Another point that is often missed is that, as long as the issue is inspiration and not the merits of the individuals, we are not even comparing Jesus to the prophets and the apostles, but Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John to the other writers of Scripture. Without hesitation, we acknowledge the utter superiority of Christ over all men, but the issue is whether Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were inspired. Since they were, then the documents that they produced, which included the words of Jesus, carry maximum authority, just as the writings of the prophets and the apostles carry maximum authority, and just as any word from God would carry maximum authority. There is no room for one to be superior to another. Since all of them carry the authority of God, none can be any greater or lesser in authority.

We may even concede that, if "inspiration" applied to him at all, it occurred differently in Jesus than in the prophets and the apostles. Among other things, he had no sin whose effects the Spirit must overcome or suspend to ensure the perfect communication of God's mind. And he could speak by his own divine authority in harmony with the Father's will. So the mode of operation was certainly different. Yet the product is the same – infallible and inerrant "God-breathed" words. The point is that to make any distinction in authority between God and Scripture, or Jesus and Scripture, is also to deny the inspiration of Scripture.

Disregarding for now the ramifications of this truth for theology, hermeneutics, and other disciplines, it has immediate relevance to our text. Paul says that all Scripture is God-breathed and is "useful" or "profitable" for the purposes that he enumerates. It follows that we must not consider the words of Jesus in the Bible as more useful or profitable than the words of the inspired human writers in the rest of the Bible.

In fact, an exposition of our text does not strictly require us to mention the human writers at all, or to consider how divine inspiration occurred in them. This is because the word "God-breathed" has no reference whatever to any human role or agency in the production of Scripture. The term emphasizes the God-given nature of Scripture, and that it is directly given by God in terms of content. God wrote on tablets of stone when he gave the Ten Commandments, but the rest of the Bible came from him just as much, so that there is no essential difference than if God had taken up a pen and wrote the whole thing himself without using human writers. The word "God-breathed" forbids us to form a weaker conclusion.

Nevertheless, most portions of Scripture indeed came through inspired human writers rather than by a voice from heaven, by dictation, or by the finger of God, and it is often observed that the various parts of the Bible reflect the different circumstances, backgrounds, and personalities of the inspired writers. Our text does not mention or explain this about the Bible, but calling it God-breathed, it stresses the divinity of the source and the purity of the product. To learn about how God wrote down his thoughts through inspired human writers, and in a way that the Bible can be called God-breathed without qualification, we will have to take a quick detour into another biblical passage.

(to be continued)

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