BTR:

INTERPRETING THE SCRIPTURE

Knowing that all scripture is God-breathed, according to 2 Timothy 3:16-17. So then, we

should carefully read, understand, and interpret the Scripture. Why? Because, some of the
Christians nowadays, just read, understand, and interpret the Scripture like it is written for them.
And why there are a lot of false teachers, false prophets, agnostics, and so on, in our time, is
because, they interpret the scripture wrongly. That’s why the scripture that is supposedly
correctly interpreted, turns to wrong interpretation.
There are factors why does preachers, leaders, and readers struggles in Interpreting the Scripture:
First We don’t read the scripture carefully. When a reader regardless if you are a leader or not
does not READ the Scripture carefully, he/she will possibly miss the meaning of the scripture.
For example, when someone picked a scripture in Old Testament with Narrative Literature, most
of the time the interpretation of the scripture was in the narration itself. Why does a reader fall in
interpretation? Because, he/she is excited to understand and interpret the scripture wholly and
carefully without reading the scripture repeatedly and carefully. That’s why as readers we should
carefully read the scripture for us to see the beauty of it as a whole. And do not fall on
misunderstanding the scripture and misinterpreting it.
Second is, the readers do not carefully understand what they read. Readers downfall in
interpreting the Scripture is they usually rely on their own understanding with regards the
scripture itself. Which leads them to wrong interpretation and application. I just remember when
our Pastor who passed away said to us, for us to understand the meaning of the scripture that we
are reading, “we should not use a spoon in digging in to the scripture. But a shovel." He
explained to us that this metaphorical statement means, we should not be satisfied in
understanding the scripture just the way we understand it. But we should have this desire to dig
deeply into the scripture and deeply understand what does the scripture says.
And the last factor why does preachers, leaders, and readers struggles in Interpreting the
Scripture is because, they interpret the scripture wrongly. The worst thing that a preacher of the
Word can do in Scripture, is when he or she do not let the Bible interpret itself. As a preacher of
the Word, we should let God speak through the Word that we are sharing. We do not let
ourselves interpret it and make it reliable to the things that is contradicting to the context of the
scripture. Example, most of the people quoted Philippians 4:13 wrong, because some people just
read it, they think it is the real meaning of it. But when we deeply understand the Scripture, what
does Philippians 4:13 says is God gave us strength to endure hardships, difficulties,
transgressions, and persecutions because of serving Him.
Again if we think that interpreting the scripture is easy, think of it again. We should let the Bible
interpret itself as always so that we will not fall into wrong interpretation and application of the
Scripture. God bless.