This lesson is a digest of four articles I wrote some years ago for a church bulletin. Each relates to the theme of scriptural authority and interpretation of the Bible.

Interpreting the Bible

1 Our Authority

Our faith and religious practice should not be chosen on the basis of what sounds right or feels good to us. We should not go into the "religious supermarket" and shop for a church with a set of doctrines, traditions, and behaviour patterns that we find appealing. Rather, we must listen to what the Lord says, and recognise his absolute authority. Jesus has all authority in heaven and on earth (Mtt 28:18).

So we should seek what pleases him, and what is according to his word, no matter what ordinary mortals like us might be inclined to think (Col 1:9-10,18). We must have a "Thus says the Lord" for all our beliefs and acts of worship. This may even mean that we must go against our own best judgment, letting the Lord's judgment rule us. We put aside our own personal opinions, preferences, and prejudices, and say, "Not my will but your will be done" (Lke 22:42). Jesus criticised the religious leaders of his day for making the word of God of no effect through their tradition. He made a distinction between God's word and the commandments of men (Mrk 7:6-13). So should we.

2 Interpreting God's Word

If the Bible is to be our authority in religion, then of course we must interpret the Bible correctly. For example...

When the Bible says, "Let God be true, and every man a liar" (Rom 3:4), we would not interpret that to mean that God wants us to be liars.
Or when the scripture says, "How unsearchable are God's judgments, and his paths past finding out" (Rom 11:33), we would not take that to mean that we cannot know God's will.
Or when the word says, "God is love" (1Jn 4:8), we do not take that to be teaching that God is a Principle and not a Person.
Or when we read, "Fight the good fight of faith" (1Tm 6:12) we would not take this as a call to make war upon and kill people of another religion.

If the Bible is to mean anything to us and act as an authority for us, then we must apply our minds to what it says to make sure that we have correctly understood its meaning. The authority of the scripture cannot be isolated from that process.

Most Important Principle

The most important principle of interpretation is that the Bible must be interpreted holistically. We treat the Bible as one self-consistent book of God, a contextual unit. Although comprising many different books from various sources and times, it has a consistency such that no part contradicts the other. Therefore if we interpret any given part so that it harmonises with all other parts, our interpretation will be correct. However, if our interpretation of one statement makes the Bible contradict itself, we know that our interpretation is in error.

3 Messages From God

Since creation, God has been communicating with men and women,revealing his will and purpose for them. He has delivered various messages in various ways to various people at various times and places. The Bible itself is a compilation of such messages.

If God wished, he could communicate individually to every human being. I would receive my own special angel, prophet, dream, or writing. You likewise would receive yours, and others theirs. Each person would have their personal miracle and message from God. But God has not seen fit to do this.

So where do we stand? Either God does not have a message for us all, or he expects us to derive a message for ourselves from the messages he has given to others. It is the latter idea that people are really asserting when they rightly say, "the Bible is God's message to all mankind". The Bible ties together many messages from God to people in various times and situations. If we think about these messages and situations sensibly, we can reason out what we would be told if God really did send a prophet or angel to us.

Them and Us

Take for example this message: "God demonstrates his own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us" (Rom 5:8). A lot of people reading that statement, back when it was written, would indeed have been sinners when Christ died. But Christ did not die for you and me "while we were still sinners". We arrived several hundred years too late for that to be true. Yet we have taken that old message of God's love so much to our own hearts that we quote Paul's words just as if the "we" and "us" literally means us.

We reason that those who were sinners when Christ died, were representatives of all. In demonstrating great love toward them, God demonstrated his love for every sinner, and thus Christ died for all. We therefore, despite the literal anachronism, make the "we" and "us" refer in principle to all mankind, even ourselves today. We find this interpretation agrees with other statements in the chapter, and with the rest of scripture. Thus a message to the early Christians serves as a message for us as well.