It has been said many times that the best interpreter of the Scriptures is the Bible itself, and this is true. It should be further said, the apostles and prophets long since having died, that the Bible is the only certain interpreter of itself. We have no one else to whom we may turn to know for sure what the Bible means – and we ought to be satisfied with that.

Much mischief has been done in the church by men reading into the Bible or seeing things in the Bible that they want to see without any solid evidence from the Scriptures themselves that that view is correct. To interpret the Scriptures is to bring to bear evidence from other places in the Bible that show that a particular view of a passage is the correct view. Guessing, surmising, speculating, forcing our pet views into a passage, deliberately wresting a passage – none of these is interpreting the Scriptures.

We ought always to desire to know more of the true meaning of the Bible, but it is not reasonable to expect that we will understand it perfectly, for even the apostle Peter admitted that some things in Paul’s writings were hard to understand. When we cannot prove – from the Bible itself – the meaning of a passage, instead of trotting out some view of it just so that we can say we have one, it is safer just to let it lie for the time being until we get more light on it. As ministers of the gospel, it is vastly more important that we be right than that we be thought to be wise by pretending to have answers we do not have.

As an example of how the Bible can explain itself, let us take the case of the commandment: “Thou shalt not kill.”  This expression has been used by some to forbid all sorts of killing, even the protection of one’s own life. However, our Lord gave the correct view of that commandment in  Matthew 19:18 when He rendered it, “Thou shalt do no murder.” We thus know for a certainty what “kill” means in the commandment given to Moses: it forbids murder. Since Jesus interpreted the verse, there is no need for us to seek another interpretation.

There is great power in declaring truth. There is danger is guessing about what the Bible means. There is such a great body of clear truth contained in the Scriptures that we preachers have plenty to do declaring what is clear without guessing about that which is not. As soon as preachers become guessers, speculators or manipulators from the pulpit regarding the Bible, then we risk turning aside from the solid rock of God’s truth to the shaky ground of men’s opinions. The only safe interpreter of the Bible is the Bible.