1) Don’t take verses out of
their context: A verse taken out of context is pretext.
2) Don’t allegorize or overly spiritualize
verses: When the plain sense of a passage makes common sense, seek no other
sense.
3) Don’t cherry pick verses:
Consider all related passages as a topical whole.
4) Don’t establish doctrine on
the wrong book: “God ... has in these last days spoken to us by His Son…” (Heb.
1:1-2). The New Testament... God’s new will, is the primary roadmap for New Covenant
believers.
The Apostle
Peter called people who “twist” the scriptures “untaught and unstable” and said
it would lead “to their own destruction.” We “twist” scripture when we:
*Take a verse
out of its context to impose a different meaning.
*Allegorize/Spiritualize
a verse to impose an unintended meaning.
*Cherry pick
verses to support our “pet” meaning, ignoring related verses which don’t.
*Use Old
Covenant Law and historical passages to establish New Covenant truth.
“Be diligent to
present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed,
rightly dividing the word of truth: God commands the diligent study of His
Word, that we “work” at “rightly dividing”, interpreting, “the word of truth.” Interpretative tools will be of little help
if we don’t diligently study God’s word. Truth, the tenets and precepts of our
faith, is revealed by the Holy Spirit who organizes the word we have
assimilated into meaningful doctrines... sets of beliefs that define our life
in Christ. And, the Apostle Paul established three as the minimum number
of substantiating verses necessary to establish a doctrinal truth, three verses
correctly interpreted that is.
Without assimilation of God’s word we become a rudderless ship adrift on
a sea of half-truths, vulnerable to every whim of the enemy. Whether we wrongly
interpret scripture ourselves, or receive wrongly interpreted “truth” from
others, the results are the same. The
enemy loves nothing better than drawing us off course with half-truths that
appease our carnal fleshly nature Self. This is why we are commanded to “work
out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” The study of God’s word must become a
committed lifestyle if we are to “fight the good fight of faith, lay
hold on eternal life.”
STUDY DILIGENTLY
INTERPRET RIGHTLY
PRESENT YOURSELF APPROVED TO GOD
BE UNASHAMED
FIGHT THE GOOD FIGHT OF
FAITH
LAY HOLD ON ETERNAL LIFE
(2 peter 3:16; 2 Tim. 2:15; 2 Cor. 13:1; 1 Tim. 6:12;
Phil. 2:12)
No comments:
Post a Comment