2 Timothy 3:17

that the man of God may be complete, furnished completely unto every good work.

The man of God here is not merely Timothy. "Man" is generic and means "human being." All persons who walk in the way of God are made complete and completely furnished unto every good work by the Holy Scriptures. As Lenski said:

The value of these two verses (2 Timothy 3:16,17) is beyond question. It is a proof passage for verbal inspiration and for much more besides. As a proof passage it is outstanding and yet forms only a part of the entire volume of proof and evidence for verbal inspiration. It is one of the peaks in the Rocky Mountain range that establishes "The Impregnable Rock of Holy Scripture" (Gladstone) as inspired.[30]

Before leaving this incredibly important passage, we shall explore a little further the Scriptural evidence bearing upon the subject of INSPIRATION.

THE INSPIRATION OF THE BIBLE

First of all, and most importantly, our Lord himself believed in the inspiration of the Old Testament.

Matthew 4:4ff. Our Lord, the Redeemer and Saviour of the human race, in his confrontation with the prince of evil at the time of Jesus' great temptation, turned aside every thrust of Satan with the words, "It is written ... it is written ... and again it is written." Is it possible to believe that the Lord of Life in such a confrontation would have appealed to a book that was merely human, fallible or untrustworthy?

Matthew 19:5ff. "God (he who created man) said, For this cause shall a man leave his father and his mother, etc." Jesus said this, thus attributing the authorship of Genesis to the Creator of the world.

John 10:34-36. In this passage, Jesus referred to the Old Testament as "your law ... the Scriptures ... the word of God," adding that "the Scriptures cannot be broken."

Matthew 22:29. Jesus attributed the ignorance of the Sadducees to the fact of their not "knowing the Scriptures."

Luke 24:25. Jesus denounced as "foolish" those who did not "believe all" that stands in the Scripture.

Jesus frequently explained occurrences as coming to pass "that the Scriptures might be fulfilled" (Mark 14:49; John 13:18; 17:12; Mark 12:13, etc.), indicating his utmost confidence that everything in the holy Scriptures would indeed be fulfilled. Of course, as Warfield said, Jesus made such appeals upon the basis "of his ascription of it (the Bible) to God as the author of it."[31]

Secondly, the holy apostles implicitly believed in the total accuracy, infallibility and inspiration of the sacred Scriptures, further proof that Jesus was also the source of that belief; for it is inconceivable that they would have believed such a thing unless it had been taught to them by the Master. 2 Timothy 3:16,17. See discussion above.

2 Peter 1:21. "But no prophecy ever came by the will of man: but men spake from God, being moved by the Holy Spirit." This passage says all that Paul said in the passage above. Furthermore, "prophecy" must be understood in the sense of "all scripture" and not limited to predictive elements. The source of Scripture is God; Scriptures were spoken by man indeed; but the men who spoke it spoke "from God."

The total preaching of the apostles was geared to the conviction that the gospel they delivered was prophetically unfolded in the Old Testament. The death, burial and resurrection of Christ were "according to the Scriptures" (1 Corinthians 15:3,4). When Judas betrayed the Lord, it was "because it is written" (Acts 1:20). The Bereans were "more noble" because they tested even the preaching of apostles "searching the Scriptures to see whether these things were so" (Acts 17:11). Dozens of other examples could be cited, every one of which testifies to the apostolic confidence in the inspiration of the Old Testament (and of the New Testament as well).

This same certainty of its inspiration pertains also to the New Testament.

We have already observed Paul's frequent use of the ancient formula "He saith," or simply "Saith" in the Greek to introduce sections of his own writings (Romans 15:10; 1 Corinthians 6:16; 2 Corinthians 6:2; Galatians 3:16; Ephesians 4:8; 5:14, etc.). Warfield noted that "saith," standing without the pronoun in the writing of the apostles always meant "God saith." "For who could be the speaker of the words of Scripture but God only?"[32] How deplorable it is, therefore, that some commentators and translators supply the pronoun "it" (meaning the Old Testament); and then when they cannot find the passage Paul "quoted," they accuse him of garbling or misquotation! when the truth is that Paul was writing, not quoting Scripture. Paul possibly referred to Luke's gospel in 2 Timothy 2:8; and in 1 Timothy 5:18 he certainly quoted from Luke 10:7. Likewise Peter recognized the inspiration of Paul's writings even regarding some things "hard to be understood" (2 Peter 3:16).

Our Lord made an argument for immortality and the resurrection to depend upon a single word, the verb "I AM," and the tense of it at that. Paul also made an argument relative to the whole Christian religion on a single word, the noun "seed," and the number of it! Those who believe in the Lord and his holy apostles have no trouble whatever with the doctrine of inspiration, despite there being many things concerning it which we shall never be able to understand.

Regarding the inspiration of the New Testament, Jesus promised the apostles, "It is not ye that speak but the Spirit of your Father that speaketh in you" (Matthew 10:10), and also that "he (the Spirit) will bring to your remembrance whatsoever I have said unto you" (John 14:26), and that "he will teach you all things" (John 14:26), and that "he will guide you unto all truth" (John 16:13), and that "he will declare unto you the things that are to come" (John 16:13). The consent of Christians in all ages has viewed these expressions as certification of New Testament inspiration, a fact attested by the apostolic writings having been bound (in the form of the New Testament) to the Old Testament which preceded it, thus forming the Bible, all of which is inspired.

Unintentionally, the enemies of the New Testament are themselves a witness in favor of its inspiration, because of the inordinate amount of time and effort expended by them in their vain efforts to discredit even a single line of it. Why do they not spend similar time and energies in efforts to prove the Declaration of Independence, the Magna Carta, or the works of William Shakespeare to be forgeries, fraudulent or unreliable? Simply because they know instinctively that the New Testament is the word of God, therefore far more important, and much more challenging to their evil genius.

[30] R. C. H. Lenski, op. cit., p. 848.

[31] Benjamin B. Warfield, ISBE, Vol. III, p. 1477.