The Difference Between the Bible and a Legal Document
It’s always struck me as ironic that the word abbreviation is such a long word. Why is there no abbreviation for the word abbreviation?
I had a similar reaction when I first heard the word perspicuity. A professor was describing the wonders of the Bible, and he went on and on about the perspicuity of Scripture. The what? Perspicuity is a word to describe something that is clear and easy to understand. My professor was using an uncommon, hard-to-understand word to describe something that is just the opposite!
We tend to think complicated words and phrasing carry more weight. C’mon, how many of us used a thesaurus in school to make a paper sound more intelligent, astute, inventive, knowledgeable, and well-informed?
We tend to give more importance to something that seems more intelligent than us. We certainty see that in legal documents. Does anyone really read every line of those three thousand documents you sign when buying a house? No one enjoys reading legal documents—not even lawyers. Legal documents are hard to understand because of the convoluted way things are phrased. Yet even though lawyers don’t like legalese, they still use it. Why?
It conveys a sense of authority.
Researchers at MIT looked into this. Their research included asking non-lawyers to write laws, and it appears that people whose knowledge of the law comes from Matlock reruns resort to legalese to make a law sound authoritative and important.
The researchers did a follow-up study and found that even lawyers, those who are trained to understand legal documents, prefer documents full of perspicuity … er, plain language. Furthermore, they said easy-to-understand documents are just as enforceable as traditional legal documents. [1]
There’s something in us that thinks, if it’s hard to understand, it must be really important. And if we can understand it—if we can wade through the maze of language and see its meaning—it makes us feel important … and smart.
Unfortunately, people approach the Bible with that same mentality. Even in the early years of the church, people wanted to treat God’s Word as a mystery to unravel. Part of the Gnostic beliefs prevalent in the early centuries was a belief that revelation from God required a special knowledge, and Gnostics prided themselves on possessing the inside track to this hidden knowledge. That mindset is not dead. There are many today who want to find hidden meanings. They look for patterns in words, even using numerology. For example, the Jewish mysticism of Kabbalah leans heavily on this.
Let me take us back to that hard-to-understand word perspicuity. God’s Word is clear. God gave us His Word so that we could know Him. He has no intention of making us play mental gymnastics to figure at who He is and what He desires for us.
Sure, there are passages that seem difficult for our modern, Western minds to understand. Therefore, we benefit from studying and learning about ancient customs, Jewish practices, and the culture in which the biblical writers wrote. We benefit from studying, to know the types of genres, and to discern what is to be taken literally and what is not. (When Psalm 91:4 tells us “He will cover you with his feathers,” that does not mean God is a giant chicken.) But by and large, Scripture is clear in its meaning.
“The instruction of the Lord is perfect, renewing one’s life; the testimony of the Lord is trustworthy, making the inexperienced wise” (Ps. 19:7).
We don’t need to find legalese, big words, and convoluted language in the Bible to think it must be important. Quite the opposite. God deemed His Word so critically important that He gave it to us in plain language.
Make reading and listening to God’s Word a part of your daily regimen in 2025. Your goal is not to unravel hidden mysteries; your goal is to see what God has clearly said in His Word—and live out those truths.
May God bless 2025 for you.
[1] https://phys.org/news/2024-08-laws-written-incomprehensible-style.html.
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