Limits of Leadership: Boundaries of Biblical Hermeneutics

Listen as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of Biblical interpretation in this address from The Gospel Coalition sermon library.

Within this kind of framework, then, it is very important to understand the new hermeneutic can help us to see issues very clearly. What Craft has done has tried to make a few statements transcend culture, and the rest don’t transcend culture at all. What I want to say is that at one level none of the biblical statements transcend culture because God has disclosed himself to us in time-space history, in culture, but if that’s the case, why can’t all of the Bible have a similar transcending power?

Because, at the end of the day (this goes back to a doctrine of Scripture rather than a doctrine of hermeneutics), all of the Bible constitutes the jigsaw puzzle I talked about yesterday, a jigsaw puzzle where we may not have all the parts but we know they all belong to the one puzzle and they do cohere.

What we must understand, then, is the truthfulness of Scripture, the reliability of Scripture, the faithfulness of Scripture, but still understand when we confront our generation we may have to think through what that Scripture says very carefully and understand how to articulate it to a new generation.

A year ago or so I was asked to speak at some evangelistic meetings at a research laboratory in metro Chicago. They were lunch-hour meetings with scientists at this communications laboratory. It was a former student who worked in the laboratory who asked me to go down for these lunch-hour chats, an entirely volunteer sort of thing. I had 35 minutes a slot plus about 20 minutes for discussion.

I went in assuming although these were very bright people (two-thirds of all the scientists there have a PhD) most of them wouldn’t even know the Bible had two Testaments, and for about three-fourths of those who came that was right. We are now dealing with a new generation of completely biblically illiterate people. That means we must lay the foundations much farther back again.

It is almost as if we are going into a new cross-cultural context, and I tell you frankly that understanding the limits and the power of the new hermeneutic can be very helpful as we try to think our way through not only from Scripture to us but also from us to a new generation. I would love to go down that road with you, but I don’t have time to do so now.

The negative side of this, however, is because people keep trying to appeal to their particular world to authorize their reading of Scripture, it becomes harder and harder to talk sometimes to ordinary Christians who want to say, “But that’s the way I read it in my tradition. It’s the way I read it. This is my reading of Scripture.” Implication: “Who are you to challenge it? I come from the Arminian tradition. I come from the Calvinist tradition. I’m a Baptist. I’m a paedo-baptist. I’m a charismatic.”

I know we’re in a convention now where we’re talking about commonalities and I have to keep off all the hot topics, except it is extremely important that while we say there are things that unite all Christians, things without which one cannot be a Christian, not all the opinions on all the other things can be right.

That doesn’t mean I want to, therefore, go out and say, “I will now divide because I think my opinions are all right.” That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying it is very important for the preservation of the notion of truth to insist that two mutually exclusive claims for truth cannot both be true. It is no answer to say, “Yes, but in my tradition this is the way we do it. End of discussion.”

Because, you see, if you really hold that you finally have no way of talking about the gospel either in a pluralist society, which means there ought to be forums where Christians can courteously talk about their differences and try to understand what Scripture says and at least understand where you’re coming apart in your opinions and in your exegesis and in your theology and agree to differ if need be and then try to think through what stands behind that and work at a deeper level to try to get it sorted out.

Maybe you’ll come to the position that Scripture is not clear enough on it so we just agree to be agnostic over it. Fair enough! At least you are not denying the reality of truth. This can be manipulative if you’re not careful, so at the risk of standing on a few more toes.… I know at the back you can’t read this chart, but let me explain it to you. This was a chart put together in a book by Lawrence Richards called A Theology of Church Leadership published just over 10 years ago.

What he tries to do is set up hermeneutical models for understanding the texts of Scripture with respect to headship and men/women relationships. In this column, he has a “head over” view, the command model. That is, a husband who sees his headship in terms of this model will be likely to.… And then there are a whole lot of entries. In this column, there is a head/head, a sort of equivalence, the sharing model. A husband who sees himself in terms of this model will be likely to.… And another whole set of entries.

