Did you know the Bible says, ‘There is no God’? It does. You will find those words in Psalm 14:1.
And here’s something even stranger. Matthew 27:5 says Judas ‘went and hanged himself’. Luke 10:37 says, ‘You go, and do likewise.’ And John 13:27 adds, ‘What you are going to do, do quickly.’
Put those verses together, and the Bible seems to give a terrible command. Of course, it does no such thing. Psalm 14:1 actually says, ‘The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.”’ The words are in the Bible, but the meaning is the opposite. What changed? Only one thing: the context.
This is no clever trick. False teachers build whole movements on verses pulled out of place, and sincere Christians hang verses on their walls that promise things God never promised them. In this article, we shall see what context is, why God Himself requires it, how Jesus and the apostles practised it, and how we might find the context of any passage.
KEY TERMS IN PLAIN ENGLISH
Context: The setting of a verse—the words around it, the book it belongs to, the people it was first written to, and the time it was written.
Interpretation: Working out what a passage means.
Proof-texting: Pulling a verse out of its setting to ‘prove’ an idea the writer never had in mind.
What Do We Mean by “Context”?
The word context comes from a Latin word meaning ‘woven together’. A Bible verse is like one thread in a large piece of cloth. Pull the thread out, and it loses its place in the pattern. Leave it in, and you can see what it was made for.
Context has several layers:
- The words around it: the sentences and paragraphs before and after.
- The book it belongs to: its main message and purpose.
- The kind of writing: a story, a law, a song, a wise saying, a letter or a prophecy. Scholars call this the genre.
- The first readers: who they were, what they faced and what they already knew.
- Its place in God’s big story: whether it comes before or after Christ, and how it points to Him.
A SIMPLE TEST FOR ANY INTERPRETATION
Before you ask, ‘What does this mean to me?’, ask, ‘What did this mean to them?’ A passage cannot mean something it could never have meant to its first readers.
Why Context Matters: The Case in 4 Steps
Reading in context is not just for scholars. It flows from what the Bible is.
- Step 1—God spoke through real people. Scripture is fully God’s Word, yet He gave it through human writers. ‘Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets’ (Hebrews 1:1). ‘Men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit’ (2 Peter 1:21).
- Step 2—People mean things in context. Every writer uses words in sentences, and sentences in arguments, at a certain time and for certain readers. That is how all language works, and God chose to speak this way.
- Step 3—God forbids us to change His meaning. ‘Do not add to His words, lest He rebuke you and you be found a liar’ (Proverbs 30:6). Peter warns about people who ‘twist’ Paul’s letters ‘to their own destruction’ (2 Peter 3:16).
- Step 4—So reading in context is obedience. If God’s meaning comes through the writer’s words in their setting, then ignoring the setting means replacing God’s meaning with our own.
Dutch theologian Herman Bavinck called this ‘organic’ inspiration. The Spirit did not turn the writers into typing machines; He used their personalities, languages and situations. So the human setting is not a wrapper we can throw away. It is the very shape in which God’s Word comes to us.
THE CASE IN 1 SENTENCE
Because God spoke His Word through real people in real history, His meaning is found in the words He gave, in the setting He gave them. To ignore that setting is to put our words in His mouth.
So careless reading is a moral issue. The ninth commandment forbids false witness. If we say, ‘God says this’, when He does not, we bear false witness about God Himself. That is why Paul refused ‘to tamper with God’s word’ (2 Corinthians 4:2).
And notice this: everyone who says context doesn’t matter still expects us to read words in context. Why would we treat God’s words with less respect than our own?
Jesus and the Apostles Read in Context
Is this just a modern idea? No. Long ago, the Levites read God’s Law and ‘gave the sense, so that the people understood’ (Nehemiah 8:8). Jesus and the apostles did the same.
- Jesus argued from a single verb. Against the Sadducees, who denied the resurrection, Jesus quoted Exodus 3:6: ‘I am the God of Abraham’ (Matthew 22:32). God said ‘I am’, not ‘I was’—centuries after Abraham died. So Abraham must still be alive to God.
- Jesus stopped reading mid-sentence. In Nazareth, He read Isaiah 61 but stopped at ‘the year of the Lord’s favour’ (Luke 4:19), leaving out ‘the day of vengeance of our God’. His first coming was for mercy; judgement waits for His return.
