Study Tactics for Understanding Literary Context

1. SCC University What we believe and why we believe it!

2. Study Tactics • 3 Basics Stages • Observation • Interpretation • Application

3. Study Tactics – Context • Literary Context: Surrounding context • 1) Immediate Context • Identify the textual world in which your text lives • The closer the relationship – the greater the influence • 2) Greater Literary Context • Questions: • a) What is the Unit’s role, function, and/or purpose in the book? • b)Why did the author include this section as an important part of the whole?

4. Study Tactics – Context • Literary Context: Surrounding context • 2) Greater Literary Context • Identify Sections • a) Look at how the book is divided into paragraphs. • i) Compare translations and/or section (if your bible has them); • ii) Try to identify your own section: 1) Conjunctions (therefore, then, but); 2) Changes in style (greetings, prayers, sermons); 3) Changes in topic (theory vs. application) • b) Summarize the main idea of each section • c) Explain how your passage of interest relates to surrounding sections • 1 Peter 5:7 – “cast all your anxiety on him”

5. Study Tactics – Pre-Context • Literary Context: Pre-Text • The world from which the reader approaches the text. • These “pre-text” influences have been formed both consciously and subconsciously by a variety of different sources – Luke 2:1-7

6. Study Tactics – Pre-Context • Literary Context: AS Christians • 1) Preunderstanding • Specific experiences and previous encounters with the text that lead us to assume we already understand it. • Sunday school, church, bible study, Christian radio etc… • Causes us to approach the text with “pride” • Encourages us to think that we have got the correct meaning before we have made the appropriate effort to recover it. Pride does not listen. It knows. – Kevin Vanhoozer

7. Study Tactics – Pre-Context • Literary Context: As Christians • 2) Familiarity • Tendency to think we know all there is to know about a passage so we skip over it without studying it carefully • Matthew 2:1-2 & 9-11

8. Study Tactics – Pre-Context • Literary Context: As Human Beings • 3) World View – Cultural background • Family background - national heritage - socio-economic standing • Our “world view” subconsciously influences our understanding of text • Interpretational Reflex – automatic transportation of the biblical text into our cultural context • 1) Fills in the gaps and ambiguities • 2) Creates a parameter of limiting possibilities for a text before we even attempt to assess meaning: Rom 13:1-7

9. Study Tactics – Pre-Context • Literary Context: Solution • Total objectivity? • Impossible: Besides we have a living/intimate relationship with God through Christ Jesus, we don’t want to exclude that for the purpose of being “objective” • Approach the text through faith and in the Spirit • Maintain Foundational Truths • 1) The Bible is the Word of God, therefore, trustworthy and true; 2) The Bible is not contradictory; it is unified, yet diverse. Nevertheless, God is bigger than we, and as such is not easy to comprehend thus the Bible will also be difficult and or mysterious at times and; 3) Apostle’s Creed or Nicene Creed

10. Romans • Sections of Romans Ch. 1-11: • Greeting & Theme: Gospel = righteousness of God revealed • 1) Universal nature of man = sinful/unrighteous 1:18-3:20 • 2) God’s Righteousness for Justification: 3:21-5:21 • 3) Grace reigns through righteousness: Ch. 6-8 • Ch. 6 – Sin’s dominion broken and its influence resisted • Ch. 7 – Dead to the Law’s condemnation though not yet made sinless • Ch. 8 – Those living by the Spirit prove victors over the flesh • 4) God demonstrates his righteousness: Ch. 9-11

11. Romans • Sections of Romans Ch. 1-11: Section 3: ch. 6-8 • Grace reigns through righteousness • Sin’s dominion broken and its influence resisted: ch.6 • 6:14 For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace. • Indicative statement NOT am imperative • 6:17But thanks be to G od…you…have become obedient from the heart…18having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness (another indicative) • 6:23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. • 6:19…so now present your members as slaves to righteousness. HOW?

12. Romans • Sections of Romans Ch. 1-11: Section 3: ch. 6-8 • Grace reigns through righteousness • Dead to the Law’s condemnation though not yet made sinless: ch.7 • The law no longer holds power for condemnation BUT the law remains for good for those in Christ • 7:1Or do you not know, brothers – for I am speaking to those who know the law – that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives? • 7:6But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.

