The Scriptures

Aut scripture is given by inspiration of God, and ¢s profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness; that the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works. A.V.

Every Scripture is inspired by God, and is serviceable for teaching, for conviction, for correction, for the training which is in righteousness; that the man of God may be complete, for every good work completely equipped.

We have here a great passage, and we can give it only a brief comment. Let us be as concise as possible in details.

Our last section introduced us to the great theme of the Scriptures. Timothy, from infancy, had known the ‘holy writings’; so we have literally rendered. The Apostle puts a certain emphasis in his Greek upon the word ‘holy,’ as if to say that there was other and competing literature in the field, perhaps referring to the literature of an occult and mysterious knowledge used by the ‘impostors. Whatever the precise emphasis however the reference here is unmistakable; it is to the Holy Scriptures, and to the Old Testament of course in chief. Of nothing wider, nothing inferior, would a Paul speak as of the ‘writings, the ‘letters,’ literature, which distinctively were ‘holy.’ This most sacred literature was able, he says, as its

The Scriptures

supreme function, to make its reader ‘wise,’ with a 2 Tim. iii. wisdom bearing upon and issuing in ‘salvation.’ 16, 17. Yes, it would school him in the deep science of the soul — in the majesty and holiness of God, in His love, in the nothingness of man as His adversary or rival, in the greatness and bliss of man as His creature and willing servant, and in -that wonderful redemption, through the Lord of the primeval Promise, which should bring man the rebel back to God as man the child. All this these ‘holy writings’ would unfold to the soul which had received and believed ‘the testimony of Jesus,’ and took them up with a ‘faith which rested in Him.’ For thus they would reveal themselves in their true character. They would prove thus to be the witness of the Father to the Son, in order to unfold man’s salvation in the Son, with eternal glory.

So viewed, the holy Writings stand forth, in the Inspired. terms of our present section, as one deep Golden Treasury of ‘Scriptures,’ written oracles, ‘inspired by God,’ owing their power to His Spirit. The process of His work in their production might be, and it was, inscrutable, and therefore the analysis of that work was impossible. But the result was patent. The breath of God was in each ‘ Scripture,’ as man’s breath is in his words, making them to be the vehicle of his thought. The messages of the Bible were the utterance to man of the mind of God. To quote the words of Gregory the Great, Bishop of Rome, who died a.p. 604, the contents of that mysterious Book are ‘the heart of God in the words of God.’ In the Bible that eternal heart speaks out

2 Tim. iii.
16, 17.

The Bible and the Man of God. its sacred self, that His children may be ‘ wise unto salvation,’ even the salvation of ‘knowing Him, and Jesus Christ whom He hath sent.’

Such was the Book of Books to be to Timothy, when as yet it consisted of the Older Scriptures alone, with only fragments as yet of what were to be the Newer. Such it is to be to us, in that grand completeness which somehow — no man can say precisely how — it attained in the primeval age of the Christian Church, and which shall neither be diminished nor increased till yet once again ‘the Redeemer shall come to Zion,’ and Himself shall ‘tell us all things’ (Joh. iv. 25).

Such was it to be to Timothy as he was ‘the man of God, ‘God’s man,’ the man commissioned as His minister to live wholly for Him and His work in the souls of others. Such is it to be to ‘God’s men’ now. Without impregnation and inspiration by the Bible there can be no ‘complete,’ ‘completely equipped,’ Christian ministry. Our succession may be historically faultless. Our accomplishments may be many, our diligence great, our sacrifice of ease and reputation sincere. But if our heart is not filled with ‘the heart of God in the words of God’ our words and our works will carry with them a strange disappointment and defect; we shall not be ‘complete,’ as the agents of His will, ‘for teaching, for conviction, for correction, for that ‘training’ of souls and lives which moves along the line of His sacred ‘righteousness, ‘walking worthy of the Lord’ (Col. i. 10)..

Then let us betake ourselves afresh to our Bible,

The Scriptures

and let us never have done with it. It bears the 2 Tim. iii. proof of its own supernaturalness within it; for 16, 17. while it is a ‘Library, which occupied much more

than a millennium in its manifold growth, yet behold

—it is a Book! And the world is strewn with proofs, after a thousand criticisms, that this unique Book, manifold and one, is the divine vehicle of supernatural results in human souls. Man of God, Minister of Christ, and all true members of the Lord’s Body everywhere, ‘read the heart of God

in God’s own words, and always be reading it again,

on your knees, before the real Author’s face.

2 Tim. iv.
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Closing

Paragraphs.