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What We Might Miss When We Discuss the Bible’s Context

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Writing for the Logos Talk blog, Michael Heiser makes an important point about the Bible’s context. When we study the Bible “in context,” we tend to focus on the literary context (surrounding passages) and historical context (what was going on in Israel’s culture at the time).

But another context is just as important, yet often overlooked: The socio-religious context. In other words, what was going on in the surrounding nations at the time? What did those nations believe about their gods and how to serve them, and how does the true God’s revelation to Israel relate or stand out?

The profound contextual overlaps between Israel and her pagan neighbors was a wise theological tactic on God’s part. When divergences in Israel’s theology appear in the text—and there are some dramatic, stark points of contrast—they scream for attention on the part of the ancient reader. Unlike the pagan deities, Israel’s God could not be cajoled like an idol; Yahweh could not be brought down to earth and tamed. Laws about sacrifices were set in specific covenant contexts, giving them a unique theological dimension. Yahweh would rather have faith and loyalty than sacrifice.

We can miss the punch of what the Bible says when we don’t grapple with how it would have sounded to the ancients in their social context. Heiser gives a number of examples of the similarities and differences that help our interpretation.

Check it out!

Why Did Jesus Rise From the Dead?

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No matter how you gather the essentials of the Christian faith, the resurrection of Jesus is on that list. Many scholars have written many pages on this topic, in no small part because the biblical authors give it such weight and importance.

James Emery (2007), Creative Commons License

Peter speaks about the resurrection prominently in his first sermon (Acts 2:24, 31–32). Paul writes that the resurrection “declared” that Jesus was the Son of God (Romans 1:4). Later in that same letter, we read that our justification is tied to Jesus’s resurrection (Romans 4:25) and that Jesus’s new life gives us newness of life (Romans 6:4). Paul considered the resurrection a central belief needed for salvation (Romans 10:9), so much so that if Jesus had not been raised from the dead, our faith is futile (1 Corinthians 15:17–19). Jesus is the “firstborn from the dead,” so those who believe in him will follow him in bodily resurrection (Colossians 1:18).

But what about the writers of the Gospels? These men who wrote first-hand accounts of the life of Jesus—what did they think of his resurrection? What did Jesus’s resurrection say about his work and his identity, and what did it mean for his followers?

Let the Gospel Writers Speak

Over the next six weeks, we’ll try to answer these questions here at Knowable Word. Peter and I (Ryan) will each be looking at two of the Gospel accounts of the resurrection and trying to understand the authors’ intentions.

We have published a series like this in the past on the feeding of the 5000. In that series, Peter discussed the themes of each Gospel before placing the feeding of the 5000 within the structure of each book. We will be referring back to those posts in this series on the resurrection, so I’ve collected links to them here for your reference: The Feeding of the 5000 according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Peter also wrote a summary article to tie that series together.

Against Harmonization

Because the resurrection of Jesus is essential to the gospel message, some Christians are eager to see the different accounts of this event reconciled. They want one, definitive story—a narrative timeline that weaves together the details offered by each of the original writers. This is called a harmonization of the Gospels.

While there is a place for understanding the chronology of this historical event, a harmonization is not what we are attempting. In fact, we are attempting just the opposite.

Each Gospel author wrote at a specific time to specific people for a specific purpose. Divinely inspired, these men made choices about what details and events and conversations to include and exclude. They aimed to persuade and teach their audience something specific about Jesus, but the Gospels are all different. This is one reason God has preserved four distinct Gospels for 2000 years; the context in which each author lived and into which each author wrote makes each perspective unique and important. We hear slightly different messages about Jesus in each Gospel. In our series, we hope to connect each author’s account of the resurrection with his purpose in writing his book.

How to Prepare

We hope you’ll enjoy this series, and as you find it valuable we hope you’ll share it with your friends at church and around the internet. We plan to model good Bible study practices and focus our attention on Jesus.

You can prepare for our future articles by reading and studying the relevant passages: Matthew 28:1–10, Mark 16:1–8, Luke 24:1–12, and John 20:1–18. As you read, consider what the writer was intending to communicate through his account of the resurrection. That intention will likely align with the writer’s purpose in writing his Gospel.

Finally, here’s one note regarding observation. Technically, none of the Gospel authors wrote an account of the resurrection. That miracle happened behind the stone, inside the tomb. The Gospels record the discovery of the resurrection!

Over the next six weeks, let’s read the text carefully and discover why Jesus rose from the dead.

Beware the Instagram Bible

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Jen Wilkin makes a critical point about context and reading, when she writes of “The Instagram Bible” at her blog. Here is a taste:

Beware the Instagram Bible, my daughters – those filtered frames festooned with feathered verses, adorned in all manner of loops and tails, bedecked with blossoms, saturated with sunsets, culled and curated just for you.

