The Scripture Cannot Be Broken
BEYOND THE BASICS | William Stewart | Odessa, Ontario
Jesus entered the temple during Hanukkah (John 10:22) and was accosted by the Jewish leaders about whether He was the Christ or not. They demanded, “If you are the Christ, tell us plainly” (John 10:24). He had not been ambiguous about His identity. There were two problems at play here. First, the religious leaders did not believe (John 10:25-26). Second, since they had failed to seize Him and put Him to death on previous occasions (John 5:17-18; 8:58-59), they sought another opportunity against Him.
After a short discourse in which He contrasted the unbelief of the Jewish rulers with the faith of His disciples, He affirmed, “I and My Father are one” (John 10:30). This phrase sent them into a frenzy. They took up stones, ready to put Jesus to death (John 10:31). What was the charge? They explained, “…for blasphemy, and because you, being a Man, make Yourself God” (John 10:33).
Jesus appealed to the Scriptures to defend His claim as the Son of God. His response relied upon the inerrancy of the Scriptures. He reasoned,
“Is it not written in your law, ‘I said, ‘You are gods’?’ If He called them gods, to whom the word of God came (and the Scripture cannot be broken), do you say of Him whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’?” (John 10:34-36)
What a powerful phrase – “the Scripture cannot be broken.” Jesus’ defense against His accusers, ready to stone Him, depended upon the accuracy and reliability of the Scriptures.
THE CONTEXT OF THE STATEMENT
“You are gods,” is a quote from Psalm 82:6. Please understand, Jesus’ point is not that the word “god” can be used of men. If that were the case, Psalm 45:6 or Isaiah 9:6 would have been suitable. We understand Psalm 45 to be messianic, but the sons of Korah wrote it as a composition about King David (v 1). Though we see the messianic implications of Isaiah 9, the Jewish mind would count this to be accolades of a future (fleshly) king. Jesus is not arguing that He, as a man, can be called “god.” He is not playing word games with their accusation; He is supporting His claim (v 30).
How did Psalm 82:6 justify His claim? What made it different from Psalm 45 or Isaiah 9? The key is to understand who is being referred to as “gods” in the text. Commentators tend to view them as human judges and magistrates. If this is the case, the Lord’s argument would be reduced to this” “If your wicked civil leaders could be referred to as gods in Psalm 82 because they were given authority, then I can be called a god too.” Again, He is not arguing semantics.
So who are these “gods” in Psalm 82? Several texts in both the Old and New Testaments infer angelic beings had authority over the nations (see Job 1 & 2; Daniel 10:4-21; Ephesians 3:10; Colossians 1:16; 1 Peter 3:22; etc.). Deuteronomy 32:8 speaks of separating the sons of Adam into nations. The NKJV (among other translations) states, “…He set the boundaries of the peoples according to the children of Israel.” This verse is an odd statement. What does the number of people in Israel have to do with the borders of nations in the world? Consider a different translation of Deuteronomy 32:8, this from the LXX: “When the Most High divided the nations, when He separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the nations according to the number of the angels of God.” This rendering of the text agrees with the list of texts cited above, which speak of angelic beings set over the nations.
Angels had sinned and were accountable before God in judgment. And if angelic beings were called “gods,” then surely “Him whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world” could identify Himself as “…the Son of God” (John 10:36). Of Jesus’ use of Psalm 82:6, brother Pickup wrote:
Jesus purposely chose to cite a passage that addressed wicked beings by this term, and He contrasted himself with these beings to refute the charge of blasphemy. So Jesus’ argument hinges upon His dissimilarity with the ones addressed in the psalm as much as similarity with them.1
As always, the Lord found the perfect words to say in response to His opposition. In this case, citing a text which employed the Hebrew ‘elohiym, not of men like kings and judges, not of the Father, but of spirit beings set over and dwelling outside our earthly existence. His argument hinged on the use of a single word.