Over here in this column is a servant model, we’re told. This is the servant model. A husband who sees himself in this model will be likely to.… And then a list of entries. The whole theory behind this chart is if you adopt one of these models as you approach Scripture you will fall out in a certain kind of way. Let me read some of the entries.

On the command model, this husband will make most significant decisions himself, in the sharing model decision-making will be a 50/50 matter, and in the servant model, engage in consensus rather than authoritarian or compromise decision making. Command model: share few if any feelings. Sharing model: share himself and his feelings more fully. Servant model: actively seek and try to understand his wife’s thoughts, feelings, and needs. Do you get the idea? You know where you’re being driven.

Command model: perceive headship in terms of authority and the right to require obedience. Sharing model: adopt compromise as the best way to resolve differences. Servant model: encourage his wife to develop her full potential and use all of her abilities. Command model: stereotype male and female roles in family and society. Sharing model: value intimacy over performance of wife-role tasks. Servant model: be more interested in personal growth and development than tasks and roles.

Finally, you come down to the bottom. Be strongly against the ERA. That was the Equal Rights Amendment Act that finally didn’t get through the American Congress. They don’t even have anything like that over here. I made up my own chart. I hasten to say I don’t believe the second chart any more than I believe the first chart. I think they’re both rubbish, but I want you to see it is possible to slant things in a rubbishy way, whichever your position. I have the same general breakdown.

Command model: responsibly grasps the strategic importance of providing leadership in decision making. Sharing model: unable to decide much on his own but seeks shared responsibility in blame. Servant model: serves others in parasite fashion drifting with their decisions. Command model: responsibly discipline his emotional life and understand the emotions of others. Sharing model: wears his emotions on his sleeves and demand his wife do the same. Servant model: displays his emotions in emotional blackmail.

You work down the chart until you come to the end. Command model: strongly opposes the ERA where it poses dangers for Christian truth and obedience while insisting equally strongly because he is secure on such principles of justice as equal pay for equal work. Sharing model: supports the ERA without mature biblical reflection. Servant model: gladly sends his wife to the front lines of armed conflict while he stays home in supporting roles.

Let me tell you both those charts are rubbish. They’re equally rubbish. All I’m saying is what you’ve done is provide a sort of framework and you can no longer listen to the text. The text can no longer reform your thought. I think both visions of leadership are rubbish in those two models, but somehow the new hermeneutic has squeezed us into a certain kind of set of disjunctive alternatives that are really quite dangerous it seems to me.

[Audio cuts off] of the sole sufficiency of and perspicuity of the Scriptures if the passage demands or depends on past context. For example, Laodicea’s water system from the second day and commentaries which I may not have or can’t read. Then another question along this same line. What are the implications for this for the common user who doesn’t have your training? Is the Bible a closed book or at least only half open? What about Christians in third-world countries? More questions along the same. Then this one. Having made all the exegetical mistakes for many years, how can you encourage me not to give up?

[Audio cuts off] an open book. There is no priestly class that has some special advantage in understanding it. No church officers or priests who can claim an inside track in infallible interpretation. Rather, the Scriptures are perspicuous. That is to say, they are sufficiently clear ordinary believers must read them, can understand them, should study them, and must obey them. That’s what the doctrine of the perspicuity of Scripture is about.

What that means, then, is there is no concern in the doctrine of the perspicuity of Scripture to say every passage is easy. Moreover, we have already seen any doctrine of Scripture requires us to recognize God has disclosed himself at times in history to real people with real language, and that means there are cultural overtones. That means part of the study of that language is part of better grappling with Scripture. That must be put side by side with the doctrine of the perspicuity of Scripture.

