The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.
We got a call from a pastor friend about two weeks ago or so. He had just been rushed by ambulance to the hospital, unable to breathe. He said, “I just couldn’t inhale. I thought I was going to die.” And he said it scared him half to death. But it seems these days people are now being given access to treatments to help that healing process move along. He was released the next day, home resting, and has recovered fairly well over the last couple of weeks.
From the moment a child comes out of the womb to the moment of the last breath on this earth, breathing, as you all know, is essential to life. Without breath, we die.
The assigned Epistle lesson this morning contains one of the most critical and the most disputed Bible passages in all of the Old and New Testaments — a Bible passage firmly establishing the nature and authority of the Bible. This morning we have the answer before us. This Bible passage this morning is one of those that undergirds all of Christian theology, all of right doctrine, all of right understanding, and all of true Christian faith. I’m speaking specifically of 2 Timothy 3:16-17: “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, thoroughly equipped for every good work.”
This passage teaches that the Scriptures are the inspired Word of God. Although written by human hands, of human authors — men like Moses and David and Isaiah, Amos, Matthew and Luke and John, Paul and the like — at the same time, not a human product, these texts are also fully divine, produced, originated from the mind and the hand of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In other words, the Scriptures are like our Lord Himself: fully human and fully divine. It’s a great mystery, this biblical text of ours.
Paul says here that all Scriptures have been breathed out from God’s mouth. They have come down to us through human office, but they are without question from God. That’s how the Bible represents itself over centuries of development. The Greek word used here is theopneustos, and it means “breathed out.” It’s a compound word: theos, God, and pneuma, spirit or wind or breath.
Despite the watering down of these words today by various modern scholars and the like, the context makes it very clear what Paul — what the Bible — is claiming for itself. The noun pneuma means spirit or wind. “God-breathed,” “spirited out” as you’ll see from time to time, or “inspired,” or “breathed out,” are all valid interpretations, applications of the word — especially the word “inspired,” though we’ve got to sort of clarify that one. The classic definition is: outstanding or brilliant in such a way, or to such a degree, as suggests divine inspiration or divine origin.
Tragically, the majority of pastors, teachers, professors, scholars, ordained laity, and laywomen who now populate the Western church no longer believe the claim as set forth in 2 Timothy chapter 3, especially verses 16 and 17. But 2 Timothy chapter 3 and other passages make it very clear that the Scripture that makes up the Old and New Testaments originated in God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and proceeds from His mouth as breath — breathed out.
Thanks to this passage and many others, we believe, and rightly so, that the books of the Old and New Testaments are trustworthy and true. So we use the phrase “infallible and inerrant” — without error. They are not just ideas of men about God, or about what God may or may not have done in the world, but they are the very words of God. We know and believe that every word of every verse in the Scripture, accurately recorded and accurately translated, are in fact reliable and without error.
It is a conviction that our assigned reading began with. That’s how Paul begins this section of his epistle to young Timothy: “As for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.”
The entire epistle here is a call to continued steadfastness on the part of a pastor, Timothy, and the other pastors who work with him, and the congregations that they serve. It’s a call for steadfastness in the doctrines given to us — these teachings by God’s very own breath. That which is correctly taught about the Bible, and that which is correctly taught from the Bible, is not something that Christians are supposed to grow out of. We don’t grow up out of the old Bible stories. Rather, we are supposed to grow into them. We are supposed to, by faith, know, live, believe, and trust. Christians are supposed to hold on to these doctrines that they’ve learned from their childhood all the days of their life, and thus finally win the race and fight the good fight of faith unto the goal that is salvation, eternal life.
Sadly, most of the people who are baptized and confirmed no longer hold to the breathed-out doctrines of Scripture. They’ve accommodated, replaced it with all kinds of other things, or simply are so shallow they don’t give deep thought to much of anything anymore. And that’s the second half, of course, of the lesson this morning. That’s what chapter 4 is about: “People will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.”
While everything else in the world is evolving or devolving these days — mostly devolving — the Scripture, you see, is constant. It came, once spoken, out of God. It was breathed into a human author, and the human author recorded it on the scroll. That’s it. God’s Word has been spoken. It is certain, sure. It is a firm foundation — the only foundation for preaching, teaching, reproof, correcting, and training in righteousness in the church. It is, in essence, life and salvation, and is to remain pure and true as the day God Himself breathed it out.
