Your point of view changes the way you see everything. Look to the heavens: Someone who loves and follows Christ sees the unfathomable scope of the cosmos and recognizes: creation sings its Creator's praise. With the psalmist we say:

The heavens declare the glory of God,
and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
Psalm 19:1

Someone who doesn’t love and follow Christ looks to the same giant sky and concludes… We’re irrelevant specks of dust drifting through an uncaring universe.

Same data. Different conclusions. Why? Our perspective. What we already understand causes us to interpret the same things differently.

That holds true for so much of life. We interpret other people’s actions through the lens of what we already think of them: We excuse our friends, just as we suspect the motives of someone we dislike. (And no one do we excuse more than ourselves.)

(This is also why you'll see politicians condemn among their opposition identical behavior they excuse among their own party.)

And our perspective matters when we read the Bible:

If I come thinking I'm pretty great, it's amazing how I can find things that tell me how great I am.
If I open the Bible with a distrust towards the Church, I'll probably be able to confirm my suspicions.
If I come pre-committed to an ideology, whatever it is, I will either "find" it there, or conclude that the Bible isn't worth my time.

But how would the Lord have us approach his Word?

But this is the one to whom I will look:
he who is humble and contrite in spirit
and trembles at my word.
Isa 66:2

And our perspective includes more than our attitudes. We’re culturally-conditioned to notice (and miss!) certain things. A few weeks ago we mentioned how Russian and American Christians noticed different details in the parable of the Prodigal Son. That’s not an issue of our heart so much as it’s a factor of what we’re used to noticing.

And here’s another factor in how our perspective influences the way we read and understand the Bible: Through whose eyes do you enter the story? Which character do you draw alongside of?

Men, have you ever been in a co-ed Bible study, discussing a passage together, when all of a sudden you realize: “I’ve been reading this from the perspective of the men in the passage - considering their goals, their conflicts... And a woman in our study has entered the story from the perspective of the women involved. And she’s seeing things I never would”?

Now in our passage today there aren’t any women in the Roman legion, nor among the Sanhedrin. So our natural inclination is to read each narrative through the main character’s eyes. To see it from their perspective. But sometimes that’s a mistake:

That’s how we go into accounts like David and Goliath and, if we “place ourselves” next to David, we start reading it as if it’s a paradigm for how I can slay “the giants” in my life.

Is that why the Lord gave us that narrative? What if we looked at it through someone else’s eyes?

Then we’d see a testimony that we serve a God who:

Sends a shepherd King
to vanquish an invincible enemy
without any weapons of war in his hand
and we his people, standing on the sidelines, who have not lifted a finger in battle
share in his victory.

Whose eyes do you enter the narrative from?

Proclaim. Build. Serve.

With What Eyes Do You Read Scripture?