Five Principles of Interpreting the Bible # 1

I want to speak now about some principles of Biblical interpretation. It is very important for us to be able to know how the Bible is to be interpreted, and this will be especially seen in what we have to consider later on. Unless we do understand the principles of the interpretation of the Bible, the Bible is not an open book; we may know what is in the Book as a book, but we do not understand it until we have the principles of interpretation. So I ask you to try and remember what I am going to say now and bring it over into our later study. We will consider five important principles of interpreting the Bible:


1. The Eternity of God;
2. The Comprehensiveness of Christ;
3.  The Interpreter of the Bible is the Holy Spirit;
4.  The Final Mention;
5.  The Only Real Value is the Spiritual.


The Eternity of God


The first principle of the interpretation of the Bible is the eternity of God. We must always remember that all time is present time with God. There is no past and future with God: all that is past and future with us has been present with God always. At any moment in what is time to us, eternity is present with God.


The architect always has the completed plan before him. If he is the designer of a ship, he has a model made of that ship before anything is done. He sees in the model the completed object, that is, exactly how the thing will appear when it is finished. If it is a great building, or even a city, it is the same. The architect draws what we call a scale model, and he sees in that model exactly how the building, or the city, will be when it is finished. The builder works day by day according to that completed plan. Those who only see the parts cannot understand, and must not take the parts as being the whole. Sometimes when you look at the parts of a building, you cannot for the life of you understand what it is going to be. It is only as the completed thing is seen that you can understand the parts.


Now the Bible is just full of parts, but they are all the parts of something that God sees in completion. God is the Great Architect and He has the completed and perfect plan before Him before He begins any work. God's eternity is in every part. So we must realize that God has His full Mind behind everything that He does! God's full intention governs everything that he does! You must realize that God's mind never grows - God Himself is incapable of development.


The temporary form of anything contains the eternal and full thought of God. You must realize that there are always TWO MEANINGS in anything that is in the Bible. There is the present meaning, that is, how that applies to the present situation; but there is also the future meaning. Everything in the Bible, while it has a present application, has a fuller meaning in the future. That is the first law of interpretation: it is the eternity of God.


~T. Austin-Sparks~


(continued with # 2 - "The Comprehensiveness of Christ")