The Bible Was Not Written TO Us…

In college, I had a professor who often said: The Bible was not written to us, but it was written for us. (I can’t read that sentence without hearing it in his southern drawl!)

This statement boils down to one thing: Audience matters!

Imagine yourself in a third-grade classroom. It’s the first day of school, and Mrs. Smith passes out a college-level engineering textbook. Wide-eyed eight-year-olds stare at pages full of words they can’t pronounce. It might as well be written in another language.

The problem? It’s a great textbook—but it wasn’t written for them. The author wrote it for future engineers, not third graders. The book isn’t bad; it’s just out of place.

Once again, audience matters.

A good author knows important information about his or her audience: their level of reading comprehension, their background, and even the social context that will influence how the message is interpreted.

The same is true in Scripture.

• When Moses writes Genesis, he writes to the people of Israel, 4000 years before the time of Christ. His purpose? To share the true story of God’s covenant promises with His people—the story to be passed down through the generations.
• When Matthew writes his gospel, he writes to Jewish Christians. His purpose? To convince 1st-century Jews that Jesus is the promised Messiah from the line of Abraham, Moses, and David.
• When Paul writes 1st and 2 Corinthians, he writes to the church in Corinth. His purpose? To speak to the specific struggles of this church so that they might grow in sanctification and walk in the ways of God.

Identifying the original audience helps us recognize the author’s purpose. And once we recognize the purpose of the text, we can rightly apply its words to our lives.

This is what my professor meant when he said: The Bible was not written to us, but it was written for us.

If you would like to learn more about how to understand the Bible in its original context AND apply it to your life today, my study Nehemiah: Labor, Longing, and the Promise of Restoration will equip you with practical tools for deep, transformative Bible study. You can learn more HERE.