Where is King Jesus?

We have just been through the Christmas season, and if our hearts were right, our reason for the season was the coming of the King. I must admit that the decorations in my house look more like a celebration of the coming of a jolly old elf from the North Pole. (My wife is a Claus collector.) There are a few shepherds and mangers in the mix, but like most Christmas decorations, they lean away from the true meaning of Christmas and into the shiny, silly, worldly version. In our defense, I can only say that our traditions and our memories are so thoroughly steeped in the tree and the presents and the colorful lights that even I have to remind myself what this celebration is all about: the greatest gift ever given in the form of the baby in the manger who became the King on the throne of Heaven and Earth.

Baby Jesus had to grow into His kingship. I know – He was with God and He was God from before the foundation of the Earth. But, in His unique expression as God’s earthbound Son, He had to be born and grow and ultimately become obedient unto death. It was only after His sacrificial death at Calvary that He could ascend to the throne of Heaven. The Bible reveals that because of Adam’s sin, the rulership of Earth was relinquished to God’s arch enemy, Satan. Divine justice required a human payment for Adam’s sin. That was the reason for the incarnation, the baby born in Bethlehem came to die to redeem mankind.

More than that, Paul told the Ephesians redemption was the reason for creation itself! It is truly a mystery, as Paul said, that God would create our universe knowing that His crown of the creation, us humans, would rebel and require redemption. But that is what the Book says. Paradise lost was to become Paradise regained, but only at great cost. The entire sweep of the Old Testament is a record of God moving in human history to prepare for the arrival of the Seed/Servant/Savior, Jesus. The road from Bethlehem to Calvary was posted with signs that the prophets had written centuries before.

One of the most important things the prophets foretold was that the One who was to come would be a king. So, when Jesus finally came, most of the Jewish people were looking for a conqueror king to free them from Roman oppression. They were ready when John the Baptist and then Jesus Himself announced the coming of a kingdom. It was most frequently called the Kingdom of God, but Matthew called it the Kingdom of Heaven. This implied that there was something unearthly about it. Jesus confirmed this when He told Pilate His kingdom was not of this world.

His disciples obviously missed the distinction, though. At the time of Jesus’ return to Heaven, they asked, “Lord, is it at this time you are restoring the kingdom to Israel?” I can imagine Jesus sighing deeply – maybe rolling His eyes – when He answered, “It is not for you to know the times or seasons that the Father has set by his own authority.” Times (χρόνος) or seasons (καιρός) could be translated “dates or circumstances.” He gave them a marker for the date: “When the Holy Spirit has come upon you.” The circumstances would only become clear after the Spirit had, in fact, come.

What became clear after the Holy Spirit guided them into the truth was that the kingdom was to be a spiritual reality. I believe they finally understood what Jesus had meant by saying, “The kingdom of God is within you.” If I could paraphrase what Jesus told the Samaritan woman it would sound like this: “The King of Heaven is a spirit being who requires those who would honor Him as king to do so using their spiritual faculties; physical locations are no longer important to Him.” I think He was trying to make the woman (and us) understand that true human existence is spiritual, and true worship of the One who made us in His likeness must be “in spirit and truth.”

We humans are so bound up in our time/space universe that we fail to see how a spiritual reality can be more real than our physical one. The Apostle Paul encourages us to think of earthly things, material things as temporary (temporal: time-bound) and passing away to be replaced by more permanent things – spiritual things. His explanation to the philosophers in Athens was that the true God did not have a physical existence as represented by their idols and related sacrifices. Rather, he said the true God made the world and everything in it, and that it is in him we live and move and exist.

The teachings of Jesus and Paul are clear: we all exist in God in one sense, but God in us only applies to those who take their place in the Son. Jesus’ disciples must have been horrified when He told them He was going away; then they were mystified when He said it would be better if He went away. What could be better than walking through life in Jesus’ physical presence, they must have asked. The answer came to them with the coming of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost. Once they were filled with the Spirit, they understood what Jesus meant by fulness of life – completeness of joy. They soon learned that they also had been given power to do Jesus’ work – first twelve of them, then thousands, then millions of them.

