The Church Goes Where Your Biblical Interpretation Goes
How We Read The Bible Determines Everything
Introduction
Martin Luther famously said, “Let the man who would hear God speak read Holy Scripture.” (1) If this is true, then one will only hear God speak if one can understand how to rightly read Scripture. The one who possesses the knowledge for how to accurately interpret Scripture possesses the knowledge that is foundation to all else.
Erring here makes the Church collapse. All Christian living, doctrinal precision, apologetic efforts, biblical principles for leadership, counseling the hurting soul, and powerful preaching depends upon this foundation of hermeneutics. The answer to our problems, and the correct understanding of our problems, is found in knowing how to read and interpret Scripture.
Luther is correct: If we want to hear God speak, we must read Holy Scripture and read it rightly. For the future of the individual Christian, the health of the Church, and the salvation of the world, the most needed discipline in all existence is to rightly read the word of God.
The Pastor As Chief Bible Reader
What is the pastor if he is not a man of God’s word? Rather than a shepherd, he is a wolf. Rather than a sure guide, he is a false teacher. Without a proper knowledge of how to read and interpret Scripture, the pastor is a dull tool, witless teacher, empty prattler, broken compass, and butcher disguised as a physician. It is not those outside the Church who have done the most damage to the Church; it is those inside. The worst damage done to the Church, and to the world, has been false teachers who have falsely interpreted Scripture.
To know the Bible, read the Bible, and teach the Bible accurately is the great goal of any faithful pastor. Many other tasks arise for the pastor, but none are more important than being a man of the word. The chief end of the pastoral ministry is to help people glorify and enjoy God forever, but this can only happen if they know who this God is. If they aren’t thinking rightly about Him, then they have built up an idol and are living in false worship. Therefore, how are they to know it is the true God unless they know how to read His word?
A pastor is only a leader insofar as he is a follower of Christ. But no one can follow Christ who is unable to hear His word (Jn. 10:27). The pastor who does not know how to rightly read and interpret Scripture might tell his people they are heading toward still waters when, in fact, they are being led in circles in the valley of the shadow of death. The best pastor-leaders are the best Bible readers. No pastor can rise higher than his understanding of Scripture.
A right reading and interpretation of Scripture will produce many characteristics.
Faithful Bible Reading Produces The Fear Of God
First, faithful Bible reading produces fear God. Yes, there is more to fearing God than merely having a correct hermeneutic. The Bible must go from head to heart. But it is certainly true that there will be no fear of God with a wrong hermeneutic. Isaiah 66:2 mentions that the godly “tremble at [God’s] word.” The right understanding of the word of God produces the right response of the fear of God. To know that the Bible is God’s word and that His word must be understood in His way changes everything about life and ministry. No longer should we make a wax nose out of the Bible. This is God’s book, God’s voice, and God’s word.
Through the different genres, historical settings, eras of covenants, and figures of speech, God communicates His unchanging truth in the form of a beautiful tapestry. There are so many different parts that contribute to one consistent whole. Writers, public speakers, politicians, coaches, and teachers all tend to have only a few ways of communicating to people, but God uses poetry, proverbs, prose, apocalyptic visions, epistles, and historical narrative to communicate with His people. Who would not fear a God like this?
Faithful Bible Reading Produces Faithful Bible Preaching
Second, faithful Bible reading produces faithful Bible preaching. Again, there is more to preaching than merely correct hermeneutics. We do believe that “dead orthodoxy” can come from the pulpit. But there is no faithful preaching without a faithful hermeneutic.
In 2 Timothy 2, Paul charges Timothy to minister in such a way that steers clear of shame and dishonesty. To the contrary, Timothy is to be known as one who is “rightly handling the word of truth” (2:15). That looks like Timothy using God’s inspired word “for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness” (3:16). The primary place this occurs in ministry is through preaching the word (4:2). Therefore, if preaching does not “reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching,” then people will not “endure sound teaching” (4:2-3). If the word of God is not rightly divided, the churches will “accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths” (4:3-4). If the pew follows the pulpit, then the pulpit must follow faithful hermeneutical principles.
Faithful Bible Reading Produces Faithful Private Worship
Third, faithful Bible reading produces faithful private worship. Reading the Bible accurately means we will meditate on the Bible more affectionately. I say “affectionately” because a better understanding of the Bible leads to a better understanding of God. This inevitably aids our communion with Him.
We must get to the heart—the thoughts, affections, and actions—and apply the teaching of Scripture there. But if we get to the heart with a wrong exegesis then we will be led astray. A more accurate exegesis that finds its ultimate fulfillment in the gospel is the exact medicine that our heart needs for that day. Elders need to teach their people how to faithfully implement private worship in their lives, but this will never be faithful if they don’t know how to rightly interpret Scripture.
