The Bible is its Own Expositor

The Bible is its Own Expositor

Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that need not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. 2 Timothy 2:15.

The Bible is its own expositor. Scripture is to be compared with scripture. The student of the Bible should learn to view the Word as a whole and to see the relation of its parts. He should gain a knowledge of its grand central theme—of God’s original purpose for the world, of the rise of the great controversy, and of the work of redemption. He or she should understand the nature of the two principles that are contending for the supremacy, and should learn to trace their working through the records of history and prophecy, to the great consummation. We should see how this controversy enters into every phase of human experience; how in every act of life he himself reveals the one or the other of the two antagonistic motives; and how, whether he will or not, he is even now deciding upon which side of the controversy he will be found.

Every part of the Bible is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable. The Old Testament, no less than the New, should receive attention. As we study the Old Testament, we shall find living springs bubbling up where the careless reader discerns only a desert.

The Old Testament sheds light upon the New, and the New upon the Old. Each is a revelation of the glory of God in Christ. Christ as manifested to the patriarchs, as symbolized in the sacrificial service, as portrayed in the law, and as revealed by the prophets is the riches of the Old Testament. Christ in His life, His death, and His resurrection; Christ as He is manifested by the Holy Spirit, is the treasure of the New. Both Old and New present truths that will continually reveal new depths of meaning to the earnest seeker (Counsels to Parents, Teachers, and Students, 462, 463).

Christ reproached His disciples with their slowness of comprehension. After His resurrection, as He was walking to Emmaus with two of the disciples, He opened their understanding, that they might comprehend the Scriptures, so explaining the Old Testament to them that they saw in its teachings a meaning that the writers themselves had not seen.

Christ’s words are the bread of life. As the disciples ate the words of Christ, their understanding was awakened. They understood better the value of the Saviour’s teachings. In their comprehension of these teachings they stepped from the obscurity of dawn to the radiance of noonday. So will it be with us as we study God’s Word.

The work of explaining the Bible by the Bible itself is the work that should be done by all our ministers who are fully awake to the times in which we live