God's Word is the Authority on God's Word

There is a certain audacity afforded the unwise that betrays their own sense of ignorance. To truly progress in knowledge is to come to an understanding of just how insignificant your capacity for knowledge is. It is to embrace the notion that learning is a life-time endeavor, not a temporary achievement.  Every new idea comprehended should be accompanied by the humbling realization that such knowledge was far too great for you to attain to yourself. Unfortunately, development in our understanding of the Lord does not typically follow this pattern.. Somewhere along the line we have traded the joy of the journey for the conceit of accomplishment. We deny that our knowledge of God has come solely through the vehicle of revelation through His word, and pretend that somewhere within the depths of our own psyches there engine an engine of pure and proper thought that has itself led us into a deeper understanding of Christ. But it must be plainly stated: Such thinking is the height of arrogance before the Lord.

The danger of this arrogance is two-fold.

First, it raises your own estimation of yourself so far beyond reality, that you are left unconcerned with any evidence that you are in fact misunderstanding the word of the Lord. A well concerned brother in Christ could rightly approach you with a correction or a concern about how you understand the Lord and His word, and it would simply be met by indifference,  excuses, or outright denials. We cannot have too high an estimation of our powers of comprehension. Remember that the disciples even understood that Jesus was the Christ, but they did not understand all that was meant or entailed by that statement. Proudly resting in their interpretation of the Messiah as a conquering king, they were blind-sided by the reality of the Suffering Servant.

Paul's own estimation of his understanding of the Lord is that he sees in a mirror dimly. Greater still, he says this about his own desire to know Christ:

Not that I have already attained, but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press towards the goal to the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus -- Philippians 3:13-14

There is no value in deceiving yourself into thinking that there is not always more to learn, more to understand, or more to apply to yourself in the word of God.

Secondly, and perhaps most dangerously, there is a great risk that in our arrogance, we find ourselves subjecting God to our own judgments rather than submitting to His. We set ourselves as judges of the word rather than recipients of it. Let's not be coy: All heresy begins by setting yourself as the authority on God's word.

The only secure way to confine your own prideful capacity for heretical thought is to let God's word define God's word, to let God's word interpret God's word. Through and through, it is His own revelation which both reveals new truths and fortifies old truths. It is His word which enlightens the mind and enlarges the understanding. He works in us both to will and to do. There is nothing for us except to exercise the humility of coming to His word with open minds. He is the author, we are the audience.