I grew up in the Western US, in the Nevada desert. When I was in my teens, my family realized there was something wrong with our house. And by “something wrong” I mean something structurally wrong with our house. There were large-gap cracks appearing in the sidewalk and our living room floor was bowing. Turns out, one part of the house was slowly sinking, while another section, on the opposite side, was slowly drifting away.
How could this happen? Well, the first thing you have to understand about desert soil is that it is very alkaline and it swells when it gets wet. While the soil in the rest of the US will act like a sponge and soak in any rainfall, the top layer of the desert soil tends to swell shut and not allow additional water to be absorbed. This is why “flash floods” happen in the desert – too much rainfall too quickly, the top layer of dirt swells shut, and any remaining water rapidly moves to the lowest elevation point it can find. After the rain evaporates in the desert heat, the ground contracts back to normal.
Further investigation of the cracks and shifts revealed that the house did not have a proper foundation. Sure, there was a concrete slab and some footers, but not much else underneath. The house was about 25-30 years old at the time, and who knows what zoning/building laws were in place (or just flat ignored) when it was built. In any case, we had to do something, because after a couple of decades of the ground underneath settling and the surrounding topsoil being treated like an accordion, the lack of proper foundation meant that the ground was literally tearing our house apart.
This wasn’t something we could patch with plaster or pour concrete over. Ultimately, the best way to fix the problem was to start over with a new, properly-laid foundation. Now, it’s one thing to place a new foundation behind an existing house…but it’s a completely different operation to move a house from its current foundation on to the new one. We brought in and moved into a single-wide trailer on our property. Next, our home had to be gutted. Everything was removed, even the bottom layer of sheetrock, exposing the wooden frame. Then, enormous metal beams were run through the gutted lower layer. The last step was to have the house picked up by the metal beams and moved to the new foundation. (It was quite a sight to see my entire home “floating” in the air, being supported by jacks.) Afterward, my dad rebuilt the gutted portions before we could move back in.
By way of correlation, the same thing can happen to how we interpret the Bible. The best way to handle Scripture begins with Observation (What do I see?), moves to Interpretation (What does it mean?), and ends with Application (How does it work?). To use my house analogy, Observation is the foundation, Interpretation is the structure, and Application is the furnishings that make the building useful. However…no matter how pretty we make the Application, or how much we like the Interpretation, the whole structure will fall apart if the Observation-foundation is not solid.
Perhaps you’ve lived with a particular interpretation you were taught decades ago. But, over the years, you noticed some cracks in that line of thinking. Maybe you’ve found that those conclusions don’t quite “fit in” with other clear statements in Scripture or your experience in life. It’s hard to change your mind when it’s something you’ve “known” for a long time, or if it was taught by someone you respect. When we realize that our Application is off or our Interpretation doesn’t work, it’s time to take a hard look at our Observation-foundation. Ultimately, we need to let Scripture speak for itself.
One of the most common mis-interpretations of the Bible comes with the word “save” or “salvation”. A regularly quoted verse about salvation is found in Paul’s letter to the believers in Philippi:
Philippians 2:12-13
Therefore, my dear friends, just as you have always obeyed, so now, not only in my presence but even more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God who is working in you both to will and to work according to His good purpose.
“See?” they say. “In order to be saved from eternal damnation, you have work to do and God has work to do. Our obedience proves that we’re working out of our ‘saved’ state.”
But if you compare this statement with Paul’s letter to the believers in Ephesus, you find:
Ephesians 2:8-9
For you are saved by grace through faith, and this is not from yourselves, it is God’s gift – not from works, so that no one can boast.
So which is it, Paul? Is eternal salvation proven by us working or is it God’s gift? Many people try to reconcile these two verses by putting the “work” concept from Philippians into the “faith” concept found in Ephesians. They would argue that you are saved by grace through faith [which is proven through your continued obedience and work]…the problem with this reconciliation attempt is that anything done as work automatically disqualifies the work-earnings from being called a gift (as Paul states in Romans 4:4-5).
Notice the cracks in the interpretation structure here? Does the house look/feel unsteady? To really address this interpretation problem, we’re going to have to inspect our Observation-foundation.
Our problem stems from the assumption that every use of the word “save” or “salvation” in the Bible refers to being eternally saved from the consequences of our sin. When, in fact, no Old Testament use of “save” means that, and less than half of the uses of “save” in the New Testament refer to our eternal salvation. The other uses throughout the Bible refer to being delivered from enemies, or healed from sickness, or delivered from physical death, or other types of “rescue”…all of which can be determined by looking at the context where the word “save” is used. Let’s be fair here…we do the same thing in English: I saved money. I saved someone from choking. I saved you when I gave you a ride after your car broke down. Lots of saving here…but nothing pertaining to eternity.
If we take the same context-driven approach with our Bible reading, we find that in his letter to the believers in Philippi, Paul used the term “salvation” three times (Philippians 1:19, 1:28, 2:12). In his chapter 1 uses, the context makes it clear that Paul is talking about an earthly rescue from earthly persecution. In the verses surrounding 1:19, he talks about his own earthly rescue, and then in the following two uses (1:28, 2:12) Paul is using himself as a pattern for the Philippian believers to follow for their own escape from earthly persecution.
With this new, solid Observation-foundation, our interpretation changes when we read Philippians 2:12-13. We find that this rescue-from-persecution interpretation is more consistent with the rest of the chapter. We also realize that those verses are not in conflict with Ephesians 2:8-9, and there is no need to shoehorn one verse inside the other. When our observations are solid, our interpretations become accurate, and our applications will be more useful.
The same thing happened when we moved our house. Since there was a new foundation being laid…my dad took the opportunity to add a master bath and other improvements that made the home more pleasant and useful to live in. However, these extra amenities would have been useless if we had not replaced the poorly-constructed foundation.
Whenever you find an apparent conflict between Bible passages, go back and look at the context. Rarely does the same word mean the same thing every single time it is used. Even if it means we need to gut and replace what we’ve been taught previously, we must let the Scriptures speak for themselves.
Keep Pressing,
Ken