Faithful Bible Reading Produces Faithful Bible Application
As we see in the lives of men like Martin Luther, Thomas Boston, John Newton, Charles Spurgeon, and Martyn Lloyd-Jones, spiritual depression was often their experience. Yet these seasons mightily shaped their lives and pastoral leadership. Their understanding of this “dark night of the soul” was informed by their reading of Scripture. Experience does not determine our theology. Rather, theology is what interprets our experience. Right interpretation of your experiences only comes from a right interpretation of Scripture.
The poetry of the psalms and the prose of the epistles, the logical flow of their arguments and the “pragmatics” of the text, along with the authorial intent and the Spirit’s authority all help us understand what Scripture is teaching. (2) It was because of these seasons of life, not in spite of them, that these men grew as pastoral leaders. Not only did they grow as pastoral leaders, but they were able to pastorally lead others through their own dark seasons. (3) If we do not have a faithful exegesis and hermeneutic of Scripture then we will misinterpret these seasons for ourselves and for others.
Faithful Bible Reading Produces Faithful Pastoral Answers
Time and again pastors are asked to provide their insight into what Scripture teaches on a particular topic. If the pastor does not have an accurate hermeneutic then the people will not have an accurate answer. Pastoral leadership and care builds upon the foundation of knowing how to read the Bible.
Consider the recent debates on Side-B sexuality, women’s roles in the church, regulative principle of worship, biblical justice versus social justice, and some others. Each of these hinge upon this question: What does the Bible say and what does it mean for us today?
Faithful Bible Reading Produces Faithful Pastoral Ministry
How can apologetics argue for the faith if people do not know how to interpret the text of our faith? How can churches be planted and revitalized if they are not built upon the proper foundation of the word? How can pastors lead if they are not “people of the Book”? How can there be wise counselors if they are not wise with God’s word? How can there be accurate cultural exegesis if there is not accurate biblical exegesis?
Few have said it better than Milton Terry,
The rank and importance of Biblical Hermeneutics among the various studies embraced in Theological Encyclopedia and Methodology is apparent from the fundamental relation which it sustains to them all. For the Scripture revelation is itself essentially the centre and substance of all theological science. It contains the clearest and fullest exhibition of the person and character of God, and of the spiritual needs and possibilities of man. A sound and trustworthy interpretation of the scripture records, therefore, is the root and basis of all revealed theology. Without it Systematic Theology, or Dogmatics, could not be legitimately constructed, and would, in fact, be essentially impossible. For the doctrines of revelation can only be learned from a correct understanding of the oracles of God… The great work of the Christian ministry is to preach the word; and that most important labour cannot be effectually done without a thorough knowledge of the Scriptures and skill in the interpretation and application of the same. Personal piety and practical godliness are nourished by the study of this written word. (4)
Conclusion
God commands pastor-leaders to “preach the word” (2 Tim. 4:2), feed the people “with knowledge and understanding” (Jer. 3:15), “speak in Christ” rather than “peddle” the word of God (2 Cor. 2:17), and guard against false teaching (Jude 3-4). The leadership principles for the pastor are built upon the foundation of the principles of hermeneutics. This is why Milton Terry says, “For if ever the divinely appointed ministry of reconciliation accomplish the perfecting of the saints, and the building up of the body of Christ, so as to bring all to the attainment of the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God (Eph. iv, 12, 13), it must be done by a correct interpretation and efficient use of the word of God.”
The Book of Church Order’s Preliminary Principles says, “All church power, whether exercised by the body in general, or by representation, is only ministerial and declarative since the Holy Scriptures are the only rule of faith and practice.” According to this principle, the church’s power rests upon its understanding of the Holy Scriptures. Therefore, church power can only be as pure as its principles of hermeneutics.
(1) Luther, Martin and Ewald M. Plass, What Luther Says: A Practical in-Home Anthology for the Active Christian (Concordia Pub. House, 1959), 61.
(2) Abraham Kuruvilla says that “pragmatics” mean, “What the authors do with what they say.” Kuruvilla, Abraham. Privilege Text!: A Theological Hermeneutic for Preaching (Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2013), 48.
(3) As one peruses through the pastoral letters of Martin Luther and John Newton, they can witness the skill, wit, and discernment of the person’s condition and the needed spiritual prescription.
(4) Terry, Milton S., Biblical Hermeneutics: A Treatise on the Interpretation of the Old and New Testaments (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 1999), 21-22.