Literal interpretation gets lost in translation...
You are an interpreter. You may not be able to interpret another language into your own, but you do have the capacity to interpret and you use that capacity every day. You interpret the things your friends tell you and what you see on the news. You interpret the body language of your spouse and the reaction of your boss to a project you just finished. You interpret the conversation that you can barely hear from the other room and the blogs that you read. Everything you experience is up for interpretation, but that doesn’t mean that every interpretation is correct. There are absolute truths. There are interpretations that are widely accepted as right. There are even best interpretations among a multitude of possibilities.
When it comes to interpreting the Word of God, it is important to remember that it always points to the person and work of Jesus Christ. Whether you are interpreting Scripture or any other special revelation, you should look at it through the lens of how it relates to Jesus.
The Holy Bible is all about Jesus Christ. He was there at the beginning of the earth and He will be there as it is prophesied to usher in a new heaven and new earth. The Old Testament prophesied the Messiah and tells the history of the world leading up to the birth of Christ. The New Testament gives the account of Jesus life, death, and resurrection, the forming of His church, and it ends with the prophesy of His second coming. It can be easy to misinterpret Scripture when you pull it out of the context of the whole Bible as the story of Jesus Christ.
Sometimes special revelation comes in forms other than Scripture. God sometimes reveals His plan to us through others people, prayer, dreams, visions, and even angels. These revelations can often be misinterpreted more easily than Scripture, so The Bible gives us guidelines to test these revelations against. I like the way Mark Driscoll lays out these guidelines in his doctrine book as he includes testing extra-biblical revelations that others have as well as your own:
- Are they loyal to the LORD? [Deuteronomy 13:1-11, 18:20]
- Is their word consistent with the Bible? [ Deuteronomy 13:1-11, 1 Kings 13:15-18
- Is what they describe or predict accurate? [Deuteronomy 18:22]
- Is their character Christlike? [Jeremiah 23:9-40, Micah 3:5-10]
- Does their word build up and encourage the church in truth? [1 Corinthians 14:3]
- Do the church elders affirm their word? [1 Corinthians 14:29]
While these tests can show whether a revelation is from God, there is still the issue of human error. It is possible to have a true and correct revelation from God, but misinterpret it. Don’t let that discourage you though because God is still sovereign and He can and will correct your interpretation if you happen to hear Him incorrectly.
I think more often than not, God’s revelation to us is general. For example, I know that I am called by God to make disciples. Does that mean I should be a missionary to a community that has not heard the Gospel of Jesus? Does that mean that I should be a youth pastor? Does that mean that I should plant a church somewhere and lead it? Maybe it means that I should just build relationships with people as I work to create environments in our church where people are freed to be open to hear the voice of God calling them to Him. Often times the details are just a matter of the context we are in.
My church has a call to reach as many people as possible with the Gospel. There was a time when we thought that meant to build a bigger building so that more people could come to us. We have since moved to a multi-site strategy where we are taking the Gospel to where the people are. We didn’t hear wrong from God, we just interpreted the details in a way that God eventually redirected to where we are now.