God Says What He Means And Means What He Says

I often speak with people who shy away from engaging with the great theologians of history. Our own limitations as a lightweight theologian can leave us intimidated and hiding in the shadows of the assumption that the greater the theologian is, the harder they will be to understand. It is good to be reminded and encouraged with the fact that a theologian’s greatness often lies in his ability to communicate the most profound of truths in the most accessible of ways. How much more so is the greatness of God’s written revelation demonstrated in the clarity of His Words and the way He has arranged those Words (the perspicuity of Scripture):

For this commandment that I command you today is not too hard for you, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, that you should say, 'Who will ascend to heaven for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?' Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, 'Who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?' But the word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it. (Deuteronomy 30:11-14) 


The law of the LORD is perfect, reviving the soul; the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple; the precepts of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes; the fear of the LORD is clean, enduring forever; the rules of the LORD are true, and righteous altogether. (Psalm 19:7-9 ) 


Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. (Psalm 119:105) 


But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work. (2 Timothy 3:14-17) 

Grammatical analysis is important because God has communicated through words that are structured in a way to convey a message. If, as our doctrine statements love to profess, we believe that the Bible is verbally inspired then it follows that all words and sentences in the Bible are there for a purpose. Grammatical interpretation is the only form of biblical interpretation that honors verbal inspiration because it is the only response consistent with the thought that God has clearly spoken to us in His Word via the words He spoke and the way in which He arranged those words. Roy Zuck clarifies this important point when he says:

Thoughts are expressed through words, and words are the building blocks of sentences. Therefore to determine God’s thoughts we need to study His words and how they are associated in sentences. If we neglect the meanings of words and how they are used, we have no way of knowing whose interpretations are correct. The assertion, “You can make the Bible mean anything you want it to mean,” is true only if grammatical interpretation is ignored. 

Matt Waymeyer adds:

For this reason, in order to determine the divinely intended meaning of Scripture, the interpreter must be careful to analyze the grammar of any given passage according to the normal grammatical use of that language at the time the passage was written. 

Waymeyer’s point about the use of language at the time of writing is dangerous to ignore. Words and phrases adopt different meanings in different eras and different settings. The word “wicked”, as found in Scripture, carries an entirely different connotation to the guy in the saggy pants expressing his delight at the excellence of his latest skateboard maneuver. And how many people in the present day would use the word “gay” to describe how happy they are?

Analyzing the grammar of a passage involves recognizing the various parts of speech that comprise the text and how they interact with each other. What follows is a basic component list of the parts of speech that make up the grammar of a text:

1. Nouns – these appear as a person, place, or thing. The significance of nouns is based upon the role they play in a passage. At the most basic level a noun will either take on the role of a subject or an object. A subject performs an action whereas an object is the recipient of that action.

2. Pronouns – these act as the generic substitute for a noun that appears elsewhere in the context. For example the word “him” can be used rather than repeating the corresponding masculine name that has already been mentioned.

3. Verbs – these describe an action or a state of being. The significance of verbs are seen in their tense (past, present, or future), mood (statement of fact or expression of command), and voice (active or passive).

4. Adjectives – these are words that describe a noun by ascribing certain qualities to it. They usually answer the questions: Which one? What kind? How many? How much?

5. Adverbs – these describe verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs.

6. Prepositions – these are words that connect nouns or pronouns to other words in the sentence and show how they relate to each other.

7. Conjunctions – these words, or groups of words, are the connectors between one group of words and another group of words. The meaning of the entire New Testament hinges on how the conjunctions join the various pieces of text together. Locating and identifying conjunctions is integral in the interpretation and exegesis of any given text. If we see a “therefore” we need to know what it is there for.

From these basic components the grammatical structure can be organized into larger units called phrases and clauses. Phrases are groups of words that function together but lack a subject and a verb. Clauses, on the other hand, are groups of words that do contain a subject and a verb. Once the phrases and clauses have been identified along with the conjunctions that connect them, the interpreter is ready to “diagram” the passage by assembling these components into a structure that allows him to see the relationship between these components. Observed carefully, the interpreter will be able to capture the biblical author’s flow of thought in how these components combine and fit together. It is not rocket science but it is hard work. And this hard work is necessary if we revere the Scriptures in the way our confessions say we do! Because words have meaning. And God says what He means and means what He says!

Hazards On The Hermeneutical Highway

There are three major categories of mishandling Scripture:

1. Mis-interpretation - ascribing the wrong meaning to a passage. This is the most disastrous because it involves getting the interpretation completely wrong.
2. Sub-interpretation - failing to ascertain the full meaning of a passage. Nothing erroneous is said in this scenario but it does involve erring on the side of too little information, especially if an important point is missed.
3. Super-interpretation - attributing more to a passage than actually exists. This is the most dangerous because it involves a mixture of correct interpretation with some fantasy elements. We need to be extra careful with this because people often have a tendency to lower their discernment radar if the interpreter starts out soundly before veering into heresy land.

