The Doctor: Go Further Back!

Now, in parenthesis, let me say here that when you come across a subsection such as this, or even a verse which seems to you on the surface to be difficult, and you say to yourself, ‘Why does he say that here?  What is the connection?’  Then a very good principle to follow is not to spend too much time with the immediate connection.  Go further back!  Look at the larger context, and very often that will give you the key to the solution of your immediate problem.

Let me use an illustration here.  In athletics, if you come up against a particularly high hurdle that you have to jump, you take a longer run!  If you want to vault over it, you go further back.  You do not try to lift yourself up over this very high hurdle from where you are on the ground.  The further back you go, the longer your run, and the momentum will carry you over.  That is a very valuable principle in the exposition of Scripture and in the elucidation of some of these problems with which it presents us.  – D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans Vol. 10, p. 253