Last week, we began our new Sunday school series on biblical hermeneutics, the discipline of interpreting the Scriptures. One of the greatest challenges to interpreting the Bible well is the tendency to inadvertently interpret a passage in isolation from its context. This is how “I can do all things through Him who strengthens me” (Phil 4:13) becomes a sanctified rendition of “Climb Every Mountain.” What the biblical authors wrote, they wrote within a context. To understand what they wrote, the entire context must be in view.
As I mentioned Sunday, a way to overcome this is to become very familiar with a given biblical book in its entirety. If I were going to study Hebrews, I would not start taking apart the first few verses of chapter 1 on the first day. I would read Hebrews in its entirety every day for at least a couple of weeks so that I have a grasp of the flow of thought from beginning to end. Then I would understand how any given passage fits within that flow of thought. I would be much less likely to interpret that passage in a way that is unfaithful to the message of the book as a whole.
However, the Bible is much larger than one letter or prophecy. The true context of any given verse of Scripture is the whole Bible. Since the Bible is inerrant, no interpretation of one verse can contradict any other. The difficulty then becomes how to ensure that we do not contradict truths in Habakkuk while studying 1 John. How do we refrain from inadvertently pitting Moses against Paul?
There are tools out there that can help with this. Some are more helpful than others. The cross-references in your bible…an exhaustive concordance…an online concordance…the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge. But even these resources each have their limitations. They simply cannot capture every passage that might pertain to a given theme, word, concept, or doctrine in any other passage in Scripture.
There is one tool for which there is simply no substitute. It enables a student of the Word to make connections between multiple passages, connections that a concordance or cross-reference simply cannot make. It can bring forward from the entire canon those related passages that either confirm a particular interpretation or overrule a particular interpretation. It is the single most reliable tool to make sure that one does not isolate a passage from the rest of Scripture. It can’t be bought or borrowed. It is your own human brain filled with a broad knowledge of the Scriptures via years of repetitive reading of the Bible.
The absolute best way to become a better interpreter of the Scriptures is to read the Bible over and over and over. Read single books over and over. Read sections over and over (law, history, poetry, major prophets, minor prophets, Gospels/Acts, epistles). Read the testaments over and over. Read the Bible. The longer we read the Bible, the less we will find ourselves relying on printed or electronic tools and the better quality cross references we will make.
There are numerous brothers and sisters at Providence who are able to rattle off numerous passages that speak to any given subject or doctrine, not because they memorized Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance or the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, but because they have spent much time repetitively reading the Bible. And not all of these people have known the Lord for years and years. It is not unheard of for a new zealous believer to dive into the Word with such tenacity that he or she gains tremendous breadth in the Scriptures very quickly, a breadth sadly unknown to some who have been Christians for decades. Such new believers should be a challenge and encouragement to all of us. It is quite possible to gain great breadth in the Scriptures in relative short order. It is simply a matter of priorities.
You might wonder, “What do I do in the meantime while I’m reading and re-reading the Bible? Am I doomed to make contextual mistakes until then?” No, you can and should use the tools I mentioned above. But don’t think of them as the long-term solution. Read the Bible. And again...and again...
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