God’s Word for You

2 Timothy 3:16 Part 1

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Tuesday, July 7, 2026

16 All Scripture is God-breathed…

The word “scripture” means things that have been written down. In this context, it stands for everything that is in the Bible. In the previous verse, Paul reminded Timothy that he had known the “holy writings” (grammata, every little bit of written things) from his infancy. Now Paul uses a similar word, graphe, to encompass all of Scripture, from the most elementary Bible stories to the deepest doctrines.

Paul also says “all.” We need to take this word seriously. There is nothing at all in the original Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek text that was not set there by God the Holy Spirit for our benefit. We should not limit our belief in inspiration when it comes to any part of the Bible, even though some passages seem to be more historical (Luke 2:2), geographic (Deuteronomy 1:2), scientific (Exodus 16:36), or even musical in their focus (such as the headings of the Psalms). But all of Scripture is inspired and given by God.

Here we come to Paul’s term, “God-breathed.” This word, theopneustos (θεόπνευστος) means to have come from the very breath of God. We can say this of every passage of the Bible. We often speak of “verbal inspiration,” meaning the words themselves came from God, not merely the concepts. “God did not merely give the ideas to the writers and leave it to them to find their own way of expressing those ideas. No, he breathed the words, and the writers wrote what he breathed. Why would they have wanted to pick words other than those breathed by God? Surely it would strike the apostles and prophets as the height of arrogance to hear God breathing words and then to decide on their own to pick words they deemed more appropriate than those breathed by the author of all languages and all truth. The notion that God breathed ideas but not words is absurd on the face of it. For ideas consist of words joined together in a certain grammatical and coherent order. Thus to assert that God breathed ideas but not the words that express those ideas is a contradiction in terms” (Deutschlander, Grace Abounds p. 30).

The form of the actual writing of the Scriptures, that is, the material used for the original documents, is rarely specified. God gave Moses tablets of stone for the Ten Commandments (Exodus 24:12) and commanded Moses to chisel out new ones when the originals were broken (Exodus 34:1). Moses wrote the rest of the Pentateuch on scrolls according to the command of God (Exodus 17:14). Such scrolls were made of animal skins, especially calf skin or the skins of lambs or kid goats, on account of the excellence and whiteness of their hides to aid in writing and reading. Later, papyrus may have been used (it is not mentioned as a means of writing in the Bible) as well as parchment (which is mentioned, 2 Timothy 4:13). Did any of the early prophets perhaps use clay tablets? We don’t know for certain, and none of the originals or autographs, remain.

We can say with confidence that the text we have of the Old and New Testaments is correct and not corrupt. There are accusations that one hears from time to time (and even I have been misled by some statements like this in the past) that the text was corrupted either by the wickedness or the carelessness of men. But if somone (such as a certain group of Jewish scribes) corrupted the Scriptures, then they would have done this either before or after the coming of Christ. If they had done it before, then why did Christ and the apostles never rebuke such a great crime when they did not keep silent about much lesser crimes? But if they had done it after Christ’s coming, how then are the testimonies and quotations made by Christ and the apostles from the Old Testament—which would certainly have been the very parts that would have been attacked by the Scribes—how is it that they are in the very form that they are cited by the Lord and his apostles? And additionally, Christ sends the people back to search Moses and the prophets carefully (John 5:3) and he wanted the people to listen to Moses and the prophets (Luke 16:29). We also must note that the Hebrew scriptures were disseminated throughout the world so that there are good copies that were made in North Africa, in Palestine, in ancient Georgia (that is, near Turkey), France, Spain, Portugal, and so on. Also, the New Testament Scriptures were also copied faithfully and distributed far and wide from a very early date.

While there are certain small omissions in a few passages, such as 1 Samuel 13:1, where the age of King Saul and the length of his reign are mostly missing from the Hebrew text, these are supplied by reliable ancient translations. This is also true of some errors of copyists in both Hebrew and in Greek. We must remember that the Bible was copied by hand for many centuries, and that errors creep even into printed editions on account of human error. But the message of the Bible is clear, and is never challenged on account the misspelling of a name (more than 90% of all variants in the text are issues of spelling), and careful consideration is given to every major or minor variation in the text.

In our modern translations, word usage and the changes of language over the centuries and even from decade to decade must be taken into consideration. But the translations we have (with the possible exception of the New World Translation), have not been made to deceive, but to clarify. If someone has a favorite translation of the Bible, such as the old NIV, let them use it with confidence and the blessing of God, just as many of the early Christians used the Greek translation rather than a Hebrew Old Testament. Christ and the Apostles even quote from the Greek translation, almost as often as they quote from the Hebrew, translating into Greek as they speak. Therefore the translations may be used with confidence and with the ability to say, “This is the Word of God, inspired by the Holy Spirit.”

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

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