Beware lest it become for you your source of daily bread. It is telling a partial truth.

I saw in my vision by night, and behold, I dreamed of a world in which every copy of the Bible was gone, except those portions we had preserved on Instagram. Consider this Bible, my daughters, if you will:

Its perfect squares are friend to the proverb, the promise, and the partial quote, leaving laws, lists, land-allotments, and long-stretching lessons to languish off-screen.

It comforts but rarely convicts.

It emotes but rarely exhorts.

It warms but rarely warns.

It promises but rarely prompts.

It moves but does not mortify.

It builds self-assurance but balks at self-examination.

It assembles an iconography whose artists, by spatial necessity, are constrained to choose

brevity over breadth,

inspiration over intellect,

devotion over doctrine.

Beware its conscribed canvas, where calligraphy conquers context.

Beware.

Click here to see the full post. And please take this to heart as you post verses, share verses, or even memorize verses. All such verses are but a nibble of a larger passage, a broader argument. If we don’t get that argument, we misuse the verse.

Check it out!

Who is The Servant of the Lord?

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Imagine driving by your child’s school and spotting a fire truck next to the building. If you recall the fire safety assembly scheduled for the day, you’ll look forward to hearing all about the brave firemen. But if you forget this event, you’ll view that truck in a different light.

Poghia (2006), public domain

Poghia (2006), public domain

In Bible study as in life, context matters. We’ve covered this topic before at Knowable Word. But with the popularity of word studies and the indiscriminate use of cross-references and search engines, we all could use a reminder.

The Servant of the Lord

In the book of Isaiah, interpreters often understand the term “Servant of the Lord” to refer to the Messiah. Beginning in chapter 42 and continuing through the end of the book, the prophet describes the coming Christ in sweeping terms—what he will be like, what he will do, why he must come and suffer. Isaiah 42:1 serves as a preamble:

Behold my servant, whom I uphold,
my chosen, in whom my soul delights;
I have put my Spirit upon him;
he will bring forth justice to the nations.

But read further in the chapter, and you might hear the proverbial record scratch when you hit Isaiah 42:18–20.

18 Hear, you deaf,
and look, you blind, that you may see!
19 Who is blind but my servant,
or deaf as my messenger whom I send?
Who is blind as my dedicated one,
or blind as the servant of the Lord?
20 He sees many things, but does not observe them;
his ears are open, but he does not hear. (Isaiah 42:18–20)

Say what?

Are we reading here that the Messiah is the chief example of one who is blind and ignorant of God’s word? How do we explain this? It doesn’t match what we know of—or what we need from—the Savior.

The Servant Israel

When we read further in Isaiah 42, we see the last half of the chapter addresses God’s people and their failure to respond to God. We see the people in caves and prisons in Is 42:22. Isaiah writes about Jacob and Israel in Isa 42:24, explaining that God “gave up Jacob to the looter” because they weren’t willing to walk in his ways. God brought drastic measures (battle and fire) against them but they “did not take it to heart” (Isa 42:25).

God referred to Israel as his servant (twice!) in Isa 41:8–10, so if you’ve read chapter 42 in context, the reference to the blind servant of the Lord makes a bit more sense. Israel is God’s servant.

So here’s the better question: why should “servant” in Isa 42:1 not refer to Israel? If Israel is God’s servant both in Isa 41:8 and Isa 42:19, why should the reference in Isa 42:1 be different?

A Better Servant

Our understanding of the “servant of the Lord” as the Messiah is sharpened and filled out in later chapters of Isaiah. But there’s an important lesson about salvation in chapter 42.

When God calls attention to his servant in Isa 42:1–4, he has big plans in mind. This servant “will bring forth justice to the nations.” The word “justice” appears three times in those four verses.

Much of Isaiah 42:5–17 describes God’s involvement in this justice mission. He will hold the servant by the hand (Isa 42:6). God’s glory and his name are at stake (Isa 42:8). He will prevail like a warrior (Isa 42:13). He will shame those who trust in idols (Isa 42:17).

Thus, when we see Israel described as a blind and deaf servant in Isaiah 42:19, we naturally wonder—how can such a sinful servant accomplish God’s justice?

The logical answer is, he can’t. It will take a better, holier servant of the Lord to accomplish this momentous task. Considering the “servant of the Lord” in context shows us the need for a greater servant than the world had yet seen.

