When you read the Bible, the correct interpretation is not hinged on subjective interpretation.
Readers of the Bible who do not have a comprehensive grasp of the consistent themes and cultural and historical contexts, will often take a random passage and derive some meaning that conforms to their opinion. That’s how they skew the authority of Scripture, to justify themselves and not to understand what God intended for man. That kind of usage of Scripture is called called prooftexting.
Assuming that the Bible is the Word of God as source collection of writings that are focused on the Gospel and Salvation by Grace, the character of God and Christian living, it should be approached as a reference book rather than a book of secular philosophy or worse, a fortune telling grab bag.
So how do you know what is right and what is true?
The Bible is a collection of divinely inspired writing and altogether is a revelation of God. The Gospels and the New Testament writings in particular are sourced from writers who were eye witnesses to Jesus’ ministry, death and Resurrection and/or their contemporary and close associates. In this regard it is a reliable historical document. Generations of Bible scholars have found both Old and New Testament writings to be reliable for the truth and consistency of God and His gracious plan for salvation by faith through a Savior.
When understood in the context of history and culture, the unchanging character qualities of God are better revealed. God reveals Himself through all peoples: people of faith, the nation of Israel, and even through the enemies of Israel. God uses nations as a means of judgment and we can see the Sovereign’s hand engage with individuals, among nations, personal and world events. But most personally is God revealed through His Son, Jesus Christ and the New Covenant where we get a clearer picture of the invisible heavenly Father and His empowerment of the believers via God’s Holy Spirit. God has communicated faithfully and truthfully through the Apostles and the growing Church.
The Bible in its current form includes books and letters that focus on the key doctrines supporting Salvation by Faith and the Gospel of Grace.
As I wrote earlier, studying the Bible is not much about what you think the Bible says, it’s very much about understanding what God is communicating to its reader and to humanity at large. It’s about getting a grasp of context and the God’s unchanging character and the cost of depravity of man’s sin. Its messages are founded in the Truth and not intended to be left to that would be in effect, random individual interpretation when a Truth is needing to be grasped.
After a while, you’ll learn to understand that novel ideals that you have about what a passage means, while interpreting it both out of context and without a good understanding of the consistent themes that run throughout Scripture, is mere spitting in the wind.
You see, taking a passage out of a literary work done by one author in one of his or her works may increase your chances of making a relevant statement based on your personal intuition. That’s a secular thinking based on a secularist’s work. Mostly no one would criticize you, and no one could, in your subjective exploration, no matter how tangental it may be. Your liberal arts professor might even give you a nod of approval just to be able to come up with an intelligible statement, much less an argument. One of the ideas I learned in college, studying soft sciences: It is not so much declaring truth but rather, being able to support your idea with some reasonable arguments; in other words, working to justify your own truth.
But, now, when you attempt to do that with the Bible, you need to understand, every one of the 66 books in the Bible has one supernatural Author (Almighty God the Creator), who inspired its over 40 writers, in different continents, in different languages, and over a 1600 year period. The Bible is a collection of works, miraculously preserved, and stunningly consistent in God’s message of Salvation by faith and by Grace. In doing that been deemed to capture, God’s divine purpose of Salvation of humankind by Grace and through His Son, The Lord Jesus Christ.
Properly interpreted, you use the Bible as a lense unto itself and you can use the Bible to interpret the world and its works. However, if you use the world of secular wisdom to judge the Bible, I should exhort, you would be far from thinking or behaving as one who claims to be a follower of Christ as Lord and Savior.
While the Bible contains a substantial amount of history and scientific insights, which have a growing track record of being confirmed by modern exploration and archeology, the Bible is not intended to be the Encyclopedia Brittanica. It is God’s revelation for his plan for human redemption. In this regard, you need to be a student of the Bible to extract its meaning, not based on your secular prejudices, but with a humility and contrition that, quite frankly, can only come from a repentant mind trusting that Truth from God will be revealed to you.
When interpreting a passage, book, or an Epistle (letter), it helps to see what the overall purpose and context of the writing was before you interpret a verse, especially when trying to interpret by today’s meme standards.
A verse is strongly integrated into the meaning of the ‘paragraph’ it is written, and often best interpreted by reading the entire work. Quite frankly, that’s true with any writing.
