How to Interpret the Bible
Can you interpret the Bible for yourself?
Can you just open the Bible and understand what it means, or do you need someone to interpret the Bible for you? What do you think?
The truth is that both answers to this question are a little bit right.
On the one hand, Scripture is for everyone.
The Holy Spirit speaks to us while we read it to help us understand, and there are some things in Scripture that are easy to interpret. For example, “Children, obey your parents because you belong to the Lord, for this is the right thing to do” (Ephesians 6:1 NLT) is pretty straightforward. A third grader can understand that, even though she doesn’t want to hear it!
On the other hand, we need a little help.
Let's face it: most of us don’t speak ancient Greek! (Or Hebrew!) We also probably don’t know some things about what was going on 2000 years ago. And sometimes, we think that thought came from God when it was really just a brain fart. So we are going to need some help to interpret the Bible. But that doesn't mean that we need someone to do all of the interpretation for us, or that only pastors or seminary theologians can interpret the Bible. We just need some help with the heavy lifting.
