The word “inspired” is taken to mean a lot of things nowadays but it usually means “motivational, encouraging, or uplifting.”1  It is typically used to show that something stimulates a person to excel.  Coaches inspire their athletes to compete harder and perform better.  Teachers inspire their students to study harder and make better grades.  Employers inspire their employees to put out a better product this year than they did last year.

A quick google search for the word “inspiration” demonstrates this.  One website gives inspirational quotations from famous scholars from the past. Here are a few examples.

Albert Einstein:

Try not to become a man of success but a man of value.

Henry David Thoreau:

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be.  Now put foundations under them.

Edward Bulwer Lytton:

To find what you seek in the road of life, the best proverb of all is that which says: “Leave no stone unturned.”2

Another website gives several inspirational pictures of mountains and sunsets and flowers and castles and rainbows.  It had one pretty picture of a railroad track that seemed to suggest that the viewer was at a crossroads in life and must pick which way to go.3  Still another website gives a list of 40 inspirational songs, which included “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” “I Believe I Can Fly,” “Eye of the Tiger,” “Walking on Sunshine,” “Live Like You Were Dying,” “Circle of Life,” and “It’s a Wonderful World.”4

So the modern use of the word inspiration is to motivate or encourage or uplift.  It conveys the idea of giving someone enough emotional and spiritual strength needed to make it through another day.

But that is very different from the Bible’s definition of inspiration.  When Christians say that the Bible is inspired, they do not mean that it is encouraging.  And when they claim that the authors of Scripture were inspired, they do not mean that they were motivated to do a good job.

In regards to the Bible and to the authors of the Bible, the term “inspiration” refers to the work of the Holy Spirit to ensure that the written words were the Word of God.5  The Holy Spirit inspired the authors of Scripture to write His Word in such a way that it came out without any mistakes.6  He moved in their hearts and sovereignly worked in their lives to produce a book that is “living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword.”7

To get a better understanding of this term, it would be helpful to see what some Christian scholars have written about it.  In his book, Basic Theology, Charles Ryrie defines inspiration this way.

God superintended (or carried along) the human authors of the Bible so that they composed and recorded without error His message to mankind in the words of their original writings.8

Ryrie brings out several helpful things with this definition.  For one, he shows that inerrancy or the doctrine that the Bible is without error is connected to inspiration.  Because the Holy Spirit moved the authors of Scripture to write and, because the Holy Spirit never does anything imperfectly, what He inspires is perfect.  What He inspires is without error.

Another insight from Ryrie’s definition is that the original words of Scripture were inspired but the copies or translations were not.  The copies and translations are inspired only to the extent that they match the originals.  They are only the Word of God where they match the autographa9 or the first-hand copies.  The Holy Spirit moved men to write the originals but He does not move men to copy them (at least not in the same way).

Just a few more definitions of inerrancy.  According to B. B. Warfield in The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible,

Inspiration is, therefore, usually defined as a supernatural influence exerted on the sacred writers by the Spirit of God, by virtue of which their writings are given Divine trustworthiness.10

Warfield points out that inspiration was an influence and not an interfering.  The Holy Spirit used men of God when He wrote Scripture but He did not bypass them.  More will be said about this below.

In his book, God has Spoken, J. I. Packer writes that,

[Inspiration refers to] a divine work, taking many psychological forms, whereby, having made God’s message known to the authors of Scripture, the Holy Spirit so overruled all their subsequent mental activity . . . that each resultant oracle was as truly a divine utterance as a human, as direct a disclosure of what was in God’s mind as of what was in the prophet’s.11

When we say that Scripture is inspired, we mean that it is divine and it is human.  It is a word from the mind of God and it is a word from the mind of a prophet or apostle.

And, finally, one more definition from the Moody Handbook of Theology. Here Paul Enns defines inspiration as

The act of the Holy Spirit in which He superintended the writers of Scripture so that, while writing according to their own styles and personalities, they produced God’s Word written, authoritative, trustworthy, and free from error in the original writings.12

Inspiration refers to the work of the Holy Spirit to move the prophets and apostles to write the Bible.  And the Holy Spirit inspired the authors in such a way that they would not misrepresent Him.  He moved in their hearts so that they would write a perfect, inerrant Word that reflected Him Who is perfect and inerrant.  And, again, this inspiration only applies to the autographa.  It only applies to the autographs or to the original writings of Scripture.

