Most of my day consisted of reading Gadamer's take on philosophical hermeneutics, which I oddly kind of enjoy.  I am particularly challenged by a passage explaining a bit of what it means to understand the Gospel. Before I share the quote, here is a short snippet of Gadamer's hermeneutics.

Classic romantic hermeneutics viewed understanding, interpretation, and application as three separate processes. Gadamer, however, concludes that understanding is always interpretation. Furthermore, understanding and interpretation are always combined with application to form one unified process. While every individual approaches the process of understanding with their own presuppositions or prejudices, understanding is not the process of validating those presuppositions by finding a methodology that allows for an examination of the text or artwork or event that supports our preconceived notions. "On the contrary, the interpreter risks his own position to place [his presuppositions] in the light of the governing claim of the text" (Palmer on Gadamer in Hermenutics, 188)  This process of understanding actually alters our horizon as we interact with the text because it causes a fusion of horizons where the individual's perspective meets the perspective of the text.The individual's process of understanding is an event and must be viewed as such, which necessitates that "Understanding always include application to the present" (Palmer, 191)

"[Hermeneutics recognizes] application as an integral element of all understanding. In both legal and theological hermeneutics there is an essential tension between the fixed text- the law or the gospel- on the one hand and, on the other, the sense arrived at by applying it at the concrete moment of interpretation, either in judgment or in preaching. A law does not exist in order to be understood historically, but to be concertized in its legal validity by being interpreted. Similarly, the gospel does not exist in order to be understood as a merely historical document, but to be taken in such a way that it exercises its saving effect. This implies that the text, whether law or gospel, if it is to be understood properly-i.e. according to the claim it makes- must be understood at every moment, in every concrete situation, in a new and different way. Understanding here is always application." - Gadamer, Truth and Method, (307-308).