Moreover, there is a deep Christian reason why we need to grasp the doctrine of the perspicuity of Scripture. Under the old covenant, God disclosed himself primarily through prophets, priests, and kings. The king was God’s Son par excellence. The prophets spoke God’s word. The priests sometimes taught God’s word and officiated at God’s ordained sacrificial system. Those were the means through which God disclosed himself.

When you read Jeremiah 31 with a promise of the new covenant, there we’re told under the new covenant there will be a change. We often begin Jeremiah 31 from verse 31. We should begin from verse 29 or even farther back. Jeremiah 31:29 says, “In the old days you went along with the proverb, ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.’ But the time is coming when, if a person eats sour grapes—his own teeth will be set on edge.’“

What does he mean by that? What he means is under the old covenant there was a tribal structure. When the king sins (when David sins in the matter of counting the people) the whole nation is destroyed. People and prophet, priest, and king were so bound together that the one represented the other.

When the old covenant was inaugurated at Sinai immediately after the giving of the Ten Commandments in Exodus, chapter 20, the people cry out before the terrors of the mount, “Moses, we cannot go any closer! You be God for us and you represent us to God.” Moses is the mediator. David is a mediator. The prophets are mediators. They take the needs and concerns of the people, and they represent them to God, and they take God’s message and bring that message back to the covenant community.

When the fathers ate sour grapes, the children’s teeth were set on edge. That was the nature of the old covenant, but God says, “Under the new covenant it won’t be like that, for I will write my law on their hearts. They will all know me from the least to the greatest.” That is, all the covenant community.

In that context, he says in Jeremiah 31:31 and following, “There will no longer be anyone to say to or teach his neighbor, ‘Know the Lord’ …” Not in the covenant community. “… for they will all know me.” What is this? The abolition of all teachers? No. It’s in the context of this proverb. It’s the abolition of all mediating teachers.

Thus, in the Christian church there are teachers (I think that’s what I am), but it is not because I have a mediatory role that you can’t have. It is not because I have an inside track with God. It is not because I am an intrinsically chosen person to a specifically mediatory task. “They will all know me, from the least to the greatest.” That’s the nature of the new covenant. The Spirit is poured out equivalently on all of God’s people under the new covenant. Read Joel 2. Read Ezekiel 36. Read Isaiah 45.

Within that kind of framework, then, there are teachers in the church of God (that’s made clear by Paul and Peter and by Christ himself), but there are no mediating teachers, no mediating priests, no mediating prophets. We have one mediating Priest, Prophet, and King, and his name is Jesus. That’s the very structure of the new covenant. I think I could defend that at some length.

What that means, then, is under the new covenant we look to the revelation God has given and we all have access to it. The Bible in that sense is a public book for the people of God. There is no inside track to give more Scripture. There is no inside track to give infallible interpretations of Scripture. We all have access to it. This is part, then, of the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers.

Within that framework, it is important to affirm the perspicuity of Scripture. That is, the Bible is clear enough for ordinary Christians to understand all that is necessary for saving grace, for growth in holiness, for subjective faith in the objective object of faith (Christ himself), to gain eternity, to hate sin, to love the neighbor, and so on.

There was a story told from the Deep South about the time of the American Civil War of a rather sophisticated and arrogant white Southerner who approached a black slave preacher who was barely literate and asked him, “If you’re a preacher, could you explain to me what this verse means? ‘And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.’ ” The poor chap was swamped.

He said, “Could you tell me where that is?” “You mean you’re a preacher and you don’t know?” “I don’t know. Could you tell me where it is?” “Well, it’s in Romans 8,” the slave preacher said. The chap said, “I know your problem then. All you have to do is read all of Matthew and obey all of that and all of Mark and obey all of that and all of Luke and obey all of that and all of Acts and obey all of that, and when you get to that part in Romans you’ll have no problem.”

Of course, that’s not quite true, but there’s enough truth in it, enough insight to the fact that ordinary people can understand the Word of God and obey huge swaths of it, and if we focus all the time on the hard bits we don’t understand we might be better advised to spend a little more time obeying the bits we do. The hardest things to me in Scripture are not the challenges that make me write books. They are the things I understand all too well and find very difficult. One should not take a series of lectures like this and blow it out of proportion.