So, as you can see, the Christian idea of inspiration is very different from the secular idea.  To the Christian, inspiration does not mean to simply encourage or uplift or motivate.  It means to move and empower and influence with a supernatural ability to write a perfect Word.  As Clark Pinnock says,

“To err is human – Scripture is human – therefore Scripture errs” [should be taken away and replaced with] “To err is human – ergo, God gave the Scripture by inspiration – so that it does not err.”13

Pinnock is exactly right.  Many people today ask, “How can you believe that the Bible doesn’t have any errors in it?”  “How can you believe that men wrote a perfect book?”  We can believe that because the Bible is inspired.

Man did not write the Scriptures alone.  The inerrant Spirit of God entered into Him in the process.  The Holy Spirit stepped into time and moved the authors of Scripture to write exactly what He wanted them to write.  And He did more than motivate them; He moved them.  He supernaturally indwelt them and empowered them to write a flawless book.  This is what we mean when we say that the Bible is inspired.

To dig into this a little more, this article will look at four areas of inspiration.

I. INSPIRATION COVERS ALL OF SCRIPTURE

Second Timothy 3:16-17 gives a good description of the inspiration of Scripture.  It says,

All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.

The word “inspired” here is also translated “God-breathed” in the New International Version and “breathed out by God” in the English Standard Version.  It is a compound Greek word: theopneustos.  Theos means “God” and pneustos means “Spirit.”14  If this word is made into a verb, as Paul does here, it means “God-breathed; breathed out by God; inspired.”

And, if you notice, the Apostle Paul says here that all of Scripture is theopneustos.  All of Scripture has God’s breath in it.  All of Scripture is inspired.  Not just a verse or two here or there . . . Not just John 3:16 and a few other favorite passages . . . Every bit of Scripture has been breathed out by the Holy Spirit of God.  “All Scripture is inspired by God . . .”

The word for “Scripture” in verse 16 is graphe, which literally translates “writing.”15  All of the written words of God are inspired and, therefore, all of the written words of God are useful for growth in Godliness.  All of them serve a purpose.  There are no useless verses in the Bible.

To highlight this a little more, Matthew 5:17-18 says,

Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill.  For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished.

As Jesus is giving the Sermon on the Mount, He is saying over and over again to His audience, “You have heard that it was said but I say to you.”  “You have heard that it was said but I say to you.”  “The Old Testament tells you this but I tell you this.”  “The Word of God commands this but I, as the living Word of God,16 command this.”  He says it in Matthew 5:21-22, 27-28, 31-32, 33-34, 38-39, 43-44.  Over and over and over again in this passage, Jesus reinterprets God’s Law for the Jews.  He explains it to them in a way that they have never heard before.

And it all raises the question, “Is Jesus doing away with the Old Testament here?”  “Is that the point of the Sermon on the Mount?”  “Is Jesus throwing aside everything God revealed to the Jews in the Hebrew Scriptures?”  And, to answer that, Jesus says in verses 17-18 that He has not come to abolish the Law but to fulfill it.  He has not come to do away with what God has said to the prophets.  Instead, He has come to show the people of Israel what the prophets really meant and to live it out for them.

Jesus would perfectly fulfill God’s Law17 so as to make a perfectly righteous sin offering on the cross.18  God would be pleased with His Son’s sacrificial death19because His Son perfectly kept His Law.  He did not do away with the Law, He fulfilled it.20.

And what Jesus goes on to say in verse 18 sheds a lot of light on the inspiration of Scripture.

For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished.

Here, Jesus says that everything in the Old Testament has been inspired by God.  Every square inch of it.  The word for “smallest letter” in Greek is iota, which was the smallest letter in the Greek alphabet.  Some commentators say that iota could even refer to the smallest letter in the Hebrew alphabet, yodh.21 “Stroke” in Greek is keraia, which means “little horn” and refers to a little hook that the Hebrew language used to distinguish one letter from another.  It was the equivalent of one of our hyphens or punctuation marks in English.22

In other words, Jesus is saying that until the heavens and the earth are destroyed, even the punctuation marks and the most insignificant letters in God’s Law will remain.  And the reason for this is simple: inspiration covers all of Scripture.  All of Scripture is inspired by God and, therefore, none of Scripture will be done away with until it has all been accomplished.

