A Word of Grace, Preserved For Us

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. Isaiah 40:8

Maybe you like the weight of it in your hands, maybe the crinkling of the thin pages between your fingers as you turn to the passage you seek. Maybe it’s the smell of old leather or new ink, the sight of familiar handwriting in the margins.

Or maybe you prefer the ease of an app on your tablet or phone, choosing your highlight colors with a tap of your finger. Perhaps you’ve made a ministry of copying and pasting Scripture into text conversations.

Whether we scroll through the Bible in the palm of our hand, listen to an audio version while we drive, or page through the family heirloom, it’s not the medium, but the message that continues to draw hearts to God.

The Temple Scroll, Public Domain

Revealed in Creation

Before God’s Word was ever recorded, repeated, or written down, it was alive; a person—Jesus Christ, the Word with God who was God. Even as he conveyed the commands that brought forth Creation, he was the Light of the world, the Son shining before the sun was created. He was the preeminent Christ, the one who is before all things and holds all things together. ¹ 

And through the artistry that is Creation, all humanity receives God’s general revelation: his message of design, of purpose, of beauty that displays “his existence, his character, his moral law.”²  

For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made.

Romans 1:19-20

Revealed Specifically

In his abundant love, God also gave us a special revelation, meaning: words. These have been revealed in any of the following forms:

• A decree: God’s commands that cause events to happen, bringing forth life from his lips

• Personal address: God’s words spoken directly, audibly, to people on earth (For example, to Adam; to the Israelites as he gave them the Ten Commandments; at the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan River)

• Through other humans: God’s words spoken through his prophets (Deut. 18:18-20).

• A person: Jesus Christ

• God’s Words in written form: the Bible. ³ 

  
  

The Book of Kells: Christ Enthroned (public domain)

This last form, the written word, combined with the leading of the Holy Spirit, is the mainstay of the Christian diet today. From stone tablets engraved by the finger of God ⁴ to the mouths of men passed down to their children;⁵ from scrolls rolled in leather to codices made of papyrus and wood. From the Book of Kells to the Latin Vulgate printed on Gutenberg’s press, God has preserved his words to us over thousands of years.

But why?

We find the answer in Romans 15:4:

For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.

Revealed and Preserved

His words tell a story that he wants us to know, a story of love, of life, of perfection distorted by sin, and a plan of hope and redemption. His words contain truth that reveals our sickness and offers the only cure.

He loved us enough that he didn’t keep this truth to himself, but produced it through the words of Holy Spirit-inspired men ⁶ and then, most remarkably, by sending the Living Word to earth in the form of his Son, Jesus.

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. – John 1:14

This message was so important, his message of grace and mercy, of justice and righteousness, that God made sure to preserve the whole story so that we would always have it before us. The hope found from Creation to Revelation is like manna from heaven, our daily bread that nourishes us, sustains us, and sets us free.  

It boggles our limited minds, and yet our minds yearn for this word; do you wonder why the brain was designed to read? God desired that even after the Word became flesh, was crucified, resurrected, and ascended into heaven, he would continue to spread that word, his story, to reach hearts and save souls.

He preserved his Word for us because he is for us. He wanted us to know not just the words in his book, but to know him and his great love. 

This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.

1 Timothy 2:3-4

The History of His Story

The Bible was written over approximately 1,500 years by 40 different authors and includes 66 books—39 in the Old Testament and 27 in the New Testament.⁷

The final New Testament canon was first identified by the church father Athanasius in AD 367 and ratified by the Council of Carthage in AD 397. Interestingly, the New Testament can be found almost complete—well before that year—through quotations used by the early church fathers.⁸ 

With respect to the Old Testament, it reads the same as when originally written. From the time of their composition, the Jews considered the books of the Old Testament holy. These written works were not ordinary literature or history; they were God’s Divine Word communicated to his people. Because these books were held in such high regard, the people took great care to preserve the texts precisely as they were originally written.⁹

