Phil Gons

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Foundations for Exegesis

I delivered this message at Spring Creek Bible Church on April 30, 2017, as part 1 of the Introduction to New Testament Exegesis series.

Prefer what I actually said? Read the transcript (lightly edited for readability).

0. Introduction to the Class

This is a six-week class called Introduction to New Testament Exegesis. Here’s how I described the class:

In this class we’ll lay the foundation for how to understand the meaning of passages in the New Testament by establishing core principles, methods, and tools for Bible study. We’ll then apply that foundation as we interpret and unpack a variety of texts together. Whether you’re new to personal Bible study or have been doing it for years, this class will equip you to better understand the New Testament and apply it to your life.

I could have called this class “How to Study and Apply the New Testament,” but exegesis is an important term that you should be familiar with. And putting it in the class name guarantees you don’t miss it.

The class is properly an introduction to New Testament exegesis. We could easily spend all six weeks (and longer) studying in detail the theory and details of New Testament exegesis. And while I want this class to stretch you intellectually and equip you with skills and tools you don’t currently have, I deeply want this class to be practical as well.

So we’re going to spend two weeks laying the foundation for doing NT exegesis and then spend our last four weeks actually doing it together, applying our study method to four different texts, one each week.

I’ve prepared a six-page exegetical worksheet that we’ll work through together for each of the four texts. Your homework will be to do work through some of the worksheet before class, and then we’ll come back together and work on it as a group in class. More on this next week.

Here’s what I anticipate our schedule will look like:

  1. Class #1 (April 30): Foundations for Exegesis
  2. Class #2 (May 7): Techniques and Tools for Exegesis
  3. Class #3 (May 14): Exegesis of John 3:16
  4. Class #4 (May 21): Exegesis of John 12:32
  5. Memorial Day (May 28): No class
  6. Class #5 (June 4): Exegesis of John 14:26; 15:26; 16:7–14
  7. Class #6 (June 11): Exegesis of Matthew 5:20
  8. Class #7 (June 18): Exegesis of Matthew 5:48

It’s my hope and prayer that at the end of these six weeks together, you’ll have

  1. greater desire to study God’s Word,
  2. greater skill in how to study God’s Word,
  3. greater understanding of and love for the texts we’ll consider together, and
  4. greater commitment to applying God’s Word to your life.

A word of warning, and a request for prayer: Shanna is expecting our fourth child and second son around Saturday May 27, four weeks from yesterday. May 28 is our break week, so if he comes on time we may not have any interruptions to our schedule. But our first two children came a week early, so we’re trying to be ready for any time in the next few weeks. I’ll keep you posted as we get closer to the date.

I committed to this class before we knew we were expecting, so we’re trusting that this is all God’s kind providence for us. Since this is an extra busy time for our family, we’d appreciate your prayers, especially for our youngest who has been very sick with the flu the last few days.

1. Terms and Definitions

A class on exegesis has to begin with terms and definitions.

What Is Exegesis?

It may be an unfamiliar word, but it’s not a difficult concept. Exegesis is loosely just the formal word for what we typically call Bible study.

The word exegesis comes from the Greek noun ἐξήγησις, which means explanation. It doesn’t occur in the New Testament, but it does occur once in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament, in Judges 7:15:

As soon as Gideon heard the telling [ἐξήγησιν; מִסְפַּ֧ר] of the dream and its interpretation, he worshiped. And he returned to the camp of Israel and said, “Arise, for the Lord has given the host of Midian into your hand.”

The verbal form of the word, ἐξηγέομαι, does occur in the New Testament.1 And it carries the idea of explaining. It’s made up of two parts: ἐκ/ἐξ, meaning from, out of, or away from, and ηγέομαι, meaning to lead, guide, think, consider, or regard.

The idea of these Greek words is explaining or drawing the author’s intended meaning out of the text.

As we’ll learn later, a word’s etymology—“the study of the origin of words and the way in which their meanings have changed throughout history”2—doesn’t always match its current meaning, but it can be a helpful way of understanding where it came from and what it meant when it was first used.

