Lesson 5) Interpret Scripture with Scripture

Principles for Interpreting Scripture in Context

Well, this is the last in our introductory class on hermeneutics, helping you to interpret God's Word. And as we look at this, we've already gone through four principles. The first and most important, context.

Read the passage in its context. Second, we looked at the difference between descriptive and prescriptive texts of scripture, and we need to find out what type of genre we're dealing with, what type of literature.

Is it describing something that happened, or is it giving an instruction? Third, we looked at the importance of interpreting the difficult passages by the easy. So we first start with easy to understand passages, then we look at the more difficult ones.

The fourth principle that we looked at is we need to be willing to question our presuppositions. Our systematic theologies, our experiences, they could be wrong, but the Word of God cannot be. So we want to make sure we're interpreting by that standard, by looking at the Word of God as supreme.

Interpreting Scripture with Scripture the Wrong Way

Now what we want to do now is a principle that many people talk about, and yet many people don't always understand, and it is the idea of interpreting scripture with scripture. What many people do, wrongly I might add, when we say interpreting scripture by scripture, is they will look at the way a word is used in many other passages of scripture, and say that therefore it must be used that way all the time.

For example, you might look at some people who would hold to an Arminian position, and they're going to take a look at Revelation chapter 20, and they're going to look at the way thousand year is used elsewhere in scripture.

Now I've heard this argument that many people should be looking at this and seeing that thousand years is used twice in the Old Testament, both figuratively, two times in 1st Peter, and some would argue figuratively.

Now the Arminians that I've heard will say it's always used figuratively. Well, not really, because actually in 1st Peter, he says a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years is like a day. He's comparing a literal day to a literal thousand years, and a literal thousand years to a literal day, but it is an illustration.

So I would actually argue that one's not as so clearly figurative. But then you come to Revelation 20, and they would say, well, see, because it's used this way elsewhere, it must be figurative. Now, not all Arminians would argue that way.

Some do. That would be a bad way of arguing, because the question you have to ask is, what does this mean in this context first? You first start with the immediate context, and look at how that word's used in that immediate context before jumping all over the Bible to see how that word's used elsewhere.

It may not have the same meaning. The context of the immediate passage is what informs that understanding. So you always have to start by interpreting the passage you're dealing with in its context, and then go to where the words used elsewhere in that context.

Comparing Ephesians 2:8-9 and James 2

Another way of doing a comparison of Scripture with Scripture is the one that I used earlier in this course, and it is Ephesians 2 .8 .9, where it says, For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this not of your own doing.

It is a gift of God, not a result of works, lest any man should boast. And then we compare this to James chapter 2, verses 14 and following, where it says, What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith, but does not have works?

Can that faith save him? And then he gets into some description, and then he says in verse 18, But someone will say, But you have faith, and I have works. Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works.

And he ends up ending it in verse 26, For the body apart from the Spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead. Now if we compare the Ephesians passage and James passage, it looks different.

But again, when we look at context, we're comparing the easy-to-understand Ephesians by the harder-to-understand James. We're going to use all these principles here, and we compare scripture to scripture.

What we see is in verse 14, he's talking about, I already say I have faith, but I don't have works. This isn't talking regeneration like Ephesians is. This is talking sanctification, which happens after regeneration.

After we're saved, we should have works. So if you don't have any works, then maybe you're not saved. So this wraps up a quick introductory course that we offer on hermeneutics. If you want to get more, we have 20 classes, 20 50-minute classes on our YouTube channel.

You could just go to strivingforreturn .org, and you could see our Striving for Return Academy, our School of Biblical Hermeneutics, and we go into greater detail there. I hope that this is helpful, and I hope that you've learned, and I hope you will keep studying in more depth how to interpret the Bible, because hermeneutics is extremely important when we want to know what thus says the Lord.