16. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching …correcting…
Verses about correcting:
Proverbs 15:32 – NIV
32. Those who disregard discipline despise themselves, but the one who heeds correction gains understanding.
Proverbs 12:1 – NIV
1. Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but whoever hates correction is stupid.
Job 5:17 – NIV
17. “Blessed is the one whom God corrects; so do not despise the discipline of the Almighty.
Psalm 94:12 – NIV
12. Blessed is the one you discipline, Lord, the one you teach from your law;
16. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for …training…
Verses about training:
1 Corinthians 9:25 – NIV
25. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last, but we do it to get a crown that will last forever.
Ephesians 6:4 – NIV
4. Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.
1 Timothy 4:8 – NIV
8. For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.
Titus 2:11-13 – ESV
11. For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, 12. training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, 13. waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ,
Back to the main verse:
16. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for…
What does God breathed mean?
Who wrote the Bible? Man or God?
Is it God’s inspiration? I see a mountain. I am now inspired to write a poem about a mountain…
The scripture is not just God‘s inspiration. It’s more than that. If it’s only God‘s inspiration, then it’s actually written by man.
I imagine it like this: if a man wants to write something on a piece of paper, he uses a pencil. God wrote the Bible instead of a pencil, he used men.
But God breathed, or God‘s breath, is so much more:
Genesis 2:7 – NIV
7. Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.
John 20:21-22 – NIV
21. Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” 22. And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.
2 Peter 1:21 – NIV
21. For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
Here we see the truths of Scripture described as coming directly from God, not from the will of the writers He used to record them.
2 Peter 3:15-16 – NIV
15. Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. 16. He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.
1 Corinthians 2:13 – NIV
13. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words.
Remember how we talked about Jesus teaching in parables, and that by doing so, people who had ears to hear, could hear and understand his word, but those who were “too smart, for their own good”, could not understand? Or look at this verse also:
1 Corinthians 2:14 – NIV
14. The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.
So being God breathed, is so much more than just inspiration from God, and written by man. It is the breath of life itself. It is “supernatural“ in that the words can be understood through the Spirit. Jesus gives believers the Holy Spirit. The unbeliever cannot fully understand according to these verses.
So because we can’t fully understand, with our own reason, it only makes logical sense that hearing scripture itself, the word of God, has power that we can’t understand.
Isaiah 55:8-11 – NIV
8. “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord . 9. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. 10. As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, 11. so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.
Essentially, this is saying, even though you don’t get it, because you’re not me (God), I get it. And my words, when heard, never come back empty. Or they never return void. Don’t worry about people who say they don’t understand scripture, or it’s too boring, or they don’t care. Whether they know it or not, God is speaking to them in his way, in his time.
It’s just so powerful!