When I started work I was an “office boy,” now known as a P.A., personal assistant. I picked up the mail at the post office in the morning, and in those days most of the letters were addressed to “The Manager.” In the vast majority of cases those letters addressed to the manager were of great interest to others. Yet many managers got quite upset if someone else read the letters before they did. Nowadays, even though my wife Vivien and I have joint accounts, privacy laws insist we each have to receive a statement in a separate envelope, one addressed to me and one to Vivien.
It is, in fact, against the law to open another person’s mail. So look at the address on the envelope. Does it have your name on the outside? If it does, then what it says is specifically for you. If your name is not on the envelope, it is not specifically for you but you may learn some things from its contents if it is shown to you. Often the only way you can resolve an apparent contradiction in the Bible is to apply this filter.
Not all of the 66 books of the Bible have your name on them, but you can learn something from all of them. Miles Cloverdale, in his 1535 English translation of the New Testament, wrote about studying the Bible: “It shall greatly help ye to understand Scripture, if thou mark not only what is spoken or written, but of whom, and to whom…” and seven other rules. These wise words have helped Christians for nearly 500 years. The “to whom” is of interest to us at this point.
Romans 15:4 will help you to understand this concept. (The statement follows a quotation from Psalm 69:9.) “For whatever things were written before were written for our learning, so that we through endurance and comfort of the Scriptures might have expectation.” Romans is a book in the church period, and so what was written before that time is “for our learning.” It will not be addressed to us but it was written to teach us.
The same concept is stated in I Corinthians 10:11: “Now these things happened to them as examples, and they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come.” The previous ten verses quote examples from the history of the nation of Israel. What happened to Moses and to the nation have been written down so that we can be instructed by their example.
In I Corinthians 10:32 we have God’s three-fold classification of all people: “Give no offense to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God.” The church of God is not made up of Jews or Greeks (non-Jews), but it is made up of Christians: “There is neither Jew nor Greek… for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). For each of these three groups of people God has a plan, God has promises to fulfill for them. God addresses Himself to them in the various books of the Bible and occasionally in a specific portion of a book. What He says to Jewish people may or may not be of interest to the church. God said some very strong words to the nations other than Israel, and we would hope those words were not meant for us! To be sure if it is meant for you, read the address on the envelope.
To whom is it written? Let me give some examples. The first words of the book of Isaiah are these: “The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem…” (Isaiah 1:1). That is the “address” or title on the envelope. Isaiah contains “the vision… concerning Judah and Jerusalem”. So there is no doubt about the “to whom,” but we can learn many things from Isaiah that do concern us as Christians, like the coming Messiah of Isaiah 53.
In the New Testament, the book of James is addressed… “To the twelve tribes in the dispersion” (1:1). The twelve tribes are the Jews, and God had some special things to say to them at that time in their history. There are things I can learn from the book of James but it is not written to the church. Many of the books of the Bible are written for someone else but are also helpful for our learning.
Other books are written to us, to the church. Let’s check a few of these. I Corinthians is addressed… “To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called saints with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord, Jesus Christ, both theirs and ours” (1:2). We are included in the address on the envelope! It is written to the church.
Ephesians is addressed… “To the saints in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus” (1:1). I praise God that I am one of the “faithful in Christ Jesus”; my name is on the envelope. Romans through II Thessalonians are the letters addressed to the seven churches, and all have our name on the envelope. Then follow some “pastoral epistles” written to individuals in the same church period, and they too contain truth that applies to us, right up to Philemon.
Now which books do you think we ought to read first? Which books should we “correctly cut”, “rightly divide” (II Timothy 2:15) in order to be approved to God? Yes, the ones that are addressed to us. Those books are “a curriculum which contains everything necessary for the Christian’s standing and his walk,” as E.W. Bullinger so accurately states in his book The Church Epistles.
This is why I have taught the book of Revelation only twice in fifty-five years of ministry. It is not important to know the meaning of the hair on the end of the horn of the seven-horned beast that rises out of the sea, as recorded in the book of Revelation. It is really important to know what it means to be “in Christ” and “as Christ” in this world.
How God works now may be different from how He worked for Israel in Old Testament times, and in some ways it may be the same. I will only know if an Old Testament verse has meaning for me when I compare it to what God says on the same subject in those books addressed to me. The same is true of what is written in the Gospels. When someone asks me what a verse means, the first thing I do is to check the address on the envelope, and in many cases that solves the apparent difficulty.
This principle demands that I be diligent by correctly cutting, rightly dividing, the word of truth. To do this I must apply the concept that the Bible interprets itself, often right where it is written. In addition, I must check the address on the envelope and ensure that it was written specifically to me. Since I want to enjoy positive living, I need the sure foundation of God’s positive Word and apply its truth to my life.
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