We are among those millions, those of us who have given our lives to Christ, those of us who hail Him as King Jesus. We are ambassadors of the one true King speaking into the darkness of this world, “Be reconciled to your King; escape the darkness and enter the Kingdom of Light.” Today that kingdom is a spiritual reality, true enough. But we look forward to the day when all creation will be remade; heaven and earth will be reunited at the return of the King. But you won’t enjoy Him as King then if you don’t accept Him as King now. It is the question of the ages: where is King Jesus?                                  

Related Posts: The Virgin Shall Conceive;  Toasting Christmas; Merry Priestly Christmas; Despising the Down Payment; Happy Birthday to Me

His Name Shall be Called

Names can be funny things. Modern parents seem to want to create unique names for their children. One friend named his son Bridge for some reason; another named his boys Boston, Champ, and Chief. When I was younger, a family named Lear called their daughter Chrystal Shanda. (Say the full name out loud!) The Fogg family named their daughter Misty. I had a student in a college writing class whose name threw me when I tried to call the roll on the first day. In the roster it was Britanece. I took a stab at pronouncing it, but I got a dirty look from the guy; “That’s Britannica,” he insisted, “like the encyclopedia!”

I was saddled with a name I probably would not have chosen had I known the trouble it would cause me. My first name is Clair, which is fine since my dad was also Clair, and his dad was Clarence. But when Grandma Ruthie changed her husband’s nickname, Clare, to C-l-a-i-r, she created my nightmare. It’ s a fine word in the French; it translates in English to “clear.” So far, so good. But in French, adjectives have gender; clair is masculine, while claire is feminine. For seventy-odd years I have had to give French lessons to inform people how to spell my name. For some reason Americans decided that Claire is a woman’s name (and that’s the only spelling they know), so when I appear in my maleness, they are confused.

I have learned to make jokes like, “I will have to Clairify that for you.” Or I explain that in French, clair means clear or bright; obviously, I am the bright one. In my brilliance, we named our first daughter DeAnna Michelle drawing on the family name, Anna, and the Hebrew Hanna and Mikael: it means “helper who is like God.” She is now a certified Christian counsellor, so that worked out. My son we called Benjamin John from the Hebrew meaning “son of God’s right hand” and the Greek Iōannēs (in English it’s John), meaning “grace gift of God,” John being his maternal grandfather’s name. He has been a gift to all he encounters, I am proud to say. Our last child we named Elissa Joy. In Hebrew, Eli-sha-a means “god is awesome,” and “Joy” is self-evident. She has been a joy without doubt.

In my experience, most modern parents don’t make that kind of effort in naming their kids. In Bible times, names were very important. God often told prospective parents what to call their child. More than once, a prophet was told to name a child something that would foretell what was prophesied. Isaiah was told to name a child Maher-shalal-hash-baz; how would you like to carry that around for your whole life? The most memorable prophetically given name is undoubtedly the one an angel told Mary and Joseph to call the miraculous child that was coming to them. In our English translations we read the name, Jesus. That’s fine, but it is interesting to follow the etymology of that name.

First, a Bible translation lesson: the Old Testament was written in Hebrew and Aramaic. The New Testament mostly in Greek. This was fitting, since the first readers of the OT were Jews who spoke Hebrew and Aramaic. Because Alexander the Great had spread Greek culture and language across the “known world,” when God chose to send His Son, almost everyone could read Greek. The New Testament therefore was written in Greek (with a touch of Aramaic) to make it widely readable. By the fourth century, Greek was the language of scholars, and Latin (the language of Rome) was more commonly read. A priest in Rome named Jerome was tasked with writing a Latin translation of all the Scriptures. His translation, called the Vulgate, became the standard version of the Bible for centuries.

By the Sixteenth Century, Latin had become a language used only by theologians and scholars, so, King James of England commissioned an English translation. The translators used what original manuscripts they had but relied heavily on Jerome’s Vulgate. The second most popular version of the Bible in English today is the King James Version, only recently surpassed by the New International Version after nearly 400 years of dominance.

Now we are back to names. The Latin (Vulgate) translation of the Greek New Testament name for the son of Mary and Joseph was Jesu. That’s where we get the English King James name Jesus. I think the translators should have gone deeper than the Greek/Latin name. My thinking is that the angel would have used the language of Mary and Joseph’s heart: Hebrew. That would mean the angel would have told them to call their baby boy “Yeshua.” That may sound odd, but follow me. The Hebrew behind the Greek, Ἰησοῦς (Yaysous) is “Yeshua.” Yayshua: Hebrew – Yaysous: Greek. The English translation of Yeshua is Joshua which means “God saves.” If we are going to do a proper job of translating this gospel passage into English, it seems fitting to assume that the angel told Mary and Joseph to name their miraculous baby Joshua, God’s Savior.

