In case you’ve ever been with a woodworker at a job, you’ll know the form of care that’s required with a pointy blade. The identical is true of a surgeon laying out the devices of surgical procedure. The Phrase of God, Hebrews tells us, is sort of a sharp blade (4:12). It’s all too doable to brandish it like a form of whirling dervish, swinging it round recklessly, putting terror and inflicting untold harm. As an alternative, those that wield it are urged to take action cautiously and graciously, purposefully and kindly.
One key to this care is studying to learn, examine, and perceive the Bible rightly. After all, Bible interpreters develop higher with time. We shouldn’t anticipate anybody to achieve abruptly the knowledge that years of wrestling with the Scriptures brings. Nonetheless, each Christian can and must be acquainted with the straightforward ideas of biblical interpretation that may set them off on the suitable path.
A method of framing the suitable strategy to understanding the Scriptures calls on three ideas.
The Pure Sense
First, once we learn the Bible, we should always achieve this within the consciousness of the textual content’s pure sense. In different phrases, the Bible must be learn with a way of clear-minded simplicity. God’s Phrase just isn’t a thriller e book the place you need to “crack the code” earlier than you may start to grasp it. The aim of God’s revelation in Scripture is readability, not confusion. God has given us a readily intelligible message, not a sequence of riddles and enigmas.
To place it otherwise: The primary issues are the plain issues, and the plain issues are the principle issues. What’s most vital within the Bible is what’s most blatant as you learn its pages. And whereas some statements, passages, and even complete narratives could also be onerous to grasp and there are all the time deeper depths to plumb, you’ll by no means discover something that contradicts or supersedes the clear and chronic instructing of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
The aim of God’s revelation in Scripture is readability, not confusion. God has given us a readily intelligible message, not a sequence of riddles and enigmas.
On the subject of our studying the Bible collectively in congregations, one theologian has stated properly that what we should always search is “in necessities, unity; in nonessentials, liberty; in all issues, charity.” In different phrases, what is apparent from the pure sense of Scripture ought to result in shared convictions, whereas what’s unclear shouldn’t divide God’s folks by strict laws. That girls ought to pray, for instance, is a transparent instructing of Scripture, a vital; whether or not they should put on head coverings whereas they do is much less plain and so must be handled as nonessential—maybe not unimportant, however definitely not indispensable to being counted a Christian in good standing with the church.
The Unique Sense
Second, we should learn the Bible with a watch to the textual content’s authentic sense: What had been the authors, “carried alongside by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:21), saying within the languages and cultural contexts wherein their messages had been first delivered and recorded? If the primary precept is the precept of simplicity, the second is the precept of historical past.
The everlasting message of Scripture might solely be understood inside the circumstances wherein it was initially given. Once we examine 1 Corinthians, we labor long and hard to grasp, so far as we are able to, the who, what, the place, why, and the way that drove Paul to write down it as he did. That means, once we come to contemplate Cleveland, or Cambridge, or Cairo—or cities that start with different letters for that matter!—we achieve this by way of our understanding of Corinth quite than merely launching off from our personal presuppositions.
We would put this one other means: The pure sense of Scripture is knowledgeable mainly by its authentic intent, not by what happens most readily to our minds. Studying the Bible includes imagining, primarily based on proof and sound reasoning, the circumstances of different folks in one other place after which drawing a line of software from these circumstances to our personal. So we don’t twist the Bible’s phrases to imply what they don’t, both by unnecessarily complicating them or by failing to contemplate them altogether. The duty that falls to us in our research is to deliver out what’s there, to not stick in what we expect ought to be there.
The Common Sense
Third and eventually, we should learn the Bible with a watch to the textual content’s basic sense. That is the precept of concord. In different phrases, we learn every verse inside the context of its passage, every passage inside the context of its e book, every e book inside the context of the Outdated or New Testomony, and Outdated and New Testomony alike in mild of one another.
The duty that falls to us in our research is to deliver out what’s there, to not stick in what we expect ought to be there.
If God is the creator of all of the Scriptures, then we should always anticipate the Scriptures to talk with a constant voice. This doesn’t imply there gained’t be variations in language and expression and goal between the human authors. Poetry, in any case, makes use of completely different instruments from these of narrative, simply because the apostles James and Paul wrote of the identical Gospel from completely different factors of view. However by way of all of them, God is telling a single, constant story. The Bible is God’s symphony, and the suitable studying of anybody half—along with being plain and traditionally grounded—will harmonize with the entire.
The way in which the Protestant Reformers put that is that Scripture interprets Scripture. When it’s unclear to us what a passage of Scripture means, the primary and finest place to search for a solution is inside the pages of Scripture itself. Definitely, questions will come up: How does a New Testomony passage honor and fulfill the Outdated? How does an Outdated Testomony passage anticipate the New? How is one command to be understood in mild of one other? Such an strategy requires persistence and knowledge as we search to “rightly [handle] the phrase of reality.” God’s directive, nonetheless, is evident: “Do your finest” (2 Tim. 2:15). By His grace, He can allow us to extend in our obedience to it.
Be Diligent!
“That is tough work!” somebody might say—and, after all, it’s. To be a scholar of the Phrase of God calls for constant diligence. No one ever turned a Bible scholar on one sermon every week. No one ever turned agile with the sword of the Spirit just by listening to any individual speak about it. And no one will ever grow to be helpful with the Scriptures with no actual want to know God’s Phrase.
Even so, the promise of God is that those that examine His Phrase diligently and punctiliously will discover their labors rewarded as His Spirit opens the Scriptures to them. “All Scripture,” Paul reminds us, “is breathed out by God and worthwhile for instructing, for reproof, for correction, and for coaching in righteousness, that the person of God could also be full, outfitted for each good work” (2 Tim. 3:16–17). That reward is effectively definitely worth the effort we take to grasp the Scriptures rightly.
This text was tailored from the sermon “The Soldier’s Weapons” by Alistair Begg.
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