Exegesis vs. Eisegesis

Exegesis stands in contrast to eisegesis, which conveys the idea of bringing our own thoughts into a text. The Greek word εἰς means into. Exegesis is good; eisegesis is bad. A lot of what happens under the guise of Bible study is actually eisegesis not exegesis. We’ve probably all heard about or been a part of a Bible study group where the focus is on talking about what a passage means to you rather than on what God intended to communicate through the author to us.

Exegesis and Hermeneutics

There’s another term related to exegesis that we should talk about briefly: hermeneutics. Hermeneutics comes from the Greek word ἑρμηνεία, which means exposition, interpretation, or translation. The verb form ἑρμηνεύω, which means to explain, interpret, or translate.

While the Greek words for exegesis and hermeneutics seem like synonyms, and they were, the English terms today have an important distinction. Hermeneutics deals with the principles and rules of interpretation. Exegesis deals with the application of those rules to specific texts.

Bernard Ramm captures this distinction well:

As a theological discipline hermeneutics is the science of the correct interpretation of the Bible. It is a special application of the general science of linguistics and meaning. It seeks to formulate those particular rules which pertain to the special factors connected with the Bible. It stands in the same relationship to exegesis that a rule-book stands to a game. The rule-book is written in terms of reflection, analysis, and experience. The game is played by concrete actualization of the rules. The rules are not the game, and the game is meaningless without the rules. Hermeneutics proper is not exegesis, but exegesis is applied hermeneutics.3

This is not a class on hermeneutics, but we will touch on some of the aspects of hermeneutics.

A Definition

So let’s define exegesis.

Exegesis is the task of prayerfully and carefully reading, analyzing, and synthesizing the Bible to understand what it said, what it meant, and what it means today.

John MacArthur defines exegesis as

the skillful application of sound hermeneutical principles to the biblical text in the original language with a view to understanding and declaring the author’s intended meaning both to the immediate and subsequent audiences.4

Exegesis is simply careful reading and thinking about what the Bible says and teaches.

To put it concisely and perhaps memorably, it’s careful reading to discern the meaning.

That means everyone here is an exegete, because we’re all called to read and understand God’s Word.

I’d like us to watch two brief videos from John Piper that illustrate the kind of carefulness we should give to reading and studying God’s Word.

Look at the Book video

Keep Looking video

John Piper has been focusing his teaching and writing ministry on helping people understand the Bible. Look at the Book is a series of videos where John Piper visually interacts with the Bible and talks about the kinds of exegetical connections that we’re going to talk about in this class. These would be a good resource to help think more carefully about the Bible.

John has also written a number of helpful books on reading and studying the Bible:

These latter two volumes form part of a trilogy. He’s working on a final book on expository preaching.

Meaning, Authorship, Intent, and Context

There are a few more terms and concepts we need to grasp to do exegesis well.

Meaning

We’ve mentioned the word meaning several times so far. It’s at the heart of doing exegesis. It’s worth taking a few minutes at the outset to think carefully about what we mean when we talk about meaning.

When we talk about the meaning of a particular Bible passage, we’re talking about what an author intended to communicate as illuminated by his and its context.

There were three key words there that deserve our attention:

  1. Author
  2. Intent
  3. Context

Let’s look at each in order.

Authorship

Meaning implies an intelligent author. That author had ideas he wanted to communicate to his readers. He wrote them down with the intent that his words would accurately convey the meaning he wanted his readers and hearers to receive.

It’s important to identify as much as we can about the original human author who wrote thousands of years ago to a specific group of readers to communicate a message to them. The more we know about the author, the better we’ll understand what he wrote.

We can’t talk about authorship of the Bible without also talking about it’s divine author, but we’ll cover that in the next section.

Intent

That means that what’s fundamental in understanding the meaning of a text is understand what the author intended to communicate, not what comes to our minds we read his words, but what the author wanted to come to our minds.

This brings us back to the distinction between exegesis and eisegesis.

We don’t impose our ideas on the author’s words. We seek out what he intended to communicate by his words.

Divine and Human Intent

The Bible is a book like no other. When we interpret the Bible, we need to take into consideration its dual authorship. The whole of the Bible has as its ultimate author the triune God. But God didn’t write the Bible directly like he wrote the Ten Commandments (cf. Ex 31:18; Dt 9:10). Instead, he moved (φερόμενοι; 2 Pe 1:21) men to write and worked through them such that the final product was said to be God-breathed (θεόπνευστος; 2 Ti 3:16).