Remember what Jesus said about His written Word in Matthew 5:18: “Truly, truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke” — you know the old translation, “jot or tittle,” the smallest markings that you put in a Greek scroll of a letter — “shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished.”
Some people who still think of themselves as Christians often get a little testy with other Christians — especially pastors — who insist on holding to the literal sense of the words. That is: if it’s a poem, it’s a poem. If it’s a historical narrative, then it’s history. Words have context. Context and the words tell us what the literary sense is supposed to be. But when we insist on it these days, as pastors — actually for a very long time — a lot of people get really angry. “Don’t be so literal” is the charge.
These people believe that, you see, God is more pliable than the jot and tittle of the biblical text. God’s softer and nicer than that. He wouldn’t hold me to that particular kind of translation or that meaning of the text. This view only leads to one of two conclusions. One: God doesn’t mean what’s given in the Scripture. He simply doesn’t mean it. He sort of just generally means, vaguely means, vaguely would like it, or maybe not. Or two: the Bible is not the Word of God at all; it’s the words of men who are inventing God’s thoughts about things.
It is, however, another reason why this statement must be held to at all costs: “All Scripture is breathed out by God.” That statement is essential to the Christian faith and Christian life. 2 Timothy 3 not only teaches that the Scriptures — the sacred writings — are breathed into existence by God, but we learn here and elsewhere that God breathed the Scripture so the Scripture would breathe life into us. If you have a dead Scripture, you don’t have Christians. You don’t have the real Word of God. You have something else in its place, and that can rescue no one.
It is God’s breath that creates and sustains true life and Christian faith. It’s God’s Spirit that enables one to say, “Jesus Christ is Lord.” It’s God’s Spirit, His breath, His words, that enable us to both love God and our neighbor.
In Genesis 2, Adam and Eve had the breath of life breathed into them in creation, and that breath of life created them as living beings in the very image of God — that is, in perfect holiness. As a result, they originally were able to love God and serve each other perfectly, one to the other. After falling into sin, they were left gasping for air — both physically, as they ran to hide themselves when they heard God walking in the garden toward them, and spiritually, now unable to love God or each other as they ought.
In Ezekiel 37, the Lord compared the people, the children of Israel, to a valley of dry, breathless, and dead bones because of their sin. Ezekiel was commanded by God to prophesy over these bones and say to them: “You dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Behold, I am going to make breath enter you so that you come to life.” And then he said to me, Ezekiel wrote: “Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, son of man, say to the breath: The Lord God says this: Come from the four winds, breath, and breathe on these slain, so that they may come to life.” Breath is life. The breath of God is eternal life.
Listen again to 2 Timothy 3: “As for you — I’m speaking to you — continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be equipped, competent for every good work.”
I’m reminded of a true story from a pastor who once held so firmly to the Bible’s teaching, so firmly to the command given here in the Epistle of 2 Timothy — charged with making sure that the breathed-out Word of God is spoken amongst the congregation. This man took this charge seriously. So when members of his congregation would make theological mistakes, he would correct them. One day, one of the members of his church stormed into the pastor’s study and said, “There’s an awful lot of correction going around here lately. Where did you get the idea that your job is to correct us?” The pastor responded, “I got the idea from 2 Timothy chapter three and four.” The member: “Well, I don’t know much about what the Bible says. All I know is I didn’t come to this church to be corrected.”
That used to happen here in the ’90s a lot. I had elders’ meetings — meeting after meeting with people who came in and decided they wanted to correct me. When it was on little matters, it only hurt my feelings. But when it was on the Word of God, they ran into a little problem. They’re gone; I’m here.
That’s the world in which we live. People do not want to be corrected — even about two plus two, they don’t want to be corrected anymore. But they certainly don’t want to be corrected about the doctrines of the Bible, about their life in Christ, about Christ. They don’t want to be corrected about their moral code. And when a pastor comes along and says it, they then write you off as a legalist and one who does not deserve to be heard. But forgiving sins and correcting error is the fundamental task of the church, and it’s the charge of the pastor. It’s called preaching.
