Introduction

Dismissing truth with “that’s just your interpretation” fails because God is the Author of Scripture, and through the Holy Spirit and His prescribed rules, His intended meaning is objective, absolute, and discoverable. In addition, this subtly attempts to appeal to neutrality. It argues that no interpretation is objectively right or wrong; it depends on each reader’s understanding.

The Problem With “That’s Just Your Interpretation”

When you faithfully defend Biblical truth by appealing to what the text explicitly says, you will eventually hear this conversation-ending cry: “That’s just your interpretation.”

In today’s culture, people treat the Bible like an art museum piece where everyone gets to walk away with their own personal opinion. But that mindset destroys the very nature of God’s word. If a Bible verse can mean anything spiritually to whoever reads it, then objectively, it means nothing.

God communicated His revelation propositionally, expressing His mind in objective, written statements of fact that carry fixed meaning, follow sound logic, and are universally true. To abandon propositional truth is to surrender inerrancy, strip Scripture of its practical authority, and open the church to subjectivism, irrationalism, and heresy.

It cannot be interpreted through each individual’s bias.

God is the ultimate Author of the Bible, and an intelligent Author does not write a book that means a thousand different things to a thousand different people. If God wrote it, He defines it. Just as Joseph declared in Genesis 40:8 and Daniel demonstrated before kings (Dan. 4:18, 5:16), interpretation belongs to God. The Holy Spirit is the ultimate Interpreter of Scripture (1 Cor. 2:13), searching the deep things of God (1 Cor. 2:10) and revealing His secrets to those who fear Him (Ps. 25:14, Amos 3:7). There is only one right interpretation of any given passage: God’s interpretation.

Since God is the Author, He also prescribes the proper way to study it. We don’t have to guess, and we certainly don’t need to rely on modern academia’s shifting, subjective methods.

There is a bias derived from the text itself.

God’s Built-In Rules for Study

God didn’t leave us in the dark. Hermeneutics is the science of interpreting a text. Biblical hermeneutics applies that to Scripture. Biblical hermeneutics rests entirely upon self-evident principles derived from Scripture itself. Because God prescribes the method for studying His word, we reject human reasoning, scholarship, and academic invention and draw our interpretive rules directly from the text.

God gave us clear guardrails to keep us from twisting His word:

• Let Scripture Explain Scripture: If a verse is hard to understand, you don’t make up a meaning. You let clearer parts of the Bible define the terms. The Bible is its own best dictionary. (1 Corinthians 2:13)

• Keep Christ at the Center: Every part of the Bible ultimately points to Jesus Christ, the living Word, and the grand theme of a King and His kingdom. (Colossians 1:18)

• Respect Context: You can’t just rip a verse out of its home. Look at the surrounding sentences, the chapter, the book, the dispensation, and the whole canon. (Acts 20:27; 17:2)

• Rightly Divide the Truth: The Bible deals with different groups at different times—like Israel, the Church, and Gentile nations. Mixing up who a verse was written to leads to major error. (2 Timothy 2:15; 1 Corinthians 10:32)

• Take It Literally First: Look at the plain, normal meaning of the words using the historical-grammatical method. Don’t turn everything into a hidden code or an allegory unless the text clearly calls for it. (Proverbs 8:9; Amos 3:7; Luke 24:25)

• Never Invent Contradictions: God is perfect, and His character doesn’t change. Because God is completely logical and truthful, His word follows the laws of logic, like the rule of non-contradiction. If two verses seem to clash, our interpretation is wrong—not the Bible. (2 Corinthians 1:18; Titus 1:2; Mark 3:25)

A Simple Checklist for Your Bible Study

Next time you open your Bible, run the passage through these quick questions to stay on track:

1. Am I letting the text speak for itself, or am I forcing my own opinions onto it?

2. Who was this originally written to? Am I mixing up historical audiences or dispensational timelines?

3. Does this fit with the rest of the Bible? Am I using an obscure verse to build an idea that clearer verses deny?

4. Am I taking the words literally and naturally, or am I turning a straightforward statement into a personal fairy tale?

5. Does this honor Jesus Christ and the overarching truth of His kingdom?

The Right Attitude: Trembling at His Word

Isaiah 66:2 gives us the exact posture we need when approaching divine revelation: “To this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at my word.”

When people interpret the Bible on their own, they practice private interpretation—divorcing a verse from the body of Scripture to make it say what they want. But God doesn’t want us acting like masters over His book. He wants us to come to it like humble students led by the Holy Spirit. If we want to know the truth, we must approach His word as He prescribes, resting in the absolute confidence that His book is entirely without error, contradiction, or confusion.

One pastor put it succinctly: