Above all, you must realize that no prophecy in Scripture ever came from the prophet’s own understanding, 21 or from human initiative. No, those prophets were moved by the Holy Spirit, and they spoke from God.
– 2 Peter 1:20-21
God indeed used fallible human beings to record Scripture. Yet, through them, He produced infallible and inerrant words. Just as a straight line can be drawn with a crooked stick, God used imperfect people to deliver a flawless Bible.
A clear and direct parallel to this is the incarnation of Jesus Christ. Scripture describes the miraculous conception of the sinless Son of God in the womb of Mary (Matthew 1:18–25; Luke 1:26–38). Mary, like every descendant of Adam, was a sinner, yet God used her to bring Jesus into the world. Her fallibility in no way hindered God’s ability to bring forth the sinless Savior (2 Corinthians 5:21). Jesus was fully Mary’s son (Matthew 1:25) and God’s Son (John 1:14), yet He was utterly free from Mary’s sin nature. Similarly, God used human instruments to compose Scripture without compromising the integrity of His revelation.
This remained true regardless of the variety of human efforts God employed in the writing process. Moses, for example, wrote both the very words God directly commanded him to write (Exodus 24:4; Leviticus 1:1; 4:1; 6:1, 8, 24; Numbers 1:1; 2:1) and prophetically recorded his own experiences, all under divine inspiration (Deuteronomy 31:24–29). Luke composed his two-volume work based on careful research and investigation (Luke 1:1–4; Acts 1:1–3). Matthew and John wrote from their firsthand experiences and Spirit-inspired recollections of Jesus’ words and deeds (John 14:26). Paul sometimes expressed his own Spirit-guided reasoning in his writings (1 Corinthians 7:25; 14:37).
While the Bible was composed through human means, it is not merely the product of fallible men. At the same time, it is the very Word of the infallible Holy Spirit (1 Thessalonians 2:13; 2 Timothy 3:16; 2 Peter 1:20–21).
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