- Paul asked a ‘when’ question. Was Abraham counted righteous before or after circumcision? ‘It was not after, but before’ (Romans 4:10). His whole argument rests on the order of events.
- Paul counted the years. The law ‘came 430 years afterward’, so it cannot cancel God’s earlier promise to Abraham (Galatians 3:17).
The clearest example comes from the devil himself. When he tempted Jesus, he quoted Psalm 91: ‘He will command his angels concerning you’ (Matthew 4:6). But he quietly left out ‘to guard you in all your ways’ (Psalm 91:11). The promise was for those walking in God’s ways, not testing Him. Jesus replied, ‘Again it is written’ (Matthew 4:7)—letting Scripture explain Scripture.
THINK ABOUT IT
When Satan quoted Scripture, he quoted it out of context. When Jesus answered, He put it back in context. Careless reading follows the wrong teacher.
What Faithful Teachers Have Always Taught
For centuries before the Reformation, teachers often looked for 4 meanings in every verse, which led to wild guesses. The Reformers called the church back to the meaning the writer intended.
Timeline: How Faithful Teachers Guarded the Text
- 1528—William Tyndale: The man who gave England its first printed New Testament wrote that ‘the scripture hath but one sense, which is the literal sense’.
- 1540—John Calvin: In his commentary on Romans, Calvin said the interpreter’s main task is ‘to lay open the mind of the writer’.
- 1646—The Westminster Confession: It teaches that the ‘true and full sense’ of any Scripture ‘is not manifold, but one’, and that hard passages must be explained by ‘other places that speak more clearly’ (1.9).
- 1948—Geerhardus Vos: This Princeton professor showed that God revealed His truth step by step, like a seed growing into a tree. To read a verse well, we must know where it stands in that growth.
- Today—Don Carson: This New Testament scholar often repeats his pastor father Tom Carson’s saying: ‘A text without a context is a pretext for a proof-text.’ A verse cut off from its setting becomes an excuse for whatever we want.
Even great preachers can slip. Warren Wiersbe noted Charles Spurgeon sometimes spiritualised his text—once holding up Samson as a model of a consecrated man! If Spurgeon could slip, so can we.
Ditches on Either Side of the Road
People can misuse ‘context’ in 2 opposite ways. Faithful reading walks the road between 2 ditches.
| Aspect | DITCH 1: PROOF-TEXTING | DITCH 2: EXPLAINING IT AWAY |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Pulling verses out of their setting to support our own ideas | Using ‘culture’ or ‘background’ to cancel what God plainly commands |
| A common example | Claiming Philippians 4:13 means you can win any match or get any job | ‘Paul only said that because of his time and place’ |
| Why it is wrong | It ignores what the writer meant and puts our words in God’s mouth | Many commands are rooted in creation, not culture (Matthew 19:4; 1 Timothy 2:13) |
| The way out | Read the verses around it, and then the whole book | Ask whether the writer bases the command on creation, God’s character or the gospel |
Context reveals what God says; it doesn’t cancel it. When Paul teaches about men and women, he points back to Genesis: ‘For Adam was formed first, then Eve’ (1 Timothy 2:13). Creation is older than every culture. Context may show that a command’s form was local—like the ‘holy kiss’ (Romans 16:16)—but its principle, warm Christian love, remains.
Answering Objections
- ‘The New Testament quotes the Old Testament out of context!’ Matthew 2:15 says Jesus’ return from Egypt fulfilled Hosea 11:1: ‘Out of Egypt I called my son.’ In Hosea, the ‘son’ is Israel. Yet Hosea himself looks forward to a new exodus (Hosea 11:10–11). Israel was a failing son; Jesus is the true Son who succeeds where Israel failed. This is typology—real events in history that point forward to Christ. Scholars from Charles H. Dodd (1952) to Gregory K. Beale have shown that the apostles usually had the whole Old Testament passage in mind. They were not ignoring context; they read it more deeply than we do.
- ‘Context makes the Bible a book for scholars.’ Not at all. Most context is inside the Bible itself. The Westminster Confession says ‘not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means’, can understand what they need for salvation (1.7).
- ‘The Holy Spirit tells me what it means.’ The Spirit does help believers understand (1 Corinthians 2:12), but He never contradicts what He already wrote. He inspired the context too. ‘Test the spirits’ (1 John 4:1): we test a ‘leading’ by the text, not the text by a ‘leading’.
