Recognizing the many influences that shape how we read and obey the Bible can make us more aware of our limitations, lead us to interpret with greater care and skill, foster a humble posture of ongoing dialogue, and help preserve our unity. All readers are invited to respond and challenge what I have written. I will be grateful for your insights and for continuing the conversation.
NOTE: Chatgpt was used for editing, but not generative purposes.
Part 6: Biblical support for the proposed hermeneutic
The central claim of this series of articles is that the debate over women in ecclesial leadership is fundamentally hermeneutical rather than merely exegetical. Every biblical command must be interpreted with careful attention both to the cultural setting of its original audience and to the cultural lenses through which we apply God’s word today. We cannot apply Scripture apart from the assumptions shaped by our enculturation into the particular context in which God has placed us. Theology, therefore, emerges through an ongoing dialogue between the biblical text and our context, rendering it both local and provisional.
At the same time, because God has truly communicated his will, we can affirm that Scripture gives us access to what is genuinely true about life and faith. Holding these commitments together—confidence in God’s revelation alongside humility about our interpretations—requires attentiveness to the Spirit, openness to correction, and a deep commitment to Jesus’ mission as we interpret and apply Scripture within contemporary ecclesial life.
To follow an interpretive pathway that is consistent and faithful to the purpose of Scripture, I have argued for a hermeneutic that reads the Bible as the revelation of God’s will, character, and mission. In this article, I will demonstrate how this hermeneutical approach is grounded in patterns and practices of the New Testament. Applied faithfully, this hermeneutic guards against isolating a verse, command or promise that is addressed to a community in a different social and historical setting and transferring it directly to our own. Instead, as we pursue the goal of knowing God and living according to kingdom principles, we seek to embody God’s purposes and mission in ways that are faithful to Scripture and fitting for our particular context.
Jesus’ New Wine
When God sought to bring people into a right relationship with himself, he did not send a second Moses—a prophet to deliver a new law. Instead, he came himself: the Logos incarnate, revealing his will, character and mission. Jesus did not map out a path to follow in the manner of Old Testament prophets; he declared himself to be “the way, the truth, and the life” (Jn 14:6).
The new life of the kingdom—the fulfillment of the gospel—was established not through a covenant of laws and commands, but through a covenant of body and blood (Lk 22:19–20; Jn 6:53–58). Under the old covenant, loving and fulfilling the law was the expected expression of faithfulness. But the new covenant, as Paul explains in Galatians, is grounded in Christ himself. Jesus lived under the law in order to free us from it and make us children of God (Gal 4).
Within this new covenant, obedience is not about following biblical commands, but about conforming to the person, purpose, and mission of Jesus as revealed through those commands. Our Redeemer leads us into life by prioritizing relationship over rules.
I will argue that this paradigm shift permeates the entire New Testament and reframes kingdom living in relational terms. Reading the New Testament primarily for “teachings to obey” is a categorical mistake that overlooks the full implications of the “new wine” Jesus proclaimed. This new wine fulfills the prophetic vision: “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people” (Jer 31:33 NIV).
I believe this corresponds to Ezekiel’s promise: “I [God] will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. Then you will live in the land I gave your ancestors; you will be my people, and I will be your God” (Eze 36:26-28 NIV).
Ezekiel speaks within the framework of the old covenant, where faithfulness was expressed through obedience to the law. Yet his vision anticipates an unimaginable paradigm shift: God incarnate inviting us into relationship with himself. The focus moves from “following decrees” and “keeping laws” to receiving God’s Spirit, who enables us to live in imitation of our Lord—just as Jesus submitted himself to the Father.
The gospel is not a collection of universal teachings and commands to obey, but the revelation of the person of Christ whom we are called to emulate. The teachings and commands in both the Old and New Testaments are contextually specific expressions of God’s will, character, and mission—examples from which we learn to follow and know Jesus. There is no command that applies directly and universally; rather, every teaching and instruction is a culturally situated revelation of who God is, what he desires, and how he is working to bring about redemption.
