Most Often Abused Bible Verses #3

It’s one of the most coveted cards in the Monopoly game.  The “Get Out of Jail Free” card.  It’s very annoying to get stuck in jail, although if you are losing, it’s a nice break from having to deal with your opponents row of hotels.

No such card exists in real life.  There is no card that you can show that can get you out of jail, certainly not literally.  There also is no metaphorical “get out of jail free” card either.  By that, I mean ways to get out of trouble for the stupid things we do or say.  We try to invent them.  Most of the cards that we create start with the phrase, “I was just…”  “I was just tired,”  “I was just hungry,”  etc.

However, the biggest, most often used “get out of jail free” card that we try to use is found in the Bible.

The Verse:

“Do not judge, or you too will be judged. ² For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

³ “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? ⁴ How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? ⁵ You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.

Matthew 7:1-5

What we think that it means:

There are a lot of different ways to describe what we mean when we quote this verse. You’re not the boss of me.  You can’t tell me what to do.  How dare you? Who do you think you are?

Basically, what we think this verse means is that no one can tell us what we are doing is wrong.  If someone tells you that what you are doing is sinful or wrong, then that is judging.  Bible says don’t judge.  Again, we play it like a “get out of jail free” card.  You do something wrong, someone calls you on it, play this card and you are out of trouble.

Why that is a bad interpretation:

First, there are multiple verses that say this it is our responsibility to confront or rebuke people’s sin.  I Timothy 5:20, James 5:19-20, Galatians 6:1, Matthew 18:15.  That’s just a few.  God is calling us to be involved in each other’s lives and help and confront each other when in sin.  It can’t mean that we can’t tell someone that what they are doing is wrong.

This leads to the second issue.  What does the word judge mean?  As always, words have a lot of different meanings.  The context determines the meaning.  Judge can mean determine right from wrong or it can mean determine someone’s value or it could mean to determine the consequence or punishment.  Just because something feels judgmental to you doesn’t mean that it falls into the category of this prohibition against judgment.  It depends on what judging means, and you have to look at the context.

Finally, it is self-refuting.  You are judging someone when you say they are judging you.

What this verse means:

When Jesus says don’t judge, what he says next is that the measure by which you judge someone will be used against you.  The word “measure” almost certainly is a reference to a scale that you would use to determine the value and weight of something that you were going to buy.  So what Jesus is prohibiting is determining someone’s value.  That’s not your role.  He says that if you do that, you will judged by that same measure.   This is by no means a prohibition against determining whether or not an action is sinful or telling us that we are not to be involved in correcting people or being corrected.

However, even though Matthew 7:1 is not a “get out of jail free card,” there also are no licenses in the Bible for you to be a jerk to somebody.

If you see someone in sin and determine because of that sin, that they are less valuable to God or are going to Hell, you should be careful, because you do not want that same measure applied to you.  Not only that, but this passage makes it clear that when you do that, you are a hypocrite.  He uses an outrageous and hilarious metaphor.  Someone is walking around with a log in their eye.  Then even though they are blinded by the log, they believe that they have the vision to point out a speck of dust in someone else’s eye.  That makes you both an idiot and hypocrite.

This is especially important to the church today in the way that we treat people with what I will call “unusual” sins.  Most guys struggle with porn, so that’s normal and understandable.  You get grace.  Being gay is unusual and therefore worse and worthy of condemnation.  Most Americans are greedy and terrible with money, that’s OK.  Homeless people though are lazy and unworthy of compassion.

We compartmentalize sin and determine some sins are worse than others because they are foreign to us or repulsive in some way.  Therefore, even though I am a sinner, those sinners deserve condemnation.  That is not a measure by which you want to be judged, so don’t judge.  In fact arrogant condemnation might be the log that you are carrying around with you that makes it where you can’t see the specks in another’s eye.

What we all need is someone who loves us to come to us gently and tell us what we are doing is hurting us and others.  We need those people to then help us get better.  I’ll do that for you and you can do it for me.  That is a measure of judgment that I will gladly live by.

Most Often Abused Bible Verses #2

It was the summer of 1993 and I was in Dallas for a discipleship project before my senior year of college.  That summer the 4th of July was on a Sunday and I had never experienced before what happened that day.  I had never been a part of a patriotic themed church service.  Instead of the traditional hymns that you usually sing, you sing the sort of patriotic/sort of Christian songs like, of course, the Battle Hymn of the Republic.  I wasn’t exactly sure how I felt about it.  I loved America but at the same time, I was in this very intense discipleship project and I was wondering why we seemingly had abandoned Jesus as our primary topic for the day.

There was a theme verse for the day.  It was on the bulletin cover and prominently a part of the service and ultimately was also the primary passage of the sermon.  It was after the sermon that I knew for sure that I was not a fan of what was happening.

