The Challenge of Reading the Bible

 May 9, 2024

Thursday

Hebrews 4:12 (NASB 2020) ¹² For the word of God is living and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, even penetrating as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

The Bible is impossible to grasp without the intervention of the Holy Spirit. We read it with a host of predispositions. One of those is that we have been conditioned by the world to read it as it applies to the world. If we read this with our own minds alone, we are likely to make it apply to every trial and challenge we face. When we are sick, we read that Jesus bore all our infirmities and claim that we will be healed. When we are poor, we read that He will supply more than we can ask or think and start claiming money that will certainly roll in.

Our traditions also affect our interpretation of the Bible. If we grew up with a strict understanding of men's domination over women, we will interpret the Bible to say exactly that. We will point to the scripture where a wife is to subject herself to her husband and subtly apply that to every area of men and women. If we grew up speaking in tongues, we will make it equivalent to having the Holy Spirit within us. If we grew up thinking that everyone will get exactly the same reward when they get to heaven we will be hard pressed to make any sacrifices here on earth.

Then, there are the sins that we have accepted. If gossip and gluttony were accepted by our pastors and other leaders in the church, they will never be great sins. They will be past times that we indulge in with impunity. If we have been taught that all alcoholic drink is evil, we will condemn those who have a glass of wine with their dinner. We will even go so far as to prove that none of the wine that godly people drank in the Bible was alcoholic.

Of course one of the worst of our conditions is to believe that we are righteous when we strictly act in accordance with what we believe the Bible says. As the self righteous, we condemn others severely and do not consider our actions as cruel or unloving. We can be as mean as we want to be while using the Bible as a weapon to beat upon those who are below our level of righteousness.

But if the Bible is what it says it is, there should be times when it knocks us off of our feet. It should challenge our past so that we are changed into the likeness of Christ. It should sometimes be so convicting that we rush to confess and seek God's forgiveness. We should be like Josiah when the scripture is found and read. He tore his clothes because he realized that he nor others were doing as the Bible said.

Yes, this means that we just might need to confront our pasts. We must not let the past affect our interpretations of the Bible. We should let the Bible affect the sins of our pasts. We must let it change our practices rather than letting our practices change the interpretation of the Bible. This will be swimming upstream in any denomination that has such a set doctrine on secondary issues that it will condemn those who disagree. It may mean that some of those who call themselves mature Christians will find that they are not so mature.

Yet, this is necessary if the Bible ever acts like a two edged sword that cuts through all of what we have accepted to reveal what is true before the Lord. Again, that can't come from a human who simply reads his Bible. It comes from a committed follower of Christ who prays that the Holy Spirit will completely inhabit the understanding of the scripture before him.

This is the challenge of reading the Bible.