The most common hermeneutical problems in modern day evangelical churches can be clearly seen via a simple perusal of the surrounding text. One classic example of this would be in Matthew 18:

Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them." (Matthew 18:15-20 ESV)

“When two or three gather in God’s Name He is there among us. Whatever we bind and loose on earth shall be bound and loosed in heaven.” This was a very popular saying in the Pentecostal church that I attended for ten years. I would have heard this quoted hundreds of times and almost always at every prayer meeting. I don’t think it is entirely incorrect to believe that God is among us when we gather in His Name, but it is amazing that, considering the number of times this verse was quoted, I never heard it in its context. If we start just three verses earlier the context becomes very clear even to the lightweight theologian:

If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them." (Matthew 18:15-20 ESV)

What is the context here? Church discipline! Church discipline is the true Christian’s friend and the false Christian’s reality check. It restores the fallen brother and removes the false convert. God, in His kindness, delays His wrath, giving lost sinners time to repent. In this time when God restrains His wrath (that will come one day) He has given the church the authority to deal with unrepentant sin in the congregation. Paul teaches in 1 Corinthians 5 that God deals with those in the world and the church deals with those inside church. And sometimes the church casts people out into the world to protect the believers and in the trust that God will now deal with them. And here God tells us that He is with church leaders when they practice church discipline in accordance with Matthew 18:15-17.

The good news for the layman wrestling with alarm bells every time he hears his pastor preach in “mega-church suburbia” is that most hermeneutical errors fall into the same category as the example above. A plain reading of the surrounding text usually detects the common error of simply ignoring the context of an easily understandable passage.

But wait there’s more! There are other hazards that regularly appear on the narrow hermeneutical highway. The popular phrase “my life verse” is the description many people give to a Bible verse that they like and then personalize in application to themselves. And the Behemoth of modern day “life verses” would have to be Jeremiah 29:11.



This may be therapeutic to our self esteem but is it a reflection of biblical truth applied personally? Reading this verse in its context and wider context we learn that this is a part of a particular message, to a particular people, at a particular time, in a particular situation. What was the situation of Jeremiah 29:11?

Israel had been taken by the Babylonians into captivity. The Temple in Jerusalem was in ruins and the king had had his eyes cut out. The glory of Israel as a nation was finished. But in the midst of this terrible situation – God speaks:

4 "Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: 5 Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. 6 Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. 7 But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. 8 For thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: Do not let your prophets and your diviners who are among you deceive you, and do not listen to the dreams that they dream, 9 for it is a lie that they are prophesying to you in my name; I did not send them, declares the LORD. 10 "For thus says the LORD: When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. 11 For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. 12 Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. 13 You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. 14 I will be found by you, declares the LORD, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, declares the LORD, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile. 15 "Because you have said, 'The LORD has raised up prophets for us in Babylon,' 16 thus says the LORD concerning the king who sits on the throne of David, and concerning all the people who dwell in this city, your kinsmen who did not go out with you into exile: 17 'Thus says the LORD of hosts, behold, I am sending on them sword, famine, and pestilence, and I will make them like vile figs that are so rotten they cannot be eaten. 18 I will pursue them with sword, famine, and pestilence, and will make them a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth, to be a curse, a terror, a hissing, and a reproach among all the nations where I have driven them, (Jeremiah 29:4-18 emphasis mine)

It would be possible to spend several lessons on this passage alone but for the sake of brevity I will give just four points to consider:

1. Why do people think they can claim verse 11 as their own "life verse" but decide that verses 17 and 18 do not apply to them?
2. When God speaks in verse 11 remember that verse 4 shows us that He has His foot on their neck while He is saying it.
3. The people receiving the promise in verse 11 will not even live to see its fulfillment (it will take 70 years).
4. The reason Israel was in Babylonian slavery was because they had spent their time listening to prophets who told them things they liked to hear.

It is foolish to read Jeremiah 29:11 as a personal message from God to us as individuals. But there is something far greater that we learn from this story in its true context - that God does not abandon His people! We need to beware of this seductive trap in personalizing verses that do not necessarily apply to us.

Another hazard that is more difficult to detect is that of reading the meaning of one passage into another. This practice is rampant in the field of eschatology as different camps try to make the entire Canon fit within their apocalyptic parameters. While the practice of using explicit passages to help interpret unclear passages of Scripture can have validity, it must be done so only when there is a clearly defined connection between the two.

