Reading the Bible Rightly: Three Basics of Biblical Interpretation

If you’ve ever been with a woodworker at a task, you’ll know the kind of care that is required with a sharp blade. The same is true of a surgeon laying out the instruments of surgery. The Word of God, Hebrews tells us, is like a sharp blade (4:12). It is all too possible to brandish it like a sort of whirling dervish, swinging it around recklessly, striking terror and causing untold damage. Instead, those who wield it are urged to do so cautiously and graciously, purposefully and kindly.

One key to this care is learning to read, study, and understand the Bible rightly. Of course, Bible interpreters grow better with time. We shouldn’t expect anyone to attain all at once the wisdom that years of wrestling with the Scriptures brings. Nevertheless, every Christian can and should be acquainted with the simple principles of biblical interpretation that will set them off on the right path.

One way of framing the right approach to understanding the Scriptures calls on three principles.

The Natural Sense

First, when we read the Bible, we should do so in the awareness of the text’s natural sense. In other words, the Bible should be read with a sense of clear-minded simplicity. God’s Word is not a mystery book where you have to “crack the code” before you can begin to understand it. The purpose of God’s revelation in Scripture is clarity, not confusion. God has given us a readily intelligible message, not a series of riddles and enigmas. 

To put it differently: The main things are the plain things, and the plain things are the main things. What is most important in the Bible is what’s most obvious as you read its pages. And while some statements, passages, and even whole narratives may be hard to understand and there are always deeper depths to plumb, you will never find anything that contradicts or supersedes the clear and persistent teaching of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

The purpose of God’s revelation in Scripture is clarity, not confusion. God has given us a readily intelligible message, not a series of riddles and enigmas.

When it comes to our reading the Bible together in congregations, one theologian has said wisely that what we should seek is “in essentials, unity; in nonessentials, liberty; in all things, charity.” In other words, what is plain from the natural sense of Scripture should lead to shared convictions, while what is unclear should not divide God’s people by strict regulations. That women should pray, for example, is a clear teaching of Scripture, an essential; whether they ought to wear head coverings while they do is less plain and so should be treated as nonessential—perhaps not unimportant, but certainly not indispensable to being counted a Christian in good standing with the church.

The Original Sense

Second, we ought to read the Bible with an eye to the text’s original sense: What were the authors, “carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:21), saying in the languages and cultural contexts in which their messages were first delivered and recorded? If the first principle is the principle of simplicity, the second is the principle of history.

The permanent message of Scripture may only be understood within the circumstances in which it was originally given. When we study 1 Corinthians, we labor hard and long to understand, as far as we can, the who, what, where, why, and how that drove Paul to write it as he did. That way, when we come to consider Cleveland, or Cambridge, or Cairo—or cities that begin with other letters for that matter!—we do so through our understanding of Corinth rather than simply launching off from our own presuppositions.

We might put this another way: The natural sense of Scripture is informed chiefly by its original intent, not by what occurs most readily to our minds. Reading the Bible involves imagining, based on evidence and sound reasoning, the circumstances of other people in another place and then drawing a line of application from those circumstances to our own. So we don’t twist the Bible’s words to mean what they don’t, either by unnecessarily complicating them or by failing to consider them altogether. The task that falls to us in our studies is to bring out what is there, not to stick in what we think should be there. 

The General Sense

Third and finally, we ought to read the Bible with an eye to the text’s general sense. This is the principle of harmony. In other words, we read each verse within the context of its passage, each passage within the context of its book, each book within the context of the Old or New Testament, and Old and New Testament alike in light of each other.

The task that falls to us in our studies is to bring out what is there, not to stick in what we think should be there.

If God is the author of all the Scriptures, then we should expect the Scriptures to speak with a consistent voice. This doesn’t mean there won’t be variations in language and expression and purpose between the human authors. Poetry, after all, uses different tools from those of narrative, just as the apostles James and Paul wrote of the same Gospel from different points of view. But through them all, God is telling a single, consistent story. The Bible is God’s symphony, and the right reading of any one part—in addition to being plain and historically grounded—will harmonize with the whole.

The way the Protestant Reformers put this is that Scripture interprets Scripture. When it is unclear to us what a passage of Scripture means, the first and best place to look for an answer is within the pages of Scripture itself. Certainly, questions will arise: How does a New Testament passage honor and fulfill the Old? How does an Old Testament passage anticipate the New? How is one command to be understood in light of another? Such an approach requires patience and wisdom as we seek to “rightly [handle] the word of truth.” God’s directive, however, is clear: “Do your best” (2 Tim. 2:15). By His grace, He can enable us to increase in our obedience to it.

Be Diligent!

“This is difficult work!” someone may say—and, of course, it is. To be a student of the Word of God demands consistent diligence. Nobody ever became a Bible scholar on one sermon a week. Nobody ever became agile with the sword of the Spirit simply by listening to somebody talk about it. And nobody will ever become useful with the Scriptures without a real desire to know God’s Word.

Even so, the promise of God is that those who study His Word diligently and carefully will find their labors rewarded as His Spirit opens the Scriptures to them. “All Scripture,” Paul reminds us, “is breathed out 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” (2 Tim. 3:16–17). That reward is well worth the effort we take to understand the Scriptures rightly.

This article was adapted from the sermon “The Soldier’s Weapons” by Alistair Begg.