With that said, how are we to understand the relationship between human and divine intent in the Bible?

Divine and Human Intent Are Identical

Are they identical, where everything God intended man intended and everything man intended God intended?

We could diagram this view like this:

I don’t think that’s the right way to think about it. In some cases, it seems that there were things that God intended to communicate that the human author wasn’t aware of (e.g., 1 Peter 1:10–12; cf. Dan. 8:27; 12:8; Jn 11:49–52).

Divine and Human Intent Are Overlapping

Another possibility is that most things God intended to communicated, the human author also intended to communicate; and most things the human author intended to communicate, God did as well. This would leave room for some things to be divinely intended by not humanly intended and some things to be humanly intended by not divinely intended.

We could diagram this view like this:

But I don’t think this view is consistent with Scripture’s own teaching. If God didn’t intend the meaning, then the meaning isn’t God-breathed, and therefore it’s not authoritative, infallible, and inerrant. That is, it’s not Scripture. And how would we distinguish the parts God intended from the parts only man intended? I don’t think there’s biblical basis for this view.

Divine Intent Goes beyond Human Intent

But we already observed how sometimes God intended meaning that the human authors didn’t. If that’s true, we’re left with the view that all man’s intents were God’s intents, but not all God’s intents were man’s intents. That is, sometimes God intended a meaning deeper than, and in addition to, the meaning that the human author intended.

We could diagram this view like this:

The important point for us, here, is that we should always be looking for the human author’s intended meaning, knowing that that was also God’s intended meaning, but that there could be another deeper meaning that God intended in addition to that. This will normally happen when New Testament authors interpret Old Testament texts. New Testament authors, under God’s influence, find meaning in Old Testament texts that may not have been present to the human authors when they originally wrote. That doesn’t mean the New Testament authors were wrong. That means we need to allow for a divine intent that extends beyond the human intent.

This is often called sensus plenior, which may be defined as

that additional, deeper meaning, intended by God but not clearly intended by the human author, which is seen to exist in the words of a biblical text (or group of texts, or even a whole book) when they are studied in the light of further revelation or development in the understanding of revelation.5

Moo and Naselli comment,

The usual objections against the idea of a sensus plenior are not cogent, so there does not appear to be any compelling reason for rejecting the hypothesis. We think that a suitably nuanced sensus plenior describes at a fundamental level much of what is happening as the NT authors appropriate the OT. Jesus and the apostles discern a “deeper” or “fuller” meaning in the very words of the Old Testament.6

The New Testament use of the Old Testament is a fascinating area of hermeneutics and exegesis that raises all sorts of interesting questions. We’re not going to survey them all in the class, but I did at least want to make you aware of some of the challenges and areas for exploration.

Intent and Error

One final point on intent. Not everything in the Bible is a statement of truth. The Bible contains statements of error. That sounds heretic on the surface, but stick with me. The Bible records statements the words of Satan, the father of lies. So the Bible records lies, falsehoods.

When we say the Bible is free from error, what do we mean and what don’t we meant?

We don’t mean that the Bible contains no statements that are false or untrue. We know that’s not the case.

The Bible is infallible and inerrant in its recording of false statements because it records them accurately and its authors intend to convey them as falsehoods.

The Bible is true in what intends to communicate as truth. The Bible is full of error. It records the erroneous ideas of people. What’s important to understand is that the Bible records truth as truth and error as error. That is, it always truthful and accurate in what it intends to communicate. The Bible is truthful in its presentation of error as error.

God rebuked Job’s “friends,” and not all of the ideas they communicated to Job should be taken as authoritative accurate truth statements about God. What God intends to communicate is that the book of Job is an accurate and truthful recording of what Job’s friends told him. Job’s friends did not speak until divine inspiration like Paul and other authors of Scripture.

This is another example of why it’s important to read and interpret the Bible in context.

Context

Why is context so important? Words (and grammatical expressions) aren’t static. They don’t have a single fixed absolute meaning. Words are dynamic. They have a range of meanings, and those meanings change over time.

