Very true, my friend, but we can and do make mistakes. God uses fallible man to inscribe / transcribe / translate / interpret His infallible Holy Word. Then He comes along with His Holy Spirit to set everything right. So all my translations and paraphrases, even the ones with the most mistakes, are still God’s Word, if and only if I listen for the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in them.

So, it’s not really the words on the page that are God’s Word. It is those words combined with the life of the Holy Spirit in a revelation to my heart that is God’s Word. Without the Holy Spirit, the words on the page can be interpreted by the human intellect and become nothing more than “good works,” fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Worse, they can be interpreted by the devil, who is really quite good at twisting the Word of God and deceiving us into believing it.

Now I can confidently read any of my translations or paraphrases, listen carefully for the Holy Spirit’s confirmation, and know that I have God’s Word. He will surely make it clear to me where the translator made a mistake - that is, if and when it matters. If He doesn’t reveal a mistake (yet) then it doesn't matter (yet). I totally trust my Lord to keep me safe from errors and heresies.

 But this is where it gets a bit dicy. What about someone’s sermon (based strictly on the Scriptures, of course)? Can anyone’s sermon be God’s Word?

Of course it can. Look at Peter’s sermon in Acts 2, and Paul’s sermon in Acts 17. “No fair!” you may complain, “They are already in Scripture!” Well, OK. What about Charles Spurgeon’s sermons, or George Whitfield’s, or D.L. Moody’s, or Billy Graham’s! Surely the Gospel came forth with power, and millions received divine life through them! Yes, I’m sure they made mistakes; they were fallible, just like the translators of the Scriptures. But as before, the Holy Spirit came through to set it all right as He revealed Himself to the listeners through the power of the spoken word. Yes, those sermons were just as much God’s Word as any of my translations.

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