Jesus taught us in practice how to use the word of God, what to emphasize and what to ignore. He consistently ignored or even denied divisive, vengeful, and domineering texts in his own Jewish scriptures in favor of passages that emphasized acceptance, benevolence, and truthfulness. He knew what passages were leading to God and which passages were bigoted, sectarian, tribal, and discriminatory. (Matthew 7:29, Mark 12:24)
Greek is the language of the New Testament and was composed seventy years after Jesus’ death. Since we only have a few fragments of Jesus’ actual words in his native Aramaic, this should keep us humble and in search of our own experience of the Risen Christ instead of squabbling over Greek linguistics. Literalism will always be the lowest and least level of meaning.
Sacred texts open up endless possibilities for life and love. Our Jewish ancestors called the deeper approach midrash, extrapolating from the story to find the truest message. On the other hand, the immature approach is used to justify anything that is egocentric.
Following Jesus necessitates our need to study scripture the way He used it. Scripture, then, becomes the living word truly and essentially as we understand it through the eyes and heart of God’s word – Jesus Christ.
John 5:39 “You search the Scriptures because you think they give you eternal life. But the Scriptures point to me!”
Luke 24:27 “Then Jesus took them through the writings of Moses and all the prophets, explaining from all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.”
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