- ‘Doesn’t the Bible have deeper meanings?’ It has great depth, but not double meanings. Later passages show more of what earlier passages meant, yet the tree always grows from the seed. It never becomes a different plant.
Famous Verses Taken Out of Context
Here are some of the most misused verses in the Bible:
| VERSE | HOW IT IS OFTEN USED | WHAT IT MEANS IN CONTEXT |
|---|---|---|
| Jeremiah 29:11 ‘For I know the plans I have for you’ | A personal promise of success and comfort | Spoken to Jewish exiles in Babylon who would wait 70 years (v. 10). God’s plans were good, but they included a long wait first. |
| Philippians 4:13 ‘I can do all things through him who strengthens me’ | Strength to win or reach any goal | Paul writes from prison. Christ helps him be content when ‘facing plenty and hunger’ (v. 12). |
| Matthew 18:20 ‘Where two or three are gathered in my name’ | Jesus is present when a small group prays | Jesus is speaking about church discipline (vv. 15–19). Christ stands behind His church when it deals with sin. |
| Matthew 7:1 ‘Judge not’ | Christians must never call anything wrong | Jesus forbids proud, hypocritical judging. He also tells us to remove our own log first (v. 5) and to spot false prophets (v. 15). |
| Psalm 46:10 ‘Be still, and know that I am God’ | A call to quiet personal meditation | God speaks to warring nations: stop fighting, and know that He rules the earth (vv. 8–10). |
| Colossians 2:21 ‘Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch’ | A Bible rule for strict living | Paul is quoting false teachers. He rejects these man-made rules (vv. 20–23). |
These verses still speak to us. But we must first hear what God said to them before we ask what it means for us. A passage has one meaning, but many applications.
How Do We Find the Context?
Think of ripples on a pond, moving outwards from small circles to large. Start small and work outwards.
| CIRCLE | THE QUESTION TO ASK | AN EXAMPLE |
|---|---|---|
| 1. The words around it | What do the sentences before and after say? | ‘Judge not’ (Matthew 7:1) is soon followed by ‘first take the log out of your own eye’ (v. 5). |
| 2. The meaning of the words | What did this word mean to the writer—not to us today? | Paul often uses ‘flesh’ for our sinful nature, not our body (Romans 8:8). |
| 3. The kind of writing | Is this a story, law, song, wise saying, prophecy or letter? | Proverbs give wise patterns for life, not guaranteed promises. |
| 4. The history and culture | Who wrote it, to whom, when and why? | Paul wrote Philippians from prison (Philippians 1:13). |
| 5. God’s covenants | Is this before or after Christ? Which covenant applies? | The food laws of Leviticus 11 were for Israel; Jesus ‘declared all foods clean’ (Mark 7:19). |
| 6. The whole Bible | What do clearer passages teach on this subject? | We read James 2 on faith and works alongside Romans 4. |
| 7. Christ | How does this passage point to Jesus? | The bronze serpent (Numbers 21) points to the cross (John 3:14). |
Two circles need a word of explanation. On the kind of writing, Robert Charles Sproul—better known as RC Sproul—taught that reading the Bible ‘literally’ means reading it according to its type of writing: poetry as poetry, history as history.
On the meaning of words, Carson’s book Exegetical Fallacies warns against the ‘root fallacy’—thinking a word’s origin tells us its meaning. Some preachers say the Greek word for power, dunamis, means ‘dynamite’. But dynamite was invented in 1867!
TRY THIS: A 5-STEP READING HABIT
- Read the whole chapter—better still, the whole book in one sitting.
- Ask: who wrote this, to whom, and why?
- Ask: what did it mean to them?
- Ask: how does it point to Christ?
- Only then ask: what does it mean for me today?
Cross-references, a reliable study Bible and sound commentaries all help. Louis Berkhof’s Principles of Biblical Interpretation and RC Sproul’s Knowing Scripture are excellent places to start. If you discover a meaning no faithful teacher has ever seen, slow down. You might be the first—but you are probably wrong.
Conclusion: Christ, the Greatest Context
On the road to Emmaus, 2 sad disciples knew the words of the Old Testament but had missed its meaning. Then Jesus, ‘beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, … interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself’ (Luke 24:27). Every verse has a near context, but also a final one: Jesus Christ and His saving work.