Emulating Jesus and the Apostles as we engage Scripture
Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ is the incarnate Word—God revealed—not only in human flesh, but within a specific cultural context. We are called to emulate him (Mt 4:19). In revealing God and engaging people in his setting, Jesus continued the pattern of divine accommodation that God has practiced from the beginning in his relationship with humanity. God’s desire is that his grace and truth be reflected in every society through faithful, contextualized expressions—his kingdom coming on earth as it is in heaven.
What, then, is our calling? We are called to follow the apostles’ example of discerning culturally appropriate expressions of God’s will, character, and mission through engagement with Scripture. Because our cultural setting differs from that of the New Testament, faithful obedience will inevitably require fresh expressions shaped by our context. We enter into a dialogue with Scripture in order to discern what it means to submit to our heavenly Father in ways that are culturally appropriate and biblically faithful.
This dialogical approach to Scripture is not a compromise with modern or worldly values, as though we were reshaping God’s intent to suit contemporary expectations. Nor is it an arrogant claim that we possess insights that improve on God’s communication. Rather, it is a recognition that we must grasp God’s heart and intention in a manner consistent with Scripture and express that intention in ways that resonate with the dynamics of our context.
To fulfill this commission, Scripture must first be interpreted according to its original intended meaning and only then applied. Yet because that meaning is itself culturally embedded, it cannot be transferred directly into our setting. Instead, each biblical teaching is to be understood as an expression of kingdom living within a specific historical and cultural environment—an expression that invites us to discern a faithful, contextualized embodiment in our own time and place. What we are not given is a set of universal commands untouched by cultural considerations. I believe this is God’s good intention, ensuring that our focus remains on being his obedient children rather than prioritizing laws.
I will now show how Jesus himself models the hermeneutic advocated in these articles, and how the apostles follow his approach as they work out the implications of the gospel within their New Testament context. This, in turn, calls us to continue the same theological process. We are to imitate Jesus’ use of Scripture and his teaching about the gospel, as well as the apostles’ practice of discerning how best to embody the gospel within their first-century world.
The New Testament therefore provides a model for gospel-shaped living. Our task is not to replicate the apostles’ specific conclusions as a fixed pattern for church practice, but to follow their example by discerning what faithful gospel embodiment looks like in our own context—always consistent with the apostolic witness and guided by their commitment to contextualize the gospel faithfully.
The Sermon on the Mount
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus models a way of reading the law that invites us to discern the heart, character, and mission of God through an unexpected reading of the commands. Jesus reveals that obedience is not conformity to the command itself but using the commands as windows into the heart of God. The goal is conformity to the divine purpose that those commands represent.
In Matthew 5:17–20, Jesus declared:
“Whoever disobeys even the least important of the commandments and teaches others to do the same will be least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever obeys the Law and teaches others to do the same will be great in the kingdom of heaven. I tell you, then, that you will be able to enter the kingdom of heaven only if you are more faithful than the teachers of the Law and the Pharisees in doing what God requires” (TEV).
What does it mean to be “more faithful” or “more righteous” in doing what God requires? Jesus ultimately clarifies this in the final verse of the chapter, calling us to “be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (5:48). This corresponds, I believe, to his emphasis on the greatest commandment: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Mt 22:37 ESV). Such obedience is not achieved through conformity to rules, but through conformity to the character, purposes, and heart of God.
How this perfection of love for the Father is accomplished is illustrated by the examples given between those key verses 20 and 48 of Matthew 5. Jesus provides an interpretive process that parallels the hermeneutical approach advocated in these articles. He shows not only how we are to read commands but also how those commands are meant to shape us.
When he quotes the Torah—“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not kill,’ but I say to you…”—he is not replacing one command with another, nor is he calling for mere behavioral compliance (as in, “I have not murdered, therefore I have obeyed”). Instead, he reveals the heart of God and directs us toward the deeper orientation to which we are to conform. We are called to adopt a posture of love and care toward those for whom our natural inclination might be anger, mockery, or contempt. These descriptions are not new rules meant to restrict us at the behavioral level; they are an invitation to understand God’s heart for people and to reflect that heart in our desires and relationships.
