Page 4 - Romans Student Textbook.doc

exegesis?” Hopefully this introduction to the course will at least begin to answer that question for you.

The problem we face in biblical interpretation is “How do we get from the text of the Scriptures as
they were delivered through the prophets and apostles to significant instructions on how to live life
to the glory of God in our contemporary cultures?” In the pursuit of providing an adequate answer
to that question I find it necessary to answer three seemingly simple questions of any text of the
Bible that I might be teaching or preaching. The questions are (1) What does the text say? (2) What
does the text mean? and (3) How does the text matter?

We are then considering three subjects: message, meaning and matter. The message is the data of the
revelation that we have from God through the pens of the prophets and apostles. It is the words,
sentences, paragraphs, parallelisms, stanzas, and structures of the texts. In the light of this the question
we must ask ourselves as we begin to read a text of Scripture is “What is there?” It is the pursuit of
answers to this question that is the core of what theologians call “exegesis.” The meaning is the
interpretation of that data in expressions of truth that speak to the day and time in which they were
written. The matter is the significance of that data and the original meaning of it as it was given for living
out that meaning in appropriate ways in the day and age in which we live. Graeme Goldsworthy puts this
all in a very helpful diagram on page 49 of his book, Gospel and Kingdom.1

Hermeneutics Interpretation

Exegesis Explanation Homiletics Application

Original Text Contemporary Hearers

Goldsworthy’s diagram of the relationship between exegesis, hermeneutics and homiletics makes clear
what I have discussed above. The reason that having good exegetical skills is so important is that it is the
place where the process of understanding what God is saying to us in the Scriptures begins. Before a
person can properly apply a passage of Scripture to a contemporary situation or problem that person
must first understand the meaning of the text, one must do proper interpretation of the text. However,
before a person can begin to do proper interpretation of the text one must first of all do accurate exegesis
of the text.

Exegesis is important because it comes first and lays the foundation for accurate interpretation of
the text and effective application of the text in contemporary culture. “What does is the text say?”
must be answered first. In order to that we must learn to use certain skills of observation well

1 Graeme Goldsworthy, The Goldsworthy Trilogy, London, England: Paternoster Press, 2011, p. 49.
(Kindle Edition).

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