01.12. Chapter 4 How the Bible speaks
Chapter 4 How the Bible speaks The duty of the reader
One assurance that Christians have is that God lives within them and teaches them. Paul once said, ‘We have received the Spirit sent by God so that we may know all that God has given us’ (1 Corinthians 2:12). This work of the Spirit of God within them does not mean that God’s people have no need to read and understand the Bible. If that were so, God need not have preserved the Bible. But God has preserved it, so that the Spirit has something objective, historical and factual to use in teaching his people. God gave the Holy Spirit to his people not to make Bible study unnecessary, but to make it meaningful.
Once readers understand the circumstances in which God’s Spirit inspired the original writings, they are in a good position to understand the Spirit’s up-to-date application to them. The Bible has a living power within it, and will make its meaning relevant to its readers once the readers understand it. Readers, then, have a duty if they are to benefit from the Bible: they must work to understand what they are reading. And if they ask God’s help in this, they can be assured they will receive it. To help Christians understand his Word, God has given teachers, people he has equipped for this work. They may teach by means of their spoken words or their writings, as did teachers in New Testament times. However, Christians must test all that they hear and read, and if they are to do this satisfactorily, they must know how to interpret the Bible. The Bible in its setting
Some people think that the Bible is nothing more than a collection of moral rules and abstract religious ideas. On the contrary, it is a very down-to-earth book containing all sorts of writings, most of them set in the everyday world. God made himself known through things that happened in history. The part of the world where most of those events occurred was the region of Western Asia and Eastern Europe.
Readers of the Bible will be helped by any encyclopaedia, directory, atlas, dictionary or handbook that gives information about the regions and eras covered by the Bible story. They will more readily understand what they read when they have a knowledge of such things as locations of countries and towns, climatic conditions, agricultural practices, local customs and ancient religious rituals.
Another requirement is a knowledge of the historical setting of whatever biblical book they are reading. With most of the Old Testament prophets and New Testament letter writers, readers will understand the books properly only when they know when and where they were written, under what circumstances and for what purposes. In some cases the books themselves announce these details clearly, but in others readers may have to spend some time searching for them.
Variety yet unity
Within the Bible there are many kinds of literature, and readers must interpret each according to the kind of literature it is. A straightforward story is different from a poem and must be interpreted differently. The prophet’s style of preaching is different from the wisdom teacher’s. Israel’s Old Testament law books must not be read as if they are the same kind of literature as the New Testament Gospels. Present-day readers must consider all these matters, for if they misunderstand the writer’s standpoint, they will misunderstand what he has said.
Occasionally readers of the Bible will meet what is known as an apocalyptic writing. This kind of literature was popular during the centuries immediately before and after the time of Christ. It featured visions involving fearsome beasts and mysterious numbers, and was usually concerned with great conflicts out of which God and his people were victorious. If readers interpret the symbolism of the visions literally, they will misunderstand the writer’s meaning. In spite of the variety in its contents, the Bible is one book, a unity. Each book within the Bible, though understood in its own setting, must also be understood as part of the Bible as a whole.
Unity, however, does not mean sameness. One word will not have the same meaning wherever it is used. Different writers may use the same word in different ways. A statement from an Old Testament wisdom book must not be interpreted in the same way as a statement from a New Testament letter. People must be careful when linking statements from various books. They must always consider the original setting and never force the Bible to say what the writer never intended. A full and complete revelation
God’s activity in making himself known to the people of the world is called revelation. This revelation is progressive. God did not reveal his total plan for the world all at once at the beginning of human history, but revealed it stage by stage as he prepared people for the fuller revelation through Jesus Christ. That is why readers today must understand each part of the Bible in relation to its own era. The Old Testament, for example, contains things that look strange to today’s readers, but that is because the revelation was still developing. The Old Testament was not incorrect, but it was incomplete. The New Testament does not correct the Old, but completes it. Yet it also depends on it, just as God’s revelation at every stage depended on what had gone before. Readers will understand the Old Testament better when they see it pointing to the New. They will understand the New Testament better when they are more familiar with the Old. This Bible of sixty-six books is the full written revelation God has given. Its authority is absolute. It will not answer every question that people like to ask, for that is not its purpose. It is not a book of answers to puzzles, but a revelation from God to ordinary men and women, showing them who he is, what he has done and what he requires of them.
Human beings do not and cannot know everything, and the Bible gives them no magical answers or supernatural knowledge. What it does is encourage the life of faith, whereby people know God and live by trusting in his wisdom, power and love.
Although it contains more than the human mind can fully understand, the Bible is not a handbook on every subject. People do not honour it when they try to make it teach farming, geology or medicine. God showed from the beginning that if people want to find out how the physical world functions and how it can benefit them, they must do so ‘by hard work and sweat’. God does not usually give such knowledge by revelation.
Learning, then doing
True Christians read the Bible as those who acknowledge its authority and submit to its teachings. They have a respect for it. They are not the Bible’s master, using it as they like, but its servants, doing what it says. They come to the Bible not to force it to support their opinions, but to learn from it. They may want the Bible to give them teaching that is relevant to life in today’s world, but that is no reason to ignore what it meant in its original setting. Readers should not impatiently force the Bible to teach them a certain number of lessons each day, but let it say whatever it wants to say in its own way and in its own time. By doing this, Christians allow the Word of God to mould their character, as the Bible itself says: ‘Let God transform you inwardly by a complete change of your mind’ (Romans 12:2). And if attitudes change, behaviour also must change. Christianity has no place for those who know the Bible but do not live by its teachings. Jesus said of his teaching, ‘Now that you know this truth, how happy you will be if you put it into practice’ (John 13:17).