by Dave Brown
Ye often hear it said ...
“Jesus never
used necessary inference.”
but Jesus answered and said unto them (Mt. 22:29) ...
“Ye do err,
not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God.”
He went on to illustrate a biblical interpretation method
by which they should have been able to understand the reality of the
resurrection (Mt. 22:31-32): “But as touching the resurrection of the dead,
have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying, I am the God of
Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the
dead, but of the living.” Jesus was quoting from Exodus 3:6, which says
nothing specifically about the resurrection from the dead. However, Jesus
chastises them for not drawing the obvious conclusion, one that is necessarily
inferred from the tense of a verb (I am, not I was).
Our focus here is not as much with the resurrection as it
is with following the example of Jesus (1 Pet. 2:21). If Jesus used this
method, can it be wrong? In Mt. 22 (and many other places), Jesus draws
conclusions that must follow from the scriptures even though they are not
explicitly stated. This is exactly what we mean when we talk about necessary
inference. To draw such conclusions, however, one must know the premises.
Knowing only what other people state about the bible is not sufficient. Thus,
the necessity to study (2 Tim. 2:15) and to become as those “who because of
practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil” (Heb. 5:14).