Having said that, it is also important to say God has a complex mind. He hasn’t revealed all about himself, because if he had we couldn’t understand it (finitude cannot understand infinity), but God has revealed enough of himself that the Bible becomes, as someone has said about the gospel of John, like a pool in which a child may wade and an elephant may swim.

The youngest Christian can understand the basic Christian truths and read the Scriptures with profit. The most mature Christian will still see levels and layers and interactions and connections and read more on backgrounds and culture and understanding and deepen things, and that is part of the job of the teacher.

To use Paul’s body metaphor, I am a stomach. I take in the raw stuff and sort of render it into useful form for the rest of the body. That’s part of the teacher’s job, but that doesn’t give me an inside track with God or take away from the perspicuity of Scripture. In terms of encouraging those who feel they have made mistakes, we all make them.

What I would say is if you don’t identify the mistakes and try to correct them, you may go away feeling happy because you don’t know you’re making mistakes but you won’t improve. Better to discover you’re making mistakes and try to correct them as best you can, even if it’s a bit of a discouraging process now and then, then to pretend you’re not making mistakes because you’re so blissfully spiritual you can’t be corrected. We all have a long way to go in this business of learning how to handle the Word of God.

Moreover, it has to be said that many, many, many ordinary preachers in small churches and chapels around the country faithfully articulate the gospel even when they’re mishandling texts. In other words, the truth they articulate may have very little to do with the particular passage they’re expounding, but it’s still God’s truth.

God does not say, “Unless you line up God’s truth with the right text, you shall not be saved.” It is the truth that saves and sanctifies not the particular hermeneutical skill. The hermeneutical skill is merely an aid of better articulating the truth. Within that kind of framework, therefore.… Dare I say it?

If you go back to your church and you hear your preacher say something about dunamis dynamite, which we considered a couple of days ago, and you take him aside after the Sunday morning sermon and say, “That was really a bad mistake this morning, Pastor,” don’t look to me for sympathy. The real question is whether he articulates the gospel. Does he preach the truth?

If, in fact, he is poor at handling Scripture but does preach the truth, at least be grateful for that and give him lots of books as presents. Pray for him. Love him. Bring him to conferences. Pay his way to conferences. He probably can’t afford to come. Be grateful, at least, you have someone who articulates the truth. Far better to articulate the truth and to hook it on the wrong text than teach and preach a lot of half-truths and whole lies. Very hermeneutically sophisticated. Enough then on the hermeneutics of perspicuity.

Let me say something about the role of the Holy Spirit in interpretation. Let me begin with a story that I recounted elsewhere. If you’ve heard it, I beg your indulgence. When I was an undergraduate at McGill University, my older sister became engaged. We had been brought up in a Baptist home, and she was becoming engaged to someone of extremely enthusiastic convictions. Not even tamely enthusiastic convictions but extremely enthusiastic convictions. Like any new convert to another position, she went over the top.

One day as we were driving along in Ottawa (I had gone home for the weekend to meet my future brother-in-law), I was driving Dad’s car. Next to me was my future brother-in-law. Behind him was my sister with whom I was at one time extremely close. (That closeness has resumed in later years.) Beside her was my father. This is a rather personal story, but you will understand it.

As we drove along, my future brother-in-law said to me, “I was having my devotions this morning and God told me such-and-such a passage in Matthew meant such-and-such.” I was studying chemistry and mathematics. I was no theologian, but I had done some classical Greek, and in the peculiar providence of God, I had just read that passage that morning in Greek, and I thought I knew what it mean, too.

I said, “Well, with all respect, I think it means such-and-such.” He said, “No. It can’t be, because God told me it means such-and-such.” I said, “Well, the Greek says …” I quoted it and I tried to explain it. He had no Greek. I tried to explain it and I said, “For these reasons, I think it means such-and-such.” He said, “Well, you have your learning, but the Spirit has told me this is what the passage means.” My sister said, “Spiritual things are spiritually discerned, Don,” which told me where I stood.

I have to confess there is a streak of perversity in me in these situations, so I lied through my teeth, and I said, “What I’m really saying is the Spirit told me what I said the text meant it really means.” I said it with a straight face. I wanted to see what he’d say. We drove quite a long way then with silence in the car. Finally, he said to me, “Well, I guess that means the Spirit says the text means different things to different people.” My father just cleared his throat … loudly. He was the only wise person in the whole car.

This does raise in an acute form just what we mean when we say the Spirit helps us in interpretation. Does it not? Because, after all, my sister was quoting a text. It’s found in 1 Corinthians, chapter 2, to which I invite you to turn. If you look at chapter 2, verses 6 to 16, you find a great deal about the Holy Spirit. Finally, you come to these very strong texts.

For example, verse 10: “But God has revealed it to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God.” Verse 14: “The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.”

Then this: “The spiritual man makes judgments about all things, but he himself is not subject to any man’s judgment.” I’ve had that one quoted at me more than once. Then the last verse. “For who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.” On the one hand, some people take these texts to apply to authoritative, Spirit-given interpretation of Scripture today invariably connected with their own opinions.

Other people are so suspicious of this interpretation fearing a new round of subjectivity that they say, “No. These texts do not mean the Spirit actually comes along and gives us interpretations. All the Spirit does is apply the Word. The natural man might understand the propositions about redemption and the deity of Christ and substitutionary atonement, but there’s no way the natural man (the old person) can actually apply these things to himself or herself apart from the Spirit’s aid. It is the application of these things to the life that is at stake.”

In the first place, I want to say both of those interpretations I think are false. I don’t think they pay enough attention to the context. The context begins in 1:18 where Paul starts talking about the word of the cross (the message of the cross) over against the “isms” of Corinth, the wisdom structures which, in Corinth, meant the public philosophies that were claiming whole allegiances in the marketplace of ideas. Over against all of these public philosophies (the wisdom of the world) stands the message of the cross.

Paul talks about those who have been converted by it, how he has preached it at the beginning of chapter 2, and he’s still talking about this message of the cross when he presses on. Thus, for example, when he says in verse 8, “None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory,” he’s still talking about the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

The thing that has troubled the interpretation of this text, I suspect, is the word mature in verse 6. “We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature,” Sometimes in Paul that word mature distinguishes Christian from Christian. There are mature Christians and there are immature Christians.

Indeed, in the next chapter, Paul himself will begin to make that disjunction, but I am persuaded that’s not what he is doing here. He’s using the word mature precisely because there are Corinthians who want to make exactly that claim with respect to what they are doing in integrating the gospel with pagan philosophies.

Paul won’t have it. He says, “We speak a wisdom from God among the mature,” and the mature turn out to be all Christians by definition. Look at the flow of his argument here and there. “None of the rulers of this age understood it.” That does not here mean the principalities and powers, I think, but actually the people who crucified Jesus on the cross.

Pontius Pilate and Caiaphas did not really understand Jesus was the Messiah (they didn’t really believe it) and that God’s whole wise plan was to send Jesus to the cross, because if they had understood that, then in the first place, they wouldn’t have done it because they would have been too terrified.

In the second place, if they had wanted to oppose it the best way of opposing such a plan would be not to send Jesus to the cross. They didn’t understand it or else they wouldn’t have crucified the Lord of glory, but that’s what they did. They crucified him. They didn’t understand it. “However, as it is written: ‘No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him’—but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit.”

What is the it? It’s the message of the cross. It’s the message of Christ crucified. That has been the burden all the way through. The us is us Christians. God has revealed it to us by his Spirit. Then what Paul is saying is, in addition to the objective revelation out there when God disclosed himself in the God-man Jesus Christ, what is necessary in addition to that objective revelation in order to come to terms with it is the work of the Spirit of God. Otherwise, quite frankly, it doesn’t make sense.

