The
Apostle Peter wrote the following words toward the end of his life in the New
Testament book that we call 2 Peter:
2PE 1:19 And we have the word of the prophets made more
certain, and you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in
a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. 20 Above all, you must
understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet's own
interpretation. 21 For prophecy never had its origin in the will
of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
Peter makes the same point as Paul
does regarding the inspiration of the Bible. He tells us that the Scriptures
did not originate with man but with God. Peter’s image of men being carried along by the Holy Spirit
parallels Paul’s used of the term God-breathed.
The Holy Spirit of God acted upon and within men and they wrote what they saw,
heard, and thought.
Peter makes another important point
when he writes in verse 20 that the prophet’s own interpretation was not a part of what was written. In other
words, the writers of Scripture did not superimpose their own thoughts onto
what God was speaking to them in such a way as to change what God was saying.
The translation used above is the NIV, let’s look at another translation, the
NASB, to get another perspective on verse 20:
But
know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one’s own
interpretation.
The NASB translation is the
traditional translation of verse 20 (we’ll have a section on translations later
on), and we see that the NASB’s point is that not only did the prophets who
wrote the Scriptures not pollute it with their own ideas (verse 21) but that
when we read the Scriptures we ought to make sure that our interpretation of
what we read is not a private matter but that it is in harmony with the rest of
Scripture and with apostolic teaching (verse 20).
While we will explore this in more
depth later in our study, the immediate point that I want to make is that the
Christian life is not to be lived in isolation, but rather in community, and
this community includes the interpretation of the Bible. This is one reason why
it is important to be part of a local church that believes the holy Bible is
the Word of God and which practices a mature approach to understanding and
interpreting the Bible.
While the Holy Spirit will teach us
all things and lead us into truth, the Scriptures make it clear that He does
not do this in isolation and I should never be defensive about testing my
understanding of the Bible alongside historical Christian teaching and
alongside my contemporaries.
Paul writes to the Ephesians:
EPH 2:19 Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and
aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household, 20 built on the
foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief
cornerstone. 21 In him the whole building is joined together
and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. 22 And in him you too are being built together to
become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.
Notice the description of the
foundation upon which we are built; apostles and prophets with Christ Jesus
being the chief cornerstone. Without question Christ is the cornerstone, the
holy temple of which we are members is all about Jesus and He is the only true
light of the City of God, (see Revelation 21:22-23; 22:5). Yet in this passage
we are taught that the apostles and prophets are also part of the foundation –
what does this mean? (See also Revelation 21:14).
If we take the term “prophets” to
refer to the Old Testament and the term “apostles” to refer to the New
Testament, for virtually all of the Old Testament was written by prophets and
virtually all of the New Testament was written by apostles (and those portions
of the New Testament not written by apostles were written by men who were
partners in an apostle’s ministry), then we see that this idea of apostles and
prophets means two things:
Firstly, that our belief and
practice should be consistent with what the apostles and prophets wrote, that
is, our teaching and lives should be consistent with the Old and New
Testaments.
Secondly, our lives and beliefs
should be consistent with the way the
apostles and prophets lived.
I am making this distinction because
all too often we think that if we give mental assent to the Bible that that is
enough, but it is not enough. Our lives must conform to the holy Scriptures and
to the manner of life of the people
who God used to write the Scriptures.
Therefore, important questions when
studying the Bible and when evaluating the way we live, and the way in which
our local churches function are: Is what I am thinking and the way I am living
consistent with apostolic teaching? Can I trace this belief and/or this
behavior back to the apostles? Is this thinking or way of life consistent with
the apostles and prophets?
The Apostle Peter wrote
the following words to Christians around 64 A.D.
2PE 3:14 So then, dear friends, since you are looking
forward to this [a new heaven and a new earth], make every effort to be found
spotless, blameless and at peace with him. 15 Bear in mind that our Lord's patience means
salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that
God gave him. 16 He writes the same way in all his letters,
speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are
hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the
other Scriptures, to their own destruction.
There are two things I’d like us to
see in this passage in which Peter mentions the letters that Paul wrote to
Christians. The first is the phrase, the
other Scriptures. The Apostle Peter classified Paul’s writings as
Scripture, on the same level as the Old Testament. This shows us that even
while the Apostles and the other New Testament writers were alive that their
writings were viewed as Scripture, as holy and inspired by God. Because they
are inspired by God people who misuse them, who distort them, do so to their own destruction.
The other thing for us to consider
is how Peter characterizes Paul’s letters. Peter writes that his [Paul’s] letters contain some things that are hard to understand.
As
we get to know the Bible we’ll get to know the human authors that God inspired
to write the Bible, and as we get to know the human authors we’ll see that a
sense of who they were often comes through what they wrote and the way they
wrote.
Peter
says that Paul wrote some hard things, things that are so hard to understand
that if a person doesn’t submit his understanding to the Holy Spirit that the
person is going to get in trouble – this wouldn’t be an issue with any other
book, but it is an issue with the Bible – our attitudes are important when we
read the Bible.
God didn’t turn the human writers of
the Bible into robots when they wrote; God is a God of relationship who caused
the Bible to be written in the context of relationship, of His relationship
with men and of their relationship with humanity.
God likely chose some men for
certain ministries and Scripture writing because of the way He had made them.
For example, Paul’s education, cultural background, and single-minded
temperament suited him to write hard and complex things and also suited him to
preach the Gospel and plant churches in the heavily Greek-thinking areas of
Asia Minor and
Moses’s education at the Egyptian
court gave him an understanding of government, legal systems, and the military;
while he would have to learn not to depend upon his natural learning but to
depend on God, once he learned dependence on God, God could use Moses’s
education to lead a nation out of slavery, engage in warfare, and institute a
complex system of worship and law.
There are those who say that a Coke
in a can tastes different than a Coke in a bottle. Those who know wine can
taste the difference between wine aged in oak and wine aged in stainless steel.
The formula of the Coke is the same, the vintage of the wine is the same, but
they taste differently depending on the vessel they come from. Such is the way of the inspiration of the
Bible. God didn’t exclude the characters of the human agents He inspired; John,
Peter and Paul all wrote differently. The prophet Jeremiah has a flavor that is
distinct from Isaiah or Ezekiel. God did not negate who these men were anymore
than He wants to negate who we are – after all, God created each one of us
uniquely and He knows us intimately (see Psalm 139).
To be continued....
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