The Word Study Fallacy

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Writing for The Master’s Seminary, William Barrick explains the problem of over-occupation with word studies (scroll to page 19 of the doc):

Study of the words alone will not present us with a consistent interpretation or theology. This is one of the misleading aspects of theological dictionaries/wordbooks. One learns far more about obedience/disobedience or sacrifice and sin from the full statement of a passage like 1 Sam 15:22–23 than he will from word studies of key terms like “sacrifice,” “obey,” or “sin” in the text.

He explains briefly why word studies are easy and popular. But he shows with a few good examples that they simply will not do. We do far better to learn how to study passages than to study words.

Check it out!

Best Advice: Never Read a Bible Verse

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Writing at the Stand to Reason blog, Greg Koukl explains what he believes to be the most important skill for Bible-believing Christians:

If there was one bit of wisdom, one rule of thumb, one single skill I could impart, one useful tip I could leave that would serve you well the rest of your life, what would it be? What is the single most important practical skill I’ve ever learned as a Christian?

Here it is: Never read a Bible verse. That’s right, never read a Bible verse. Instead, always read a paragraph at least.

Koukl goes on to explain a simple method for clarifying the meaning of any verse: paraphrase it in your own words, then read the surrounding paragraph with the inserted paraphrase. Demonstrating this method, Koukl debunks popular but false readings of quotable verses:

  • John 1:3 – “Apart from him” cannot mean “With the exception of Jesus.”
  • Colossians 3:15 – “Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts” cannot mean “Let feelings of peacefulness in your heart be the judge about God’s individual will for your life.”
  • John 12:32 – “If I be lifted up from the earth” cannot mean “If I be exalted before the people.”
  • John 10:27 – “My sheep hear my voice” cannot mean “Mature Christians have the ability to sense My personal direction for their lives and obey it.”

Koukl’s great article will challenge you never to read a Bible verse apart from the paragraph surrounding it. And I highly recommend this practice.

Check it out!

HT: Justin Taylor

Don’t Neglect the Lesser-Known Commands of God

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I spend most of my time on this blog focusing on the main points of passages. I’ve said we should fight for them and move our study groups toward them. I’ve even promised to follow this practice on point #2 of this welcome page. But in the interest of balance and completeness, I must take some time this day to highlight some of the lesser-known commands of God.

These commands are no less inspired than the biggies. Of course we should love God and love our neighbor; nobody denies this. But that’s not all God wants us to do! The problem with most churches today is that we’ve lost our commitment to God’s word, and we run afoul of God’s explicit will for our lives. And not only do we practice such things, but we also give hearty approval to those who flout these plain imperatives with a high hand. I’m speaking of all those supposed “Christians,” “pastors,” and “disciples” who ignore the clear and plain sense of commands such as:

  • “Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: ‘Drink, be drunk and vomit, fall and rise no more'” (Jer 25:27).
  • “Thus says the Lord God: ‘Set on the pot, set it on'” (Ezek 24:3).
  • “Go, take to yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom” (Hos 1:2).
  • “Come to Bethel, and transgress; to Gilgal, and multiply transgression” (Amos 4:4).
  • “You are to entice him, and you shall succeed; go out and do so” (1 Kings 22:22).

I mean, who really does these things? I wish I could join a truly faithful church, but I have yet to find one. And we can’t simply claim ignorance of the prophets, either. Jesus was just as clear:

  • “Leave the dead to bury their own dead” (Luke 9:60).
  • “Why were you looking for me?” (Luke 2:49).
  • “Go to the sea and cast a hook and take the first fish that comes up” (Matt 17:27).
  • “Take nothing for your journey” (Luke 9:3).

The Bible is full of imperatives that couldn’t be any clearer. I’d love to hear what other commands have impacted you over the years, so we can encourage one another to greater faithfulness.

And may this first day of April inspire a new season of fruitful Bible study for those among the chosen remnant. “If the Lord of hosts had not left us offspring, we would have been like Sodom and become like Gomorrah” (Rom 9:29).

What Did It Mean to Them?

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Last week, Tim Challies reflected on the “One Indispensable Rule” that must guide our interpretation and application of Scripture.

Proper understanding and interpretation is dependent on one indispensable rule: Before you ask, “What does it mean to us now?”, ask “What did it mean to them then?” In other words, before you attempt to apply the Bible to your life and circumstances, anchor it in the lives and circumstances of its original recipients. Application must be related to meaning.

Challies gives an example of a common error. In our efforts to get practical, we read verses apart from their context and arrive at applications the original audience never would have known. Sometimes our applications might still be good, but false teachers can use the same methodology to promote evil ends. It’s worth it to learn to read the Scriptures well!

Challies’s short article is well worth reading. Check it out!

Keep the Context Front and Center

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Last week, I read some amazing things in the New York Times:

The president’s announcement was the first official confirmation of his death.

