Sharpening the sword......

For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Hebrews 4:12

If this is true, then God's word is worthy of our study! In the study of scripture there are basically two main tasks. The first task is to find out what the text meant and the second task is to find out what the text means. These two tasks have big names associated with them: exegesis and hermeneutics. Please don't accuse me of trying to get too complicated on you. Let's keep it simple.... exegesis is a process of learning to ask good questions of the biblical text. And again, we do exegesis to discover, to the best of our abilities, what the text meant to the original hearers.... seeking to get at the biblical author's intended meaning.

Now, on to the other big word, hermeneutics. I have already talked about this a little in a recent post....in any case, the task of hermeneutics is all about taking the understanding that is derived from exegesis and figuring out how to apply it to our lives. This may sound complicated....and some theologians are experts in making it seem unattainable to the common folk....but it really does not have to be. The whole object is to get at the plain meaning of a passage of scripture and then properly applying it to our lives. The goal of exegesis is not to find some mysterious meaning behind a text....or to come up with some meaning that no one else has ever uncovered. This will most certainly lead to doctrinal error.

Please continue to join me this week as I share a few pointers on these two important tasks of bible study. I'm thinking the better we do our part in properly studying the scriptures, the sharper the double-edged sword will be. Agree?