This Place Feels Familiar

Photo by Suzy Hazelwood: https://www.pexels.com/photo/brown-and-grey-bricked-building-2697773/

In the previous article, we noted the importance of having a “map” to help us properly interpret a text. For us, that “map” is a set of guidelines and considerations that help us to understand the text in the way that the original author would have expected his original readers to have understood it. But I also remarked that there are times when God’s Spirit intended a fuller and richer message than even the authors themselves understood (c.f. 1 Peter 1:10-12).  The fact that God’s Spirit revealed things through the words of an author that even the author himself did not fully comprehend is part of the mystery of Divine revelation and inspiration. In this article, I want to build out further how we should relate this phenomenon to the principle of the “traveling instructions” we discussed in the previous article. How can we possibly anchor the meaning of a text to the author’s original intent when we know that the Spirit often intended to reveal something greater?

Here is a parallel idea that can help to illustrate how this generally works. I am now old enough that when I return to places where I lived as a teen, or where my wife and I lived as a young married couple, I am blown away by the changes that have taken place over the decades. I frequently find myself oscillating between a sense of familiarity and a sense of not knowing where I am. The names of the roads are generally the same as they were before, but almost everything on those roads is now different. Sometimes, it is only the most enduring landmarks, like bridges, lakes, and large or historic buildings, that help me keep my bearings. Now, for the sake of this illustration, imagine I am reading directions to a particular location, but they are directions that were written decades earlier. If I read the instructions based only what I see in the modern day, I will probably become lost. Numerous traffic lights have been added along the route, and several lanes (or over passes!) added to the road. Some of the landmarks the author used in writing those old directions (such as shops, or gas stations, or trees, etc.) are completely missing now, and I could easily confuse newly built ones for the ones referenced in the directions.

However, all these changes, along with the carefulness I have about the details mentioned, do not alter the meaning and intent of those original instructions. Readers contemporaneous with the author would have understood the directions without hesitation. Even decades later, if I pay careful attention to the more permanent elements that are unlikely to have changed much over time, I will still be able to arrive at or near the destination the author intended. And, if I can find someone with knowledge of local history or get access to old maps and photos from around the time the instructions were given, I will have even more confidence that I am on the right track. All of this demonstrates that the author’s directions (or meaning) have not really changed. What has changed is how I relate the directions to what I am seeing in the present.

In a similar sense, the “directions” in a biblical text must be understood in the context in which it was written, a passage never conveys less than what the author intended. Of course, there are places where God makes it plain that what He is revealing is a snapshot of a future time. Yet, even in those instances, it will still be important to evaluate his context in order to fully appreciate the distinctions he is seeing between his own “neighborhood” and the one he is prophetically describing. And in those cases where God sometimes adds meaning that the author himself did not realize, the “enhanced” meaning that the passage eventually conveys is generally a result of new features “built up” as the plan of God unfolds. We will want to recognize and explore those new features, but we should focus first on understanding the original message and context, for that will be key to understanding why the original passage was important to the author and his readers. Then, after we have been able to identify the “destination” the author had in mind, we can look around and study how things have been “built up” through Christ and the Gospel, and how the features we see today are related to ones described in the text.    

In practice, I have heard numerous sermons that failed to follow this important principle. Preachers will grab onto a phrase or a verse and then preach it according to the way they see it in their current context. They navigate around the “landmarks” of the text without ever considering how the landscape of God’s redemptive work has been “built-up” since the time it was written, and this leads them to some wrong turns.

One common example of this is 2 Chronicles 7:13-14. Many read this passage as though all the “landmarks” mentioned there are the same ones they encounter by the same name today. So, when they see the phrase “my people,” they immediately equate that with God’s people of the New Testament era, that is, Christians. It is as though this verse were a promise made directly to Christians today.  Then, after making this “wrong turn,” some go on to take the word “land” as applying to the land in which they live (that is, their own nation or city). According to this reading, the message of the author is something like this: “If the Christians of [this nation] will repent and turn from their wicked ways, then God will heal [this nation] and we will enjoy the prosperity that has been withheld because of our sin.” The failure to recognize that the passage was written in a different era and that many important features have changed can have many harmful effects. For one, it may cause people to think repentance is focused more upon the fixing of earthly problems, rather than reconciliation with God and heart transformation. On the flip side, it naturally leads to assumptions on the connection between the prosperity of a nation and its relative “rightness” with God. But most importantly, it fails to exalt the immense “upgrade” in the status and hope for New Covenant believers who are in Christ. In the words of Paul, “If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.” (1 Cor. 15:19).   

So, the next time you are “cruising around” in a biblical passage, remember to use the map that keeps you anchored in the author’s original context and intent. There will still be many practical applications that spring from that original message, and plenty of ways to preach it within a New Testament context (as we have noted in previous articles, here and here). But all of that will flow from what the Spirit of God communicated to those original readers.