"All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work."
2 Timothy 3:16-17, NIV
This passage is the namesake of my account, so I wanted to do (what will hopefully be) a quick devotional on it. [EDIT: It wasn't.] This is only a couple of verses near the end of what's believed to be Paul's final letter, but how crucially we take this short passage can't be understated. It affects how we read, study and understand the Bible, which by extension affects our Christian understanding and identity.
Starting with the titular segment, other translations may say 'inspired' or 'breathed out', but "God-breathed" is perhaps the most straightforward way to translate "theopneustos", which appears only once in the entire Bible: this verse. It combines Theos with pneustos, the former meaning 'God' and the latter meaning 'breath/wind/spirit/etc.'
Ultimately, the meaning isn't hard - Scripture is divine. The term affirms that God didn't pen each stroke of ink or bequeath the documents from heaven like a loot drop. They were written by mankind, but their place in the Bible is no coincidence. They weren't dependent on lucky success nor limited by human error. What is communicated in the Bible is communicated by God.
All of it is communicated by God, not just direct quotes. We have no excuse for making exceptions. We have no right to cherry-pick the Bible. By God's authority, the entire Bible should be regarded as of his word.
It's funny, you can almost try to argue that if you make an exception for this verse, you're then free to make exceptions for the whole Bible, like God is testing us. The problem is of course that we find ourselves rejecting the word or assertion of Paul, who wrote half the NT, in his last letter when he was at his most experienced, which in the first place undermines Paul's entire reliability despite multiple records of Jesus personally stepping in to choose Paul on the road to Damascus, as well as Peter affirming the authority of Paul's letters in 2 Peter 3:15-16.
Ultimately though, this is a principle, like much in the Bible, that makes sense of the whole when applied. Jesus quoted the OT with a tenth of his dialogue in the Gospels and the NT reaffirms reliance on God's word in verses like Romans 15:4 and Hebrews 4:12. The more you see each and every book as one big story with one ultimate message for us, the more you see the full scope of God's wisdom laid out before you. Scripture is our ultimate tool for discerning truth because it has God's stamp of approval on it. All of it.
Useful/Thoroughly Equipped
Interesting word, right? "Useful". Other translations say things like 'profitable' or 'beneficial'. But not 'essential' or 'necessary' or even 'needed'. So what, the Bible is good but it's optional? Is that the takeaway?
Well, in one sense (and stay with me on this) yes, technically we don't need to read a word of the Bible to become a Christian or live life as a Christian. We can follow the faith in other ways, such as by learning and committing ourselves to the gospel at church, or by being ministered to by friends or missionaries (Romans 10:14-17). The early church used Scripture in their evagelism (Acts 17) but it wasn't the core tool of spreading the gospel as much as the message itself.
However, that isn't the point of this passage. Paul is encouraging believers to apply Scripture to various forms of growth (that we'll get onto in a second) which are all in service of being "thoroughly equipped". We're not to take this meaning as an excuse to live life without looking deeper into God's word - quite the opposite!
The Bible has no shortage of instructions on seeking what is good and/or lawful (Luke 6:45, John 15:14, Romans 12:9, 1 Thessalonians 5:21, Titus 2:1+3:1, 3 John 1:11), but how do we know what is good? How does that help us? (Romans 7 is a good chapter on this subject.)
The fact that Scripture is beneficial to us is exactly why we should seek it out, live it out and take it as seriously as if God is saying those words to us in person, directly. for our benefit. Because in a sense, he is. How else are we to be 'thoroughly equipped' in order to fight the fight and run the race that is following Jesus?
I could come up with another ten paragraphs going over why Bible study groups study the Bible in groups and why God's church gather together to study God's word, but I feel like that would be redundant, yeah?
Only thing I will say is this: be incredibly wary of anyone who tries to teach Christianity but doesn't use the Bible. The Bible stresses caution about encountering false teachers multiple times, especially in the NT, even just one chapter prior to this very passage! This is why (again, using the 'useful' wisdom we gain from Scripture) we are taught that we'll know them "by their fruit".
The Bible teaches us how people ought to teach and what fruits they ought to produce, so let's not try to determine the length of something without bringing our measuring rod.
The controversial one! You hear a lot of "the Bible says 'don't judge'," which is a whole in-depth topic for another time, but it gets almost flatly rejected here with just these two words, alongside the usual caveat on that topic of *mind the authority by which you judge, or in this case, by which you rebuke or correct. That authority, as Paul says here, is the Bible.
Rebuking is sometimes necessary, as Scripture acknowledges (like in Matthew 18:15-17 or Titus 3:9-11) as is correction (such as in just about every religious argument Jesus got into or the entire letter of Galatians), and when it's needed, God's word is how we do so correctly.
This is not an excuse to pick any and all fights; some of those verses I've mentioned will make a point of saying to avoid needless conflict. But with God's word as our authority, Scripture is what we should be drawing from and should be following the instruction of to better follow God and to protect people from being misled. We can't afford to be passive. Standing for truth means standing against lies. Scripture helps us know the difference.
Righteousness/Every Good Work
There's no risk of misunderstanding the end goal of Scripture. The ways of the Bible, being God's word, are righteous. Just. True. Good. Put simply, equipping ourselves with what it teaches is spiritually healthy. It aligns us with what God approves of and against what God opposes.
It may feel like I'm stating the obvious here, but again, it cannot be understated: If there's one thing in this life that we cannot afford to do, it's get on the wrong side of God. The Bible teaches us how to avoid that.
And don't miss that last word. Ignoring the 'good' for a moment, this passage is showing how we're to be prepared for "every work". Having established that it's for our own good, let's not forget that studying the Bible is massively helpful in showing how we can apply ourselves towards service, whether it's the service of our own lives, the service of others or the service of God's kingdom.
After all, we are servants:
Who was this passage for in the first place? Who concerns themselves with Scripture? Who affirms the divinity of every book of the Bible? And why would that person use it to train, to teach, to rebuke, to correct or to equip themselves with that knowledge and wisdom?
Because they are a servant of God.
And the person who does not concern themselves with these things is not.
Let's be clear: rejecting the Bible's authority is rejecting God's authority. The Bible isn't the crucial ingredient of salvation but it is the core compendium of every truth a follower of the Christian faith needs to know and learn from. If you don't want to learn from it, you don't want Christ. You don't want God. You don't want to be saved. It is that simple.
So to wrap up this study, I leave you with a challenge:
Who is the God of your life?
If it's Jesus, then do you take the Bible seriously? Do you submit yourself to its authority? Do you want the things he wants, according to the Bible? Do you read the Bible often to apply the reverence that the God of your life deserves? Do you try to understand the things you find confusing or challenging? Do you listen when someone who knows the Bible well gives you an explanation? Do you make it your priority over every other law, rule or worldview that you live by?
If you don't do some of these things, do you want to? Biblical dilligence isn't a necessity, as said earlier, but would you prefer to be better equipped in your faith than not?
If you don't do any of those things, are you sure Jesus is the God of your life?
