The Importance and Value of Proper Bible Study

How to Properly Study and Interpret the Bible

Reuben A. Torrey

• Publisher: Aneko Press
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781622457908
• eBook ISBN: 9781622457915
• Topic: Theology & Religion

There has perhaps never been an age that set such great store in study as that in which we now live. The unfortunate thing about it is that so much of the study in our day is devoted to books and subjects in which there is little or no profit. Time is squandered on the purely speculative, the uncertain, the unprofitable, the unessential, the unproductive, the irrelevant, and the transitory. The most profitable of all study is wisely ordered Bible study. Its value is incalculable. It is beyond all comparison more profitable than any other study. It is the one superlatively profitable study.Bible study towers above all other studies in importance and value not only because of what the Bible is, but also because of what the Bible does.
The Bible properly studied makes men wise unto salvation.
The Bible makes Jesus Christ known so as to lead anyone who studies it to believe in Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God, and thereby to obtain eternal life in His name.
The Bible imparts God's own nature to the men, women, and children who study it as they should and thus completely transforms their inmost and their outward life.
When properly studied, this Book makes the one who studies it grow like the palm tree in all the graces and glories of Christian character.
The Bible properly studied makes the heart pure and keeps the life white.
The Bible, properly studied, brings peace, wonderful peace, to the troubled heart.
The Bible, properly studied, brings joy as well as peace.
In this book, I will tell you how to properly study the Bible: for light and not for darkness, for life and not for death, for blessing and not for cursing, and so it will lift us up to heaven and not sink us down to hell.

Chapter 3

How to Interpret the Bible to Find Its True Meaning

For we are not as many, which corrupt the word of God: but as of sincerity, but as of God, in the sight of God speak we in Christ. (2 Corinthians 2:17)

Therefore seeing we have this ministry, as we have received mercy, we faint not; but have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully; but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God. But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost: in whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them. (2 Corinthians 4:1-4)

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

The devil . . . saith unto him, . . . it is written. (Matthew 4:5-6)

My next subject is how to interpret the Bible to find its true meaning. I have four texts. The first is that we are not as many, which corrupt the word of God: but as of sincerity, but as of God, in the sight of God speak we in Christ (2 Corinthians 2:17). The word translated corrupt in this verse is derived from a noun meaning “a tavern keeper, a wine merchant, a petty retailer, a huckster, or a peddler.” The thought is that as tavern keepers and wine merchants and peddlers frequently adulterate their wines, fruits, or other wares, so many alleged teachers of the Word of God adulterate the Word of God. That is certainly true of not a few preachers, Bible teachers, and theological professors in America and elsewhere in these days. Paul says he was not in that contemptible, disreputable business, and we ought to be careful that we are not either, when we teach or when we study God’s Word.

Our second text is 2 Corinthians 4:1-4:

Therefore seeing we have this ministry, as we have received mercy, we faint not; but have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully; but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God. But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost [are perishing]: in whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.

The word translated handling deceitfully in these verses means “to corrupt,” as metals are debased or wine adulterated, and the thought is that of debasing the pure gold of God’s Word, or adulterating the pure wine of God’s Word, by mingling false ideas with it. That too is a common practice today. Paul says that he has renounced the hidden things of dishonesty, and that he is not walking in [theological] craftiness [cunning or subtlety]. It is evident that he did not have the “advantage” of an education in some of our American institutions, as he was not debasing the pure gold of the Word of God or adulterating the pure wine of the Word of God by mixing in his own preconceived notions. Here too we also greatly need to be on our guard when we study or teach the Word of God.

Our third text is, Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth (2 Timothy 2:15). The Authorized Version, as you know, reads, Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. The Greek word for rightly dividing that Paul actually used means “cutting straight,” and that would be a better way to translate it here than the way it is rendered in either the Authorized Version or the Revised Version. Then the verse would read: Give diligence to present thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, [cutting straight] the word of truth (RV). I tell you there is a lot of crooked cutting today when men come to the study and interpretation of the Word of God, especially when they find something they do not wish to believe.

