The Perfect
Infallible Word
of God
Wuest Translation
Wuest Translation: 2Pe 1:19 (19-21) And we have the prophetic word as a surer foundation, to which you are doing well to pay attention as to a lamp which is shining in a squalid place, until day dawns and the morning star arises in your hearts; knowing this first, that every prophecy of scripture does not originate from any private explanation, for not by the desire of man did prophecy come aforetime, but being carried along by the Holy Spirit men spoke words from God who is the ultimate source.
Kenneth Samuel Wuest (1893 – 1962) was a noted Christian New Testament Greek scholar and a professor of New Testament Greek at the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago.
Believer’s Bible Commentary
1:19 And so we have the prophetic word confirmed. The OT prophets had predicted Christ’s coming in power and great glory. The apostles were given an advance glimpse of the glory of Christ’s future kingdom.
The prophetic word is the shining light. The dismal or dark place is the world. The dawning of day signals the end of this present Church Age (Rom_13:12). The rising of the morning star pictures Christ’s coming for His saints. Thus the sense of the passage is that we should always keep the prophetic word before us, treasuring it in our hearts, for it will serve as a light in this dark world until the age is ended and Christ appears in the clouds to take His waiting people home to heaven.
1:20 In the final two verses of the chapter, Peter emphasizes that the prophetic Scriptures originated with God and not with man; they were divinely inspired.
No prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation (or origin). This statement has given rise to a great variety of interpretations. Some are absurd, such as the view that interpretation of the Bible is the right of the church alone and that individuals should not study it!
Other explanations may be true statements, although not the meaning of this passage. For instance, it is true that no verse should be interpreted by itself, but in the light of the context and of all the rest of Scripture.
But Peter here is dealing with the origin of the prophetic word, and not with the way men interpret it after it has been given. The point is that when the prophets sat down to write, they did not give their own private interpretation of events or their own conclusions. In other words, interpretation does not refer to the explaining of the word by those of us who have the Bible in written form; rather it refers to the way in which the Word came into being in the first place. D. T. Young writes: So the text, rightly understood … asserts that Scripture is not human in its ultimate origin. It is God’s interpretation, not man’s. We often hear of certain statements of Scripture as representing David’s opinion, or Paul’s opinion, or Peter’s opinion. Yet, strictly speaking, we have no man’s opinion in those Holy Writings. It is all God’s interpretation of things. No prophecy of the Scripture represents an individual’s interpretation: men spoke as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.
1:21 This verse confirms the explanation just given in verse 20. For prophecy never came by the will of man. As someone has said, “What they wrote was not a concoction of their own ideas, and it was not the result of human imagination, insight, or speculation.”
The fact is that holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. In some way which we cannot fully understand, God directed these men as to the very words to write, and yet He did not destroy the individuality or style of the writers. This is one of the key verses in the Bible on divine inspiration. In a day when many are denying the authority of the Scriptures, it is important that we stand firmly for the verbal, plenary inspiration of the inerrant word.
By verbal inspiration we mean that the words as originally penned by the forty or more human writers are God-breathed (see 1Co_2:13). God did not give a general outline or some basic ideas, then let the writers phrase them as they wished. The very words they wrote were given by the Holy Spirit.
By plenary inspiration we mean that all the Bible is equally God-given from Genesis through Revelation. It is the word of God (see 2Ti_3:16). By inerrant we mean that the resultant word of God is totally without error in the original, not only in doctrine, but in history, science, chronology, and all other areas.
Wuest
This process of men being carried along by the Holy Spirit and thus speaking from God is explained by the apostle Paul in his classic passage on that subject in 1Co_2:9-16. It was written to a racial group that stands out in history as the most intellectual of all peoples, the Greeks. They were a race of creative thinkers. The sole instrument which they used in their attempt to pierce through the mysteries of existence was human reason. This they sharpened to a keen edge. But it was inadequate to solve the great mysteries of origins, of the wherefore of human existence, of God, and of evil. Plato, one of their great philosophers, acknowledged that mere human reason was not sufficient to answer the riddles with which man is confronted, and that the only sure foundation for a system of religious truth was, not even the best of human opinion, but a revelation from God.
Greek Word Study
The Scriptures are the voice of God to the soul of man. It is inconceivable that God would give His people a book they could not trust. He is the God of truth (KJV Dt 32:4); Jesus is “the truth” (Jn 14:6); and the Holy Spirit is the “Spirit is truth” (1Jn 5:7). Jesus said of the Scriptures,
“Thy Word is truth” (Jn 17:17). “
The greater Presbyterian preacher Donald Grey Barnhouse explained inspiration this way…
Just as the Holy Spirit came upon the womb of Mary, so He came upon the brain of a Moses, a David, an Isaiah, a Paul, a John and the rest of the writers of the divine library. The power of the Highest overshadowed them, therefore that holy thing which was born of their minds is called the Holy Bible, the word of God. The writing of Luke will, of course, have the vocabulary of Luke and the work of Paul will bear the stamp of Paul’s mind. However, this is only in the same manner that the Lord Jesus might have had eyes like his mother’s or hair that was the same color and texture as hers. He did not inherit her sins because the Holy Spirit has come upon her. If we ask, how could this be, the answer is God says so. And the writings of men of the Book did not inherit the errors of their carnal minds because their writings were conceived by the Holy Spirit and born out of their personalities without partaking of their fallen nature. If we ask, how could this be, again the answer is “God says so”.
The Divine Preservation of The Scripture
Paraphrased from Pastor Ho Soo Kam
All scripture is given by inspiration of God and He has also preserved every word of the Bible.
“The words of the LORD are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. Thou Shalt keep them. 0 LORD, thou shalt PRESERVE them from this generation forever.” (Psalm 12:6,7) “Heaven and earth shall pass away: but my words shall not pass away.” (Matthew 24:35; Mark 13:31; Luke 21:33).
“For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away: But the word of the Lord endureth forever. And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you.” (1 Peter 1:23,25) “The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: But the word of our God shall stand forever.” (Isaiah 40:8) God has preserved the scripture for us so that the scripture we hold in our hands is “God-breathed”. This is why the scripture is able to quicken us. “This is my comfort in my affliction: for thy word hath quickened me.” (Psalm 119:50)
“I will never forget thy precepts: for with them thou has quickened me.” (Psalm 119:93).
“For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” (Hebrews 4:12)
God in his great faithfulness has preserved the scripture so that what we have is inerrant and infallible. “Inerrant” means free from error or mistake. “The Law of the Lord is PERFECT, converting the soul: the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple.” (Psalm 19:7)
“For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass: For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightaway forgetteth what manner of man he was. But whoso looketh into the PERFECT law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.” (James 1:23-25)
“Infallible” means free from error, unfailing and true. What God said must come to pass. “Thy word is true from the beginning: and every one of thy righteous judgements endureth forever.” (Psalm 119:160)
“For verily I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law till all be fulfilled.” (Matthew 5:18) Nothing in Scripture, even the smallest stroke, is without significance. (BBC)
“And it is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail” (Luke 16:17)
The question of inerrancy and infallibility do not even arise if there is no divine preservation. (Psalm 12:6, 7)
Liberal Christians have generally abandoned belief in both inerrancy and inspiration of the Bible. Instead, they analyze the Bible as a historical document using techniques of “higher criticism.”
By Lead Pastor J L Wood
The Cactus Report
Sermon/Teaching Series: The Perfect Infallible Word of God