By Greg W. Heisler
Expository preaching is an act wherein the living truth of some portion
of Holy Scripture, understood in the light of solid exegetical and historical
study and made a living reality to the preacher by the Holy Spirit, comes alive
to the hearer as he is confronted by God in Christ through the Holy Spirit in
judgment and redemption (Miller, 1957,
26).
Miller’s
definition stresses the importance of the Spirit in relation to the preacher’s
personal devotional life, as well as the Spirit’s role in applying the message
to the hearts of those who hear the word of God.
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Another
classic definition of expository preaching is Haddon Robinson’s:
Expository preaching is the communication of a biblical concept, derived
from and transmitted through a historical, grammatical, and literary study of
a passage in its context, which the Holy Spirit first applies to the personality
and experience of the preacher, then through him to his hearers. (Robinson,
1980, 20)
Robinson’s
definition emphasizes the clear movement of the Spirit through the inspired
text, into the preacher’s heart and mind, and then penetrating the audience
with the Spirit’s convicting power. Wayne McDill speaks of the “enabling” of
the Holy Spirit in his definition (McDill, 1999, 20), and Danny Akin incorporates
the preacher’s “submission to the Spirit” in his definition of expository preaching
(Akin, 2000, 13).
Another
Spirit-laden definition is provided by Stephen Olford, who writes:
Expository
preaching is the Spirit-empowered explanation and proclamation of the text of
God’s Word with due regard to the historical, contextual, grammatical, and doctrinal
significance of the given passage, with the specific object of invoking a Christ-transforming
response. (Olford, 1998, 69)
The
strength of Olford’s definition is the fact that it includes a reference to
the Spirit’s empowerment, a topic many homiletic textbooks avoid due to the
theological controversy surrounding the anointing of the Holy Spirit. Vines
and Shaddix (1999) and Olford (1998) actually contain sections on the anointing
and empowering of the Holy Spirit in preaching.
Having
surveyed some variety of definitions of expository preaching among evangelicals,
I put forth the following original definition for consideration:
Expository
preaching is the Spirit-empowered communication of biblical truth derived from
the illuminating guidance of the Holy Spirit by means of a verse by verse contextual
exposition of the Spirit-inspired text, with a view to applying the text by
means of the convicting power of the Holy Spirit, first to the preacher’s own
heart, and then to the hearts of those who hear, culminating in Christological
witness and resulting in obedient, Spirit-filled living.