This leads into another more sophisticated hazard, that of reading one’s theological preferences into a passage of Scripture. Professor Matt Waymeyer (my Hermeneutics lecturer at The master's Seminary) readily identifies two ways of reading a theological system into a passage:

First, when an interpreter finds a discrepancy between his theological beliefs and a given passage of Scripture, he may be tempted to twist that passage to fit his theology rather than let his theology be corrected – or at least refined – by Scripture. Secondly, sometimes an interpreter will simply read more into a given passage than is actually there in the text itself. In this case, his theology may be true and biblical, but it is not taught in the passage under consideration. Both are examples of eisegesis.

When Waymeyer refers to “eisegesis”, he is talking about the precise opposite of exegesis. Exegesis is the extraction of meaning out of a text while eisegesis involves imposing one’s meaning onto the text. I think it is safe to say that the prosperity preacher who equates the donkey Jesus rode on with the contemporary equivalent of a Ferrari is not practicing exegesis!

Another ever-present danger on the hermeneutical highway is that of our own personal experiences. What we feel and sense does not necessarily define God’s reality and we need to be aware of that when reading a passage that we think can be defined in terms of what we have previously experienced. Just because I am physically healthy and materially wealthy does not mean that 3 John 2 is an all encompassing doctrinal statement on God’s will for the health and wealth of every Christian. Our experiences must be defined and understood through the lens of Scripture and not the other way around.

Hermeneutics - A Scary Name For A Good Friend

Hermeneutics is a word that does not need to intimidate the regular churchgoer. I have often heard people excuse their biblical ignorance by making the claim that they are “not a theologian”. The truth of the matter is that everyone is a theologian. The real question is whether you are a good one or a bad one. The same goes for hermeneutics, we all do it when we read the Bible. The question is whether we practice good hermeneutics or bad hermeneutics.

Hermeneutics is technically defined as the science and art of biblical interpretation. Henry Virkler says that:

Hermeneutics is considered a science because it has rules and these rules can be classified into an orderly system. It is considered an art because communication is flexible, and therefore a mechanical and rigid application of rules will sometimes distort the true meaning of communication. To be a good interpreter one must learn the rules of hermeneutics as well as the art of applying those rules.

It is true that there is a realm of hermeneutics that is specialized and requires greater interpretive skill in dealing with difficult passages and specific genres. But there is also a general set of hermeneutical principles that apply to all of Scripture and can be readily embraced by the average layman. In fact, most modern interpretive errors in mainstream evangelicalism can be easily detected (and solved) by a plain reading of the text and its surrounding verses.

It is also important to make a clear distinction between hermeneutics and exegesis when we make the leap from interpreting a text to explaining that text. Professor Matt Waymeyer explains this distinction when he describes hermeneutics as:

The set of underlying principles which guide the process of arriving at an accurate interpretation of the Word of God.

Waymeyer then goes on to contrast this with exegesis which he defines as:

The application of those principles in which the interpreter actually draws out of the text the meaning of Scripture.

In short, hermeneutics is the principles of interpretation while exegesis is the practice of interpretation. Since all Christians are called to be heralds of the gospel then all Christians are called to practice a certain degree of hermeneutics in order to understand this gospel rightly, and all Christians are called to practice a certain degree of exegesis in order to proclaim this gospel rightly.

In the book of Acts we see an encounter between Philip and an Ethiopian where Philip’s hermeneutical skills are called upon to bring illumination to the Ethiopian who desires understanding:

And there was an Ethiopian, a eunuch, a court official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who was in charge of all her treasure. He had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning, seated in his chariot, and he was reading the prophet Isaiah. And the Spirit said to Philip, “Go over and join this chariot.” So Philip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?” And he said, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him. Now the passage of the Scripture that he was reading was this: “Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter
and like a lamb before its shearer is silent, so he opens not his mouth. In his humiliation justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation? For his life is taken away from the earth.” And the eunuch said to Philip, “About whom, I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?” Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning with this Scripture he told him the good news about Jesus. (Acts 8:27-35 ESV emphasis mine)

At the pastoral level, hermeneutical principles are the foundation of a faithful and powerful preaching ministry. They are the foundational building block from which good biblical exegesis is derived. This, in turn, becomes the necessary platform on which to build systematic theology, expository preaching, and pastoral ministry.

Accurate Interpretation à Faithful Proclamation à Authoritative Exhortation

This pattern is laid out biblically in the book of Ezra where it says:

For Ezra had set his heart to study the Law of the Lord, and to do it and to teach his statutes and rules in Israel (Ezra 7:10 ESV). 

Ezra was determined to study God’s Word in order that he could apply and live in accordance with God’s Word in order that he could teach God’s Word. We would all do well to emulate Ezra in this area.

Interpretation is an active part of our everyday lives. Just driving here today you probably practiced hermeneutics when you saw a diamond shape painted onto the left hand lane of the freeway to discern whether you were allowed to drive there or not. How much more important is it for Christians to rightly discern the written revelation God gave to us. Hermeneutics might be a scary name, but it is a faithful and necessary friend.