The truth you find in the Bible, also has much to do with seeing yourself in the evil that manifests throughout the Bible. You think Joseph’s brothers were cruel? You think Pharaoh was a bad guy? Think that Haman was caustically greedy and power hungry? You think the Pharisees were hard-headed and blind to put Jesus to the cross? You think that you wouldn’t take part in a massacre of innocent people and plunder their possessions? Those who persecuted God’s prophets, were they evil?
Look in the mirror. The same sin that drove those heinous behaviors resides in you, in that sense you are no better spiritually, in reference to God’s moral perfection, than Ahab and Jezebel and her prophets of Baal. Just as you may have judged all those aforementioned evil doers, how much more would a just, holy and righteous God, do GOOD, in casting your sin ladened soul into the everlasting torment of hell.
The truths of the Bible becomes much more of 2 + 2 equals 4 than we would initially believe, the truth comes across in stark and unveiled ways, and yet it remains an enigma to unbelievers.
You may walk, you may talk, you work and live your life in your own self-righteousness, but spiritually you are dead as a cinder block in sin and can only be saved by God who reaches out and lifts up those who are dead in sins. Dead men and women cannot help themselves. Yet, God gifts us with faith, not faith in ourselves, but faith in Him, His blessings, His gifts, and His Grace.
Only God is good. The rest of us need Salvation by His Grace.
Come to Christ!
Won’t you plead with God today to receive His gift of Grace through His Son, The Lord Jesus Christ, who will at the end of the Age of God’s patience with evil doers, judge the living and the dead. The day of salvation is today, even now! If you are genuinely led by your conscience, come pray to Jesus this very minute. There’s no need to wait to go see a priest or confess to anyone, putting this important decision off for a day that may never arrive.
With a sorrow for the sin that is within you that separates you from God, plead for Him to open the door of faith and grace that only God (The Father, The Son and the Holy Spirit) can.
HERE IS THE CRUX
I am convinced that unless you come to Faith in Christ and are then by God, blessed with the transforming fire of the Holy Spirit, your sinful mind keeps the worldly obstacles between you and the truth, liberty, and salvation and hence, separates you from the actionable truths and evidences of God’s glory that are contained in the Bible.
Jesus promised a the Holy Spirit, who in part acts as a divine interpreter, for each believer.
12 “I still have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. 13 But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak from Himself, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. 14 He will glorify Me, for He will take of Mine and will disclose it to you. 15 All things that the Father has are Mine; therefore I said that He takes of Mine and will disclose it to you. – John 16:12-15
Ion closing, was going to only pull verses 10-12 out of the following chapter, but I love the whole Chapter of 1 Corinthians 2. Here it is:
2 And when I came to you, brothers, I did not come with superiority of word or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the witness of God. 2 For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. 3 And I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling, 4 and my word and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, 5 so that your faith would not be in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.
6 Yet we do speak wisdom among those who are mature, a wisdom, however, not of this age nor of the rulers of this age, who are being abolished. 7 But we speak God’s wisdom in a mystery, the wisdom which has been hidden, which God predestined before the ages to our glory, 8 which none of the rulers of this age has understood; for if they had understood it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. 9 But just as it is written,
“Things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard,
And which have not entered the heart of man,
All that God has prepared for those who love Him.”
10 But to us God revealed them through the Spirit, for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God. 11 For who among men knows the depths of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so the depths of God no one knows except the Spirit of God. 12 Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the depths graciously given to us by God, 13 of which depths we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual depths with spiritual words.
14 But a natural man does not accept the depths of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually examined. 15 But he who is spiritual examines all things, yet he himself is examined by no one. 16 For who has known the mind of the Lord, that he will direct Him? But we have the mind of Christ. – 1 Corinthians 2
For a one minute explanation of the Gospel from the late Pastor John MacArthur, watch this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCP9UcC7BzE
For a review of the Ten Commandments: https://www.challenyee.com/the-ten-commandments/
ACT LIKE MEN a short talk given by John MacArthur (click on the link)
All quoted excerpts have footnotes removed, usually from Legacy Standard Bible (LSB), sometimes from New International Version (NIV), on rare occasion the Amplified Bible (AMP).
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7-13-2024