13. Romans • Sections of Romans Ch. 1-11: Section 3: ch. 6-8 • Grace reigns through righteousness • Dead to the Law’s condemnation though not yet made sinless: ch.7 - • 7:7What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.”8 But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead. 9I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died.10 The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. 11 For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me.

14. Romans • Sections of Romans Ch. 1-11: Section 3: ch. 6-8 • Grace reigns through righteousness • Dead to the Law’s condemnation though not yet made sinless: ch.7 • 7: 13 Did that which is good, then, bring death to me? [is the law bad] By no means! [it has a purpose] • 13 sin might be shown to be sin, • [I] 13 might become sinful beyond measure. • 14[the law good is also good because] …the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin.   • 16…if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. 17 So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. 18For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh…. • 20 Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.

15. Romans • Sections of Romans Ch. 1-11: Section 3: ch. 6-8 • Grace reigns through righteousness • Dead to the Law’s condemnation though not yet made sinless: ch.7 • When I sin, if it’s my fleshes fault, not my “will’s” fault, am I okay to just keep sinning? • 6:15What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! 16 Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?

16. Romans • Sections of Romans Ch. 1-11: Section 3: ch. 6-8 • Grace reigns through righteousness • Dead to the Law’s condemnation though not yet made sinless: ch.7 • When I sin, if it’s my fleshes fault, not my “will’s” fault, am I okay to just keep sinning? • 7:15For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. • 7:18For I know that nothing good dwells in me • 7:23but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.

17. Romans • Sections of Romans Ch. 1-11: Section 3: ch. 6-8 • Grace reigns through righteousness • Dead to the Law’s condemnation though not yet made sinless: ch.7 • 7:24aWretched man that I am! • 7:24bWho will deliver me from this body of death? • 7: 25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin. • We have dual being that will not be satisfied in the here and now BUT this does not mean we stay the same.

18. Romans • Sections of Romans Ch. 1-11: Section 3: ch. 6-8 • Grace reigns through righteousness • Those living by the Spirit prove victors over the flesh: ch. 8 • 7:6…we serve in the new way of the Spirit • 8:1There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 2For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. 3For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, 4in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. How?

19. Romans • Sections of Romans Ch. 1-11: Section 3: ch. 6-8 • Grace reigns through righteousness • Those living by the Spirit prove victors over the flesh: ch. 8 • 8:13…if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. 14 For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. 15 For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” • 8:17and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.

20. Romans • Sections of Romans Ch. 1-11: Section 3: ch. 6-8 • Grace reigns through righteousness • Those living by the Spirit prove victors over the flesh: ch. 8 • 8:17and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. • 2 Cor. 4:16 So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. 17 For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, • 8:18For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.

21. Romans • Sections of Romans Ch. 1-11: Section 3: ch. 6-8 • Grace reigns through righteousness • Those living by the Spirit prove victors over the flesh: ch. 8 • This whole treatise is not an apologetic speech but a love letter of encouragement. He is saying you are now slaves of a new master (INDICATIVE) so by nature you are going to have a “new” occupation. BUT that new occupation is at odds with your self and you know this to be true because you battle with the old (sinful self). BUT have peace knowing that if you, with the Spirit’s aid, set your mind on Christ, the Spirit will strengthen you.

22. Romans • Sections of Romans Ch. 1-11: Section 3: ch. 6-8 • Grace reigns through righteousness • Those living by the Spirit prove victors over the flesh: ch. 8 • 8:22For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. 23 And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.  • 8:26Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us

23. Romans • Sections of Romans Ch. 1-11: Section 3: ch. 6-8 • Grace reigns through righteousness • Those living by the Spirit prove victors over the flesh: ch. 8 • 8:22For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. 23 And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.  • 8:26Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us

24. Romans • Sections of Romans Ch. 1-11: Section 3: ch. 6-8 • Grace reigns through righteousness • Those living by the Spirit prove victors over the flesh: ch. 8

25. Romans • Sections of Romans Ch. 1-11: Section 3: ch. 6-8 • Grace reigns through righteousness • Those living by the Spirit prove victors over the flesh: ch. 8 • 8:29 For those whom he foreknewhe also predestinedto be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. 30 And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.

26. Romans • Sections of Romans Ch. 1-11: Section 3: ch. 6-8 • Grace reigns through righteousness • Those living by the Spirit prove victors over the flesh: ch. 8 • 8:37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. • 8:18For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us