It is also curious to me that Jesus’ closest disciples never called Him by His name except once when Philip told his brother, Nathaniel, he had found the one, “whom Moses wrote about in the law, and the prophets wrote about—Jesus, son of Joseph from Nazareth!” Even there, he was not addressing Jesus. When the disciples did address their Savior, they called Him Lord or Master or Rabbi. The two disciples on the Emmaus Road called Him Jesus, but every other instance of the use of His name was by those outside of His closest friends.

I do not expect to change anyone’s mind after many centuries of using the name “Jesus.” I am not suggesting that English speakers start calling their Savior Joshua. I do, however, have a friend with strong feelings for the Old Testament background of the Gospels who consistently uses Yeshua when referring to his Savior. He also uses “Messiah,” a transliteration of the Hebrew word, mashiach (מָשִׁיחַ), instead of the Greek form “Christ,” which means “anointed one” in both languages. To call our Lord Yeshua Mashiach may sound strange to our modern ears, but it is as close as we can get to saying the Name in its original form. I have said all of this to emphasize that “Jesus Christ” is not the first and last name of our Lord. His name is Yeshua Meshiach which means “God’s anointed Savior.” Isn’t that what He should be called after all?

Related Posts: There’s Something Fishy about that Name

                        

Alternate Realities

I have just finished reading Philip Yancey’s Rumors of Another World: What on earth are we missing? Yancey’s thesis is that most people, even Christians, don’t live as if there is another world out there somewhere. They live as if this world is the ultimate reality. It is not uncommon for unbelievers to live as if this is all there is; many assume that when they die, they simply cease to exist. What concerns me, as Yancey suggests, is that many believers act as if there is no life after death – no other world to which they will go when they die.

This mistaken attitude is one of several common misunderstandings that are the result of a failure to think Christianly about everything. Another way to say this is that one’s world-view is not thoroughly Christian – not biblical. Paul said believers are supposed to see this world as temporary, passing away. We are supposed to see ourselves as pilgrims, sojourners passing through this world on our way to another. Rumors of that other world are all around us, according to Yancey. That unbelievers fail to see them is forgivable; that believers miss the truth is not.

First, look at the word reality. The Oxford Dictionary defines it as “the world or the state of things as they actually exist, as opposed to an idealistic or notional idea of them.” The “state of things as they exist” to most people refers to this world. Yancey’s point is that most people, even Christians, believe this world is the only “reality.” To these people, heaven is an “idealistic or notional idea.” To unbelievers, heaven is a foolish notion, but sadly, to many believers it is hardly more than an idealistic hope for something better someday – pie in the sky by and by.

The concept of being in the world as opposed to somewhere else (heaven or hell, for example) appears all over the New Testament. In the Gospels, Jesus regularly warned of a time to come when those who believed in Him and those who did not would find themselves in radically different realities. Believers would be welcomed into His presence while unbelievers would be cast into a dark place with “weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Paul wrote of being taken to another reality to receive special revelation. He also told the Corinthians and the Ephesians that believers’ true enemy was not from this world.

While I am not a strict dispensationalist as the word is used today, I do believe that the Bible often refers to ages which have different conditions. The Old Testament prophets spoke of a coming day when the Messiah would usher in a dramatic new age. The New Testament speaks often of ages. This age, the coming ages, and interestingly, Paul equates “world” with “age in Corinthians” and in Ephesians. I believe this is important because it implies that our created reality, the world as we know it is just one “age” or time period in God’s overall plan for us. The resurrection all believers look forward to will be into that rumored “world” Yancey wrote about. I have described previously what I believe about that new world in “When Destruction is not Destruction.”

Most Christians believe they will go to heaven after they die. While I agree with that sentiment in principle, I see the situation differently than some. I believe heaven and earth will become one – a restored Eden if you will. So, the “heaven” that I imagine will be a reality that combines all the best of God’s good earth with all the best of Heaven. It is not so much an alternate reality as it is a perfected reality. Heaven and earth exist for this age as intersecting realities; after Jesus returns, I believe the two will become one reality. I believe the Bible teaches that we must begin to live as if Heaven is real because it is.