The late Lutheran Bible commentator Paul Kretzmann wrote this concerning the Bible’s place and what it is that is paramount in a Christian congregation: “All other considerations are secondary in comparison with the one great necessity: that the Word, the Word of eternal truth, be preached. Every method of building up a congregation, of working faith in the heart of men, is destined to failure from the beginning. The preaching of the Word — God’s Word of grace — must always remain the foremost function of the proper Christian pastor.”
This so-called good church member didn’t want to endure sound teaching. He wanted to accumulate for himself his own ideas, his own teachers to suit his own purposes, thus turning away from the truth and wandering off into myths. If you turn away from the truth, you will buy into something else. It’s human nature — sinful human nature. I’m sure that after that man departed from the congregation, other members blamed the pastor for being too nitpicky over doctrine and “driving him off.” That was a frequent refrain in the ’90s here.
See, we don’t want to actually stick to the words as God gave them. We somehow think God’s different than the words He gave us. But the only way to know who God is, who we are, and how we’re saved from our sin is from the sacred Scriptures — the Bible. It’s the reason for which the Bible was written and given to us in the first place: “These things are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life eternal” (John 20:31).
The Bible is not, as the modern-day thinker thinks, an ancient, outdated, man-made, dead book. The Word of God — spoken, written, sacramental — is the very breath of God and the very life of the Christian. The Word of God is living and active, Hebrews teaches, sharper than any two-edged sword, even penetrating as far as the division between soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, able to judge the thoughts and the intentions of the heart.
On Easter morning, the Word of God won victory over the sin, death, and power of the devil that holds the world in prison. Through the Word and Sacrament ministry of the church, God continually breathes new life into one person after another, and continues to breathe it into you. It is the ministry of faithful congregations and faithful pastors that the breath of God continues to go out in this world and give birth to new Christians.
God breathed life into Adam and Eve with the promise of a Savior and the forgiveness of sins. God breathed new life into Israel with the promise of repentance brought by Ezekiel’s preaching and teaching. So Ezekiel prophesied as God commanded, and the breath entered them, and they came to life and stood on their feet, an exceedingly great army.
As He breathed His last on the cross and gave up His spirit, Luke records Jesus calling out with a loud voice: “Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit.” And having said this, He breathed His last. Now when you hear that, I want you to keep in mind: “commit My spirit” and “breathed” have the same basic root word. Jesus gave up His life’s breath to breathe out upon the world — upon you. On the cross of Good Friday, Jesus breathed out His breath, once and for all. And in that moment, He breathed out His life.
The breath of God is the Spirit of God — same word, pneuma. Breath and spirit and wind are all together, living and active and powerful. Mess with the words and you mess with the Spirit. Jesus teaches that His words are spirit and life, in John 6:63: “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh provides no benefit. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.”
In John chapter 20, after He had been resurrected, He appeared to the disciples who lived in fear, not faith, behind locked doors. And He breathed out life and faith in them. Jesus said, “Peace be to you. Just as the Father has sent Me, I send you.” And when He had said this, He breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” Breath — same, basically.
See, we were dead without breath in our trespasses, but God made us alive with the breath of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In the hearing and reading of the Word, the preaching of the Scripture, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit breathes out on us continually His breath of life, and we are continually resuscitated from sin, over and over again, and resurrected to a new life.
After God spoke His promise to Adam and Eve, the Lord breathed His life-giving Word into them and clothed them, so they could stop running and stop hiding. Having breathed His life, His breath, into them who heard the preaching of Ezekiel, the children of Israel repented before God. And even others in Babylon heard the Word of God, believed and trusted the Word of God, and thus were able to praise and serve God and neighbor.
The whole purpose of the two Epistles to Timothy is so that you would believe in Jesus Christ as the Son of God, and having faith, be resurrected unto everlasting life. The Word of God is a lamp indeed to our feet, so that you could and would walk on the narrow path of righteousness, where your sins are continually forgiven. So: all Scripture is inspired — and so are you. Amen.
May the peace that surpasses all understanding keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.