Because of this, theologians have come up with a helpful distinction to make when discussing how inspiration covers all of Scripture.  It is called the ipsissima vox / ipsissima verba principle.  Ipsissima vox is Latin for “the very voice.”  Ipsissima verba is Latin for “the very words.”23  The principle or the issue that these phrases address is “Does inspiration teach that the Holy Spirit moved the writers of Scripture to write every word of Scripture?”  “Or does inspiration teach that the Holy Spirit moved the writers of Scripture to write the general idea of Scripture?”  “Does inspiration cover the details or the gist?”  “Does inspiration refer to the ‘very words’ or the ‘very voice?’”

Jesus says here in Matthew 5:18 that God will fulfill even “the smallest letter or stroke” of the Old Testament Law.  Paul says in Second Timothy 3:16 that the all Scripture is inspired or God-breathed.  Inspiration is ipsissima verba.  It refers to “the very words” of Scripture.

II. INSPIRATION WAS IRRESISTABLE

When God moved the authors of Scripture to pen His very words, He did not force them.  He did not violate their will but, instead, He conformed their will to go along with His perfect will.

It is the same principle when someone is saved.  The Scriptures do not teach that, when God saves a man, He attacks his will and makes him do something he does not want to do.24  God does not “force” men to believe.25  The Scriptures teach that God changes the sinner’s will so that now, for the first time, he wants to believe the Gospel.  Now, for the first time, he wants to turn away from sin.  Before the Holy Spirit gets involved, an uncoverted man does not want to come to God.26  But, after the Holy Spirit gets involved, the unconverted man cannot help but come.27

All of this is a close parallel to the inspiration of Scripture.  Inspiration does not mean that the Holy Spirit forced the apostles and prophets to write His Word.  It means that He changed their desires so that they wanted to write His Word.  And He changed their desires to write it just the way that He wanted them to write it.  They kept their unique personalities but they wrote an inerrant Word.

Second Peter 1:20-21 talks about this when it says,

But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever made an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.

Verse 20 says that “no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation.”  This means that inspiration does not come from a subjective source.  Men did not write God’s Word on their own initiative or on their own authority.  And, therefore, men cannot interpret God’s Word on their own initiative or on their own authority.  The Bible was not man-made and, consequently, it cannot have a man-made interpretation.  It means what God intended it to mean or it does not mean anything.

But, not only that, verse 21 says, “for no prophecy was ever made an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.”  Prophecy or, specifically the prophecies recorded in Scripture, did not originate with man.  They were not “made by an act of the human will” as the New American Standard Bible has it.  They did not come “by the will of man” as the King James Version puts it.

So where did prophecies come from?  They came from God.  The Bible was inspired as men were “moved by the Holy Spirit of God.”  The Greek word for “moved” is pheromenoi and it means “to bear, to carry, to bring forward.”28  The same word is used in Acts 27:15, 17, where it says,

And when the ship was caught in [the storm] and could not face the wind, we gave way to it and let ourselves be driven along (pheromenoi) . . . After they had hoisted [the lifeboat] up, they used supporting cables in undergirding the ship; and fearing that they might run aground on the shallows of Syrtis, they let down the sea anchor and in this way let themselves be driven along (pheromenoi).

It is a pretty interesting picture that Peter paints with this Greek word in Second Peter 1.  He says that, just like a ship is driven along by the wind, the authors of Scripture were driven along by the Holy Spirit.  They were blown along their course just like a ship is blown along the water.

To think through this a little bit, the wind is irresistible if you are in a ship.  True, you can steer through the wind but, if you are sailing, you are going to eventually go where the wind blows.  If you are in a storm like Luke and Paul were in Acts 27, then you are definitely going to go where the wind blows.

Prophecy is similar to that.  The Prophet Jeremiah said that the Word of God was like a fire in his bones if he kept it to himself.29  He had to speak because the Word burned within him.  The same principle applies to inspiration.  The authors of Scripture could not keep from writing even if they wanted to because the Lord changed their will and now they could not avoid the impulse.  They could not help but write.

