God’s word is applicable in each generation, and surely there are ways to apply God’s word today that the original hearers would not have considered thousands of years ago. But the encouragement, the commands, the original intentions are the same.

It is a glorious task to search out God’s word. “It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings is to search things out” (Prov 25:2). When reading God’s word, the question, “What does this mean?” is a really good question. But I think that there is an even better, more fundamental, question to ask when reading the Bible. In order to understand what God’s word means, we first need to ask, “What is it that God’s word meant?”

It is a glorious task to search out God’s word. “It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings is to search things out” (Prov 25:2). When reading God’s word, the question, “What does this mean?” is a really good question. But I think that there is an even better, more fundamental, question to ask when reading the Bible. In order to understand what God’s word means, we first need to ask, “What is it that God’s word meant?”

We live in a time where people desperately try to fit God’s word into the current cultural moment. There is a desire to recreate God’s word into something more palatable for our refined, 21st century theological taste buds. We see this so clearly in the redefining of God’s design for marriage and gender. But this is an assault on the character of God. “For I the LORD do not change” (Mal 3:6). When God spoke, by the Holy Spirit and through the apostles and prophets, He meant something. And because God doesn’t change, what God meant then is what God means today.

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