God-Breathed

                     2 Timothy 3: 14-17       Isaiah 55: 10, 11

 

 

          Breath. You can’t live without it. Ever try holding your breath? The world record for holding one’s breath is over 22 minutes, but that involves years of training for free divers and entails actually changing one’s biology. For the rest of us mortals, 3 minutes would be considered extraordinary. When I was lifeguarding back in the previous century, I think my personal best was about a minute twenty seconds. I remember thinking that my chest would explode if I didn’t get air. It may be the most natural thing in the world, but it’s also the most essential. Without breathing, you will die. That’s the way we are built.

          But breath has more meanings than just the fuel for the lungs to digest and convert for transmitting all over the human body. It also means life force in a much older sense. It is that archaic sense of breath, that life force, that I want us to think about.

          In the Hebrew Bible, that which we Christians call the Old Testament, you don’t have to go far to find breath. The Old Testament word for it is ruach. It has three meanings: wind, breath and spirit. In Genesis 1:2, Ruach Elohim, the spirit of God, hovers over the face of the waters as God begins his creation. By the way, Elohim is a plural noun, so think of God even here at creation as Trinitarian.

          In chapter 2 of Genesis at verse 7, we read that God breathed the breath of life into Adam’s nostrils. Again, the Hebrew word is ruach, this time as breath. In Genesis 8 God makes a wind (ruach) to blow over the earth and make the floodwaters subside. Notice that whether the word is used as wind or Spirit or breath, it comes from God and it comes as a source of life. In the book of Job, Job’s friend Elihu tells him that “The spirit of God has made me; the breath of God gives me life.” Here, both spirit and breath are the same word, and they are life-giving.

          Breath. It is literally a life-giving force, and the Bible tells us that this force comes from God as spirit, as wind, as breath itself. The Greeks called this concept pneuma. It had the same range of meaning as ruach. That is, it could mean wind, spirit, breath. Think of all the ways we have inherited and applied that Greek word. We get pneumonia: bad wind. We use pneumatics to move papers through tubes or for lift gates or shock absorbers. All these words have to do with giving life to something or someone.

Pneuma: wind, spirit, breath. And in the book of  2^nd Timothy, Paul tells us that all Scripture is breathed out by God. Paul uses the word pneuma to express the same idea in Greek as ruach does in Hebrew. All Scripture is breathed out by God. Many think Paul actually made up a new word to express the concept. It is theopneustos (God-breathed) and this is the only place that this compound word appears in the Bible.

What is this Scripture that Paul is talking about? At the time Paul was writing to Timothy, the Old Testament was written, as were a number of books that later became part of the New Testament. Notice what Paul doesn’t say. He doesn’t say read my letters or read Isaiah or read Amos. He is referring to Scripture not as the work of men, but as the work of God, divine, God-breathed. The fact that he used men to write it down makes it no less divine and authoritative than it did to use Mary as the vessel to carry the Son of God into the world. Jesus was no less divine because he was born of a woman. Paul goes on to give us an idea of why we need the Scriptures. They help us to teach, to correct, and to train and be trained. They help us to become competent and equipped to do God’s work. They help us see God. At the time, Paul was probably talking to Timothy, but again, Scripture is God-breathed, and we all know that it reaches far beyond its originally intended target.

One of the ways we can constantly see the presence of God in the world is in the coming and going of the seasons of the year. In this temperate climate of the upper South, we experience four distinct seasons. Spring really does bring us warmer weather and flowers and the rain. Summer is hot and humid and a wonderful growing season for produce. Fall brings us the death of summer, falling leaves, cooler weather. And winter ushers in colder temperatures and snow. Isaiah talks about the same cycle in chapter 55. He talks about the rain and snow watering the earth to nourish it into seed and harvest. The water does not return, for it is sent to do a job. The very agents in the climate that cause its change also bring its constancy and its ability to grow and regenerate year after year. Cycles of change are also cycles of stability and certainty. Isaiah reminds us that God’s word is like the seasons of life. It goes out to its target not to return, but to plant and harvest. Isaiah says that it does not return empty. It accomplishes that for which it was sent. God’s purpose is met.

When Isaiah spoke those words, he spoke as an agent, a prophet, of God. It was only later that his words were written down. For generations they passed among the people in oral tradition. So God’s word was a spoken, remembered word. Later, those words were put down on scrolls by scribes. And hundreds of years later, God came to earth as living Word in the form of an incarnate Jesus. “So shall my word go out from my mouth, it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,” says the prophet on behalf of God. God’s word is like the seasons of life, always purposed, going forth and never returning empty, but rather doing that for which it was sent. God’s word is dependable. In his commentary on the book of Isaiah, John Oswalt says that “it is because what God says is the truth that the word will perform exactly what God intends.”

Isaiah tells us that God’s word comes not only in the written words of the prophet, but also in the incarnation of God’s Son, as both written and living Word abide within our hearts and accomplish God’s purpose.  Scripture is the written word of God, God-breathed. Scripture is the wind of God ushering in the change so needed in our lives. It is the spirit of God passing into our hearts and indwelling our souls. It is the breath of God upon us.

While God spoke through Isaiah to ordain the words of the prophets, and while God spoke through Paul to call attention to the reliable sources of revelation, he used both men to talk to each of us, that invisible body that Peter referred to as the priesthood of believers. Through the words of both prophet and evangelist, God reminds each of us who would follow him that there are many voices to hear, many writings to read on the road of life. In the middle of all the noise, surrounded by so many who would plunder our souls for their own gain, stands the Word of God. It is the sacred writings of the Bible and the living Word of the Son of God that must stand as our compass. We are all Paul’s protégés. We need not be named Timothy to be called to teach and witness. We need not be named Paul to be called to discipleship. We need not to be named Isaiah to know that the Word of God falls upon us as fresh as it did in the days of the prophets. We just need to do as Paul reminds us, to continue in what we have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom we learned it, to be acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make us wise for salvation.

At the end of the day, the Bible, the Incarnation, the passion, the resurrection, are not stories about God’s people. They are stories about God, God in three persons, and who God is. Through the power of the Holy Spirit, God comes to us and shows us who he is and how much he loves us.  God-breathed. That is the essence of Scripture. God-sent. That is the essence of its revelation. God-saved. That is the essence of his message. We just need to know where to find the truth.