THE MEANING OF THE PHRASE
Our English word “broken” comes from the Greek luo. It is defined as “…to loosen, undo, dissolve, anything bound, tied or compacted together … to annul, subvert, to do away with, to deprive of authority…”2 Jesus not only knew the Scriptures were inerrant (and thus unable to be broken), He affirmed them to be the words of God (Matthew 22:31-32, 43; John 6:45). Jesus did not think the Scriptures were man’s representation of what God might have said. Furthermore, Jesus acknowledged the Scriptures to be historically factual and accurate, unlike some of today’s theological elite. Jesus spoke about Jonah’s three days and nights in the belly of a great fish as a real occurrence and used it as a parallel for His death, burial, and resurrection (Matthew 12:40). Jesus gave witness to the creation account, speaking of “…He who made them at the beginning…” (Matthew 19;4). In the same breath, He affirmed God’s plan for marriage – one man, one woman for life (v 5-6). In Luke 17, the Lord spoke of the flood in Noah’s day (v 26-27) and the destruction of Sodom in the days of Lot (v 28-29), using both as a shadow of the judgment to come “when the Son of Man is revealed” (v 30-31). In John 3:14, Jesus referenced Numbers 21, where “…Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness…” to provide healing from a plague of fiery serpents among the children of Israel. In like manner, He stated, “…even so must the Son of Man be lifted up…” speaking of the healing which would be available as a result of His crucifixion. These Old Testament events actually took place, as did the events which Jesus likened to them (His crucifixion, His burial, the judgment).
When God’s word addresses historical data, it is accurate. Skeptics once chided the Bible for it’s many references to the Hittites, believing they were just a Bible myth. Archaeology knew nothing of these Hittite people, that is until Hugo Winckler uncovered a sizeable library in 1906 which documented the Hittite Empire. When the Bible speaks prophetically, it will be fulfilled. Perhaps no prophecy of Scriptures is as detailed as Daniel 11. The text chronicles approximately 400 years of history from the heyday of the Persian kingdom to the death of Antiochus Epiphanes in 164 BC. Set beside the record of history, we see a perfect correlation from start to finish.
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE PHRASE
Jesus’ statement, “…the Scripture cannot be broken…” is a guarantee. It is a certification of the absolute reliability of the Scriptures. If God has said it, it is true. It can be trusted.
Paul tells us, “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God…” (2 Timothy 3:16). God’s Spirit was directly involved in the transmission of the Holy Word to the Bible writers, both Old and New Testament (2 Peter 1:20-21; Ephesians 3:1-5; Galatians 1:12; etc.). That being the case, we can have confidence in the flawless nature of the original documents, even if we don’t have access to the original documents! We are using translations of copies of copies of copies. How can we be assured that the Scripture hasn’t been broken? How can we have confidence in the Bible we pick up and read today?
Jesus used and trusted a translation of copies of copies of copies. Archer and Chirichigno’s “Old Testament Quotations in the New Testament: A Complete Survey” lists 340 places in the New Testament, which cite the Septuagint (LXX, a Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures). By way of contrast, they list only 33 occasions where the Masoretic Text (Hebrew) is cited in the New Testament. The unbreakable nature of the Scriptures is not limited to the original documents. God’s word has been preserved through the ages and continues to have the same authority and power it had when first spoken.
In declaring, “…the Scripture cannot be broken…” Jesus has said that ALL SCRIPTURE will be fulfilled. Biblical inerrancy is demonstrated time and again through the fulfillment of prophecies. We see a small snapshot of this in the events surrounding Jesus’ arrest and trial (Matthew 26:54-56), in the casting of lots for His garments (Matthew 27:35), in the safeguarding of His bones on the cross (John 19:36-37), in His death, burial and resurrection (Luke 24:45-47), and in the demise of and replacement of Judas among the apostles (Acts 1:16-17, 20-23). God’s word came to pass.
THE APPLICATION OF THE PHRASE
The Lord expects us to believe in the accuracy and certainty of God’s word. Hear His portrayal of the pedestrian attitude the Jewish leaders had of God’s word:
You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me … Do not think that I shall accuse you to the Father; there is one who accuses you – Moses, in whom you trust. For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me; for he wrote about Me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words? (John 5:39, 45-47).
The 17th-century Swiss clergyman Louis Gaussen wrote:
…there are in the Christian world but two schools or two religions: that which puts the Bible above everything, and that which puts something above the Bible. The former was evidently that of Jesus Christ; the latter has been that of the rationalists of all denominations and of all times. The motto of the former is this: the whole written Word is inspired by God, even to a single jot and tittle; the Scripture cannot be destroyed. The motto of the second is this: there are human judges lawfully entitled to pass judgments on the Word of God. Instead of putting the Bible above all, it is, on the contrary, either science or reason, or human tradition, or some new inspiration, which it places above that book. Hence all rationalism; hence all false religions.3
We need to believe the Bible, without reservation. It is the divinely inspired and wholly inerrant word of God. The Scripture cannot be broken.
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1 Pickup, Martin, God So Loved, “Old Testament Citations in the Gospel of John”
2 Thayer, Joseph, Thayer’s Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament.
3 Gaussen, Louis, The Divine Inspiration of the Bible.
20.04.07 | GROW magazine