Hasn’t that been what he has argued in chapter 1? “The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing.” To the triumphalists it’s a bit ridiculous. “How can a crucified hero be any sort of hero at all? How can someone who dies actually be God’s messenger?” By definition, it’s like fried ice or boiled ice cream. It’s an oxymoron. It’s a contradiction in terms. You can’t have a hero who is crucified and abominated, but Paul says, “God has revealed this truth to us by his Spirit.”

Then he explains this. It takes the Spirit of God to understand the mind of God. He can draw an analogy because the word spirit is very flexible in the ancient world. Who understands the things that are in a person’s mind except the spirit of that mind, the spirit that is inside? You don’t really know what I’m thinking. Only so far as I express what I think, but I don’t tell you all that I think. Unless you have access to my spirit in that sense, you can’t really know what I think.

God has such access to my mind. You don’t! Who, then, has access to God’s mind? It’s God’s Spirit, and what we need is God’s Spirit if we’re going to understand God’s mind. It takes that kind of internal work in us if we’re going to see the patterns, and the natural person, we’re told in verse 14 (the person without the Spirit), cannot understand these things because they’re spiritually discerned.

Thus, throughout this end of chapter 2, the natural person is put over against the spiritual person. The spiritual person is, by definition, a Christian. The natural person is the person without the Spirit. By definition, not Christian. The spiritual person here is not the person who is a super-duper elite of the elect Christian.

We sometimes use spiritual that way. We say, “She’s very spiritual.” That’s a fine use, but it’s not Paul’s use here. Paul’s use here is the person with the Spirit is spiritual; the person without the Spirit is natural. The spiritual person, by definition, has the Spirit of God and understands these things.

Within that framework, then, some of these difficult verses suddenly make a great deal of sense. Verse 15: “The spiritual man makes judgments about all things, but he himself is not subject to any man’s judgment.” This does not mean, “If I have the Spirit you can’t stand in judgment over me on anything. I understand absolutely everything without exception including quarks, the more advanced levels of number theory.” It doesn’t mean that.

What it means is anybody with the Spirit has access to a whole range of experience between God and man that the person without the Spirit doesn’t have. The spiritual person can understand the profane person (I’ve been there. I still have the natural man living in me. I know profanity. I understand a profane person.), but the profane person can’t understand me. I have the Spirit. He has never been there.

The person who has been blind but now sees can understand blindness and sight. The person who has always been blind still can’t understand sight. That’s what is meant here. “The spiritual man makes judgments about all things, but he himself is not subject to any man’s judgment. For who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.”

Within that framework, the fundamental divide in understanding Scripture, the gospel, the whole heritage of truth, comes with regeneration. It comes with the giving of the Spirit. That is public access to all Christians. Having said that, it must also be further said this does not mean every Christian is, in fact, equally mature, equally insightful, equally given the task of teaching.

Not all of us are going to turn into Roy Clements. It’s not going to happen. There are different gifts and graces that are given in the church. But it does have to be said there is this spiritual component that is bound up with understanding. Let me put it this way. Sometimes someone says, “Is there any point in reading a commentary written by an unbeliever?” It’s a good question, isn’t it?

Yes, there is, because the unbeliever may comment on all kinds of things about which I know nothing or very little. He may provide all kinds of background material, all kinds of helpful study, and even in some cases, articulate gospel truth from a sort of dispassionate, atheistic distance.

That’s also possible, but not right in a way that is confessional, edifying, and in my experience, those who really have not come to terms with the gospel at all, finally have most difficulty even understanding the fundamental Christian doctrines: penal substitution, the deity of Christ, Christ’s resurrection.

