Questions and Answers

What advantage then hath the Jew? or what profit is there of circumcision? Much every way: chiefly, because that unto them were committed the oracles of God. (Romans 3:1-2 KJV)

A very good question – basically, what are the Jewish people deemed special? Why is that important.  Then Paul gives the answer – they were given the utterances, the very words of God.  Thanks be to God, they shared.

All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: (2 Timothy 3:16 KJV)

Why are the scriptures important? Again, Paul with the answer – by inspiration of God. Take a good look at θεόπνευστος, theopneustos – divinely breathed in by God – the scriptures were breathed into their writers, by God.

These scriptures – and Paul is referring to what we commonly call the Old Testament – are to be used for doctrine, to reprimand to instruct in the right way. But how did they become generally accepted as being God breathed?  Over centuries of being proven correct in prophecy, valid as history and true as lives were lived.

Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD; and the people whom he hath chosen for his own inheritance. (Psalms 33:12 KJV)

God inspired those words, just as He inspired these:

And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed. (Genesis 12:3 KJV)

What about Paul, though? Writer of most of the New Testament? Here’s what Luke wrote of God speaking to Ananias:

But the Lord said unto him, Go thy way: for he is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my name before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel: (Acts 9:15 KJV)

But it was to Peter that God breathed the word that gentiles – that includes me!! – were included:

Forasmuch then as God gave them the like gift as he did unto us, who believed on the Lord Jesus Christ; what was I, that I could withstand God? (Acts 11:17 KJV)

If you have a few moments, read that entire 11th chapter of Acts. Such a witness Peter gives of God’s words and work in and through him! How important it is for us to understand today.

But the voice answered me again from heaven, What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common. (Acts 11:9 KJV)

Peter also testified that Paul’s writings were scripture, inspired by God:

As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction. (2 Peter 3:16 KJV)

The New Testament as we read it now was not compiled as such for many years following the apostle’s writing. There were arguments for and against more than what is now included. Not until a meeting of bishops in the fourth century were the books of the New Testament listed as we see them today.  Should we question their validity because of this length of time?

No. Their inclusion was the result of their being well defended as accepted principles of Christ’s message, of God’s breathed words.