Who Determines the Meaning?
Once the work has been done to understand the context of the words, grammar, sentences, and the historical context surrounding the passage, we move on to working on understanding the meaning of the passage.
A mistake that some people make at this point is ask themselves the question, “What does this mean to me?” instead of asking “What is the meaning God intended in this text?” If God is the ultimate author of the Bible, then He is the one who establishes the meaning of the passage and it is our job as readers to work to understand what God meant when He inspired the authors to write. Can there be more than one meaning or can there be different layers of meaning? Next week we will finish this series up by looking at the different levels of meaning that might be available in the passage.
Interpretive Methods
There are different ways that people go about interpreting the passage’s meaning. Some use allegory, some spiritualize the text, some find typology, and some find the meaning using a historical- grammatical approach. Not every method of reading the Bible is correct and we do not have enough time go into all of the methods and interpretative theories out there. A good place to start is by learning the grammatical-historical method.