There is so much instruction in the Scripture that one finds it impossible, in giving a few hints on any portion of the text of it, to attempt to bring out the breadth and length of its various applications.
Indeed, as flowing from God and bearing continually the impress of the fullness of His character, I constantly find, in opening, under God’s mercy, any particular passage at different times and under different circumstances, that it presents itself in bearings so entirely different that, although not in reality inconsistent, they could not be thought (by one untaught of God) to be drawn from the same passage.
It is this which so strongly marks and contrasts the Word of God with any human writings. While these (all human writings) are the expressions of a judgment formed on results or the imperfect discussion of unascertained thought, the writing of God is the expression of the full perfectness of the divine mind. And it bears upon that which diversified it (while in itself intrinsically the same), according to the infinitely various reflections of that on which it expresses itself. This was inherently true of Christ, in whom dwelt all the fullness (Col. 2:99For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. (Colossians 2:9)), and Scriptures are the divine expression of that fullness.
This leads us to remember how one ought to lean upon the Spirit for the right use of Scripture, and also in speaking on it, for He alone knows its right and suitable application.
We also learn why the best commentators must be so entirely imperfect, or, I would say, we see the evil of the best commentators, for they cannot express the applicable power of the divine mind in the circumstances of the person reading, but merely what their mind has received out of it at the time of writing—which may not be at all what the individual or church needs or what the Spirit would give at another time.
And this, too, on the supposition that every comment is right as far as it goes, is a part of the divine mind in Scripture. Hence, the poverty of understanding, and the systems also into which men have fallen, and hence also partly the divisions in the church have been established as they are.
Christian Witness (Vol. 1; attributed to J. N. Darby)