The first thing we must do if we have purposed in our hearts to understand the Bible as accurately as we possibly can is to lay a broad and deep foundation in the Bible in our mother tongue. How to do this is relatively easy to articulate. Actually having the gumption and moral courage to do this is another question altogether. At any rate, I see several things that we must do to lay a foundation of accurate Scriptural understanding.
We must master the contents of the OT as well as the NT. This doesn’t mean you can recite hundreds of addresses or outline the contents of every chapter like a walking encyclopedia (though that would be nice). This means that you understand the major themes, doctrines, and events of the Bible and that you know where the information is to be found, by general location at any rate.
This content knowledge is neither technical nor theological, but without it you will never be able to maximize your technical and theological understanding. You need to have passages coming to mind for every subject or passage you are trying to doctrinally understand. You need the light God wants to shed on the subject or passage. If you don’t have this light in a significant degree, you can be swindled by a teacher sporting the mantle of technical expert or theologian par excellence. Folks, you don’t need to be an expert to weigh most points or positions. You just need to know the word of God and trust what it says. Generally, technical points and theological arguments can be vetted by a general knowledge of the Scriptures. Is the point consistent with Bible teaching or opposed to it? If it is consistent with the Bible, you can embrace the point, though details may have to be ironed out. If it is inconsistent with the Bible, you have a moral obligation to reject it.
We should study the Bible in several literal translations. No translation is perfect. No translation has been executed by the hand of God of himself. “By the mouth of two or three witnesses every word shall be established.” Moreover, don’t limit yourself to the well-known translations. I occasionally read from translations like Darby’s, Rotherham’s, or Young’s, as well as the translations offered in commentaries. If you limit yourself to one translation, you limit your understanding of passages where that translation is weak, off a few degrees, or just out-and-out wrong (as occasionally happens with all translations).*
We should be under the sound of good ministry from good Bible-teachers: formal ministry, living room fellowship, reading, videos, and audio messages. This isn’t so you can hold someone’s hand and have them tell you what to believe. This is for the benefit of having things pointed out to you that you have never seen before, sometimes in passages that you have read ten or twenty times. This doesn’t negate your obligation as a Berean. This IS doing the Berean thing. The Berean approach is predicated upon taking in good ministry. You don’t need to test what you already know. You don’t need to test things that are obviously wrong. You test when you hear things that you haven’t heard before and have no idea whether they are true or false.
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Eyes wide open, brain engaged, heart on fire.
Lee W. Brainard
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* For those who are concerned about the textual considerations behind the translations, the following observations will clarify my position.
— I am convinced that the Byzantine text best represents the original text of the NT.
— I am convinced of the general integrity of the Masoretic text for the OT, though I follow the Dead Sea Scrolls where they differ from the much-later Masoretic text.
— I believe that literal translations of the NT made from the eclectic (Non-Byzantine) tradition are still the Bible (the sword of the Lord) though they have a few dings in them.
— I love the KJV — the Bible of the revivals, the great missionary movement, and the return to the literal interpretation of Bible prophecy — but I recognize that it too has a few imperfections in it.
— I often use my own translations of the Greek and the Hebrew when I preach and teach.
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