is the same pattern we saw with λαμβάνω and δοῦλος. A small change in wording, and the whole structure of authority shifts from God to man.
The lesson is clear. The battle for the inspiration of Scripture is not fought only in the translation of individual words. It is fought in the wording of confessions, in the decisions of church courts, and in the willingness of believers to submit to the Word of God rather than to sit in judgment over it.
The Common Thread
All three examples follow the same pattern. A small change in a word or a phrase shifts authority from God to man. The change looks innocent. The consequence is devastating. This is why the doctrine of inspiration matters not only for translators and theologians, but for every believer who reads the Bible.
Discussion
Have you ever encountered a translation or a teaching that sounded plausible but weakened the text? What did you do? The examples in this topic show that the danger is rarely obvious. It usually comes dressed in the language of scholarship or relevance.
Topic 3: The Power of the Truth
The power of deception describes some important examples that make it clear how minor changes in translations and words can totally distort the gospel. There have been many attacks on Christianity, but the attacks of deception have been the most successful so far.
Roman persecution only made the church grow, and so do the modern forms of persecution fail to stop the growth of the church. Deceptions, however, were already infiltrating and distorting the gospel in the time of the apostles, and so are deceptions responsible for the deplorable condition of the churches in 2026.
It is said that the first thing that dies in a war is the truth. In 1 Corinthians 15:14, Paul claims that if Christ has not been raised from the dead, our beliefs would be in vain. So it is with the truth.
Man creates lies constantly. We know how propaganda works and how dangerous it is. Since all men are born sinners and of their father the devil, who is a liar and deceiver from the beginning, nothing man produces can be trusted blindly.
Basically we come down to the unbeliever’s most important question of all times, asked by Pilate:
Pontius Pilate (John 18:38): What is truth?
God is Righteous
If Christ had not been raised, our beliefs would be in vain. And likewise, our faith would be worthless if there were no absolute truth.
This is not just some reasoning of thinking from my side. It is comparing two names for God:
Yahweh Rapha: God who heals. Jesus not only healed the sick, He also healed the saved spiritually by forgiving their sins.
Yahweh Tsidkenu: God is righteousness. If God is righteous, then it is He who established and upholds the truth. A perfect, righteous God cannot lie and therefore cannot tolerate lies and sin for that matter.
God is truth, and God communicates His truth through His words. Because God established truth Himself, His Word is so powerful.
The worst time of human history is described in the book of Revelation. Satan uses words to deceive and even uses an image that can speak and kill (Revelation 13:15).
Jesus is the Truth and Jesus is the Word, and He only needs to speak a word to end all misery and killing by Satan’s word:
Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse, and He who sits on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and wages war. His eyes are a flame of fire, and on His head are many diadems; having a name written on Him which no one knows except Himself, and being clothed with a garment dipped in blood, His name is also called The Word of God.
Revelation 19:11-13 (LSB)
God is Truth
So just as important as the fact that Christ was raised from the dead for our salvation is the fact that God is righteousness, and therefore His Words are true. Without the truth, we would also be without hope.
Because if we were at the mercy of human truth, of the distortions and lies that are refuted time and time again, then we would be hopelessly lost. And that is why the world is lost. The world cannot and will not believe in the truth because they are not of God. And therefore they will continually deceive and be deceived.
But because I speak the truth, you do not believe Me. Which one of you convicts Me of sin? If I speak truth, why do you not believe Me? He who is of God hears the words of God; for this reason you do not hear them, because you are not of God.
John 8:45-47 (LSB)
Distortion of Scripture
Because sinners lie, they cannot bear the truth of God’s Word. We know the parable of the weeds and the tares, how Jesus speaks of goats and sheep.
If we believe that the Bible is God’s Word, we also believe in its infallibility, and therefore we believe it to be totally inspired by God and therefore to be totally true.
A real believer follows Christ and recognizes His Lordship, His supreme authority and dominion over us. A real believer listens to God’s Words and obeys them.
