Sets Us Free

Ray Ortlund post excerpt:  Hermeneutics and culture

For a church to preach gospel doctrine and embody gospel culture is ultimately a matter of hermeneutics. Not the pastor’s cheery personality, though that helps, but hermeneutics. What is this Bible we are reading? If it really is good news for bad people through the finished work of Christ on the cross — if “good news” is the hermeneutic with which every passage is interpreted and every sermon preached, then by God’s help that church will build a gospel culture where sinners can breathe again.

But it is possible for a church, reading the Bible, even revering the Bible, never to become a gospel culture. Why? Hermeneutics, how they perceive their Bible. And if the only light we have is darkness, how great is our darkness.

We tend toward a sinister reading of reality. We see God that way, we see each other that way, we see life that way. The Bible sets us free. Wise churches keep their thinking in happy and determined alignment with the authoritative message of divine grace.