Everything breathes.
Breath is essential to human life, and we rarely think about it until we struggle to find it. We breathe when we wake, walk, work, and sleep. Breath is a vital sign of life flowing within us.
Paul reaches for that kind of language when he writes to Timothy: “All Scripture is breathed out by God” (2 Timothy 3:16). Scripture is not merely written. It is God-breathed.
That one phrase tells us something profound about the nature of the Bible. The Scriptures were written through human authors, in real places, real languages, real histories, and real circumstances. Moses, David, Isaiah, Luke, Paul, Peter, and others wrote with their own vocabulary, personality, experience, and setting. Yet behind and through their words, God Himself was breathing out His Word. Inspiration does not mean the Bible was dictated by God to human recorders in a mechanical way, separated from human personality. It means God so worked through human authors that the words they wrote were His Word. In Scripture, God worked with and through prophets to preserve His timeless Word for every generation.
Because Scripture is God-breathed, we should not approach the Bible simply as a religious textbook of information. The Word is living and active because it comes from the living God. It is filled with the wisdom, mind, and purpose of God, and the Holy Spirit uses it to address His people today. The Bible is not a dead book from a distant age, but the living Word through which God continues to speak from generation to generation.
Paul says this God-breathed Word is profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness. In other words, Scripture is not passive. God’s Word seeks to do something in us. It teaches what is true, exposes what is false, restores what is broken, and trains us to walk in righteousness before God.
The goal is “that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:17). God does not give us Scripture merely to make us informed. He gives us Scripture to make us whole. He gives us His Word so that, through it, we may behold Christ and be formed more fully into His image.
So when you open the Bible this week, do not come casually. Come prayerfully. Come humbly. Come expecting the living God to speak through His living Word.
The God who breathed out Scripture still uses Scripture to breathe life, truth, correction, and hope into His people.
-Jacob Brunjes
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