Some years ago, a friend of mine passed by a carpenter and joiner’s shop in a southern city. Over the door was this sign: “All sorts of twisting and turning done here.” That would be a fine sign to put over the door of some of our theological seminaries, many of our pulpits and Bible classes, and many a room where Christians are studying the Word of God alone. Each one of us needs to be on our guard that this may not be an appropriate sign over the door of the room where we study our Bible alone. Remember as you study the Bible that it is God’s Word, and be sure to “cut it straight.”

My fourth text is Matthew 4:5-6: The devil . . . saith unto him, . . . it is written. You see from this passage that the devil can quote Scripture and interpret or misinterpret Scripture and argue from what is written in the Book of God. If you think he has quit the business, read Pastor Russell’s Millennial Dawn or Mrs. Eddy’s Science and Health or some of the productions of the American Institute of Sacred Literature or the University of Chicago or some of the Sunday school helps sent out by some of our denominational boards. But I would not advise you to spend much time on this devil-inspired trash.

It is not enough to study the Bible or even to spend several hours in Bible study daily. We must seek diligently to cut it straight. We must find out how to interpret the Bible to find its true meaning, to discover just what God meant to teach by each verse we study, and then interpret it that way in every instance. Of many passages of Scripture there are several possible meanings; one man says it means one thing, and another man says it means another thing. Now God intends only one of these meanings. We should seek to find out not what men say it means, even good men, but what God intended it to teach. Is there any way in which ordinary men like you and me can tell with certainty which interpretation of several possible interpretations of a passage is the right interpretation, the exact meaning God intended to convey? There is. There are certain “laws of interpretation” that will enable you to know in almost every instance just what is the true interpretation of every verse in the Bible, what is the true sense of the passage – just what God wishes to teach. I shall endeavor to state these laws so you can all understand them and then apply them for yourselves.

Get Right with God by the Surrender of Your Will to God

The first great law of correct Bible interpretation, which will be recognized as a law of God by any fair-minded person who gives it a few minutes’ consideration, is to get absolutely right with God by the absolute surrender of your will to Him. The only man who is at all competent to interpret the will of God is the man who is in harmony with God, and the only man who is in harmony with God is the man whose will is fully surrendered to God. If you are not right with God, you certainly are not competent to say what God means by any passage in His Word. Our Lord Jesus Himself says, If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself (John 7:17). Nothing else so clears up our minds to understand the Word of God as the surrender of our will to God.

The will is the eye of the soul. Our Lord also says that. He says, The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness (Matthew 6:22-23). And it is clear from the next verse that by a single eye He means a will fully surrendered to God. His words are, No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other (Matthew 6:24). If your will is surrendered to God and to Him alone, your eye [is] single, and your whole body [is] full of light. But if your will is not fully surrendered to God and Him alone, your eye [is] evil, and your whole person is full of darkness. Nothing gives us as clear an eye to discern as we read God’s Word, just what God means, as an entirely surrendered will.

A surrendered will does more to qualify anyone to be a competent and dependable interpreter of the Word of God than the fullest possible university course in Greek and Hebrew and the related languages. As I said before, I have known great Greek scholars and great Hebrew scholars and men deeply versed in the related languages who were as blind as a bat to the real meaning of the Scriptures because they lacked that clearness of spiritual vision that comes only from a surrendered will. And on the other hand, I have known very ordinary and quite uneducated men and women with no pretensions whatever to scholarship who had a wonderful understanding of the meaning of God’s Word because their wills were surrendered to God.

We get this same principle of Bible interpretation from Psalm 25:14: The secret [the friendship] of the Lord is with them that fear him; and he will...

Table of contents

• Contents
• Introduction
• The Importance and Value of Bible Study
• How to Properly Study the Bible
• How to Interpret the Bible to Find Its True Meaning
• The Seven Great Promises of God...
• Reuben A. Torrey – A Brief Biography
• Other Similar Titles