Is it the Truth?

That is the question my pastor would always ask me whenever I spoke publicly to our congregation. It was his concern that those who would presume to be teachers of  God's people, be so acquainted with God's word that what they said was the truth, and nothing but the truth!

This concern for truth was engrained into me when I enrolled along with some other young men for a preaching course taught by our pastor at our church in 1992. We were to craft a sermon and deliver it to the rest of the group. My message was entitled, "How Then Should We Give?" My main point was that giving was a sacred duty for Christians and a measure of their spiritual maturity, so we had a spiritual obligation to give.

In my application, I concluded that since God's gift of salvation is offered us without the condition of our doing anything to deserve it, we should offer salvation likewise, we should give to the undeserving. I found support in a proof text from Matthew 5.42: "Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you." A prooftext is a verse taken out of its context to support an assertion.

In case my audience did not understand my point, I concluded with the application that if a drunk on the street corner asks you for money for more booze you have a sacred obligation to give it to him! I backed that up with a proof text from Matthew 7:1: "Judge not, lest ye be judged."

After coming to that conclusion, you may well imagine what my pastor's response was! Also, the group was somewhat aghast at my application, since our church was located downtown and one often passed by panhandlers on the way into the building.

My pastor had some questions for me. Is that the truth, Mike? Is it really true that we ought not to judge when it comes to  giving? Does the Scripture really teach that? Is it really true that Christians must give to anyone who asks them? Is that what Jesus was really saying?

These are very important questions to say the least. My simple reading of the text had led me to a rather strange conclusion. While it is true that giving is a spiritual discipline for Christians, if I had taken the time to research the rest of Scripture, I would have discovered that God loves a cheerful giver who gives voluntarily and not under obligation. (2 Corinthians 9:7)

So here I was standing before the group, preaching from the Bible and laying down an authoritative application that was simply wrong! Perhaps it was fine for me to do it, to empty my pockets to every passer-by who holds out his hand, but for me to preach that to our congregation and lay that burden on them as a matter of gospel truth was inappropriate.

In my naïve desire to read out of the text its proper application, I had read into the text something that was not there. I could not be faulted for bringing to the text a compassionate heart for the poor, an understanding about our duty to love our neighbors unconditionally, a spirit of extravagant generosity and a zealous desire to hear God's voice and obey it implicitly. However, I was wrong to discern that my Biblical interpretation was a universal principle and sacred obligation put on all Christians by their Lord. I believe there are universal truths in the Bible that require our acceptance and obedient application, but giving money every time someone asks was not one of them!

How did I get mixed up like this? What happened in my reading and thinking that led me to such a conclusion? Since I was so sincere, zealous and prayerful and thought I was following the leading of the Holy Spirit, how could I have gone so wrong? These are questions every believer must face at one point in their spiritual journey when they are confronted with the fact that they have not only erred in their interpretation of Scripture, but have also erred in its application.

Sincere believers will inevitably get it wrong when it comes to biblical interpretation as I did. Instead of giving up on it altogether, we ought to pick ourselves up from the dust of confusion and learn how to interpret the Bible better because it is an important responsibility of every Christian to "rightly handle the word of truth" (2 Timothy 2:15).

So, let me share with you what I have learned over the years concerning the interpretation of Scripture. I call this my ten lessons in Biblical Interpretation for Dummies.

I. Evangelicals believe that The Bible is the final authority  for faith and practice. (See National Association of Evangelicals Statement of Faith).

Everything needs to be judged by the standard of Scripture as found in the Christian Bible. In no way can we sit over top of Scripture and pass judgment on it, selecting passages that we approve of and ignoring others that we do not approve of. We must always sit under it and allow it to "read us" as we read it, otherwise we become the authority and not the Bible.  So we interpret our experience in the light of Scripture and not the other way around.

The reason it is our authority is that it is God's truth. That is, what Scripture says, God says. It is God's revelation of his mind and heart to humankind. It comes to us through a written text which is 'God breathed' as Pauls says in 2 Timothy 3:16-17.

All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.    -- ...   more »