Chapter 1: Rationale and Approach
The Bible is one book. It is composed of two clearly distinctive Testaments. But it has one message throughout. I believe that the Bible, opened in whatever place the reader may open it, reveals something of the eternal redemptive purposes of God in Jesus Christ. It is never vaguely or merely generally so. It is distinctively and specifically so. The Old Testament Scriptures are as certainly written to reveal God’s eternal redemptive purposes in Christ as the New Testament Scriptures are. G. Campbell Morgan suggests this clearly when he says the following in standing against Destructive Higher Criticism.
[T]hat revelation concerning God and man and morality and salvation that I have in Christ, I have in Christ in my whole Bible, and in the moment in which I find some part of that Bible being destroyed, as I follow the line of destruction through, I find finally it strikes at Christ who is at the heart of the Bible.[1]
Our second principle of interpretation is often the most neglected, and yet it is absolutely basic to proper understanding. Simply stated this principle is that the gospel of Jesus Christ is the key to the interpretation of the whole Bible. That is, Jesus Christ in his person and work gives the meaning to the whole Bible. Another more contemporary writer has much the same thing to say regarding the centrality of Christ in the whole of the Bible.
So the Bible presents a unity of God’s action for our salvation, first in the shadows of the Old Testament history and prophetic word, and then as the solid reality in Jesus Christ.[2]
I believe that the way to receive the greatest amount of benefit from the study of the Bible, therefore, lies in approaching any portion of the biblical revelation from a Christ-centered perspective. Everything in Scripture is to be seen as in some way revealing some particular aspect of the eternal redemptive purposes of God in Jesus Christ.
In order to carry this perspective into practical application it is helpful to adopt what may be described as a “Layers of Context” approach to the interpretation of the Bible.[3] What follows is a simple presentation of this method.
The only way to arrive at a valid understanding of the meaning and message of a book in the canon of Scripture is to approach it first of all in its context. But though this is a known principle of biblical hermeneutics[4], it is rarely taken to its full extent. The first level of context when studying any passage in the Bible is the context of the overall purpose for the Divine inspiration of the Bible itself. Until the Bible student has a genuine grasp of this principle he will struggle to arrive at the true context of any passage. As I have said, I take the position that the overall context for the Bible as a whole is that it is written for the sake of revealing the eternal redemptive purposes of God in Jesus Christ. The Bible student must bear this purpose in mind when approaching any section of the Bible, any book of the Bible, any chapter of the Bible, and so on. Failure to do so will most often result in a misunderstanding of the passage in question. In speaking of this level of context one writer had the following to say.
When we have got to the text or passage we want to deal with, and set about studying it in the context, we are at once brought face to face with the question of the scope of the context. Can we determine a scientific frontier, which will divide what for our purpose is to be our native land from foreign soil? If we study the paragraph in the Revised Version,[5] in which the words we are studying are found, we soon discover that it, too, has its context in the book of which it is a portion. If we set ourselves to study the book, we find that it is no isolated phenomenon, but part of a much wider whole; it fills a place and plays a part in the history of the revelation of God, of which the Scriptures are the literature. As Tennyson, in his familiar poem, links the flower in the crannied wall to God and man, so the complete context of any text or any passage is the Bible.[6]
The second level of context that must be taken into consideration is that of the Testament of the Bible into which the passage belongs, whether the Old, or the New Testament.
If it is the Old Testament the Bible student simply realizes that the passage in question will provide a portion of the “Seed Form” revelation of God’s eternal redemptive purposes in Christ. The greatest danger in arriving at an adequate understanding of passages in the Old Testament lies in the inclination to take the Old Testament as being “essentially Jewish.”[7] The best way to approach the dispensational aspect of Old Testament truth may be understood by means of a simple illustration. If the Bible is taken to be a portrait of the eternal redemptive purposes of God in Christ, then the Old Testament may be thought of as being a frame for one portion of the picture. Certainly, the framework for the Old Testament revelation of the eternal redemptive purposes of God in Christ is the nation of Israel. But, one must remember that Israel is merely the frame. If the observer becomes too occupied with the frame, he is likely to miss the true significance of the picture itself. Thus, instead of seeing the Old Testament as being “essentially Jewish,” the Bible student does well to see it as the revelation of God’s eternal redemptive purposes prior to the Incarnation, and not primarily as the record of God’s dealings with the nation of Israel.
If it is the New Testament, the Bible student will discern that the passage will supply some aspect of the “Fully-Developed” revelation of God’s eternal redemptive purposes in Christ. There is really little controversy to enter into in this matter, except for what may be the result of a too-dispensational approach to the Old Testament Scriptures, as previously suggested.
The third level of context the Bible student must concern himself with relates to the section of the Bible into which the book in question falls. Speaking of this level of context another writer has the following to say.
One of the best ways to grasp the structure of the New Testament is to perceive the writings in their group arrangements.[8]
There are quite evidently four major sections in each of the two Testaments. Each section plays its part in the overall purpose of revealing the eternal redemptive purposes of God in Jesus Christ.[9] And each section’s role in the overall biblical revelation is somewhat different from the other sections. The sections of the New Testament will be more closely scrutinized here.
Having ascertained with some satisfaction the particular focus of the section in question[10], the Bible student is ready to move to the fourth level of context: that of the book as a whole. What contribution does this book make that would be lacking if it were not included? What is the overall burning message of the book?
It is at this point that the Bible student is ready to begin to deal with the various sections and chapters of the book under consideration. Sometimes the chapters form natural sections for the book, but not always.
[1] G. Campbell Morgan. “The Final Authority of the Bible,” Truth Unchanged, Unchanging (Abingdon OX14 1BU: The Bible League, 1984), 94-95. [2] Graeme Goldsworthy, The Lion and the Lamb (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1984), 17. [3] For a more detailed look at the Layers of Context approach to Scripture see my A Basic Introduction to the Layers of Context Approach to Scripture. [4] J. Edwin Hartill, Principles of Biblical Hermeneutics, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1947), pp. 79-83. Hartill’s work is representative of the popular approach to the principle of context in biblical hermeneutics. [5] Here the quoted writer is suggesting the usage of the R. V. for the sake of referring to its separation of the biblical text into paragraphs. The various ways in which the Authorized Version indicates the paragraph divisions is certainly adequate without having to refer to the R. V. [6] Alfred E. Garvie, A Guide to Preachers (New York: George H. Doran Company, 1906), 37-38. [7] I discuss this prevalent offshoot of Dispensationalism in A Basic Introduction to the Layers of Context Approach to Scripture. [8] Joe Blair, Introducing the New Testament (Nashville: Broadman and Holman, 1994), 17. [9] For further details of this principle the reader is directed to Appendix A. [10] It is true that the context of some of the sections of the Bible is more easily discerned if the section is broken down into its evident subsections. An example of this would be the New Testament Epistles. This will be dealt with in more detail later.