 How can we make heaven more real? Hear what A.W. Tozer says: “God is a Person and in the deep of His mighty nature He thinks, wills, enjoys, feels, loves, desires and suffers as any other person may. In making Himself known to us He stays by the familiar pattern of personality. Religion, so far as it is genuine, is in essence the response of created personalities to the Creating Personality, God, [so that Jesus could say] ‘This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.’”

Jesus, the God who created this world, descended from “heaven” and became flesh to show us what true reality is. If we can avoid the notion that Jesus is some far distant historical figure and fully adopt the idea that He lives today, both in us and in heaven, and if we can convince ourselves that He is a person like us in many ways, we may move closer to a proper view of reality. I believe that is the alternate reality we are called to.

Related Posts: The Presence of God; Waiting for Morning; Friendship with the World; Think, People!; Deer Camp Philosophy; Why Am I Here?; Is Heaven a Wonderful Place?

Are You Qualified?

My title is drawn from two commands Paul makes in 2 Corinthians 13:5. Most translations of the Bible read, “Test yourselves… examine yourselves” or they reverse the two imperatives saying, “Examine yourselves… test yourselves”. In the Greek, the first imperative is a different word from the second. Either one may be translated test or examine which explains why translators have difficulty differentiating between them. The difference I find is in the subsequent verses. Paul uses forms of the second word four more times in the next two verses.

This is not just a trivial linguistic issue in my opinion. The first command asks the Corinthians to test or examine themselves “to see if you are in the faith.” What he means is to see if you are truly a believer, one who is “in the faith.” Throughout church history, there has been a debate over how people can know if they are saved – “in the faith.” It is glaringly obvious that the Corinthian church had people who claimed to be in the faith but acted very much like those who were not – like unbelievers. The two letters we have from Paul to the Corinthians are full of correction and rebuke. He certainly questioned the legitimacy of their belief.

One could ask whether the Corinthians believed Paul’s message at first (got saved), but later they stopped believing (lost their salvation). The answer to this question generally comes from one of two perspectives: either Calvinist or Arminian. (I wrote about this in some detail in “Calvinist or Arminian”) The Calvinist position holds that once a person is saved, it is not possible to lose salvation: once saved; always saved. The Arminian view is that everyone makes a conscious decision to be saved and can therefore decide to be “unsaved.”

This passage may be Paul’s entrance into the debate. I say this because of the second word he wrote in verse five. Whereas test or examine is a fair translation of the first of his commands (πειράζω), the word he used in the second command is dokimazō (δοκιμάζω) which may legitimately be translated “qualify.” The fact that he used forms of this word repeatedly in the rest of the passage leads me to think he meant “to qualify” rather than test or examine. An alternative translation of Paul might read, “Qualify yourselves! Or do you not recognize regarding yourselves that Jesus Christ is in you, unless you are unqualified? And I hope that you will recognize that we are not unqualified! Now we pray to God that you not do wrong in any way, not that we are seen as qualified, but that you do what is good, even though we are seen as though unqualified.”

In the larger context, Paul had been asserting his qualifications as an apostle. At this point, he told the Corinthians not to concern themselves with his qualifications but to look to their own condition. In the end, the only thing that mattered was if they were qualified as believers. So, the question becomes what Paul says qualifies one as a believer. They claimed to be “in the faith,” or in Christ. Paul insists that to qualify as a believer, Christ must be “in them.” As he said to the Colossians: “Christ in you the hope of glory.”

The important question one must ask is what kind of faith qualifies one to say, “Christ is in me.” Paul told the Roman believers, “But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, this person does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead lives in you, the one who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also make alive your mortal bodies through his Spirit who lives in you.”

This was Jesus’ promise to His disciples on the night He was betrayed. He prayed to His Father, “that they may be one, just as we are one – I in them, and you in me, in order that they may be completed in one, so that the world may know that you sent me, and you have loved them just as you have loved me.” Just before this prayer for His disciples, He had told them, “If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love…. This is my commandment: that you love one another just as I have loved you.” The quality of faith that proves Christ is in you is a faith that loves selflessly, agape love, the love of Jesus. This reminds me of what James said: “Faith without works is dead.”