III. INSPIRATION WAS NOT ROBOTIC

Even though inspiration covers all of Scripture and, even though inspiration was irresistible, inspiration was not robotic.  It was not mechanical.  It did not make the authors of Scripture into mindless machines.  Every one of them kept their personalities and their own unique writing styles and their own authentic forms of expression.  Irresistibility does not cancel out creativity or originality.  Every author wrote the Word of God but every author did not write the Word of God the same way.

Just read through the Gospels and you can see that Matthew did not write like Mark.  And Mark did not write like Luke.  And Luke did not write like John.  They all retained their independence.  Each one kept their own unique personality.  Just like four eyewitnesses see an event from four different perspectives, the four Gospel writers saw the life of Jesus from four different perspectives.  One remembered this event and another remembered that event.  One remembered when Jesus said this and another remembered when Jesus said that.  Some of their stories overlapped and some of their stories stood alone.

Salvation is a lot like that.  No two Christians have the same testimony.  We were all saved by irresistible grace.30  We all believed the same Gospel message.31  We all turned to Jesus Christ and repented of our sins.  We were all called out by the Holy Spirit of God to believe on the one true Son of God.  But that does not mean that we lost our unique personalities in the process.  It does not mean that we became mindless, emotionless machines.

And it is the same way with the inspiration of Scripture.  Just as God led us and prepared us to receive Christ, God led and prepared the authors of Scripture to write Scripture.

Listen to what Gordon Lewis says about this,

How did God prepare these writers?  They received all the benefits of His common and special grace.  God provided their food and drink and all the necessities of life; preserved them from evil; restrained those who would have destroyed them; gave them natural gifts; guided and governed all the innumerable factors in their individual lives, families, schools, and social and political environments.  In addition, God graciously called them to Himself, justified them by faith, gave them spiritual gifts, set them apart to their respective works as prophetic or apostolic men . . . In all of these and undoubtedly in other ways, God prepared unique individuals for writing His Word.32

God prepared the authors of Scripture for inspiration just like He prepared them for salvation.  They wrote His inerrant Word but they did not write it as robots.

Another way to say this is to mention the difference between mechanical dictation and verbal plenary inspiration.33  “Mechanical dictation” refers to the Holy Spirit inspiring the Scriptures by ignoring the personalities of the writers.  It means that he dictated to them what to write and they wrote it without giving any input, the same way a manager dictates a message to a secretary.  The manager says what needs to be written down and the secretary writes it down without putting her own thoughts into the manuscript.  Her personality does not have any impact on the writings.  That is mechanical dictation.

“Verbal plenary inspiration” refers to the Holy Spirit inspiring the Scriptures by using the personalities of the writers.  As we mentioned earlier, “verbal” or verba means “every word.”  “Plenary” means “full or every.”  “Inspiration” means “moved along.”  Verbal plenary inspiration, then, means that every word of Scripture was moved along with the full co-operation of the human authors.  Their thoughts and opinions were not ignored, they were used in the process.  In a miraculous way, the Holy Spirit moved the authors of Scripture so that their words were their own words and they were His words all at the same time.  And the final product became the Word of God written with the words of men.

IV. INSPIRATION IS ASSUMED ALL THROUGHOUT THE BIBLE

The miracle of God speaking through man is so common in the Bible that it is safe to say it is assumed.  The Biblical authors assumed that God could and did inspire men to speak and write His Word.  Here are some areas where this inspiration occurred in the Bible.34

1. God spoke to people directly in the Old Testament

With no intermediary or human spokesman, there were times in the Old Testament when God spoke directly to His people.

Genesis 12:1-3 gives us one of those times.

Now the LORD said to Abram,

“Go forth from your country,
And from your relatives
And from your father’s house,
To the land which I will show you;
And I will make you a great nation,
And I will bless you,
And make your name great;
And so you shall be a blessing;
And I will bless those who bless you,
And the one who curses you I will curse.
And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.”

Deuteronomy 4:12-13 gives us another.

Then the LORD spoke to you from the midst of the fire; you heard the sound of words, but you saw no form—only a voice.  So He declared to you His covenant which He commanded you to perform, that is, the Ten Commandments; and He wrote them on two tablets of stone.

God spoke directly to Abraham and to the children of Israel with no intermediary.