Some people tend to think that words’ meanings are determined by dictionaries. But they didn’t have dictionaries in Bible times. And even today when we do have plenty of dictionaries, people don’t always use words in a way that conforms to the dictionary.

When we’re dealing with exegesis, with drawing out the meaning of words, we can’t just open a dictionary, pick our favorite definition, and plug it into the verse. Now, dictionaries are helpful tools, but they can also be misused.

We shouldn’t try to find all meanings in all passages. And we shouldn’t treat a dictionary’s recommendation as authoritative.

This brings us back to context. When we’re trying understand what something in the Bible means, it’s essential that we think about it in the right way. We’re trying to figure out what the authors (both divine and human) meant to communicate when they spoke or wrote to their audience.

Meaning is not defined by a dictionary; neither is it defined by its etymological origin. It’s defined by the author’s intended meaning as defined by its temporal and textual contexts.

There are multiple types of context.

There’s the temporal context, and there’s the textual context.

The dictionary captures these two main senses:

  1. the circumstances that form the setting for an event, statement, or idea, and in terms of which it can be fully understood and assessed.
  2. the parts of something written or spoken that immediately precede and follow a word or passage and clarify its meaning.
Temporal Context

The temporal context deals with the time the text was spoken or written, the people involved, the historical setting, the cultural and social milieu, and . . . . The people, the places, the things, the events, etc.

In many cases, a text might need to be interpreted in light of two temporal contexts.

For example, take the Gospels, which record the life, ministry, and teaching of Jesus. The events of Jesus life happened between 5 BC and AD 33. The synoptic Gospels were most likely written between 50–60 AD, and the Gospel of John was possibly written between 80–90 AD. These are two very distinct temporal contexts. Though the Gospels record events that happened before Pentecost, they were written in the historical setting of the early church after Pentecost.

Or consider when a New Testament author quotes an Old Testament author. It’s important to keep all of these temporal distinctions in mind as we seek to draw out the meaning of the text.

Textual context

Some people prefer to use the word cotext for this, to distinguish it from the context.

The textual context, or cotext, is the text that surrounds—precedes and follows—the text under consideration, which illuminates its meaning.

It’s important to understand the basic structure of the Bible so we can accurate evaluate its various levels of context.

The Bible is one book with one author and one overarching story. But it’s also a book of books of books (and, in some cases, of books [i.e., the Psalms]).

The biggest textual contextual level is the whole Bible. Below that is the testamental context, then the book context. Below that is the book’s structural context, and then the book’s pericopes, followed by its paragraphs, its sentences, its clauses, it phrases, and its words.

You might visualize it something like this:

Context, Not Dictionaries

When we try to understand a word or phrase, it is within the context of the concentric textual circles that we look for its meaning. We don’t open a dictionary, find the definition we like the best, and then pick that one. That’s eisegesis. We must make sure we’re drawing the meaning out of the text itself rather than reading it in from elsewhere.

While dictionaries are helpful resources, they must be used carefully. Dictionaries attempt to outline the range and groupings of meaning a word can have. They’ll often suggest a particular meaning for a particular passage. But we should treat these suggestions like we would a commentary. It’s a person’s opinion, and they might be wrong.

In many cases, it may be worth you time to do your own word study and establish the meaning yourself. We’ll spend some time doing this in future weeks.

Context, Not Etymology

In addition, we need to be careful not to fall into the etymological fallacy.

Etymology is the study of the origin of words, in particular their derivations. It often focuses on how compound words come together to make a new word. It’s easy to slip into the trap that adding the parts make the whole or that words are static and their meaning at one time is the same at another.

2. Principles for Studying the Bible

What does the Bible have to say about Bible study? How should the Bible itself shape the way we think about applying our minds to studying God’s Word?

Why Study the Bible

I’ll give you several reason that we should devote ourselves to the study of God’s Word.

A wonderful book that I’d recommend to you on this subject is John Piper’s Think: The Life of the Mind and the Love of God.

1. God commands and praises it and condemns the opposite.

Commands
Proverbs

Nowhere is this clearer than Proverbs, where Solomon repeatedly instructs his son to pursue understanding and knowledge and wisdom.

