Lesson 9: The Heart of Interpretation
Review
Primary Principle: The Bible demands that we apply it to our lives.
Unpacking the Principle
The Biblical Necessity
- God links interpretation and application (Matt 12:1–7).
- God intends faithful biblical interpretation to lead to application (2 Tim 3:16–17; James 1:22–25).
A Biblical Template
- Vertical (loving God)
- Commands: “How does this passage teach me what it means to love God?”
- Means: “How does this passage empower me to love God?”
- Motivations: “How does this passage motivate me to love God?”
- Anchors: “How does this passage anchor my love for God in truths about him?”
- Horizontal (loving neighbor)
- Church: God calls us to teach others in song, to give thanks always, and to submit to one other (Eph 5:18–21).
- Family: God calls wives to submit to their husbands, and husbands to sacrificially love their wives, after the pattern of Christ and the church. God also calls children to obey their parents, and fathers (and by implication mothers) to bring up their children in godliness (Eph 5:22–6:4).
- Work: If you are an employee, God calls you to work hard as one who ultimately serves Christ. If you are an employer, God calls you to supervise humbly and justly as a co-servant of Christ together with your employees (Eph 6:5–9).
- Government: God calls you to submit to governing authorities, honor them, and pay taxes (Rom 13:1–7; 1 Pet 2:13–17). At the same time, he calls us to live as citizens of his kingdom in a manner worthy of Christ (Mk 12:17; Phil 1:27; 1 Pet 2:9–12).
- Everyone: God calls you to do good to everyone, especially to fellow Christians (Gal 6:10) and to the poor and marginalized (Deut 10:17–18; Gal 2:10; 1 Tim 5:3; Jas 1:27).
The Biblical Balance
- Two dangers
- Mere moralism
- Airy abstraction
- How to fly safely: biblically faithful application shows you how you should live in Christ.
The Biblical Goal
- We interpret the Bible so that we will worship.
- We interpret the Bible so that others will worship.
In their helpful guide to biblical interpretation, J. Scott Duvall and J. Daniel Hays summarize the goal of interpretation succinctly and powerfully:
[God’s] ultimate goal in communicating with us is to transform our thinking and acting so that we conform to the image of his Son, Jesus Christ. When we come to the point of truly grasping God’s Word, we will find God’s Word grasping us. —J. Scott Duvall and J. Daniel Hays, Grasping God’s Word: A Hands-On Approach to Reading, Interpreting, and Applying the Bible, 236.
Have you experienced the powerful pull of God’s Word, taking you by the hand like a little child, gently drawing you out of sinful misery and into holy joy? We interpret the Bible not merely to grip the Bible but to be gripped by it. When God’s Word captivates us, it conforms us to the image of Jesus Christ.