“Oh, no! It’s time to leave for society and I didn’t get but a couple of minutes to look at the text. Well, at least we read it at the table.” Sound familiar? I am sure that I am not the only person who has said something like that when it was time for society. I have chosen to write about the subject of Bible study because it is a current and also constant problem in the church. I intend to address some of the problems, suggest solutions, explain the principles, and discuss helping tools in connection with Bible study. The last subject, tools, is particularly interesting in light of some aids that have recently become available.
I would like to begin with this question, Can we interpret the Scriptures ourselves? Can each of us understand the Scriptures without any outside help, without even our minister? Even to ask the question makes us somewhat uneasy. Why is that? The reason is that we are dealing with an aspect of our Christian life that is absolutely fundamental. We are dealing with the fact that we are Spirit filled children of God. We answer then “Indeed we can!” We can and must interpret the Bible ourselves.
Our ability to understand the Scriptures does not arise out of ourselves but belongs to Christ’s work in us by His Spirit. By nature we are blind to spiritual things and unable to understand the Word. It is true, of course, that the ungodly can study Scripture and come to a certain knowledge of it. But, he cannot come to true spiritual knowledge because his ears are deaf and his eyes blind to spiritual truth. If Christ has worked in us by His Spirit, we are given understanding. We are given eyes to see and ears to hear the things of the kingdom of God. For us the Word of God becomes a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path. This ability to interpret the Scriptures ourselves belongs to us in our office of all believers.
Rome tried to deny the ability to interpret the Scriptures to the laity. A man needed a priest to interpret the Scripture for him. The Scriptures were not written in the common language, the vernacular, but in Latin. The result was that the common people were Scripturally ignorant and illiterate. It is against this lie of Rome that Luther and the other Reformers fought with all their might. They emphasized the office of all believers. They translated the Scriptures into the everyday language of the people so that all the saints, providing they could read, had the Scripture to read and study for themselves.
We must not fool ourselves into thinking that the error of Rome is in the dusty past and has been left there. Even today we face that destructive error. The office of all believers is denied every time the clergy or an official church body makes a decision and the common people do not question or examine that decision in the light of Scripture. The office of all believers is denied every time a church supports a decision or stand it has taken with terms too ambiguous and argument too detailed for any but the most learned to understand. The office of all believers is denied every time, in society, a proficient leader claims deeper understanding (of Greek or Hebrew), without explaining it in layman’s terms, to support his particular interpretation of a text. It makes no difference if he is right or wrong. You say these do not sound like the errors of Rome? Look again! Rome said the layman could not and may not interpret the Scriptures at all. All of the examples given have the same basic problem. In all three the problem is not that it is said the layman cannot understand the Scriptures at all. But, in each the underlying notion is that the layman cannot really understand the Scriptures, that the layman is not in a place to question those who really understand what the Bible says. It seems to me that the interpretation of the scriptures is hardly nearer to the layman’s grasp than it was in the error of Rome. The reason is that in both cases the Scriptures are taken out of the hands of those who have not been trained and who do not possess the office of minister. It really makes no difference if the fault belongs to those who claim to have the deeper understanding or those who believe it is not their place to question those who have been trained. It makes no difference because in either case the office of all believers is denied.
To be continued.