Proverbs 2:3–5

If you call out for insight and raise your voice for understanding, if you seek it like silver and search for it as for hidden treasures, then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God.

Proverbs 4:5a

Get wisdom, get understanding . . . .

Proverbs 4:7

The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom. Though it cost all you have, get understanding.

Proverbs 16:16

How much better to get wisdom than gold, to get insight rather than silver!

The Great Commandment

The first and greatest commandment according to Jesus is, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Mt 22:37).

2 Timothy 2:15

Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth.

The Bible is also full of examples that praise and imply the study of God’s Word.

Examples of Knowing the Scriptures
Psalm 119

Psalm 119, which is an acrostic praising God’s self-revelation in Scripture, is a close second. It’s full of exhortations to give ourselves to studying, meditating, memorizing, delighting in, and obeying God’s Word.

Psalm 119:34

Give me understanding, so that I may keep your law and obey it with all my heart.

2 Timothy 3:14–15

But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, 15 and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.

Acts 17:11

Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.

Ezra 7:10

In Ezra 7:10, we have a wonderful picture of Ezra’s commitment to studying God’s Word.

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.

Examples of Not Knowing the Scriptures
Jesus rebuked people for not having a better knowledge of Scripture:

Jesus told the Sadducees, “Are you not in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God” (Mt 22:29)?”

Matthew 21:16

“Do you hear what these children are saying?” they asked him. “Yes,” replied Jesus, “have you never read, “ ‘From the lips of children and infants you, Lord, have called forth your praise’?”

Matthew 21:42

Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the Scriptures: “ ‘The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; the Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes’?

Mark 2:25

He answered, “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need?

New Testament Use of the Old Testament

There are more than 2,500 quotations and paraphrases and allusions to the Old Testament in the New Testament. It’s obvious that the New Testament authors, who, keep in mind, where ordinary men, were very familiar with the Old Testament Scriptures.

2. It’s the way we know God.

While God reveals himself through general revelation—all that he has created tells us something about him—it is through God’s special revelation that we can come to know him personally.

Without knowing God in his special revelation in his Word, we cannot come to faith in him and we cannot be awakened to love and enjoy him.

Faith comes by hearing . . .

We exist to know, love, enjoy, and glorify God, and studying his Word is the primary means to those things. You could say, then, that studying the Bible takes us to the heart of why we even exist.

Piper puts it this way:

. . . the main reason God has given us minds is that we might seek out and find all the reasons that exist for treasuring him in all things and above all things. The more we see of
his surpassing greatness and knowledge and wisdom and power and justice and wrath and mercy and patience and goodness and grace and love, the more we will treasure him. And the more we treasure him, the more he is consciously and joyfully glorified. The point of this book is that thinking is a God-given means to that end.7

3. It’s the way we know what God requires of us and what pleases him.

Without faith, it’s impossible to please God. But that faith must be rooted in truth. Without God’s Word, it’s impossible to please him. We need to know what it is that he requires of us. What we must do, what we must avoid, what we must love, what we must hate. Studying God’s Word is vital to the Christian doctrine of sanctification.

It’s also the means by which God enables us to please and obey him. He helps to resist temptation, gives us boldness to proclaim the gospel and defend the faith. This comes through the grace of his Word.

Dangers of Studying the Bible

Solomon talks about how much study wearies the body, but there are far greater things to be concerned about than fatigue.

“Of making many books there is no end, and much study wearies the body.” —Ecclesiastes 12:12

It may seem strange at first to talk about dangers of Bible study, but let me explain what I mean. There’s a way to do Bible study that honors God, loves others, and helps you grow in godliness, but there are ways to do Bible study that don’t. Let’s talk about a few, so we can avoid them.

A Merely Academic Exercise or Profession

It’s possible to spend your life studying the Bible as merely an important work of literature written by men. Many Bible scholars who look at the Bible with purely academic eyes, whose hearts are blinded to the God revealed in its pages. Every year thousands of people gather for the Society of Biblical Literature annual meeting, and while many there love the God of the Bible, many are self-professed atheists or agnostics who don’t worship the one they study. It’s a great and ironic tragedy.

