Do We Need An Interpreter?

An honest question for SimpleChurch folk.

Anyone who has ever been on a mission trip to a region of the world where English is not spoken, probably has been obliged to rely on the help of an interpreter who understands both English and the local language of the people you wish to minister the Word of God. People everywhere want to hear God speak to them "in their own tongue". That's one reason why the work of Bible translation and especially Wycliffe Bible Translators for many years has been very high on my esteemed servants list.

But once we have the Word of God available in our mother tongue, do we need another kind of interpreter- one who can help us understand what that Word means in all its fulness? When the Apostle John writes, "These things I have written to you concerning those who try to deceive you. But the anointing which you have received from Him abides in you, and you do not need that anyone teach you; but as the same anointing teaches you concerning all things, and is true, and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you will abide in Him", does he thereby make the gifts of interpretation in the churches obsolete?

There seem to me to be two extremes here that we have to avoid falling into. First, the most obvious is the one where we take part of this literally to mean that we are self-sufficient without the rest of the Body of Christ to interpret the Word of God because, as John says, "we have the anointing from God". The experience of that reality, of God speaking directly to each one personally through His Word and by His resident Spirit is surely very precious to each of us, is it not? The emphasis of "the priesthood of the believer" opens up this awesome participation by every beliver in every place of knowing and communing with God himself without any other mediator, save Jesus Christ our Lord. But that is not the same thing as saying we are all individually sufficient in ourselves to thus interpret Holy Scripture without listening to and participating with other believers. All we have to do is remember that we are a "nation of priests". There's that central concept of "community" again. We need one another, and by that I mean we are inter-dependent on the Body of Christ; first in our local assembly that God has placed us in, and then in the larger Church universal.

But I said there are two extremes that must be avoided and the other one can be just as deadly and dangerous to our faith. This is the extreme of depending "exclusively" on others for the interpretation of God's Word- that Word which our Lord declared we are to live by. In this case, we simply do not take the trouble to wrestle ourselves with the difficult parts, we don't learn the discipline of being in the Word personally ( and I am not referring the reading of some devotional each day which consists of one or two verses taken out of context with the rest of the page being the 'devotinal'/ non-exposition of the Biblical text). I have often likened this kind of digesting the Word of God to eating food that some one else has eaten and chewed up for us. There may be some minimum nutrition in that and in fact if there is something physically that makes it necessary to eat that way or starve- then it can be the means to keep one alive.

Thank God there is a much better way where each one assumes their own God-given responsibility before Him to know His will and to obey that will as our conscience dictates, informed by His Word. That is the twin emphasis recovered in the Reformation along with the priesthood of every believer: the God-given worth of the conscience that must give a personal account to the judge of our souls, and thus the freedom of the conscience and the awful guilt involved in violating or anyway forcing someone to violate their own conscience. The Apostle Paul has a great deal to say about that in relating to our fellow Christians.

I will end by referring to the whole area which I haven't addressed but one which is extremely important just now in our own American context. I refer to what the Bible clearly says about those gifted individuals the resurrected and exalted Christ has given to His Church down through the ages for the equipping of the whole Body to do the work of ministry. In every list of spiritual gifts I'm familiar with, there is a definite priority (not of value/ but of function) given to those gifts which have to do with interpreting the Word of God. We neglect these gifts and their labors to the resulting poverty of our understanding of the Word of God, but also to rejecting what Christ himself has sent to us for our nourishment and edification. That is exactly why I make it my priority not only to be in the Word myself, but to also listen to the rest of the Church. May all God's precious children here at SimpleChurch consider these thoughts that are meant for the abundant joy and blessing of our walk together to the glory of God and the fullness of Christ.

A relted post on "What We Need Most in Times of Confusion"