A non-believer rebels against God and will never accept His authority. Every age has its own forms of deceptions, and these deceptions are getting worse and more sophisticated, until they are so well crafted that even the elect would be deceived if the days of the end time would not have been kept short (Matthew 24:21-24).
Our era is plagued by a form of rebellion called relativism. Relativism means that there is no absolute truth. Claiming that there is an absolute truth is even becoming very problematic in education and even politically.
The world argues that:
The World’s Argument: If you claim to have the absolute truth, you are implicitly saying that everyone who disagrees with you is wrong. That is arrogant. It is an act of power, forcing your view on others. A truly tolerant person accepts that there are many valid perspectives and does not impose their own.
Which is an absurd idea in itself, because the idea is claiming that “It is absolutely true that no one should claim absolute truth,” which is a contradiction in itself.
The Contradiction of Relativism
Relativism claims that no one should claim absolute truth. But that claim is itself an absolute truth claim. The relativist is doing exactly what he says no one should do. This is not a neutral position. It is a different set of absolute commitments, dressed in the language of humility.
But this idea of relativism has crept into the churches, and examples of it were described in Topic 1. The most common forms of modern-day deception by relativism are liberal theology and neo-orthodoxy.
Liberal theology claims that the Bible is a human document written by humans in ancient times, and that its contents are often poetic or metaphorical. Since wonders and miracles are not actual and were meant for an ancient audience, we can decide what passages we need and how we apply them in our modern times.
Neo-orthodoxy claims that the Bible is a human document written by humans, and that the reader needs inspiration to receive the message behind the text. The Bible is therefore mystical, and it depends on the reader what and how much he takes out of it.
There are, of course, other forms of deception, but the abbreviated descriptions of liberal theology and neo-orthodoxy unfortunately describe approaches to the Bible that sound all too familiar.
Before we are separated by the Lord, those who call themselves Christians are divided into two groups: those who submit to God (James 4:7) and those whose god is their own stomach (Philippians 3:19), or those who only honor God with their lips (Matthew 15:7-11) and those who honor God with their hearts.
Seven times did John write that love for Christ is connected to keeping His commandments.
Jesus answered and said to him, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our dwelling with him.”
John 14:23 (LSB)
How then are we going to love Christ, how are we going to be saved, if we cannot trust the Word of God that is not for nothing referred to as “The Holy Scripture”?
Discussion
The world says that claiming absolute truth is arrogant. But the Christian claim is not arrogance. It is honesty. We are not saying that we are smarter or better than anyone else. We are saying that God has spoken, and we are submitting to what He has said. The difference between those two positions is the difference between pride and obedience.
Topic 4: Applying the Truth
Engaging Unbelievers
How do we engage those who question the inerrancy of Scripture? Peter gives us the answer in his first letter:
but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and fear.
1 Peter 3:15 (LSB)
If we look at the context of this text, it is a response for those who suffer and are slandered and disparaged for their good conduct in Christ. This is what happens to us in the world. The world loves the lie and hates the truth, and therefore they persecute and slander those who speak the truth.
“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light lest his deeds be exposed. But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been done by God.”
John 3:16-19 (LSB)
John 3:16 is the most quoted Bible verse in Christianity. But as we read in our background, it is also the most abused. Every false teacher will claim that we only need to believe, but they will never explain what genuine belief is.
As Jesus explains, it is those who practice the truth that come to the Light; it is those with a transformed life that do the deeds of God. There is a huge difference between adapting behavior to be fitting within a Christian community and having a whole new personality that came with a new life in Christ.
Paul Washer said that the call of the gospel is not an attempt to transform our life on our own; it is an act of repentance and belief. The transformation the Bible describes is not behavioral modification; it is a new creation.
Paul Washer, “The New Heart”: “Salvation is not a mere human decision. It is a supernatural work of God whereby the very nature of a human being is transformed in an instant and made alive. That is salvation. It cannot be manipulated. It cannot be coerced. It does not come from just getting someone to repeat a prayer.”
Dealing with Translations
We discussed that Bible verses can be weakened and distorted by the choice of a word’s translation.
