How Does God Speak to Me Through His Word?

A Few Thoughts to Consider

Have you ever thought about what makes the Bible different from other books?

While nearly every Christian admits there is something unique about Scripture, many struggle to see how it applies to their lives. Sometimes, it feels dated, impractical, and irrelevant to their current context. So, they push it to the side and use it as a resource to support their personal agendas or understanding of God.

But Paul was clear in 2 Timothy 3:16-17 that there is something truly unique about Scripture. He writes, ¹⁶ “All Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness, ¹⁷ so that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”

These verses “are the strongest statement in the Bible about itself.”^[1] The word translated “inspired” quite literally means “God-breathed.” As Donald Guthrie writes, “The use of the word all is determinative. If all here means ‘every’ it would be possible to understand it of separate parts of Scripture. But parallel uses in the NT suggest that ‘all’ is the correct translation. That being so, Paul is assuming that Scripture in its entirety is God–breathed.”^[2]

How did God breathe this scripture? By inspiring the minds of everyday people to pen his words. The nature of inspiration is that God speaks through Scripture not only in a past sense but also in an active sense. The Bible is not just a collection of ancient narratives that we try to fit into our present context. It’s a living and breathing document.

This is why Paul can definitively say that it can equip us for every good work. There is not one moral situation Christians face today that Scripture hasn’t addressed. This is not to say the Bible speaks to the specifics of how to handle modern technological challenges such as artificial intelligence, but it does give us a thorough set of principles through which we can interpret the cultural complexities of our day.