It should be no surprise that we are called to obey Jesus; life in Christ is a “long obedience in the same direction,” according to Eugene Peterson. That direction is conforming our life to the life of Christ. In his book Rumors of Another World, Philip Yancey asserts that, “Those who invest their hope in an unseen world prove it by their actions in this world…. putting feet to Jesus’ prayer that God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” If we are in Christ and Christ is in us, we must continue His work doing His Father’s will.

None of this should suggest that once I am “qualified” I am good for eternity. In the same way that I had to fulfill continuing education requirements to maintain my teaching certificate (qualifications), believers must continue to affirm their qualifications by continuing to grow up into maturity in Christ. The essential quality of maturity is demonstrating selfless love to a greater and greater degree.

One wonders how this quality of faith affects the quality of one’s life here on earth. Yancey quotes Albert Schwietzer: “The only [people] who will be really happy are those who will have sought and found how to serve.” It is no coincidence that throughout the Old Testament prophets, the promised Messiah is called God’s Servant. He shocked His disciples at the “Last Supper” by washing their feet and proclaiming that servanthood was to be the hallmark of His disciples. Jesus said He, “came not to be served, but to serve.” I believe that one important qualification for saying you are “in Christ” is servanthood. Are you qualified?

Related Posts: Necessary Obedience; Weak-day Christians

When "Destruction" is not Destruction

I have written in the past that I thought 2 Peter 3:12, “the elements will melt with a fervent heat,” was a prediction of a massive explosion as the elements loosed their nuclear bonds. I thought if Christ “holds all things together,” when He lets go, there will be universal release of energy: BOOM! Peter mentions this event in his discussion of the end of this world and the coming of a new heaven and a new earth. Recently, a friend asked me about this verse, so I looked at it in the original Greek. I was surprised at what I found.

First, as always, I looked at the larger context of the verse. Peter is responding to “scoffers” who were denying that Jesus would return. Their argument was that nothing had changed since the creation of the world. Peter points out that God made a major change when He flooded the earth with water. The Greek word he used for “destroyed” and “destruction” in verses six and seven means “not extinction but ruin; loss, not of being, but of wellbeing” according to Vine’s Dictionary. The planet was not destroyed; it was cleansed of the ungodly people. Peter says that the coming “destruction” in the last day will be for a similar purpose: to remove the ungodly.

We sometimes use “destroy” this way in modern English. We might say that a person who suffers a tragic emotional loss is destroyed. Obviously, we don’t mean they died; they were crushed in spirit. Similarly, a team that wins a massive victory is said to have destroyed their opponent. This type of usage follows what Vine’s says is “loss of well-being,” not utter destruction.

After the comforting thought that God is delaying the last day because He “does not want any to perish,” Peter warns his readers that there will be no warning when the day does finally come; it will sneak up like a thief. Peter’s first note is that “the heavens will disappear with a rushing noise.” In Peter’s first century understanding of the cosmos, “heavens” would mean what we call the atmosphere and possibly outer space. His usage of “disappear” could be translated as “swept aside.” Whoosh! The reason they are swept aside or averted or neglected (literal Greek) is explained by Peter a couple verses later.

Peter’s next phrase is where the real surprise comes. “The celestial bodies will be destroyed being burned up.” (LEB) Most translations say “the elements” will be destroyed. The Greek word Peter used is stoichion (στοιχει̂ον). Using “elements” in this case is another incidence of the English word not clearly translating the Greek thought. Of the seventeen Bible versions I have on my computer, only the LEB translates the word correctly. Stoichion means elemental in the sense of first principles. The LEB correctly uses “celestial bodies” because Peter’s audience would have thought of elemental spirits when they read stoichion. As the chart below shows, other occurrences of this word in the New Testament most often follow the LEB.

Vine’s Dictionary says stoichion refers to “the delusive speculations of Gentile cults and of Jewish theories, treated as elementary principles, “the rudiments of the world,” and spoken of as “philosophy and vain deceit.” (Colossians. 2:8 KJV) This clearly has nothing to do with the “elements” of the periodic table as I used to think. Vine’s Dictionary continues by explaining, “[stoichion] were presented as superior to faith in Christ; at Colosse the worship of angels, mentioned in [Col 2:18], is explicable by the supposition, held by both Jews and Gentiles in that district, that the constellations were either themselves animated heavenly beings, or were governed by them.” This makes it plain that the things being “swept away” are not planets, moons, and stars, but spirit beings who were thought to hold sway over circumstances on earth.