The Sopherim (“counters”), early scribes whose job was to make exact copies of Scripture, were very meticulous. One example of their scrupulous precision is the practice of counting all the letters in a given book and noting the middle letter. They would then do the same for the copy to make sure it matched. They employed such time-consuming and painstaking methods to ensure accuracy.¹⁰

Don Stewart of Blue Letter Bible writes,

The fact that the text of the books of the Old Testament and the New Testament has survived intact is a true wonder. This is difficult to explain apart from the fact that the Bible is God’s divinely inspired Word. Indeed, very few writings from the ancient world have survived.

We can go a step further. Most books printed in modern times do not survive for even twenty years! The great majority of books that have been printed are now long gone.

However, there was something that made scribes copy these biblical texts over and over again for thousands of years. Not only did they continue to copy the text, they made certain to accurately copy and care for these writings. Why did they take so much care in their copying? The answer: they believed that they were copying the very Word of God! ¹¹

Many attempts were made through the years to destroy the Bible. In 175 BC, the king of Syria, Antiochus Epiphanes, ordered the Jews, on pain of death, to destroy their Scriptures and worship the Greek gods. But Judas Maccabaeus saved the books and led a revolt that won independence for the Jewish nation. (Today, Jews celebrate this event at Hanukkah.) ¹² During the Great Persecution under the Roman Emperor Diocletian (beginning in 303 C.E.), Christians were ordered to surrender their copies of the Scriptures to be burned. ¹³ 

Despite these destructive attempts, God protected his message to us so that his truth would endure through generations. In 1947, the dramatic discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls displayed once again God’s power to preserve. Hundreds of scrolls, including a complete copy of the book of Isaiah dated 100 years before Christ, were kept safe in clay jars hidden in caves near Wadi Qumran—for almost 1900 years! 14

Image by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

God gave man intelligence, perseverance, and creativity to design ways for his Word to become even easier to read, understand, and access. This is how important his Word is!

History shows us that no other written word has been preserved, copied, read, or sold more than the Bible.¹⁵ We in America take for granted how easy it is to pick up a Bible or our phone to read God's words to us.

Today, will you see it as the gift that it is? It’s a message that stays relevant despite an ever-changing world, a word that will always apply to our lives, no matter where we live or what we walk through. Most importantly, it's a message of love that he has protected so that we would have every opportunity to read it.

Read it again, read it fresh, and thank God for preserving his words of grace for us so that they would land in our hands and set our hearts free.

Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.

Matthew 24:35

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For more fascinating details on how God’s word has been preserved through centuries, I highly recommend the following resources:

• https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/stewart_don/faq/10-reasons/reason3-the-bibles-survival.cfm

• https://christiancourier.com/articles/the-holy-scriptures-indestructible

• Wes Huff, “Is the Bible We Have What the Original Authors Even Wrote?” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaub_Ch0Auo&t=6s

• https://biblehub.com/q/how_was_the_bible_compiled_and_shared.htm 

1.     Colossians 1:17

2.     Wayne Grudem. Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2020), 146.

3.     Grudem, Systematic Theology, 31-34.

4.     Exodus 31:18

5.     Deuteronomy 6:6-7

6.     2 Peter 1:21

7.     https://www.gotquestions.org/original-Bible.html

8.     Ibid.

9.     https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/stewart_don/faq/10-reasons/reason3-the-bibles-survival.cfm

10.   https://www.gotquestions.org/preservation-Bible.html

11.   https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/stewart_don/faq/10-reasons/reason3-the-bibles-survival.cfm

12.   https://answersingenesis.org/the-word-of-god/the-preservation-of-the-bible/ 

13.   https://uasvbible.org/2024/10/12/how-has-the-bible-survived-attempts-to-destroy-it-throughout-history/

14.   https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/stewart_don/faq/10-reasons/reason3-the-bibles-survival.cfm

15.   https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/best-selling-book-of-non-fiction