An External/False Religion8

A second error is illustrated by the religious leaders in Jesus’ day.

John 5:39–40 captures this. This is Jesus talking to the Jewish leaders.

You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.

They studied the Scriptures, but were selective. They added to them. And they externalized them. They ignored the heart. They used them to control others. They were blind. The focused on the letter of the law and ignored the spirit of the law. They didn’t have hearts of faith that feared God and trembled at his Word (Ps 119:161; Is. 66:2, 5; Ezra 9:4).

There is a great danger of using the Bible to prove and defend an external or false religion. That’s why it’s essential that we continually examine our hearts in light of the truth we’re studying and repent of our sin and be willing to change our theology when it’s in conflict with the Bible. That’s why we beg God for faith, for illumination, for eyes to see and ears to hear.

We could also talk about the various false teachers, false religions, cults, and heretical groups today, where many of the same things can be said.

Truth and Pride at the Expense of Love, Unity, Obedience, and Humility

A third abuse is study that leads people to sinfully defend sound doctrine or create disputes and divisions or things Scripture leaves ambiguous and that aren’t central to the faith.

Many are serious about applying their minds to understanding Scripture, but they do it for the wrong reasons. The do it to win arguments or because they have a propensity toward intellectual curiosities and debates.

And while we certainly must seek to understand the truth and defend it against false teaching, but must do it in a way that seeks love and unity and is proportionate to its Scriptural clarity and importance.

Not all of the Bible’s teachings are equally clear and equally important. And generally the two correspond. As the popular saying goes, “The main things are the plain things, and the plain things are the main things.”

There is a tendency to separate the theological from the devotional. Many people devote themselves to rigorous academic study of the Bible, but do not have hearts eager to see and savor the Savior. Some come to the Word looking for spiritual encouragement, but take passages out of context and don’t dig into the meat of God’s Word.

B. B. Warfield, the great Princeton theologian from the 19th century, reminds us that we must keep both together:

Sometimes we hear it said that ten minutes on your knees will give you a truer, deeper, more operative knowledge of God than ten hours over your books. “What!” is the appropriate response, “than ten hours over your books, on your knees?” Why should you turn from God when you turn to your books, or feel that you must from your books in order to turn to God?9

As we are often prone to do, these abuses lead many to abandon Bible study and focus only on serving God and trying to live the right way. But God is not well served when we don’t know him intimately, and we don’t live well when our living is disconnected from and not grounded in the truth of his Word.

We mustn’t swing from the errors on one end of the spectrum to errors on the other. Rather, let us guard against both tendencies.

Who Should Study the Bible

Everyone should study the Bible. No one is exempt. Yes, we all have different gifts. Yes, God has created each of us unique, with different personality and strengths and weaknesses and propensities. Some of us are more practically minded and action oriented. Others are more intellectually minded and analytical. Some of us are naturally more outgoing and personable; others are more introverted and shy. Some of us love to read; others don’t. I acknowledge all of these natural and spiritual differences as part of God’s good design for us as his body with many different parts. But we are all made in God’s image. We’re made to know him and reflect his glory. And while some will excel in some ways more than others, we’re all obligated to apply our minds to understanding God’s Word.

I’m not saying that you’re called to be a scholar. But everyone is called to be a student, to apply their minds to knowing and loving God and others. We need and benefit from the work of scholars and professional theologians, but we’re all called to study God’s word.

How We Should Study the Bible

Manner

That is, in what manner should we approach the study of the Bible?

  1. With great respect. These are the Words of the God of the universe. We should tremble before them.
  2. With great humility. We came as sinners in desperate need of God and his grace. God is perfect and infinite; we deserve his wrath.
  3. With great dependence. We are powerless to understand and respond to God’s Word rightly. We desperately need God help. We must study on our knees, begging God to give us eyes to see, ears to hear, hearts to love, and hands to obey.
  4. With great gratitude. That the God of this universe has revealed himself to us, that he’s preserved his word for us, that he’s given us such riches in access to the original languages, dozens and dozens of wonderful translations, a myriad of helpful books, technological advances that facilitate study, and so much more.
  5. With great care. The Bible is not to be messed with. It’s God’s authoritative and inspired word. Scripture warns in many places not to tamper with it. As we approach God’s word, we should do so with the utmost carefulness.
  6. With great effort. If studying God’s Word is the path to knowing and loving him, which is why we were created, should we give greater effort to anything else? What great diligence and fervency should we devote to the study of God’s Word!
  7. With great consistency. The study of God’s Word is a lifelong pursuit. We never arrive or outgrown our need to understand it better.