The next thing in Peter’s chronology of the Day of the Lord is “the earth and the deeds done on it will be disclosed.” This is his first mention of things on earth, and it does not say earth will be destroyed. It seems that with the “elemental spirits” having been “swept away,” the machinations and motivations of the people on earth will be revealed or “found out by inquiry” according to Vine’s Dictionary. That leads Peter to advise that those who are believers ought to be living holy, godly lives as they wait for the day of God. Since it comes without warning, there won’t be time to straighten things up ahead of time. The Apostle Paul seems to be referring to the same thing when he tells the Corinthians that their works will be revealed by fire on the day of judgment.

Then in verses twelve and thirteen, Peter explains why the celestial bodies, the elemental spirits are going to be swept away. He uses different terms but makes the same point as he did in verse ten. He says the result of the heavens being burned up is the celestial bodies melting (τήκω). Imagine the sun thawing an icy body. It would have been obvious to Peter’s readers that the elemental spirits (stoichion) are opposed to God, and He must get them out of the way so He can renew the heavens and the earth

The new heavens and earth are not just “new” in the sense of later in time. They are of an entirely new type (καινός). In one sense, they are not new but are of an older type: they are the same as God created them in the beginning. Peter says they will be a place where righteousness makes its home (κατοικέω). This is another way of saying that the evil “god of this age” who led the “elemental spirits” will have been swept off his throne, and the rightful king will take his place. All the beautiful imagery of the prophecies concerning God’s kingdom on earth will be fulfilled. The lion will dwell with the lamb; swords will be beaten into plowshares; pain and sorrow will be no more.

Peter’s fiery imagery is reminiscent of the Old Testament passages alluding to God’s ultimate judgment of His creation. As Peter reminds us, God did judge the entire world once before using water. God promised never to do that again, but He did say He would execute judgment once and for all using fire as a metaphor. Even though the earth is not doomed to destruction as I had thought, there is power Peter’s proclamation: judgment is coming; get straight or get burned.

Related Posts: And the Light was Good; The Patience of God

The Importance of Interpretation

In my last post, I stressed that interpretation is a necessary part of understanding what the Bible has to say. I listed three things that lead sincere Bible readers to different interpretations of the Scripture. The three sources of interpretive difficulty I mentioned were failing to properly discern between figurative and literal language; failure to consider how the original audience would have understood the passage; difficulties in translation from the original language.

Expanding on the last of these, I might add that translators always adopt a style of translation which significantly affects their word choices in the target language. I covered this in some depth in “The Best Version of the Bible.” To summarize, all English translations exist on a scale from strictly literal, word-for-word translation through what is often called thought-for-thought or dynamic translation to the extreme of what is essentially a paraphrase of the original.

Needless to say, Bible versions that range farthest from a literal translation of the original language are most susceptible to interpretive error. While I love the easy reading of The Message, its author, Eugene H. Petersen, took huge liberties with the inspired text and presented what he thought the author would have said if he were writing modern English. This makes it easy to follow the flow of the redemptive story without the impediments of linguistic difficulties inherent in word-for-word translation. However, I don’t recommend using The Message to support doctrinal positions.

Even on the mid-point of the scale of Bible versions, interpretive difficulties arise. The New International Version (NIV), a popular dynamic translation, often translates a word from the original text differently throughout a passage where the word is repeated. I believe this disguises the author’s intent to carry a thought through an entire discourse. While the synonyms chosen by the NIV translators may carry a meaning similar to the original, the varying connotations of each different word may or may not represent what the author intended.

(If a student is interested in seeing the different words translators might have chosen in a particular passage, The Amplified Version parenthetically inserts optional words the NASV translation committee considered. This gives readers an opportunity to form their own interpretation of the original author’s intention.)

