Proclaimer Blog
‘Bible handling’
‘Bible handling’ is a phrase often heard around these parts: preachers need to be good ‘Bible handlers’. Unfortunately for me (and this says more about me, I readily acknowledge, than it does about anything else) the phrase most easily brings to mind a bizarre image of a preacher as a lion-tamer, holding a stick out to fend off a big book that’s trying to bite him. If I dwell on this too long I also picture that vicious book with sharp teeth in Harry Potter that needed a firm strap round it to stop it attacking you.
However of course (as I need to remind myself, in order to erase those images from my mind) it is a biblical phrase. Do your best, says Paul to Timothy, to present yourself to God as someone ‘who correctly handles the word of truth’ (2 Tim 2.15).
So what is correct ‘handling’ of the word of truth? The immediate context is our best guide. And in that context we have a number of elements packed tightly together:
• direct application of the truth: an instruction to Timothy to warn the people ‘against quarrelling about words’ (v.14);
• the teaching of sound truth about Christ and us: an instruction to Timothy to remind God’s people of these things (vs.11-14a);
• the preacher’s own godliness and soundness: instructions to Timothy to flee evil desires, pursue godliness and avoid ‘stupid arguments’ (vs.16-26).
Teaching sound truth; applying it pointedly where it’s needed; guarding one’s own soundness of teaching and life.
It looks, in context, as if I need to have a firm eye on all three if I am to qualify as one who ‘correctly handles the word of truth’.