God isn’t hiding anything from us, but the battle, the work, to dig into His Word is part of the process of knowing Him and His truth. If we attempt to know Him, but aren’t going to take the time to dig for the truth then our interpretation of scripture will not be very deep and we take the chance of misinterpreting scripture to the detriment of our walk before the Lord.

3 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, 4 who gave Himself for our sins so that He might rescue us from this present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, 5 to whom be the glory forevermore. Amen. Galatians 1:3-5 (NASB)

Much of the doctrinal confusion in the “Church” is directly attributable to attempts to understand scripture without proper study. It is fine to read the Bible and find joy in God’s truths. The Holy Spirit can and does reveal those truths to our hearts as we read and study His Word. However, the fact that there are huge doctrinal disagreements in the “Church” can be quite disconcerting to those who seek only to live for the glory of God by obeying Him in all things. If some teach that a passage in scripture really means one thing while others teach something very different then we have the makings of a paradox if our understanding of doctrine and scripture is based entirely within human reason.

Why are there such huge doctrinal differences between teachers of the Word? Could it be that many of the points of contention that cause Christians to become separate are not critical to the spread of the gospel of Jesus Christ? That may be the case in some areas of doctrine, but there are also very many teachings within the visible Church that are not based on proper Biblical exegesis. These teachings are not biblical and lead many professing Christians into darkness and away from the Light.

One of the first things I was taught when I was studying how to study the Bible was the absolute necessity of keeping scripture in proper context. When studying a verse, keep it in the context of the paragraph, which is kept in the context of the passage, which is kept in context of the chapter, which is kept in the context of the book being studied. We look at the Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How of the book being studied. Who wrote it? Who was it primarily written to? Why was it written? Interpretation of passages is not allowed to be based upon conjecture within Human reason. Instead, we look at other passages by the same author about the same subject. Then we look at other passages in scripture about the same subject. We must allow scripture to interpret scripture. Then we can dig into the grammar. We look up the word definitions in the original language. We look at the verb and participle structure. When we have a passage that is still hard to understand after all of that then we look for the same, or at least similar, passages where the words are strung together the same way. We put that passage in context to see what it says. This is how we do real Bible study. When we do this faithfully and prayerfully, the Treasure of God’s truth is revealed to our hearts.

God isn’t hiding anything from us, but the battle, the work, to dig into His Word is part of the process of knowing Him and His truth. If we attempt to know Him, but aren’t going to take the time to dig for the truth then our interpretation of scripture will not be very deep and we take the chance of misinterpreting scripture to the detriment of our walk before the Lord.

I once received a comment on a post I wrote years earlier dealing with the passage from the book of James where he tells us, “Faith without works is dead.” The writer of the comment accused me of not understanding what a works based theology really was. He took up for the Pharisees. He said that their theology was not “works based.” Of course, Jesus very clearly told the Pharisees that their legalism was keeping them in the dark and that they did not know the Father. We know God by faith and serve Him by doing good works in obedience to His commands. Our living and saving faith will always produce good works such as helping the poor and sharing our faith.

Look at the passage I placed at the top of this post. In it we read that Jesus, “gave Himself for our sins so that He might rescue us from this present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father.” What is wrong with professing Christians who love the world?

15 Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 1 John 2:15 (NASB)

From these passages we know that Jesus came to deliver us from the present evil age. (Galatians 1) The word translated “rescue” from the Greek means to pluck out, tear out, or deliver. The Greek grammar structure of this passage tells us that our “rescue” or “deliverance” was a once and done type of action. Jesus’ death on the cross was done once and it was sufficient to save “us” from the penalty for our sins. However, His sacrifice also delivered us from the present evil age. This is what John meant in 1 John 2:15 in that we are not to love what Jesus died to deliver us from.

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