When you are faced with a translation that sounds plausible but weakens the text, find out what the original word means and what the translators are doing with it. The Word of God is not a collection of suggestions. It is the voice of the Shepherd. When a translation turns a slave into a servant, or a received gift into an accepted offer, it is not just a stylistic choice. It is a shift in who is in charge.
Read the text. Compare the translations. Find out what the original Greek and Hebrew words said. Then submit to what God has actually said, not to what a comfortable culture would prefer Him to have said.
Helpful Tools: Dictionaries and Word Studies
There are many tools and websites that show and explain the original Hebrew and Greek words. These Greek dictionaries are used by seminaries to explain the meaning of Greek texts:
- A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature by Frederick William Danker
- The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology by Colin Brown
A good Hebrew dictionary is the Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament by Harris, Archer, and Waltke.
Then there is Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, which can be used to find a translation and explanation of every Hebrew and Greek word in the Bible.
Websites can integrate these tools. A very fast and easy-to-use website is Literal Word. It shows the text of the five most trustworthy Bible translations, and by clicking on the “alpha” symbol, each word can be clicked for its original Hebrew or Greek word, including its translation.
Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance numbers can be studied on BibleHub.
Helpful Tools: Bible Commentaries
There are many Bible commentaries available.
Books:
- John MacArthur’s New Testament Commentary
- ESV Expository Commentary
- Reformed Expository Commentary
Online:
- Kingcomments, a very useful full Bible commentary for new believers.
- reformednetwork.org, our website contains the commentaries of Jamieson, Fausset and Brown and Matthew Henry, which are very useful for advanced students.
Faithful Teachers and Preachers
Of course many people cannot or are not willing to invest a lot of time to study the original words and meanings in Scripture. This is why a faithful preacher and Bible study leader is so important. As we saw before, people are easily deceived by small translation errors. This is why so many churches and Christians are in error, and as time passes these errors are feeding grounds for bigger deceptions. That is why we now see churches allowing sin and glorifying man after tolerating small errors in the past.
Analogia Scriptura
Bible study and preparation not only require an in-depth study and knowledge of words, it also requires an assessment of our knowledge. Commentaries and faithful websites are very helpful to assess our knowledge, but at the end we need to compare Scripture with Scripture. God’s revelation is progressive, and no doctrine or idea stands on its own.
A faithful preacher or teacher can say “Thus says the Lord” by citing a Bible text and proving his claim and explanation to be soundly biblical by referring to other biblical texts. He does not claim this authority by imposing his own ideas on Scripture, calling them a new revelation or an inspiration by God or the Holy Spirit.
Thus says Yahweh of hosts, “Do not listen to the words of the prophets who are prophesying to you. They are leading you into vanity; They speak a vision of their own heart, Not from the mouth of Yahweh.”
Jeremiah 23:16 (LSB)
Discussion
The tools and commentaries are valuable, but they are not the final authority. The final authority is Scripture itself. When you prepare a lesson or a sermon, do you compare Scripture with Scripture? Do you test your conclusions against the whole counsel of God? That is the discipline that protects you from error and equips you to teach others.
Pastoral Note
The world loves the lie and hates the truth. This is why it persecutes and slanders those who speak the truth. But we are not called to win arguments. We are called to be faithful.
When you engage someone who questions the inerrancy of Scripture, do it with gentleness and fear. Speak the truth in love. Do not seek to win an argument, but to help them see that their own stated beliefs, if taken seriously, point back to Scripture. The work of changing hearts belongs to the Holy Spirit. Your work is to be faithful.
So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.
Romans 10:17 (LSB)
Further Study For deeper study of this doctrine, the following commentaries are freely available online and are worth consulting:
- For devotional reading and practical application: Matthew Henry (Concise) — warm, pastoral, and suitable for all readers.
- For balanced scholarship and lay-friendly depth: Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown (JFB) — scholarly but not overly technical.
- For advanced exegetical study: John Calvin — precise and foundational, but demanding.