Johann Bengel captures this well in this classic quote: “Apply yourself wholly to the text; apply the text wholly to yourself.”

Means

Another way to look at how we should study the Bible is not the manner, but the means or the method. This will occupy more of our study next week.

The Goal of Studying the Bible

We don’t study the Bible merely to fill our heads with knowledge. Knowledge is first base. It’s intended to reach into our hearts and impact our innermost being. It should change what we believe, how we feel, and what we do.

  1. Know God.
  2. Believe God.
  3. Love God.
  4. Obey God.
  5. Love others.
  6. Teach others.

Know God

All of our study of God’s Word should be about getting to know God better.

Believe God

The goal of studying the Word is to foster and grow our faith.

Love God

As we get to know God, our love for God should also increase.

Obey God

And out of that flows obedience. If we love God, we’ll keep his commandments. We’ll be doers of the word, and not just hearers.

Love Others

The Bible instructs us to love others, and it shows us how to love others. The better we know God’s Word, the better equipped we’ll be to obey it.

Teach Others

Not only are we called to be students, we’re also called to be teachers.

Deuteronomy 6:4–9

4 Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. 6 These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. 7 Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 8 Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 9 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.

We’re also called to teach and admonish other believers, to teach and make disciples of all nations, and to defend the truth against false teachers inside the church and enemies of the faith outside the church.

3. Presuppositions for Studying the Bible

We can’t and shouldn’t attempt to do exegesis in a vacuum. We all come to the study of the Bible with presuppositions and biases. And that’s not a bad thing. It’s actually part of the exegetical process.

But it is important to identify the theological foundation and presuppositions from which we approach exegesis of the New Testament.

Theology Proper

First and foremost, our foundation for interpreting the Bible the existence of the Triune God of the Christian faith. God exists, and he has spoken. All proper exegesis of the Bible is based on the understanding that the Bible is God’s self-revelation, which leads us into bibliology.

Bibliology

The Bible, as God’s self-revelation, is inspired or breathed out by him through human authors, infallible, inerrant, authoritative, sufficient, perspicuous,10 preserved, and relevant.

It also has dual authorship. The triune God is the divine author, who spoke through human authors. As we try to understand the Bible’s meaning, it’s important to keep this dual authorship in view. God always intended to communicate what the human authors did, but he didn’t always intend to communicate only what they did.

Taking a class on bibliology would be a really useful foundation for studying exegesis, but I’ll assume you have some foundation upon which we’ll build.

Anthropology (the Doctrine of Man)

We need to understand that we are the creature, and God is the creator. We are finite; he is infinite. It’s essential that we acknowledge human limitations and the inherent imprecision of languages, communication, and translation. More on this later.

Hamartiology (the Doctrine of Sin)

Not only are we finite and limited. We’re fallen. And the fall has affected every aspect of our being. Our minds are bent away from God and don’t perceive clearly his truth, our hearts try to reject and suppress it, our emotions respond negatively to it.

Our hearts are deceit. We’re prone to misunderstand God’s self-revelation, and we need his help, his grace to understand and apply it as we ought. We’re prone to laziness, which will often keep us from diligently apply our minds and hearts to understanding his word.

We might be tempted to distort God’s Word to win a debate.

Illustration: One of my children who does what I ask, but not what I meant.

Christology (the Doctrine of Christ)

God’s self-revelation reaches its climax in Christ, the Word. The second person of the Trinity is God made visible, God revealed. The Bible’s overarching story is about it. The Old Testament sets up the need for him and foreshadows him. The New Testament reveals him and the implications of his work. He’s at the center of the Bible’s message and divine and human history. Proper exegesis will see to position ever text in light of the Bible’s overarching story about God’s work in His Son.