Reading in context lets God speak in His own voice instead of ours. A verse torn from its place tells us what we want to hear. A verse read in its place tells us what God wants to say—and that’s always better.
Tough Questions, Honest Answers
What’s the difference between exegesis and eisegesis?
These 2 words come from Greek. Exegesis means ‘leading out’—drawing the meaning out of the text. Eisegesis means ‘leading in’—reading our own ideas into the text. A preacher who studies a passage and explains what the writer meant is doing exegesis. Someone who starts with an opinion and then hunts for a verse to support it is doing eisegesis. Every Christian should aim to be an exegete, not an eisegete, because God’s Word must shape our ideas, not the other way round.
What is hermeneutics, and how is it different from exegesis?
Hermeneutics is the set of principles we use to interpret any text. The word comes from a Greek verb meaning ‘to explain’—the same family of words Luke uses when Jesus ‘interpreted’ the Scriptures (Luke 24:27). Exegesis is the actual work of applying those principles to a particular passage. Think of hermeneutics as the rules of a game, and exegesis as playing the game. Good hermeneutics starts with the conviction that Scripture is God’s Word and that it interprets itself.
Who added chapter and verse numbers to the Bible?
The writers of the Bible did not use chapters or verses. Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, divided the Bible into chapters in the early 1200s. The French printer Robert Estienne added verse numbers to the New Testament in 1551, and the Geneva Bible of 1560 was the first complete English Bible to use them. These numbers are very helpful for finding passages, but they are not inspired. Sometimes they even break a thought in two—1 Corinthians 11:1 really belongs with chapter 10, and the great Servant Song of Isaiah 53 actually begins at Isaiah 52:13.
Do I need to know Hebrew and Greek to understand the Bible?
No. God intends His Word for every nation, which is why the Westminster Confession says the Scriptures should be translated into ‘the vulgar language’—the common language—of every people (1.8). Good modern translations are made by large teams of careful scholars. Knowing the original languages is a great help for pastors and teachers, and the Reformers worked hard to study them. But an ordinary believer with a faithful translation can understand everything necessary for salvation and a godly life.
Is allegorical interpretation ever valid?
An allegory finds hidden meanings beneath the surface of a story. For example, Augustine said the inn in the parable of the Good Samaritan was the church and the innkeeper was the apostle Paul—ideas Jesus never had in mind. Paul does say Hagar and Sarah ‘may be interpreted allegorically’ (Galatians 4:24), but he was an inspired apostle, and his point rests on real history. That is closer to typology, where God Himself designed real events to point forward to Christ. The safest rule is to let Scripture show us its own patterns rather than inventing hidden meanings of our own.
What does “rightly dividing the word of truth” mean?
This phrase comes from the King James Version of 2 Timothy 2:15. The Greek word means ‘to cut straight’, like a builder cutting a straight road; the ESV translates it ‘rightly handling the word of truth’. Some teachers use the old phrase to mean splitting the Bible into separate ages or programmes. But Paul’s point is simpler: a faithful teacher handles God’s Word accurately and does not twist it. In other words, this verse is itself a call to read Scripture in context.
Can I claim a Bible promise, like a “verse of the day”, for myself?
Many promises belong to every believer, such as ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you’ (Hebrews 13:5). Others were given to particular people for a particular purpose, like God’s promise of a son to Abraham. So always ask who a promise was given to and on what basis. Remember that ‘all the promises of God find their Yes’ in Christ (2 Corinthians 1:20)—so every promise reaches us through Him, not apart from Him. A verse of the day can be a good starting point, as long as you open your Bible and read the verses around it.
Related Reads
- Symbolism in the Bible: How Do I Recognise and Read It Right?
- Exegesis vs Eisegesis: What Do the Two Terms Really Mean?
- Bible Interpretation 101: The Grammatical-Historical Method Explained
- Philippians 4:13: Did Paul Really Mean We Can Do ALL Things?
- ‘Judge Not, Lest…’: Making Sense of Jesus’ Dire Warning
- Why Did Jesus Read Isaiah 61 at Nazareth—and Stop Short?
- The Old Testament in the New: Which Interpretive View Fits Best?
- Understanding Perspicuity: What Does the Term Really Mean?
- Why Do We Affirm Scripture’s Essential Clarity?
- What Does the Bible Say About Slavery? Understanding the Texts in Context
