How [the Scripture] was given through [the human authors] is left …, if not without suggestion, yet without specific explanation. We seem safe only in inferring this much: that the gift of Scripture through its human authors took place by a process much more intimate than can be expressed by the term ‘dictation,’ and that it took place in a process in which the control of the Holy Spirit was too complete and pervasive to permit the human qualities of the secondary authors in any way to condition the purity of the product as the word of God. The Scriptures, in other words, are conceived by the writers of the New Testament as through and through God’s book, in every part expressive of his mind, given through men after a fashion which does no violence to their nature as men, and constitutes the book also men’s book as well as God’s, in every part expressive of the mind of its human authors.

The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible, 153.

¹⁸ And having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. ¹⁹ I speak in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you presented your members as slaves of uncleanness, and of lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves of righteousness for holiness.
²⁰ For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. ²¹ What fruit did you have then in the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. ²² But now having been set free from sin, and having become slaves of God, you have your fruit to holiness, and the end, everlasting life. ²³ For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

How do we reconcile these claims of being slaves of God and Christ with what Paul says in Galatians 4:7, “Therefore you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ”? Or what Jesus says in John 15:15, “No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I heard from My Father I have made known to you”?

The conflict is only apparent. Any biblical metaphor should not be overstretched, and in both passages we learn where the metaphor of being slaves to God breaks down. In Galatians 4, Paul is contrasting the adoption of Christians as sons of God with their being slaves to the elemental forces. We are no longer slaves to those ungodly powers, but sons of God, and therefore heirs of God through Christ. A slave didn’t expect to receive an inheritance from his master; he expected that inheritance to go the master’s son. Now we are sons, and we have an inheritance through Christ. In John 15:15, the point is the intimacy of the relationship. We have a connection with Christ that is one of privilege and honor and close friendship. But in the verse that immediately precedes that one, he said, “You are my friends if you do whatsoever I command you.” Slaves did not have an intimate relationship with their master, and our relationship to Jesus is in no way like that. What we learn from these two passage is that no biblical metaphor can be stretched in every detail. Are we slaves to God? Yes, but not in the sense that we have no inheritance. Are we slaves to Christ? Yes, but despite that fact, we have a unprecedented intimacy and close friendship with our Master.

See especially TDNT 2:275-6 and Murray J. Harris, Slave of Christ (Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP, 2001), 139-49.

“In the execution of this power wherewith he is so intrusted, the Lord Jesus calleth out of the World unto himself, through the Ministry of his word, by his Spirit [John 10:16; 12:32], those that are given unto him by his Father; that they may walk before him in all the [Matt 28:20] ways of obedience, which he prescribeth to them in his Word. Those thus called he commandeth to walk together in particular societies, or [Matt 18:15-20] Churches, for their mutual edification; and the due performance of that publick worship, which he requireth of them in the World.”

The fifty minute lecture is, as they say, time well spent.

“If a man had a precious stone in a ring that could heal, we should say the ring heals; but properly it is not the ring, but he precious stone in the ring that heals. Thus faith saves and justifies, but it is not any inherent virtue in faith, but as it lays hold on Christ it justifies.” (Body of Divinity, 217)

• Summary page
• The End of the World According to Harold Camping: Part 1 (On Camping’s Background)
• The End of the World According to Harold Camping: Part 2 (On Camping’s Inconsistent Hermeneutic)
• The End of the World According to Harold Camping: Part 3 (On Camping as Individualistic “Guru” and Schismatic)
• The End of the World According to Harold Camping: Part 4 (On Camping’s Heresy concerning the Church)
• The End of the World According to Harold Camping: Part 5 (On Camping’s Heresy concerning Salvation)

You can find more apologetic videos like this, addressing a whole host of issues, at ehrmanproject.org.

The Christian’s God is a God who makes the soul aware that he is its sole good: that in him alone can it find peace; that only in loving him can it find joy: and who at the same time fills it with loathing for the obstacles which hold it back and prevent it from loving God with all its might. Self-love and concupiscence, which hold it back, are intolerable. This God makes the soul aware of this underlying self-love which is destroying it, and which he alone can cure. Pensees, 460 (544) (trans., Krailsheimer [New York: Penguin, 1966], 178.)