Soteriology (the Doctrine of Salvation)

Even after regeneration, we’re still not free of all the influences of sin on our hearts and minds.

Pneumatology (the Doctrine of Holy Spirit)

The Spirit of God indwells us, opens our eyes to see God’s glory in the Scripture, and illuminates Scripture to our minds. Reading the Bible is a supernatural activity, and we desperately need God’s help.

Ecclesiology (the Doctrine of the Church)

God has given gifts to the church, and those gifts include teachers. While we all have the responsibility to be students of God’s word and teachers to some degree, we should take advantage of the especially gifted teachers that God has given to the church.

Eschatology (the Doctrine of Last Things)

God will one day make all things new. And we’ll see God face to face and know God as he knows us, though not infinitely, at least without the effects of sin.

Circularity

So we approach the study of God’s Word with a massive theological foundation of presuppositions. It’s the lens through which we interpret the Bible.

But this might feel circular. How can exegesis have theology as both its foundation and outcome? This is what has been referred to as the hermeneutical spiral. We need to identify what we already know and presuppose and then do our exegetical work on that foundation. But we need to be willing to modify our theological foundation as our exegetical study exposes our faulty interpretation and wrong presuppositions. God’s Word is always the final authority, and we need to make sure our presuppositions and theology are in submission to it, constantly being shaped by it.

4. Conclusion

Johann Bengel famously said, “Apply yourself wholly to the text; apply the text wholly to yourself.” That captures well the aim our class.

Studying God’s Word is an amazing privilege and responsibility that takes us to the heart of our duty as God’s redeemed people made in his image. It’s his will for everyone of us. Let’s prayerfully and diligently apply ourselves to this great task these next five weeks together.

Next week we’ll dig into a method for doing exegesis of passages in the New Testament and talk about some of the tools available to help you.

Let’s pray.

5. Bibliography

Carson, D. A. Exegetical Fallacies. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1996.

Fee, Gordon D., and Douglas Stuart. How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth. 4th ed. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2014.

Logos Pro Team. LT261: Study the Bible with Logos; Matthew 4:1–11. Learn with Logos. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2016.

Logos Pro Team. LT271: Study the Bible with Logos; Jonah 1. Logos Mobile Education. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2016.

Naselli, Andrew David. How to Understand and Apply the New Testament: Twelve Steps from Exegesis to Theology. Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2017.

Osborne, Grant R. The Hermeneutical Spiral: A Comprehensive Introduction to Biblical Interpretation. Rev. and expanded, 2nd ed. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2006.

Piper, John. Reading the Bible Supernaturally: Seeing and Savoring the Glory of God in Scripture. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2017.

Piper, John. Think: The Life of the Mind and the Love of God. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2010.

Notes

1. It occurs six times: Lk 24:35; Jn 1:18; Ac 10:8; Ac 15:12; Ac 15:14; Ac 21:19. ↩

2. Google. ↩

3. Bernard Ramm, Protestant Biblical Interpretation: A Textbook of Hermeneutics, 3rd rev. ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1970), 11. ↩

4. Richard L. Mayhue,“Rediscovering Expository Preaching,” in Rediscovering Expository Preaching (Dallas: Word Publishing, 1992), 29. ↩

5. Raymond E. Brown, The Sensus Plenior of Sacred Scripture (Baltimore: St. Mary’s University, 1955), 92. Cf. “The Sensus Plenior in the Last Ten Years,” CBQ 25 (1963): 262–85. ↩

6. Douglas J. Moo and Andrew David Naselli, “The Problem of the New Testament’s Use of the Old Testament,” in The Enduring Authority of the Christian Scriptures, ed. D. A. Carson (Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2016), 734. ↩

7. John Piper, Think: The Life of the Mind and the Love of God (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2010), 15–16. ↩

8. We could also talk about false religions and heretics. ↩

9. “The Religious Life of Theological Students.” ↩

10. Not to be confused with perspicacious. The Bible is understandable because God intends to be understood, and God’s purposes cannot fail. God doesn’t intend to be fully understood by anyone, or understood at all by others. He intentionally veiled the minds of those who were not his and spoke in parables to hide his revelation from some. ↩