This is the pattern and guide for what it truly means to obey God’s commands. Obedience is not mere behavioral conformity, no matter how clear a command may appear. Rather, it is understanding and conforming to the character, will, and mission of God—from which genuine fulfillment and appropriate response become possible. Notice that Jesus did not dismiss or reject God’s commands. Instead, he embraced them as revelation rather than rulebook. Commands were to be obeyed by discerning and applying the purpose behind them—the “why.” The apostles, and especially Paul, adopt this hermeneutic throughout the New Testament. God’s commands are not to be rejected, nor are they to be applied directly according to their “plain meaning.” Instead, to “be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt 5:48) is to discover how the purpose of a command—the “why”—can be faithfully fulfilled.
The Good Samaritan
We see the same dynamic in the parable of the Good Samaritan. The questioner sought a clear command to obey—something specific that would allow him to feel justified in his righteousness: “Who is my neighbor?” But Jesus reverses the question, asking instead, “Who acted as a neighbor?” In doing so, he shifts the focus from defining limits about a command to cultivating sacrificial generosity that extends to anyone in need.
Confronting the Pharisees – Matthew 15
In Matthew 15, the Pharisees complain that the disciples do not wash their hands before eating. Jesus responds by accusing them of failing to honor their parents, and to drive home his point he quotes Isaiah 29:13: “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship is a farce, for they teach man-made ideas as commands from God” (NLT). At first glance, it may appear that Jesus is merely contrasting God’s laws with human traditions and dismissing rules not rooted in Scripture. But as he continues teaching the crowd in verse 10, it becomes evident that his concern goes far deeper than the source of a command. He goes on to challenge the food laws themselves—laws that come directly from the Torah. This is unsettling not only for the Pharisees, but also for the disciples.
Verses 16–20 reveal that Jesus is not focused on deciding which laws should be obeyed and which set aside. Instead, he directs his audience to the deeper principle: we are not called to merely apply commands mechanically but to discern the heart of God behind the command. The real issue is not about commands at all, but “evil thoughts, murder, adultery, all sexual immorality, theft, lying, and slander. These are what defile you. Eating with unwashed hands will never defile you” (Mt 15:19–20 NLT).
Something greater is here – Matthew 12
In Matthew 12, as the disciples walk through a field eating grain on the Sabbath, the Pharisees accuse them of violating the Mosaic law, essentially asking, “What kind of rabbi allows his disciples to ignore the law?” Jesus does not dispute their interpretation; he accepts that the action could be viewed as unlawful. Instead, he argues that there are situations in which breaking the law is permissible, offering two examples: David eating the sacred bread of the sanctuary, and the priests working in the Temple on the Sabbath. In both cases, something more important takes precedence over strict legal observance. David, the Lord’s anointed, was in desperate need, so the rules of the sanctuary—God’s own law for God’s sacred space—were set aside. Likewise, the duties of the Temple override the Sabbath law because the priests are serving God. Jesus then delivers his decisive point: just as these examples warranted exceptions, so too does the situation with his disciples, for “one greater than the Temple” is here.
Jesus is, in effect, saying, “Take note—God is doing something new, something greater than the Temple. Look around and discern what is happening: God is breaking in with his kingdom, his rule, his transformation. Open your eyes to the reality before you.” The kingdom of God is being established, and Jesus is the King. This “new wine” surpasses the old pattern of conforming to commands. The inbreaking of God’s kingdom is a greater work—one that takes precedence over the law.
This reorientation toward a hermeneutic that prioritizes God’s heart rather than mere command-keeping continues throughout the chapter. In verse 12, Jesus declares, “The law permits a person to do good on the Sabbath.” He is not quoting a verse from the Torah; no such explicit exception exists. The Pharisees are technically correct that Jesus should not violate the Sabbath law. Jesus’ frustration is not that they misunderstand the law, but that they do not know his heavenly Father who gave it (a constant refrain in the gospel of John). If they understood God’s heart, they would not elevate the Sabbath law above doing good. Ultimately, in verse 50, Jesus articulates the central principle—one that stands in sharp contrast to the Pharisees’ orientation to the law: “Anyone who does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother!”
