The Key: Seeing Jesus Everywhere
To hold a biblical hermeneutic means seeing Jesus in every passage.
Hermeneutic is a strange and rarely used term. It can be used outside of biblical circles, but mostly it is used in one’s approach to Scripture. In part, it includes the principles one considers foundational in coming to conclusions about the Bible’s meaning. For instance, I have two core beliefs that form foundational criteria for each time I approach the Word of God. (These are not the only beliefs about the Bible that I have, but everything else seems to fall under these umbrella principles.) They are:
The Bible is verbally inspired. This means that I believe every word—even every letter, in my case—of the Bible was penned with some kind of direct oversight of God. Inspiration is a process which I cannot, nor would I ever try to, explain. Each letter in the original manuscripts was chosen specifically by a divine Source. In my opinion, this is not provable by any kind of scientific experiment or litmus test. However, what is provable from the minute arrangement of letters in Scripture is such that verbal inspiration becomes—in legal terms—unreasonable to doubt. (For those wishing to look further into matters involving specific arrangement of words and letters in the text, the works of Ivan Panin, Yacov Rambsel, Rabbi Jason Sobel, Grant Jeffrey, Chuck Missler, and Tomas Bokedal will provide a good starting point.)
The Primary hermeneutic for all Bible study is Jesus. Jesus is the central and overt meaning of every scripture passage. One might think this assertion would be universally accepted among Bible scholars and laypeople alike, and perhaps in the most overarching sense it is by some. In other words, perhaps many, even most, Christians can look at their Bibles and say, “Yes, of course it is all about Jesus. He is the central point of the whole story.” Most feel that this covers the matter. By this, such well-intentioned souls mean that although there are a great number of words (or chapters, or even books) in the Bible that are not directly about Jesus, the general story when understood from beginning to end has its culmination in Jesus of Nazareth, the final Word in God’s plan to save all humans who would relinquish control to him. It is not impossible to take the words of Luke 24:27, 44-47; and John 5:31-47 in this sense, and it is all well and good for many to stop at that point.
But the problem for the serious reader and interpreter of the Bible is that this is not how the Apostles and New Testament authors interpret Scripture. It seems only logical, as someone learning to interpret God’s Word, that the best people to learn from (aside from Jesus, himself) would be those who walked with him and to whom he passed along the key to interpretation. Jesus’ own use of Scripture is, by modern standards, out of context in places like Matthew 13:14-15 where he quotes Isaiah 6:9-10 and says specifically that Isaiah’s prophecy is fulfilled in the people who do not understand Jesus’ parables (cp Matt. 13:10-13). The original context has Isaiah standing in God’s throne room answering the question, “who will go,” and being given a message to take to God’s people who would not listen and who would eventually be destroyed by the uber-powerful Babylonians that God used as an instrument to carry out His will against His rebellious people.
Matthew, though, has been taught by Jesus that everything in the Word of God is about Jesus. (Presumably, much foundation is laid in the forty days after the resurrection and before Pentecost [see Acts 1:3; also confirm again Luke 24:44-47]). Matthew now knows Isaiah was just a type of the great Antitype who stood in God’s throne room and answered the question, “who will go,” and was given a message to take to a people who would not listen and who would eventually be destroyed by the uber-powerful Romans that God used as an instrument to carry out His will against His rebellious people. (This is only one of multiple New Testament examples.)
When Jesus says all Scripture is about him, it seems that he means ALL. The reason we have the stories we do—including the really weird ones and even the immoral ones—is because in some way they taught his people (and now us, of course) about the coming Messiah and the markers which would be present at his advent. Such as the stretched out hands and mocking of Samson at his death when he defeated more of Israel’s enemies in dying than ever in his life (Judges 16:23-24, 29-30). Such as Jacob (type of Christ), the younger brother, who gave thick red liquid that he prepared to his older sibling, Esau (type of Israel), extending the older’s life at the cost of his most valuable inheritance.
The context is always Jesus. It is just a matter of focusing one’s eyes properly.