2. God spoke to people indirectly through the prophets in the Old Testament

Not only did the Lord speak  Himself but He inspired the Old Testament prophets to speak on His behalf.  The phrase “Thus says the Lord” or its equivalent is repeated hundreds of times in the Hebrew Bible.  Here are a few instances.

Jeremiah 31:1-2, 7 says,

“At that time,” declares the LORD, “I will be the God of all the families of Israel, and they shall be My people.”

Thus says the LORD,
“The people who survived the sword
Found grace in the wilderness—
Israel, when it went to find its rest . . .”

For thus says the LORD,
“Sing aloud with gladness for Jacob,
And shout among the chief of the nations;
Proclaim, give praise and say,
‘O LORD, save Your people,
The remnant of Israel.’”

Ezekiel 20:44 says,

“Then you will know that I am the LORD when I have dealt with you for My name’s sake, not according to your evil ways or according to your corrupt deeds, O house of Israel,” declares the Lord GOD.

3. God spoke to people indirectly through the writings of the prophets in the Old Testament

The Lord spoke through the prophet’s words but He also spoke through the prophet’s writings. He inspired the Hebrew Old Testament just like He inspired the Greek New Testament.

Exodus 17:14 says,

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Write this in a book as a memorial and recite it to Joshua, that I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven.”

Jeremiah 30:2 says,

The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘Write all the words which I have spoken to you in a book.’”

4. God spoke to people directly in the New Testament

Just as God spoke to Abraham and to the people of Israel directly in the Old Testament, God spoke to people directly in the New Testament.  Here are some examples of this.

Matthew 3:16-17 gives us the following account of Jesus’ baptism:

After being baptized, Jesus came up immediately from the water; and behold, the heavens were opened, and He saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove and lighting on Him, and behold, a voice out of the heavens said, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased.”

Matthew 17:5 tells us that, at Jesus’ transfiguration,

While [Peter] was still speaking, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and behold, a voice out of the cloud said, “This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well-pleased; listen to Him!”

At Paul’s conversion on the Damascus Road in Acts 9:4-6 it says,

And he fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?”  And he said, “Who are You, Lord?”  And He said, “I am Jesus whom you are persecuting, but get up and enter the city, and it will be told you what you must do.”

A similar thing happened to Peter in Acts 10:9-16 in regards to eating unclean food.  God spoke to His people directly in the time of the Jewish prophets and He spoke to His people directly in the time of the Christian apostles.

5. God spoke to people directly through Jesus Christ

As the Son of God, Jesus Christ was the most perfect revelation of God35 and every word He spoke was the Word of God.36

Luke 5:1 refers to Jesus’ preaching as the Word of God when it says,

Now it happened that while the crowd was pressing around Him and listening to the word of God, [Jesus] was standing by the lake of Gennesaret . . .

John 3:33-34, in reference to Jesus, states that

He who has received His testimony has set his seal to this, that God is true.  For He whom God has sent speaks the words of God; for He gives the Spirit without measure.

As God in human flesh, Jesus was God speaking directly to His people.  In fact, every time that Jesus opened His mouth, God opened His mouth.  Every time that Jesus spoke, God spoke.

6. God spoke to people indirectly through the apostles

In the Old Testament, God chose to speak through the prophets.  In the New Testament, God chose to speak through the apostles.

In the first official “mission” of the apostles, Matthew 10:7 says that Jesus told them to “Preach, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’”  The same statement is given again in Mark 6:12, where it says that the apostles “went out and preached that men should repent.”  While the apostles were not sinless like Jesus was, the Lord still chose to speak through them.  He spoke through their preaching in such a way that, when they spoke, the God spoke.

7. God spoke to people indirectly through the writings of the apostles in the New Testament

Just as the Lord spoke indirectly through the Hebrew Scriptures, the Lord spoke indirectly through the Greek Scriptures as well.  There is not a lot of reference to this in the New Testament on account of the fact that the New Testament books were still being written but the divine nature of the New Testament is mentioned a few times.

Second Peter 3:15-16 would be the clearest reference to the Lord speaking through the New Testament Scriptures.  Here Peter writes,

And regard the patience of our Lord as salvation; just as also our beloved brother, Paul, according to the wisdom given him, wrote to you, as also in all his letters, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction.