The apostles after Pentecost
With the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost, the apostles began to reorient their understanding of Jesus, the gospel, and the kingdom—including their perspectives on Scripture, the temple, and the law. They had seen Jesus, listened to him, lived with him, and received his Spirit, yet they now faced unfamiliar situations with no direct command from the Lord. This did not leave them unprepared; knowing the Father, knowing the Son, and being led by the Spirit enabled them to navigate new and unexpected cultural scenarios.
As the implications of the gospel unfolded, they sought to express the kingdom appropriately within their own settings. In doing so, they developed a contextual theology, working out the will, character, and mission of Jesus in the circumstances they encountered. This is the pattern we are meant to follow—a hermeneutical pattern of expressing the gospel in new contexts—not a rote adoption of contextually specific practices that addressed people living in another time and cultural setting.
The contextualized expressions of the gospel established by the apostles are recorded for us not as ecclesial mandates, but as inspired examples from their time. The book of Acts does not end as though the work of the Spirit were complete and we now simply follow the Bible as a manual containing universal practices for all eras. Instead, we are called to work out the implications of the gospel in our own context by emulating the way the New Testament writers worked out the gospel in theirs.
The inclusive nature of the gospel – Acts 8 and 10
In Acts 8, the Holy Spirit leads Philip to a lonely road, where he encounters an Ethiopian eunuch. When the eunuch asks in Acts 8:36, “Why can’t I be baptized?” Philip does not respond, “First, you are an Ethiopian, so you cannot be baptized—this is a Jewish Messiah. You may listen to our teaching when you visit, but you cannot be part of us. Second, you are a eunuch, and therefore damaged; you cannot truly be a member or citizen of the new kingdom, though you are welcome to look in from the outside.” Instead, Philip baptizes him immediately. This act was profoundly radical and subversive—an astonishing example of working out the gospel in a way that broke through every expected boundary.
Verse 37 is absent from the best manuscripts. In the narrative, the eunuch asks, “Why can’t I be baptized?” Later scribes—likely concerned with clarifying the meaning of baptism—added a response in which Philip says, “You can, if you believe with all your heart,” followed by the eunuch’s confession, “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.” This verse was not original to Luke’s account and distracts from the focus of the passage which is not on defining the theology of baptism but on the contextualization of the gospel. The story emphasizes that the good news is inclusive of all nations and all people—even the marginalized. Philip’s actions are not guided by written commands but by the leading of the Holy Spirit and by his understanding of Jesus as the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets.
A similar dynamic appears in Acts 10. Peter has a vision commanding him to eat unclean food—something that would have been profoundly difficult for him. Obeying this command meant engaging in practices he believed were wrong and that would render him unfit for God’s presence. It required him to set aside clear biblical commands; in his mind, such food would make him impure and unholy. And yet God says, “Eat.” First Pentecost opened the door to Jews of other languages and cultures, then the gospel embraced eunuchs, and now Peter is being told to eat pork. Peter must have thought, “Where is this going to end?” He immediately found out because gentiles sent from Cornelius knocked at the door.
This subversive nature of the gospel—and the way it continually produces new and unexpected expressions in different contexts—is a central New Testament theme. We are not called to obey commands mechanically but to conform our lives to Jesus’ “new wine” and to live out the kingdom in ways that are faithful and appropriate in our own context.
The question of circumcision
Two contrasting hermeneutical approaches emerge in Acts 15 during the early church conflict over whether circumcision was required for inclusion in the body of Christ. Verse 5 reports, “Some of the believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees stood up and said, ‘The Gentiles must be circumcised and told to obey the Law of Moses’” (TEV). For the Jewish community, circumcision—established as far back as Abraham—was the sign of commitment to God, acceptance by God, and identity as God’s people. The law given through Moses was to be obeyed to the letter. The “plain sense” of the command was unmistakable, and it carried severe penalties for disobedience (Gen 17:14).
But this path was rejected as normative for believers by the apostles, most notably by Paul, himself a former Pharisee. The “new wine” Jesus brought was not a replacement set of laws that substituted new commands for the Torah, as though the new covenant followed the same legal pattern as the old. Rather, the way of the Spirit—and Christ’s own approach to commands and the law—was fundamentally different. God’s commands were not discarded; instead, the hermeneutic changed.
