Christ Is the Meaning of the Scriptures

What does it say? What does it mean? How does it apply? Those were the questions I was taught, in my earlier years, to ask when reading the Scriptures. But I have since come to believe that there really is no difference between the interpretation of a text and the application of it. The act of interpretation is the act of discovering meaning in a text; application is the act of discovering meaning in a text. They are both concerned with discovering meaning in the text. Application and interpretation of the text are really but two different ways of describing the same function.

In 1 Corinthians 10, when Paul speaks of Moses and the children of Israel in the wilderness, he says, “These things happened to them as types written for our instruction” (v. 11). What are they? They are types. Why are they written? For our instruction. They have meaning for us, and that meaning instructs us. Some would call that application, and so it is; but there is really no difference between that and interpretation.

We cannot know for certain what the ancient Scriptures (the Old Testament) meant to ancient readers. We cannot even know for certain what the human authors of the Scriptures understood their own writings to mean. Did the author of Exodus and Numbers understand that the crossing of the Red Sea is about Christ and baptism? Did he realize that the Rock that followed them in the wilderness is Jesus Christ, and that the water that flowed from that Rock is spiritual drink? Did he understand that the One the children of Israel rebelled against in the wilderness is Jesus Christ? It is doubtful. Did the author of the book of Jonah recognize that the sign of Jonah is about the resurrection of Jesus Christ, as Christ said it is? Again, doubtful. We could bring many more similar examples.

There is also no reason to suppose that there is only one correct interpretation of a passage. There may be many true interpretations (and there are also many interpretations that are not true). This is especially so when we consider that, though the Scriptures have many human authors, the author whose meaning matters most is God, and there is no reason to suppose that God cannot communicate any number of things to us through the divinely inspired Scriptures — but they will always be about the crucified and risen Christ.

Choosing an interpretation as the one and only interpretation and then calling the rest “applications” simply disguises the matter. The truth is that whether we call it “interpretation” or “application,” we are talking about what a text means, and that is always a matter of interpretation.

What this means when we are reading the Scriptures, particularly the Old Testament, is that we are not applying them to Christ, as if Christ were not already inherently present in them — we are not imposing Christ upon them. It is one thing to say that an interpretation is imposed upon the Scriptures; it is quite another to say that Christ is imposed upon them. Christ is neither imposed upon them nor applied to them, but the Scriptures are about him. He is always the One of whom they speak. He is the One they present to us and give witness to. For Christ, who is the Word, the Logos, the divine author of Scripture has said that they are about him.

You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me. (John 5:39)

Likewise, in Luke 24, Christ opens the Scriptures to the disciples, and opens the minds of the disciples to see that what Moses and the Prophets wrote are about him, and thus to understand them properly (see Luke 24 and Reading the Scriptures). Christ himself is the meaning of the Scriptures. So we do not apply the Scriptures to Christ, or impose Christ upon the Scriptures, as if he were external to them. Rather, we discover Christ in them as their inherent meaning.

Random Thoughts

Thoughts culled from my random file, gathered from my Twitter tweets, Facebook updates and Instagrams. About God, the mystery of the Incarnation, redemption, faith, and life in Christ. Some have come to me in moments of prayer and quiet reflection, some in interaction with others. The stuff that memes are made of. Offered as “jump starts” for your faith.

• When you love, you don’t think about sacrifice.
• The Incarnation means that Christ did not die on the cross simply instead of us but that he died as us. His death was our death so that his life is now our life.
• The Incarnation, when God became man, is the atonement — the at·one·ment. For in Christ, God has become one with all humankind. The Cross and Resurrection flow inevitably from that.
• At his baptism, Christ identified with us in our brokenness and shame, and turned us to God. In our baptism, we are identified with him in his death and resurrection.
• Lord, let the prayer of my breathing be as angels ascending and descending, inhaling the breath of your Spirit and breathing out your praise. Amen.
• God is love. Grace is the love of God reaching out to us. Glory is the revelation of that love and grace — the revelation we have in Jesus Christ.
• The holiness of God is the revelation of his love, and the justice of God is the revelation of his mercy. All is perfectly revealed in Jesus Christ.
• Let go the what ifs of the future and if onlys of the past. They keep you from the one thing that matters: this present moment with God — the only moment there is.
• Jesus did not come into the world to get mixed up with religion.
• The fast God desires is one that never ends, an ongoing process of faith being formed by the love of God.
• Repentance does not change how God sees us but how we see God.
• Sin, like repentance, does not change the way God sees us but the way we see God.
  
• It is through the gift of repentance that God shows us the way to life. It is a good day to repent.
• Life is not a passing stream of moments. It is but one moment. This one.
• Our understanding of eternal things gets flattened out in our time-bound perspective, like trying to understand a three-dimensional world from a two-dimensional point of view.
• Our true origin is not in time but in eternity, through our Lord Jesus Christ.
• We are naïve about evil until we have recognized the depths of it in our own heart.
• Pride has ten thousand faces, and every one of them is false.
• In praying, “Forgive us our trespasses,” we are asking forgiveness not only for ourselves but for everyone else as well. For there is no them; there is only us — of whom we are all a part.
• God redeems our every moment, transforming them by the blood of the Cross and the power of the Resurrection, making them all one.
• With God there is no merit system. No points are awarded or taken away. There is simply no such reckoning, and never has been. There is only the love of God surrounding us through Christ by the Holy Spirit.
• Christ has broken the gates of Hades and set us free. The only hell now is the one we create within our own hearts.
• In Christ, God has reconciled us to Himself, and so also to our true selves, who are created in the image of God.
• Though we are created in the image of God and to be like Him, still we are finite creatures and ever shall be. How then shall we suppose that anyone possesses an infinite ability to resist the love of God forever?
• There is no us and them. There is only Christ, in whom all in heaven and on earth are made one.

More random thoughts ...