“Knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation”
This section of Second Peter deals with Scripture itself. No book in the world is as valuable as the Bible. God’s Word is indispensable because it only tells us the truth about God, Christ, sin and eternity.
Knowing this first
Invariably, what God asks us to know, we do not know. God wants us to know the subject of this verse “first.” God wants us to know something about divine inspiration above everything else. When we interpret Scripture, we need to begin with the principle that God inspired the Bible, not men. This is paramount.
Peter’s opponents denied the divine origin of Scripture. They claimed that their writings came from visions, signs and dreams. These prophecies came from themselves, from their own origin. But Peter says that the apostolic writings came from God, not a human author.
that no prophecy of Scripture
“Prophecy” here is the message of a prophet.
“Scripture” means writing. Peter here refers to the Old Testament and the writings of the New Testament written to this point.
“Scripture” is singular. The Word of God is one single unit. It does not contradict itself. Some verses are difficult to understand. We must interpret these verses in light of other passages dealing with that subject.
Also, we should interpret unclear passages of Scripture in the light of clear passages. If a passage is crystal-clear, that portion of the Bible will help us interpret the unclear portions. God is the Author of all of Scripture and He makes no mistakes. He used human authors to write His Book and they wrote in different times and different places. Many lived centuries apart from one another yet all sixty-six books fit together as one.
Principle:
The Bible is one in its teaching.
Application:
It is a dangerous practice to pick certain verses out of their context to establish a doctrine. We understand each verse in the light of its context. Otherwise, we risk distorting the meaning of that passage and then operating on incorrect information. This is much like misleading advertising. Misleading advertising misrepresents its product.
Verse-by-verse Bible exposition saves us from this problem. By taking each verse successively and all of its words, we can come to a true meaning of Scripture. This also presumes that we interpret the Bible in the time in which it was written and to whom and on what occasion it was written. It is also of great advantage to know the original languages in which the Bible was written. This is the way to discover what God truly says. We must always be careful not to make the Bible say what we want it to mean.
“Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15).
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