The apostles were re-evaluating all scriptural injunctions in light of the gospel. In Jesus, everything has been fulfilled. Now that God has revealed himself fully in Christ and given the Spirit, we are not called to be rule-keepers but grace-shaped followers of Jesus who discern God’s will, character, and mission through every command, discovering fresh and faithful expressions of God’s heart and purposes within our own context.
Obeying the commands to the Gentiles
James’s speech in Acts 15:19–21 reinforces this hermeneutic. Guided by the discernment of the gathered believers and the leading of the Holy Spirit, James concludes that gentile believers should abstain from three behaviors:
- Eating food polluted by idols,
- Sexual immorality, and
- Eating strangled animals and blood.
James was not constructing a new Christian law, nor was he attempting to impose Jewish restrictions on gentile believers. These directives are not commands to be added to our statements of faith, used as the basis of a covenant, or posted in our churches. To insist on literal application in every context would be harmful in two ways:
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First, misapplication and unintended restrictions would arise from failing to recognize the contextual realities that give these commands their meaning.
- Second, without discerning the heart and purposes of God that prompted the directives, people could demand compliance in ways that merely impose their own cultural values rather than reflect God’s intentions.
For example, concepts of “sexual immorality” can take distinctly cultural forms that do not necessarily match God’s purposes. A theology of sexual ethics shaped by a hermeneutic that reads the Bible as God’s self-revelation directs us to interpret passages such as Acts 15:19–21 in contextually sensitive ways that reflect what God desires for his people.
James’ response was a Holy Spirit–guided declaration shaped for the cultural realities of his day, and from it we can still learn. These commands should neither be dismissed as irrelevant as if they are “just cultural,” nor embraced as if they were written directly “to us.” Rather, they are truly “for us” in the sense we have been discussing: they reveal God’s will, character, and mission.
James’ directives addressed patterns of life appropriate for gentile believers in that time, enabling them to live “in Christ” and embody their identity as children of God. His conclusions disclose God’s heart for his people—an orientation we must also learn to express appropriately in our own time.
For this reason, we approach these commands by asking “why”: Why were these instructions given? How do they reflect the will, character, and mission of God? Only with that understanding can we craft faithful responses and expressions that reflect God’s purposes and desires within our own context.
The Spirit brings life, the Law brings death – Romans 7
In Romans 7, Paul explains that the effect of the Law was to introduce the element of rebellion into the human propensity toward sinful action. The Law places human behavior within the category of relationship with God. Prior to the Law, sinful actions were wrong, but not necessarily rebellious—much like trespassing when one is unaware that an authority has forbidden access. Once a person is informed that a particular action is forbidden by God and chooses to do it anyway—like deliberate trespassing—that action becomes an act of rebellion that damages or fractures the relationship. Under the old pattern, life was oriented toward obedience to the Law as a means of pleasing God and avoiding rebellion. To knowingly disobey a command that one understands to be from God is, therefore, to live in rebellion.
For when we lived according to our human nature, the sinful desires stirred up by the Law were at work in our bodies, and all we did ended in death (Rom 7:5 TEV).
To live by the Spirit changes the dynamic. We no longer obey laws in order to please God. Rather, we read the laws as a window into the heart of God—a revelation from the Spirit of God. Relationship comes first; laws are expressions of God’s will, character, and mission that guide us within that relationship. The goal is no longer obedience to laws as a means of pleasing God, for, as argued throughout these articles, new contexts call for fresh expressions if kingdom values are to be fully embodied. We interpret biblical commands through the lens of the gospel, as the apostles did, and we apply that interpretation through the lens of our cultural contexts, even as the apostles did in their context.
Now, however, we are free from the Law, because we died to that which once held us prisoners. No longer do we serve in the old way of a written law, but in the new way of the Spirit (Rom 7:6 TEV).
In the final article, I will apply the proposed hermeneutic to some of the disputed verses on women in leadership to suggest how those verses can be addressed.