“They were disappointed, frankly, that I didn’t have some breakthrough.”

Minutes earlier, she had fled there for safety as she called 911, telling the operator that her fiancé had thrown her on the bed and hit her in the face and head. She was two months pregnant.

Thousands of people attended hundreds of enrollment events around the country at public libraries, churches, shopping malls, community colleges, clinics, hospitals and other sites.

Are you amazed?

Enrique Burgos (2010), Creative Commons

Enrique Burgos (2010), Creative Commons

The Problem

Though all these quotes came from a single publication with a single editorial board, they also came from a variety of articles, written by different journalists, and spread out over a few days. Each article had a different topic, designed for a different column, reporting on a different sector of the news. But my selection of quotations doesn’t really mean anything to you without more information. You need the context for each one to make sense.

Do you read the Bible like this? Do you find a remarkable sentence or two here and there, memorize them, and base your hope on them? You don’t read anything else in this way. Not newspapers, novels, letters, emails, blogs or textbooks. Sure, sometimes you’ll scan. Other times you’ll highlight key statements that you want to remember. But you won’t limit your reading to isolated sentences.

Do you teach the Bible like this? Do you string together verse after verse to make a point? It’s fine to do so, as long as you’re not doing violence to what those verses meant in context (Paul does it in Romans 3:10-18, David does it in 1 Chronicles 16:7-36, and Jonah does it in Jonah 2:1-9). But Satan can quote isolated statements from the Bible in support of evil intentions (Matt 4:6). Plenty of folks today likewise excel at sampling Bible verses to mix some truth with catastrophic error.

The Challenge of Bible Studies

In a Bible study meeting, you may have 30-90 minutes to dive into a particular text. You’ll look at the details, ask many specific questions, and try to make particular applications. As you work on a small portion of text, how do you keep the big picture (the context) front and center? How do you prevent the group from moving through one isolated text to another, week after week, without ever fitting them together?

A Proposed Solution

These suggestions are not the only ones you could follow, but they summarize what I’ve found most helpful.

1. Do a good book overview

When leading a study through a book of the Bible, I always dedicate the first meeting to a book overview. This overview gives us clarity on the historical context: author, audience, occasion, and structure. But more importantly, it enables us to discuss the entire book’s main point. For example, in my church small group, we’re studying Romans. Our book overview led us to a pretty clear main point: Paul wants to preach the gospel to those who are in Rome (see Rom 1:15-17).

2. Remind the group of where you’ve been

Each week, I make sure to summarize the text’s argument over the last few chapters. This enables us to situate the present text within the book’s flow of thought. For example, our last study in Romans 3:9-20 came as the climax to Paul’s argument that began in Romans 1:18. Before tackling Rom 3:9-20, we briefly reviewed the section up to this point: God’s wrath is revealed against the immoral (Rom 1:18-32), God’s wrath is against the moral (Rom 2:1-16), God’s wrath is against the outwardly religious (Rom 2:17-3:8).

3. Make sure to grasp the passage’s main point

It’s worth it to fight for the main point. By definition, doing so enables you to focus on what God considers most important. Incidentally, it also helps you not to get lost in the sea of sub-points and minutiae that so easily commandeer your attention. As you keep main points front and center, you’ll decrease the likelihood of missing the context.

4. Connect each passage to the book’s main point

Every week, as we study a new section of Romans, we ask, “How does Paul preach the gospel (good news) in this passage?” The key here is to take the passage’s main point and show how it advances the book’s main point. Of course, in Romans 1:18-3:20, there is not much “good” news yet. We’ve had profitable discussions about why it’s so important to understand the extent of the bad news before the good news will seem truly good.

5. End with a book review

A book review is just like a book overview, except that it takes place at the end instead of the beginning. When you’ve completed examining all the book’s pieces, take time to put them back together. You may even need to revise your overview in light of what you saw as you dug deeper through the details. So I find it helpful to dedicate an entire meeting to reviewing what we learned from the book, both themes and applications. This review may solidify the lessons and help people to remember them when they return to this book in their personal study.

Conclusion

When you lead people in careful, contextual Bible study, you’ll be amazed to see that some of your favorite memory verses don’t actually mean what you once thought.

For example, in context, Romans 8:28 doesn’t mean that “all things” you could ever experience work together for the “good” you might hope for. No, Paul is saying specifically that all of “our present sufferings” (Rom 8:18-27) work together for that single good purpose which God predestined from the beginning: that we might be conformed to the image of his Son (Rom 8:29). Romans 8:28 offers not so much an alleviating comfort as a promise of crushing, suffocating pain — albeit a pain that will make you more beautiful for having gone through it.