NO PRIVATE INTERPRETATION

2 Peter 1:20 Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.

There are not many ways to interpret the Word of God; there is a right way and a wrong way.  Unfortunately, everyone thinks they are right.  We must be mature enough to know we are all still learning.  As a Pastor, I am very careful to say what the Bible clearly teaches by comparing scripture with scripture.  Let everything be established by two or three witnesses (Deuteronomy 19:15; Matthew 18:16; 2 Corinthians 13:1).  I think the mistake many people make is they have a belief and then, go to the Word of God to try and prove it by cherry picking scriptures out of their setting and make them say things they don’t.  We must go first to the Word of God and then, from the Word, from the study of scripture in context, we are to form our beliefs.  When we hear someone say, “Well, I just believe,” what we know is they are about to give their opinion.  We must not give opinions; everyone has one but what sets people free is the Word of the Living God.  John 8:31-32 says that if you continue in His Word, you will know the truth and the truth will make you free.

I think this gets into the itching ears syndrome found in 2 Timothy 4:3-4.  This states that people will not endure sound doctrine; they won’t want to hear the Word. Because of where they are in their lives, yielding to the lusts of their flesh, they will want to hear opinions so they can keep sinning.  It won’t matter that they are under grace; they just want to be able to sin away, and so on.  The people will demand that ministers teach them what they want to hear.  In other words, some ministers will no longer teach things that might offend their itching ear constituency but, instead, give them a private interpretation.  Not giving the full counsel of the Word of God is very dangerous.  We don’t get to leave out what might offend people.  The whole counsel of the Word of God must be ministered.

We must make sure that we don’t fill our hearing with people’s opinions, current affairs, traditions, and our paths through the Word of God.  Matthew 15:6 (AMPC) says, “So for the sake of your tradition (the rules handed down by your forefathers), you have set aside the Word of God [depriving it of force and authority and making it of no effect].” Let us pray that the Word of the Lord has free course (2 Thessalonians 3:1), that the men and women ministering the Word of God will have great utterance (Ephesians 6:19-20), and that we would all stay away from any private interpretation of the Word of God.