Again and again and again we find they just have more and more difficulty the closer they get to what is central. It just becomes too impossible, too far-fetched, too difficult, but this does not mean in any particular text they might not have a very precise understanding of a particular text. This passage is not talking about how you go to do Bible studies on a particular individual text. It’s talking about your whole grasp of the gospel.

More generally yet, I would want to argue the things that go into good Bible study are many: reasonable gifts in terms of ability to read and think, some education (if you’re completely illiterate it’s hard to read the Bible intelligently; it’s hard to read it at all), certain gifts of discipline (being willing to sit on your bottom for a long number of hours reading books). Some people are so hyper they have to be out and doing. They have another set of gifts.

There are other factors such as already knowing quite a lot from the past. They have been studying this book for 30 years. They have a lot more hooks to hang things on. Still other things, such as profound commitment to do what it says, to obey it, to love the truth, to confess sin which is highlighted. It draws you on and on and on because this is not simply an intellectual exercise. It is a holistic exercise.

The result is the aim of Christians should be to learn from whoever can help us along the way of truth because some help us with their store of common grace to which I have referred. They, too, have minds. They, too, can think. Ultimately, our desire is not to master the Word but to be so mastered by it that we are increasingly devoted to the Lord God in conformity to Jesus Christ. That’s the aim.

What we’ll discover along those lines is different writers, teachers, and preachers contribute different components to that. Some challenge us. Some structure our thoughts. Some check us out. Some make us go back and think with rigor about what Scripture means. Others help us read inductively through books and teach us how to do Bible study. They are themselves at different levels of spiritual maturity, and they are being used by the Spirit of God.

What the Spirit rarely does, in my view, is suddenly give us a flash as we’re sitting there saying, “I have a sermon to prepare or Bible study to prepare. This is a very difficult text. I have no intention of looking up commentaries or doing any diligent work or talking to somebody who knows more or buying commentaries. Still less borrowing them from the library. That all involves work. Spirit of God, just enlighten my mind and give me insight into your truth.” Then you have a wonderful message.

There are a few preachers who think that’s what they’re doing. Very few others who listen to them do. The Spirit of God regularly uses means, and he is not concerned finally to give us hunks of information but to make us conform to Christ. Within that framework, then, he uses means and agents, men and women, the fellowship of the church, the discipline of the church, the preaching and teaching of the Word, our own experience of grace. Over 50 years he uses all of these things so gradually we do understand far more of the Word of God than we did before.

This is true not merely at a psychological, warm, fuzzy level but even in hard things. When I finished doctoral studies at Cambridge University in 1975, I came away from John’s gospel, where I had done a lot of my work, and intertestamental Judaism, where I had done a lot of my work, with some completely unresolved questions from a merely historical critical perspective. I didn’t know how to answer certain fundamental questions. I could tell you what they are.

One of them, in particular, was another seven years getting sorted out. I needed more birthdays, more reading, more understanding, more talking with people. It wasn’t that all of those seven years I was troubled by it. I wasn’t! Because I had seen by that time the truthfulness of God in passage after passage after passage, I could trust him even where I didn’t understand. Eventually, more birthdays and more reading helped me to understand, and that too, is the work of the Spirit. The Spirit does not only work in the moment. He works through all of his purposes in conforming us to Christ and making us think Christ’s thoughts after him.

What I have not dealt with is typology, how Jesus uses Scripture. What I have not dealt with is how to distinguish between absolute and relative statements in Scripture, and I’m sorry I haven’t covered more, but I think we should end on this note:

“Oh, how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long. Your commands make me wiser than my enemies, for they are ever with me. I have much more insight than all my teachers, for I meditate on your statutes. I have more understanding than the elders, for I obey your precepts. I have kept my feet from every evil path so that I might obey your word. I have not departed from your laws, for you yourself have taught me.

How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth! I gain understanding from your precepts; therefore I hate every wrong path. Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. I have taken an oath and confirmed it, that I will follow your righteous laws.” May it be so with us.