There is a major problem that we all face when we open the Bible: self-deception. One Scripture deals directly with this problem: “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” (Jer 17:9) The problem described here is self-deception. It is easy for us to read our own ideas, concepts, and needs into Scripture and turn the Bible into a book that reads just the way we believe. Human beings naturally–even unconsciously–tend to avoid ideas and situations that would be painful to them. So whenever you come face-to-face with the Bible, knowing that you are looking for truth, there is a tendency for the natural defense mechanisms of sin to get in the way. In a sinful world, it is natural to read the Bible in such a way as to avoid learning what we don’t want to know. And we often do it without realizing it.

The best safeguard against self-deception is an exegesis (discovering God’s original intention for a text) based on the original languages, the Greek and the Hebrew. Genuine descriptive exegesis is more difficult for me in English (my native language), because English is filled with associations to my own, personal past. For me, every word of the English Bible triggers associations with my own previous life experience. It evokes the events and contexts in which I encountered those words before. It’s almost impossible, therefore,  not to read my own ideas into the Bible when I read it in English. Reading one’s self into the Bible is perfectly natural until one becomes conscious of the need to learn a better way of reading the Bible.

Learning to read the New Testament in the Greek, for example, allows you to break the bonds of the past and experience the text as it was meant to be experienced when it was first written. To learn the Greek of the New Testament is to break away from the familiar associations that blind interpreters to the deeper connections of the text. When an interpreter develops a reading knowledge of the Greek New Testament, associations start popping up that would not have been seen in translation. But here’s the best part. Once you have exegeted a biblical text, you can never read it the same way again. You cannot avoid the deeper implications of that text as might have been possible before.

The problem with exegesis based on the original languages is that most people who study the Bible will never have the opportunity to learn Greek or Hebrew. So such a requirement would limit good biblical study to an elite few, and this does not seem to be God’s intent in giving us His Word. Is it impossible, then, to do serious, honest exegesis? I don’t think so. I believe there are five simple, practical safeguards that will help anyone interpret the biblical text while avoiding the kind of bizarre misreadings that come so naturally to the human condition. These five principles provide interpreters with the kind of biblical balance that is necessary when dealing with divisive theological issues.