Another source of misinterpretation comes from relying on uninspired writers to provide an interpretation of the Scripture. An extreme example of this is found in the interpretation of Joseph Smith which gave rise to the Mormon religion in the nineteenth century. Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints give first place to Smith’s version of their religion rather than resorting to the Bible to explain itself. To Mormons, the Bible is just one of several “inspired” texts, and if there are contradictions, the Mormon Bible takes precedence. Roman Catholics have a similar situation, though not as radically heretical, with their elevation of the Magisterium. Catholics place the teachings of the pope and their bishops on the same level as the Bible. This has led to numerous misinterpretations and outright denials of biblical teachings that are accepted outside of Catholicism.

Even in protestant circles, uninspired men have been given prominence in doctrinal issues that rightly belongs to Scripture alone. The cry sola scriptura was foundational to the Protestant Reformation, but on some issues, they play follow the leader rather than follow the Bible. One argument often ascribed to John Calvin and Jacob Arminius concerning the free will of man in the matter of salvation actually goes back one thousand years before them to Augustine and Pelagius. The church today still has proponents who are called Calvinists and others called Arminians. I believe that if they interpreted Scripture correctly, they would find their answer in the teachings of the Apostle Paul. But, as I said earlier, that’s just my interpretation.

I believe some Christians today are led into misinterpretation through laziness. In the book of Acts, the Berean believers are praised for their commitment to search the Scriptures to see if what Paul preached was biblical. Blindly following leaders like Jim Jones or David Koresh led people to some seriously unbiblical beliefs and tragic consequences. Even with well-respected interpreters like R. C. Sproul or Dr. David Jeremiah or one of my favorites, A. W. Tozer, it is essential that each believer finds the source of their doctrine in the text of the Bible. It is not wrong to consider what godly interpreters have said in the past, but we must remember that they were not inspired and are subject to errors like any other believer.

Paul gave Timothy a stern warning about teachers who would pervert the truth: “Now the Spirit explicitly says that in the last times some will depart from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons.” The enemy of our souls is a master of deceit, purveying perversions of the truth which lead people to unbiblical conclusions. Evangelists who are more interested in making money than saving souls will make false promises to those who donate to their ministry. An unhappy husband who is convinced God wants him happy may justify an adulterous relationship. People who are led to believe their souls can be saved by a single declaration of faith without repentance or obedience are going to be surprised to hear Jesus say, “Depart from me; I never knew you.”

According to recent polls, there are millions of people calling themselves Christians who apparently believe that having a Bible on the coffee table or visiting a church occasionally secures their salvation in Christ. There are millions more who believe that their good deeds or kindly personalities will earn God’s favor; some of those people even call themselves Christians. There is no interpretation of the Bible that supports that kind of thinking. I will repeat what I have said many times: it is not sufficient for salvation to casually read the Bible or listen to someone preach. Those who are sincerely committed to Christ must read the Bible regularly and do their best to interpret it for themselves with the help of the Holy Spirit. It is fine to seek godly fellow believers to help one’s understanding, but ultimately, it is your interpretation that will save you or leave you lost. It is not wise to leave that determination in the hands of someone else.

Related Posts: Think, People!; What Do You Know?; What Were You Given?; Where Do You Find Truth?

That’s Just Your Interpretation

Bible interpretation is often a thorny subject among people who have some understanding of The Book. My title is a direct quote I have heard from people over the years. It is a legitimate comment. Sometimes it is used by honest Bible readers who stand by their interpretation based on their own scholarly efforts. Often, however, it is used by people with scant knowledge of the Bible or proper interpretive methods.

Anyone with even passing knowledge of the Scripture realizes that interpretation is required. This reality is recognized by Peter when he said that no Scripture is open to private interpretation. The implication of that statement is that interpretation will be required, but as Peter continues, he identifies the Author of Scripture as the Holy Spirit. The consequence is that that same Spirit must be accessed to obtain a proper interpretation. This is largely what Jesus meant when He said that after He left, He would send the Holy Spirit to guide His followers into all truth.

The problem arises when two sincere believers come to different conclusions. Often, the first thing that appears is a disagreement as to the figurative or literal nature of the passage in question. By its very nature, the Bible is full of figurative language. It is a false argument to say that the Bible must be taken literally to be believed. The inspired Scriptures often use language that is either intentionally figurative or language that borrows from the understanding of the original readers which may or may not be literally true.

