Take Care Not to Distort the Scriptures

Note from today’s Bible reading: 2 Peter 2-3

God has revealed His word in a way that we can understand what His will is. However, that does not mean that every passage is “easy” to understand.

Peter described some of Paul’s writings as being “hard to understand” (2 Peter 3:16). He did not mean they were impossible to understand; rather, this meant that it would take further study in order to reach a proper conclusion.

Yet not everyone would be willing to do this. Instead, they would “distort…the Scriptures, to their own destruction” (2 Peter 3:16). Rather than properly understanding God’s will as expressed in the more difficult passages, they would make assumptions or read their opinions into the text and end up at a conclusion that was not at all what the Lord intended, putting them in conflict with God Himself.

Who would do this? Peter said it would be “the untaught and unstable” (2 Peter 3:16) – those who did not have a solid foundation of a knowledge of the Scriptures and faith in Christ and His authority. If we do not have this foundation today, we will never understand the Scriptures as we should.

So take care not to distort the Scriptures. We can understand God’s word, but we must take the time necessary to do so. This means we must first recognize that Jesus has all authority, then we must continue to grow in knowledge of His word so that the “easier” and more straightforward passages can help us interpret the more difficult ones.