Interpreting the Bible Correctly

CONTEXT, CONTEXT, CONTEXT.

How this word has impacted the way that I not only read the Bible, but also study it.  Now many of you may not have had the opportunity or inclination to take a course in Hermeneutics (Interpreting the Bible).  I suppose this course could be boring if you get a boring instructor.  The class I took was not boring at all.  Between his lectures and our own discussions, I gained a lot of insight into the correct way to go about studying the Bible.

In order to discover what a passage or verse is intended to communicate, it is important to begin with the proper context.  Let me share some simple steps to get you started.  The first context to look at is the historical context.  What was happening to the author, the church, or nation or world that the passage is speaking to?  There is also the geographical context.  This is looking at the place or places that are mentioned in the passage.  Finally, there is the literary context.  This is about how the passage your reading or studying fits in with the whole of the letter, narrative, or gospel that you’re focused upon. 

All of these help you to come to the first conclusion of what is called “Sender’s Intended Meaning” (SIM).  What did the passage written mean to those it was written to.  All Scripture was written for us, but not everything in Scripture was written to us.  For example, Galatians in the New Testament was written to the churches in and around the region of Galatia.  They had a different set of needs than say the church in Thessolonica (1 &2 Thessalonians).  There are many great tools on-line to help with discovering the various contexts.  I have some of them in my Links section of this site.  There are also some very good study Bible’s like the NIV Study Bible that will be a great help as well.

After you have discovered the SIM, then you can see if there are modern applications for you that are in line with what you have discovered.  Any good Bible interpretation begins with the SIM, and branches out from there.  This is not meant to be a full post on interpreting the Bible correctly, but to simply give you some tools to get started. 

I believe it is important for every Christ follower to know how to interpret the Bible in context, so they will not fall prey to false teachers that are so rampant in pulpits and TV today.

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