Taking the text out of the context leaves you with a con.

One of the most important pieces of context in studying the Scriptures is a passages or pericope’s background. What should be included in a background study?

Contextual Elements

The Audience

The audience is often directly named in a pericope. When the audience is not directly named, it is often easy to infer based on the structure or narrative of events in the passage.

You should always be careful when trying to extend the application of a passage beyond the original audience. Returning to the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5–7 as an example, extending the audience to Christians can be problematic because the Church did not exist until Acts 2. It is possible to make such an extension, but there must be a solid argument.

The Culture

The audience and human author are also part of a culture. Their culture includes a set of beliefs and a way of looking at the world.
For instance, what would the priest Zechariah have believed about the coming Messiah when he was visited by an angel in Luke chapter 1? How would those beliefs shape what he believed after he was visited, and what he might tell his friends?

It is important to consider this in relation to the human authors, as well. Matthew was a tax collector, and Peter was a fisherman. How might their occupations impact the way they tell a story? What might they keep in or leave out? While it isn’t always possible to do a full “character study,” understanding the characters—even if you need to stop looking at the pericope for a little while to study the author more fully.

An example of this is when you are studying Hebrews 11, the author uses the Priesthood extensively as background to Christ’s sacrifice.

Understanding the Priesthood is critical to fully understanding this passage—perhaps when studying this passage, a long excursion through the Levitical Priesthood would be important.

The Flow of the Text

The meaning of any individual text should fit within the flow of the narrative or argument. People do sometimes change the subject, or inject asides, into a conversation, but most of the time people only say or write things relevant to the story or the point they are making.

If you are discussing the best bread for making a sandwich with a friend, it is possible the conversation will move to sandwich meat—but it is more likely “meaty bread” refers to a kind of bread instead of bready ham.

For instance, preachers will wax eloquent about how Jesus used parables to make his message easy for “the common man” to understand his point. There is one slight problem with this, however—in Mark 4:10, Jesus says he speaks in parables so “they will not understand.”

Preachers and scholars also often approach Romans 9 as if Paul is talking about salvation. If you spend time outlining Paul’s argument, it quickly becomes obvious Paul is talking about God’s faithfulness in this section of Romans. Does that preclude an aside on salvation? Not necessarily—but it does mean importing salvation issues into this section of Paul’s writing needs to be justified rather than assumed.

Studies on discourse analysis and biblical outlines can help you understand the flow of a passage—but remember, as always, that experts should inform, rather than control, your understanding of the Scriptures.

Quoted Scriptures

If a passage quotes some other passage, you need to study and understand the original passage before you can understand this one.

Problems

What if you encounter a “problem” when reading a passage?

You should attack problems head on

There will always be some problem in every text you study. There will be some bit of the narrative that doesn’t seem to fit with what you know of history, or with some other bit of history described in some other part of the Scriptures. There will be some passage that describes God in a way that doesn’t seem to agree with what you already think about God.

When we encounter these things, we tend to:

• Somehow make this passage secondary to what we already believe. “This is a narrative, and you cannot learn theology from narrative,” probably one of the most horrible distortions of the Scriptures we encounter. This view is taught by a bunch of important and trusted experts—and it is completely wrong.
• Ignore the problem and hope it will go away.

Take each passage seriously and tackle problems head on. Trust that the Scriptures are correct. Learn about God from the Scriptures, rather than the Scriptures from your view of God.