Why This Question Will Not Go Away
Sooner or later, someone in a Bible study asks: how can so many people read this book and walk away with different answers?
Fair question. It also carries a hidden assumption that needs to be dragged into the light.
The assumption is that disagreement proves the text is unclear. It does not. A hundred wrong answers to the same math problem do not make the problem unsolvable; they indict the students.
Scripture was never written to be misunderstood. Here is the biblical case, and the honest qualification that goes with it.
1. Scripture Is God-Breathed
2 Timothy 3:16–17: “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”
A book given to equip is a book meant to be understood.
2. The Holy Spirit Teaches Spiritual Truth
1 Corinthians 2:12: “Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God.”
Read the purpose clause again: “that we might understand.”
The Spirit was not given so that believers would feel closer to God.
He was given so that they would know what God had said.
3. The Natural Man Cannot Understand Spiritual Things
1 Corinthians 2:14: “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.”
This is the side most people skip.
Paul does not say that the unbeliever finds the Bible difficult. He says two things, and both land hard.
The unbeliever considers it “folly.” And he is “not able” to understand it.
That verdict falls on the reader, not the text.
A man with three doctorates and no new birth is not underqualified.
He is disqualified.
4. The Spirit Searches And Reveals
1 Corinthians 2:10: “these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.”
God reveals, the Spirit conveys, the believer knows.
Every link in that chain is God’s work before it is yours.
5. Jesus Promises The Spirit’s Teaching Ministry
John 14:26: “the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things...”
This is not a fringe doctrine held by a few. It came from the Lord Himself, on the night He was betrayed.
6. The Spirit Guides Believers Into Truth
John 16:13: “When the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all the truth...”
One caution.
The immediate context is Jesus speaking to His apostles about revelation they would receive and record. The application to ordinary believers is real, but derivative.
Anyone using this verse to justify private revelation has run past what the text says.
7. Scripture Came Through The Holy Spirit
2 Peter 1:21: “For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”
Scripture is not a human invention that God later approved.
Men wrote, and they were carried while they wrote.
8. Scripture Gives Understanding
Psalm 119:130: “The unfolding of Your words gives light; it imparts understanding to the simple.”
Light to the simple, not the credentialed.
Why MacArthur And Sproul Disagreed About Israel
Here is where the honest objection lands.
John MacArthur and R.C. Sproul both had the Spirit. Both submitted to Scripture. Both worked at the text harder than most of us ever will. Yet they did not agree about Israel in the last days.
Let’s start with all that they agreed with. God’s sovereignty. Human depravity. Grace alone through faith alone. The authority and inspiration of Scripture. Perseverance of the saints. The Lordship and deity of Christ.
That’s nearly everything that matters.
Then the divide. MacArthur read God’s promises to Israel in their normal, historical sense and saw a real future for the nation Israel.
Sproul read the biblical covenants as the framework of one continuous people of God and saw those promises fulfilled in Christ and His church.
MacArthur addressed it himself. Asked how he could share a platform with Sproul for so many years, he answered that what they agreed on was greater and vastly more important than what they did not, and that two men who agree on the gospel should be able to differ on secondary matters without condemning each other.
Same Spirit. Same Bible. Different conclusions.
Illumination Is Not Interpretation
Here is the distinction that resolves it.
Illumination does not hand you a finished interpretation. It gives you the capacity to receive spiritual truth.
You still have to interpret, using your own mind, your language, the historical context, and whatever theological framework you inherited.
Paul admits the limit: “For we know in part and we prophesy in part” (1 Corinthians 13:9).
Peter admits more. Of Paul’s own letters he wrote that “There are some things in them that are hard to understand” (2 Peter 3:16). Peter walked with Jesus for three years and still found parts of what Paul wrote hard to understand.
Difficulty is not failure. Difficulty is what diligence is for.
Six Safeguards Scripture Gives Us
If illumination guaranteed uniform results, none of these commands would exist.
Study diligently. Be “a worker who has no need to be ashamed” (2 Timothy 2:15).
Compare Scripture with Scripture. The Bereans were commended for “examining the Scriptures daily” (Acts 17:11).
Recognize your limits. “For now we see in a mirror dimly” (1 Corinthians 13:12).
Depend on the Spirit. “that we might understand the things freely given us by God” (1 Corinthians 2:12).
Remember, teachers are accountable. “we who teach will be judged with greater strictness” (James 3:1).
Refuse to elevate a system above the text. “So let no one boast in men” (1 Corinthians 3:21).
Two Things Held At Once
Their disagreement does not prove there is no correct interpretation.
That is a different claim, and it does not follow. Two competent mathematicians can disagree about a hard problem; the problem still has an answer.
So hold both without flinching. God’s Word is objectively true and authoritative. Your present grasp of it is what is imperfect.
That is exactly why 2 Timothy 2:15 commands diligence rather than promising results. If accurate interpretation arrived automatically with the indwelling Spirit, the command would be pointless.
Two conditions, and neither is optional.
Be saved, because the natural man finds it “folly.”
Be diligent, because the workman is commanded to handle it rightly.
Skip the first and you get a scholar who cannot see.
Skip the second and you get a believer who never learns to handle the book he already owns.
To His Glory,
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Very thoughtful commentary Thad.
Sproul and MacArthur are my primary tutors for Bible study. As the years go by, and I face more challenges with people who hold different interpretations of scripture, being patient and loving toward them goes a long way toward maintaining respect and the bond of unity we must strive for with our brethren.
In addition to being a thoughtful theologian, Sproul was an academic philosopher and was greatly influenced by Augustine of Hippo, who, I'm sure you know, was a brilliant 5th Century theologian and philosopher. In my opinion Augustine got some things quite wrong, with detrimental impact to the interpretation of eschatology and to Israel; and if one studies him, it is relatively easy to spot how his influence bled into Sproul's theology. Don't get me wrong, I dearly love Sproul and value many of his teachings, but I align more with MacArthur's biblical interpretations. They are more accurate, in my opinion, and are less overshadowed by 'man's wisdom.'
More than ever before we are divided by our interpretation of scripture and doctrine. If people would diligently and prayerfully study the Word, rather than listen to ignorant, or willfully deceptive teachers, the divisions would lessen. But we are too late in the age to turn the tide, and God graciously revealed it would be exactly like this in our times.
You and Sharon played it forward very well. That’s the best response we could hope for and I’m sure there will be a lot of stories to share in heaven!