If the Bible is clear, why do we misunderstand it?
If you’ve journeyed with me through the last several articles, I hope you’ve gained a working understanding of what we’re talking about when discussing Scripture’s clarity. To recap, clarity means:
- The Bible is not difficult for anyone to understand, and it clearly reveals all things necessary for a full, faithful Christian life.
- The Bible is only clear to those who read it in faith and rely on God’s Spirit for understanding.
If the Bible is clear, then, why do we sometimes misunderstand it? And why do we disagree on so many points of Scripture if it is as clear as we’ve said it is? It seems that we should be able to resolve all doctrinal differences by simply studying the Bible. And it’s true, many disagreements can be resolved if we carefully examine Scripture. Yet, given that 2000 years of Christianity has yet to produce perfect harmony among even biblicists, something must be amiss.
And it is. Does this mean Scripture is flawed? I’m not quite ready to unravel everything I’ve discussed so far, and, if I have correctly interpreted the passages we examined, we don’t need to. What, then, is to blame for the disparities?
But first, we should think about how we understand the Bible at all. Three players are active in our study of Scripture: The Word, the Spirit who illuminates that Word, and we ourselves. But, as we’ve already established, the faulty element is not the Word of God. And it certainly isn’t the Spirit who interprets that Word to us. We’re left then with the humans who are attempting to understand it. If Scripture is misunderstood, God is not to blame, nor is His perfect Word. Rather, we are the cause of all misunderstanding.
The Sower and the Seed
Christ described this reality in the parable of the sower and the seed. As Jesus tells this parable, He is seated in a boat on the Galilee sea, facing a large crowd (“great multitudes,” the text says). He teaches them with a series of parables, beginning with this one about a sower, his seed, and his field. This man—the sower—spreads his good seed on the earth, looking for a crop, hoping for fruit. He sows his seed on several types of earth: a hard-packed path, rocky ground, thorny weeds, and good soil. Though the sower is the same, and the seed is the same, the results are vastly different between the soils. The yield from the seed is determined by the receptiveness of the ground it is cast upon.
The fact that Jesus begins with this parable is not incidental. He surveys His hearers and sees that many will reject what He is about to say. He knows all hearts, and He knew that not everyone there would receive the truth He proclaimed. So at the outset, He tells them a little about themselves. Some of them, like the hardened path, would immediately reject His word. Others would receive it for a time, but reject it as soon as following Him became difficult. Some would remain with Him a little longer, only to forsake Him for pleasures and riches. And only some would, as the good soil, receive the seed, believe it, and persevere. Only a few of the many would hear the word with a good and noble heart and bear much fruit.
These soils are the hearts of those in the crowd. Jesus—the sower—preaches the truth to everyone. The truth He preaches is the seed, the Word of God. In all four cases, the giver of the Word and the Word itself are equal, and only the recipient varies. And many do not understand and receive the Word, though it is well sown. “What is the problem? Are parables too hard to understand? Not at all. The problem, as the parable so aptly teaches, is the spiritual condition of the listener’s heart. In the parable, the seed sown on all four soils is exactly the same—it is the Word of God. Any problem in understanding has nothing to do with the seed; everything goes well or poorly depending on the condition of the soil.”[1]
The Weakness of our Flesh
God’s Word is clear, but our own hearts often prevent us from understanding the truth. This is seen on two levels. The most poignant is man’s naturally dead spiritual state. 1 Corinthians informs us that the natural man (that is, the unregenerate man) cannot understand the things of the Spirit (what the Spirit has revealed, specifically the Bible). While he can read the words and understand their meaning in a technical sense, he cannot understand them savingly. This is not due to a lack of intellectual ability, but a lack of spiritual ability. His depraved soul has neither the desire nor the ability to comprehend God’s Word.
Secondly, those who do receive the gospel and are regenerated are still limited by the lingering effects of their yet unglorified flesh. Scripture is clear that even those who are redeemed, who have been made alive spiritually, still battle their own sinful flesh. Our flesh hangs on and ever desires to drag us back into sin. And it hampers even our ability to understand Scripture. Scripture calls us to Christlikeness, but our flesh fights back. Our desires are tainted by the residual effects of sin. As our obedience is ever imperfect, so our understanding is also imperfect on this side of glorification. As we pursue holiness and often fail, we pursue the correct understanding of Scripture and often fail.
So we yearn for redemption, anticipating when we both perfectly understand God’s will and are perfectly obedient to it. Yet for now, we don’t always understand Scripture correctly. God’s Word is not the issue, nor is God’s Spirit. Our flesh is the root cause of all misunderstanding and misapplication of Scripture.
So our understanding of the clarity of Scripture does not imply that all believers will always agree on the correct interpretation of every passage of Scripture, nor that we will always understand it correctly. It does affirm that any misunderstanding is not caused by and imperfection in the Word, nor is it because the Word cannot be understood, but is because of the weakness of our human flesh. “We affirm that all the teachings of Scripture are clear and able to be understood, but we also recognize that people often (through their own shortcomings) misunderstand what is clearly written in Scripture.”[2]
While this struggle will always be true on this side of eternity, history testifies to the unifying power of the clear Word. As Grudem states:
Though we admit that there have been many doctrinal disagreements in the history of the church, we must not forget that there has been an amazing amount of doctrinal agreement on the most central truths of Scripture throughout the history of the church. Indeed, those who have had opportunities for fellowship with Christians in other parts of the world have discovered the remarkable fact that wherever we find a group of vital Christians, almost immediately a vast amount of agreement on all the central doctrines of the Christian faith becomes apparent. Why is this true? It is because they all have been reading and believing the same Bible, and its primary teachings have been clear.[3]
Scripture’s clarity does not eliminate all disagreements, but it does eliminate disagreement on the fundamentals of Christianity. Any time the Bible is received as the authority on all things true, Christians are unified around right doctrine. Again, this is because God didn’t speak in riddles and rhymes. He didn’t obscure His will in cryptic codes, but He has plainly shown us His character and will. What we must believe and what we must do are plain in God’s Word.
[1] John S. Feinberg, Light in a Dark Place; The Doctrine of Scripture (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2018), 645.
[2] Wayne A Grudem, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2008), 109.
[3] Grudem, Systematic Theology, 110.