Approaching the Bible, or really any work of literature, requires an understanding of context. Many passages of Scripture cannot be understood correctly if you do not embrace the context in which it was written. Unfortunately for us, there are many people who use the word context without understanding what it means. This broad misunderstanding leads to misinterpretations and erroneous doctrine.
This was the point of one of Mark Driscoll’s most recent videos, which can be viewed here.
Mark brings up some great points, and they are issues that Christians have argued about for as long as there have been Christians who had not walked with Jesus, for as long as there have been people who weren’t at Sinai when Moses received the Ten Commandments, for as long as there have been people who weren’t there when God created Adam. In other words, context has always been a problem.
What Is Context?
The word context comes from a Latin word that literally means “woven together” or “joined together.” The context is really the larger thing that our Scriptures are a part of – the culture, languages, writers, audience that they intricately linked with. Context is not just knowing something about history; it is about understanding a world.
Our Own Context
While it is important to understand the context of the Scriptures, it is also important to understand our own context. We are taking a piece of a fabric of another time, another place and patching it into our own fabric of time and place. We need to understand our own fabric as well as the Scriptures’ fabric. We have to understand our own culture, our own language and thinking, before we can transfer Scripture to our own situation.
Jesus put it this way:
No one tears a piece from a new garment and puts it on an old garment. If he does, he will tear the new, and the piece from the new will not match the old. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins and it will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed. But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins. And no one after drinking old wine desires new, for he says, ‘The old is good.’ [Luke 5:36-39, ESV]
Jesus was talking about context. You can’t tear something out of one piece of cloth and then stitch it onto another, different piece of cloth. Things just don’t work that way. The transfer of the Law into Jesus’ ministry and the life of his disciples required an understanding of the context of the Law and understanding their contemporary context as well. Jesus understood that context is vital.
Understanding
There is a tremendous temptation among Christians to think of applications, and even interpretations, as eternal and immutable. It is true that God’s Word is unchanging in its nature, but WE change it. Our culture often overshadows the original context. At other times, we try to interpret the Scriptures entirely historically without consideration of the contextual fabric of our own existence. Both are important for understanding what God has to say.
If we take Scripture without considering its historical context, we produce relevance without substance. If we try to interpret Scripture contextually without consideration for our own context, we get information without relevance. Neither can be a worthwhile expression of God’s Word. We must understand both contexts in order to properly understand the Word.
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