Truth has a wonderful freshness when it is drawn directly from the Word of God. "All Scripture is God-breathed"—such is the simple meaning of the one word which we expand into "given by inspiration of God." When we read the Word of God with faith, we feel that breath of God moving upon our hearts. How refreshing, how restorative to the fainting spirit, how quickening to all the faculties, how powerful in sanctifying efficacy that breath of God which moves in and through the Scriptures—"all Scripture."
Holy men of God spake as they were moved by this divine afflatus. All Scripture (all the writing) was thus breathed of God. It is this which makes these records "living oracles," and the Bible "the word of life." Jesus breathed on the disciples, and said unto them, "Receive ye the Holy Ghost." Then followed the wonders of Pentecost. And Jesus still breathes on us in his Word. In the Bible are the words of Christ, "The words that I speak unto you," he says, "they are Spirit"—breath, the breath of God—and consequently, "they are life." In and from the Bible is a perpetual emphusesis—inspiration—(as Origen calls it, in imitation of the Greek word and John xx, 22), the breathing of Christ on his disciples and the communication of the Holy Ghost. In intimate, believing contact with the Word, read, heard, and meditated upon, the church and the individual believer, feels the breath of Christ, receives the Spirit, and finds a perpetual renovation of life, power, and joy.