No Bible passage is so clear that we cannot twist it to conform our own presuppositions and prejudices. We do this because we fear the implications of what the text says.
We too often tend to “yes, but” the texts of Scripture. No Bible passage is so clear that we cannot twist it to conform our own presuppositions and prejudices. We do this because we fear the implications of what the text says about the way we are living, or the future God intends for us. We do it because we desire to be in control and will surrender only reluctantly to Hebrew speakers from three millennia ago or residents of the Roman Empire who died two thousand years ago. We act this way because the natural habits of our culturally determined minds think only with difficulty about moving beyond the imagined structures of reality as our own environment has shaped them. Learning to think as the prophets did poses great challenges for us. This is because we are caught up in our normal way of thinking, even as it twists and turns with new winds of one ideology after another, buffeted by whirlwinds, and turned loose through our fervent self-seeking, self-exaltation, and self-defense.
It is true that transporting the biblical message from back then to our present reality is not always an easy task. More intimidating or bewildering is the message itself. Sometimes it threatens as it bids us to abandon habits which turn us in on ourselves. Frequently, it challenges us to grasp a larger view of reality than our own imaginations have constructed as they try to defend us from unpleasantness of one kind or another. But the biblical message is as complex as life itself is, intricate because it reflects the magnificent elegance of our Creator Himself, and complicated because we have messed up His design for humanity and the rest of creation by turning away from Him.
We live separated from the biblical writers by time and place, a few millennia and a few thousand kilometers. But Scripture gives us plenty of clues as to specific factors in the situations of the prophets, evangelists, and apostles, and ancient literature, with texts known for centuries and new papyri and scrolls recently discovered, as well as archeology which expands our ability to grasp what life then and there was like. Beyond that, as Heinrich Bornkamm described Martin Luther’s engagement with the Old Testament, we, like Luther, can find in the biblical texts a “mirror of daily life.” Abraham and Sarah, David and Bathsheba, they differ in many respects from our neighbors next door, but in the biblical text we glimpse life as it happens now as well as back then. Perhaps, Paul would have used a few different illustrations and expressions had he written today in Tokyo, Cairo, or Rio de Janeiro, but the message of new life through the forgiveness Christ won for us in His death and resurrection would ground our life in His cross and empty tomb in the very same way.
The complexity of the biblical message also stems from its two chief goals: To enter into our lives with the active Word that relates and effects God’s saving will toward us, and to address our thoughts and actions with God’s good and holy design for how to live well and prosper as His creature. In the sixteenth century, disciples of Luther produced a few works dedicated to answering the question, “Does the Bible contradict itself?” Unlike twentieth century manifestations of the genre, they concentrated, for the most part, on the seeming contradiction of law passages and gospel passages. These authors strove to teach readers how to distinguish passages in which God is presenting His design for human life, with its mortifying observations about the way we actually live, from those passages that express the unconditional love of God for His sinful human creatures in the death and resurrection of Jesus. All the while, they recognized how this is the first step toward letting the text come to terms with who we are and where we live.
The biblical message is as complex as life itself is, intricate because it reflects the magnificent elegance of our Creator Himself, and complicated because we have messed up His design for humanity and the rest of creation by turning away from Him.
We have various methods of bending Bible passages to our own understanding, our own dominance. We easily qualify definitions, for example. In Luke 10, the theologian wanted to know who his neighbor was, in hopes that it would be the people whom he already liked. Tough luck! He was supposed to lay down cash and take his own time to aid Samaritans too weak to defend themselves, foreigners who did not even know the Lord. That is enough to make a person sad! But qualifications to the text of Scripture are easy to come by for the sinful imagination. We are not told how his sadness made peace with Jesus’s demand, but the possibilities are many for watering down the Lord’s words.
The challenges all preachers (and every reader of Scripture, for that matter) face confront us day in and day out. How do we translate clear biblical texts into clear observations about our spiritual impotence? How do we discard our misconceptions of just what limits there might be for taming God’s design for human life that stretches us out of our comfort zones? How can we regard ourselves as people of worth and integrity if we are completely dependent on a merciful God who does not let us pay for His favor? How do we live in the confidence that Christ’s love is inseparably attached to the name He gave us in baptism? In my case, Robert Kolb, child of God.
The goal of our ventures into Scripture is to construct a bridge between preacher and hearer, between self and the prophet or apostle who claims our attention at the moment. Preachers have always found alluring the possibility of finding “deeper meaning” which obscures what the text is saying directly to us if we just listen to it. Something in most texts lends itself to diverting us from having to chew on the real meat of a pericope. We need to check our attempts to allegorize ourselves out of the plain text. We need to face the reality that biblical texts push into our countenances. We really do need to die to our old self and its clever defenses which enable us to miss the point a biblical writer is trying to tell us. We need to come alive in the cuddly arms of the God who has just been dying to love us. For He wants to tell us, in no uncertain terms, we belong to Him, we live under His rule, and we get to serve Him with a blessedness that will last forever.
Biblical texts lead us onto a path of life that is like rehabilitation. Repentance is a way of life which demands repetition, and the biblical texts we do not want to confront are constantly exercising those spiritual muscles that enable us to push back when Satan tempts us and to embrace and run the race God invites us to run with Him.
To be sure, there are some Greek and Hebrew words that are ambiguous or unclear in a given passage or two, but the Holy Spirit rises up out of the text He helped write to aid us in our interpretation. By praying, meditating, and fighting off our contemporary cultural values and judgments that conflict with the text, we are able to become ever more honest with the biblical message because the text has helped us be more honest with ourselves. Furthermore, preachers cannot bear the burden of dividing law and gospel if they are not listening to the Law and hearing the Gospel as each speaks to them. Pastors cannot bear the burden of responsibility for stewarding God’s mysteries without confidence in the forgiveness of their sins as pastors and preachers.
So, taking a new look at a text and letting it speak its message anew to us exercises our faith in the Holy Spirit, who so loves His fine work of inspiring (that is, breathing life into) the text that He keeps on dwelling in it so He can draw us into conversation as we dwell in it as well.