In this passage, Peter compares Paul’s writings to “the rest of the Scriptures.”  In Peter’s eyes, what Paul wrote was inspired in the same way that the Old Testament was inspired.  The Holy Spirit moved Paul to give us the Word of God, just as He moved the rest of the authors of the New Testament to give us the Word of God.  The New Testament has the same authority as the Old because it has the same divine author.37

1. This is not the standard dictionary definition of “inspired” but it is very similar.  According to Webster’s New World Dictionary, ed. by Michael Agnes (New York: Wiley Publishing, 2003) to inspire is “to stimulate or impel, as to some creative effort;” “to motivate as by divine influence;” or “to arouse (a thought or feeling) in someone” (336). [↩]
2. All of these quotations are taken from www.inspirational-quotes.info/inspirational-quotes-1.html as of 11/3/11. [↩]
3. www.thefuturebuzz.com/2009/03/09/inspirational-images/ as of 11/3/11. [↩]
4. www.goal-setting-college.com/motivation/inspirational-motivational-songs/ as of 11/3/11. [↩]
5. Millard J. Erickson, The Concise Dictionary of Christian Theology (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 2001 ed.). “In particular, [inspiration is] the act of the Holy Spirit upon the biblical writers that ensured that what they wrote was the Word of God” (101). [↩]
6. For more information on this, see our FAQ, “Does the Bible have any errors in it?” [↩]
7. Heb 4:12. [↩]
8. Basic Theology: A Popular Systematic Guide to Understanding Biblical Truth (Chicago, Ill.: Moody Publishers, 1999) 627. [↩]
9. For more information on the inerrancy of the autographa, see Greg L. Bahnsen’s essay “The Inerrancy of the Autographa” in Inerrancy, ed. by Normal L. Geisler (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1980) 149-193. [↩]
10. The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible (Philadelphia, Penn.: The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1948) 131. [↩]
11. God has Spoken (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1979) 97. [↩]
12. The Moody Handbook of Theology (Chicago, Ill.: Moody Publishers, 2008) 714. [↩]
13. Clark Pinnock, Biblical Revelation (Chicago, Ill.: Moody Publishers, 1971) 176. [↩]
14. Vine’s Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words, ed. by Merrill F. Unger & William White, Jr. (Nashville, Tenn.: 1996) 328. [↩]
15. Ibid., 552 [↩]
16. Jn 1:1-2, 14. [↩]
17. Heb 4:15-16. [↩]
18. 2 Cor 5:21. [↩]
19. Matt 3:13-17. [↩]
20. Matt 3:15 [↩]
21. William Hendriksen, Exposition of the Gospel According to Matthew in New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1973) 291. [↩]
22. Ibid. [↩]
23. Erickson, 104. [↩]
24. For more information about this, see the FAQ “What Does Foreknowledge Mean?,” particularly III, 3, “Doesn’t foreknowledge teach that God forces men to believe in Him?” [↩]
25. The Bible is very clear that our decisions in this life affect our destination in the next life (see Matt 12:36; Rom 14:12; Rev 20:11-15). [↩]
26. See Jn 6:44; Rom 8:7-8; 1 Cor 2:14. [↩]
27. See Rom 8:28-30. [↩]
28. Vine’s Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words, 420. [↩]
29. Jer 20:9. [↩]
30. Jn 6:37-40; Acts 13:48; 16:14; Titus 3:5. [↩]
31. For more information on the Gospel, see our FAQ, “What is the Gospel?” [↩]
32. Quoted in Inerrancy, 251. [↩]
33. The following information regarding mechanical dictation and verbal plenary inspiration is found in Norman L. Geisler & William E. Nix, A General Introduction to the Bible (Chicago, Ill.: Moody Press, 1968) 36-57. [↩]
34. These seven assumptions are loosely borrowed from Dr. Andy Snider’s unpublished “Theology I” class syllabus for The Master’s Seminary, Summer 2004 (29-34). [↩]
35. Col 1:15; 2:9. [↩]
36. This is why, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus frequently says, “You have heard that it was said . . . but I say to you” (see discussion above).  As the very Word of God, He was speaking to the people on His own authority and not on the authority of someone else. [↩]
37. For more information on the inspiration of the New Testament, see “What is the Canon?” in the Second Edition of JTST. [↩]