an_unshakeable_faith.. - Holy Bible Institute

allow the context to rule. False teachers, on the other hand, twist verses out of their contexts andforce pre-determined meanings upon them. For example, there are Korean false teachers inNepal who are aggressive in having home Bible studies with people, but they don’t let the peoplewrite down the verses they use and they don’t let them look at the verses before and after theones they are discussing. That is a recipe for spiritual disaster!Following are some examples of how to interpret the Bible according to context:a. Consider the phrase “judge not that ye be not judged” in Matthew 7:1. This is frequentlytaken out of context today to support the doctrine that it is wrong to judge sin and doctrine,but if we honor the context we see that Jesus was warning against only one type ofjudgment--hypocritical judgment (see Matthew 7:1-5). That He was not warning againstevery type of judgment is evident by the fact that in the same passage He commanded Hislisteners to “beware of false prophets” (Mat. 7:15). The way to beware of false prophets isto carefully judge or examine a man’s life and teaching by comparing it to Scripture.b. Consider the phrase “foolish questions” in Titus 3:9. What is this? The context provides thedefinition. Foolish questions are questions (1) that produce only strife and do not edify (v.9), (2) that are unprofitable (v. 9), and (3) that are used by false teachers (v. 10). Foolishquestions are used insincerely by false teachers to bring doubt to people’s minds aboutsound doctrine so they can lead them away from the truth.c. Consider the phrase “that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation” in 2Peter 1:20. This has been interpreted in several ways, but the meaning is clearly given inthe context. See the next verse. It means that the words written by the human authors of theBible were given by the Holy Spirit.d. Consider the phrase “all things are lawful unto me” in 1 Corinthians 6:12. If we ignore thecontext, we might be led to think that the believer is free from all laws and is therefore atliberty to live as he pleases. This statement is so used by the “Christian rock” crowd. Butthe context corrects this interpretation. In the next verse, we see that Paul is talking aboutthings such as dietary matters. He is saying that all things are lawful that are not forbiddenin Scripture.2. Scripture must be compared with Scripture.Another important rule of Bible interpretation is to compare Scripture with Scripture (1 Cor.2:13). That is why it is good to have a Bible with cross-references. Even more important is theTreasury of Scripture Knowledge, which has hundreds of thousands of cross-references. Goodcomputer Bible software packages such as Swordsearcher have the Treasury of ScriptureKnowledge built into the search system so it is very easy to run down cross references.51