A perfect example of this is the Bible’s use of the cosmology of the ancient audience to affirm God’s creative power and His ultimate sovereignty. For example, the Word plainly states that the sun rises and sets at God’s direction. We now know that that is an incorrect understanding of how the universe works. The absolute truth we infer from God’s statements about creation is theological not scientific. God is literally the Creator of all, but He uses figurative language to establish that.

Knowing when to accept figurative language as bearing truth and when to demand a literal interpretation presents the major difficulty. The most common way to make this determination is to say that if a literal reading agrees with the rest of the Scripture, and if it makes sense with reality as we know it, take it literally. If on the other hand, a literal reading contradicts another clear teaching, or if it offends our sense of what is real, assume it is meant figuratively. A good example of this would be Isaiah’s claim that the Messiah would be a shoot from the root of Jesse. Since Jesus was not a tree, we know this is meant to point to the Messiah as David’s descendant, thus fulfilling several prophecies.

Another commonly disputed literal/figurative issue is the six-day creation recorded in Genesis. Many conservative Bible scholars insist that the language of Genesis chapter one must be taken literally: six twenty-four-hour periods transpired during God’s acts of creation. While I can agree that six literal days may be the proper literal interpretation of Genesis, I am uncomfortable with people who insist that considering any optional interpretation damages the Bible’s credibility. I have written previously that the Hebrew word for day used in Genesis can properly be understood to mean time periods of indeterminate length. The Hebrew words for evening and morning can also be understood figuratively. It is unimportant to me whether the creative periods were exactly twenty-four hours long; what matters is that God is the Creator, and that He established a time ratio of work to rest. He even enshrined the concept in the Mosaic law concerning the Sabbath.

Interpretation is also the issue when people fail to consider how the original audience would have understood the Scripture in question. This is an essential principle in interpretation. As an example, when Paul told his Greek/Roman readers that there is no male or female in Christ, they would have been astounded. In the Mediterranean culture of the day, women were little more than property, good only for breeding and child-rearing. The Jews were slightly less strident in this, but Paul would have struck a chord with his pairings of Jew/Gentile and male/female; this would have brought to mind the temple court of the Gentiles and the court of the women. Only Jewish men could approach God at the higher levels. Paul’s assertion that men and women were equal in Christ was unheard of.

Where some people make an interpretative error is to assume that Paul meant there were no differences between men and women. Paul makes it clear in Ephesians and elsewhere that women are subordinate to men in marriage and in church offices. This has nothing to do with their equal standing in Christ or their ultimate worth; it is simply a matter of God-given role differences in certain areas. Radical feminism has infected the church causing some people to ignore this differentiation in the created order established by God.

Difficulties in translating from the original languages can also cause interpretative problems. The long dispute over the meaning of baptism might have been avoided had the translators of the early manuscripts of the Greek New Testament translated the Greek word instead of transliterating it. Translation involves finding a word in the target language that matches the meaning of the original. In the case of baptism, the original Greek word was baptizo (βαπτίζω). In Greek, the word clearly means immersion. Because there was already an ongoing debate as to the method and timing of the sacrament, translators punted by transliterating. This left the issue up to the theologians to debate.

I believe the Roman church wanted as many converts as possible, so they ignored the New Testament practice of believer’s baptism and replaced it with infant “baptism,” and since you couldn’t very well immerse an infant, sprinkling became the method of choice. In the Protestant Reformation, Luther and Calvin kept the practice and the timing despite its dubious Scriptural authenticity. Their defense was that baptism replaced the rite of circumcision as a sign of the covenant, thus retaining the possibility of bringing infants into the church. They invented the concept of confirmation (not Scripturally based) to allow older persons to “confirm” that their infant baptism had indeed brought them into Christ.

There are numerous other issues that have divided the church over the centuries. The baptism of the Spirit, the practice of miraculous gifts, the role of church hierarchy, the completeness of the canon of Scripture, the meaning of the sacrament of communion, the necessary and sufficient steps of salvation, the precise details of the end times, these and many more have their basis in interpretive differences. It may sound arrogant for me to say my interpretation of a disputable issue is correct, and someone else is wrong. All I can do is practice the best interpretive techniques and, above all, listen to the Holy Spirit. When that is done, I can confidently say it’s just my interpretation, but I’m pretty sure I’m right.

Related Posts: Take the Bible Literally; Understanding the Bible as Literature; The Vulture Has Landed;  The Importance of Being Right