WHEN CHRIST EXPOSED A CONSPIRACY
While there are many tricky verses in the Bible, it’s clear that some of them were never intended to give us so much trouble. Paul’s mysterious mention of the “restrainer” in 2 Thessalonians 2 is a perfect example, but perhaps we have been looking at it the wrong way.
Reading somebody else’s mail is impolite if not illegal. But if the letters are fifty, a hundred, or over a thousand years old, it is a very different sort of spying.
One of the biggest problems we have when reading the Bible is our habit of forgetting that although it was written for us, it wasn’t written to us. As a result, we are prone to taking things out of context. When we assume that the things we read apply directly to us, we can misinterpret them, and if we misinterpret them, we also misapply them. If we want to apply the Bible to ourselves, we must interpret it properly first.
This relates to one of the best developments in theology over the past few decades, which is a renewed desire to understand the New Testament in its first-century context. When we read the gospels and the letters to the churches (which include the seven letters in Revelation), before we come to any conclusions we must first ask who it was written to, and why it needed to be written. A better understanding of the context can put a different spin on our interpretation. Sometimes it can even change it entirely.
