Three Reasons to Trust the Bible

No prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.

–2 Peter 1:21

How do we know the Bible is true? What separates the Bible from the Qur’an, the Book of Mormon, or any other religious book? Let’s look at three reasons we can trust the Bible.

First of all, the Bible is inspired. Peter, Paul, Luke, Moses, and David didn’t wake up one morning and say, I think I’ll spend an hour writing Scripture. No, the Bible was initiated by God Himself. In 2 Timothy 3:16, Paul wrote, “All Scripture is inspired by God.” The Greek word translated as “inspired” literally means God-breathed. Inspiration is the process by which God used the personalities of men to compose and record His message. God’s message was poured through the angry outbursts of Moses, the emotional outpouring of David, and the systematic reasoning of Paul–but it was all initiated and inspired by God.

Second, the Bible is unified. Do you remember doing group projects in school? In my experience, they were always a hodge-podge–paragraphs written by different people in different styles, a random graph here, an illustration there. When you think about it, the Bible is the ultimate group project. It was written by more than forty authors from various countries over fifteen hundred years. The authors used a variety of styles, yet unlike all my group projects in school, the Bible fits together perfectly. It has one unified theme, and that is Jesus Christ.

Third, the Bible is inerrant. That simply means the Bible is without error. The inerrancy of Scripture has always been a foundational belief of the church. For example, when the writer of Hebrews quoted Psalm 95, here’s how he introduced the passage: “Therefore, just as the Holy Spirit says . . .” (3:7). The writer of Hebrews was saying that those words from the Psalms came from the Holy Spirit. Jesus, too, testified to the inspiration and inerrancy of the Old Testament. He affirmed the creation account (Matthew 19:4–6), the story of Jonah (Matthew 12:39–41), and the story of Noah (Matthew 24:37–39). Jesus believed these weren’t fables but true accounts.

The Bible affirms the inerrancy of the New Testament as well. In 1 Timothy 5:18, Paul referred to a verse from Luke as “Scripture.” And the apostle Peter, who didn’t always see eye to eye with Paul, admitted that Paul’s letters were “the Scriptures” (2 Peter 3:15–16). When you read the Bible, you can know you’re reading truth, not error, because the words were inspired by God.

Today’s devotion is adapted from “What Every Christian Should Know About the Bible” by Dr. Robert Jeffress, 2022.

Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. www.lockman.org.