The Verse:

If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land. II Chronicles 7:14

What we think that it means:

If Christians in America will simply follow the clear pattern in this verse, humble yourselves, pray, seek God’s face and turn from wickedness, then God will bring healing to America.  This is not a call for all of America to repent, just those who are called by his name–the believers.  America is under judgment from God because we have turned from God.  If the church repents and turns to God, then God will forgive and heal America.

Why that is a bad interpretation:

It is abundantly clear to me that we have no idea how to interpret the Old Testament and so we wing it.  We take verses that we like completely out of context and apply them to whatever context we want to apply them.  We are not sure which OT commands apply to Christians, so we all, and I mean ALL, pick and choose based on what happens to fit our current desires best.  (Read about that more here.) When God makes a specific promise to Israel, we ask how do we apply it?  The answer is we don’t know but we like what it says, and so we wing it.

So what is going on in II Chronicles 7?  King Solomon has just dedicated the temple and God appears to him and tells the king that he has heard his prayer.  He then gives Solomon a warning and tells him that there will come a time when God will bring a plague or drought to the land, the literal land that God had long promised them and in which they now lived.  When such a thing happens, the people need to pray and humble themselves and repent.  Then God will bring literal healing to a cursed literal land.

So what does this have to do with America? Nothing. Israel was God’s chosen people with whom God made a covenant that involved land.  He promised this land to them, but some of his blessing is conditional on their obedience.  If they fail, they will be punished.  If they repent, God will bless them again.

America has no such arrangement with God.  America did not make a covenant with God and Americans are not his chosen people in any sense of any of those words.  America began in rebellion against Romans 13:1-6 and has no divine origin.  While it is true that some of the founders wanted to establish Christian ethics and devotion to God into the founding, that is a far cry from being God’s chosen people who were promised a land.

Israel never means America.  It is more likely to mean the church, but not America.  That’s what some people are trying to make this verse mean, in part, when they say that “those called by my name” isn’t talking to all Americans but the American church.  Ok, then let’s follow that through.  If God’s church will humble themselves and pray, then God will heal the church’s land that has been cursed.  What literal or metaphorical land does the church have that has been cursed and needs healing?  Whatever land may mean, the church has not been promised American land or any country.  God’s promises to the church are in the spiritual realm not in physical land.

What this verse means:

By all means, pray for your country.  Pray for your country’s leaders.  Pray that repentance and revival will break out in your country.  Pray that God will heal people, both individually and collectively, both physically and spiritually.  All of those are great things, but do not need to be confused with the bad theology of placing America as God’s replacement for his covenant people.  That is neither helpful nor true.

There are times in the New Testament where it would seem that because of sin, people are cursed in some way.  The passage in Corinthians about the Lord’s Supper indicates that.  If you believe that you or a group you are a part of is under judgment from God, then there are some amazing principles here for us to apply.

We need to be humble not proud.

We need to pray to God.

We need to seek his face, a relational connection with him.

We need to confess sin.

If we do those things, our relational connection with God will be restored.  For the individual and the church it is fellowship and blessing.  For the country of America, there are no promises of blessing that God has made to that country or any country apart from his chosen people, Israel.  Be excited about what God has promised you and the church.

Don’t get distracted by a false narrative about what your home country is or it’s special placement in the heart of God.  Be proud of where you are from but don’t allow it to cause you to study the Bible poorly or worse yet, divide your loyalty.

Most Often Abused Bible Verses #1

Starting a new series here.  Don’t let the number one confuse you.  I’m not saying that this is the most misused, just the first in the series.  For a similar series, check out Stuff Christians Need to Stop Saying from 5 years ago.

It seems far too often that the more often we quote a Bible verse and the more often it shows up on inspirational posters, the more likely that verse is being abused in some way.  Sometimes we misquote it.  Sometimes we take it out of context.  Sometimes we just misunderstand what it is saying.  Sometimes we abuse a verse to say something that is true, and other times to we make the Bible say something we want to be true but isn’t.  I encourage you to follow along with this series over the next few weeks.  This will help our theology and our Bible study skills.

The Verse:

No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful;he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear.But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it. I Corinthians 10:13

What we think that it means:

“God will never give me more than I can handle.” The circumstances of my life will never get so overwhelming that I won’t be able to handle it.  In fact, when my circumstances feel overwhelming, I can take some pride in that because it shows that “God thinks a lot of me and what I am able to handle.”

Why that is a bad interpretation:

This verse is not talking about the circumstances of your life.   Paul is talking about the temptation to sin.  The temptations that you experience are common to everyone and will not be more than you can bear.  He is talking about temptation not the trials and challenges of life. The challenges of life can be sources of temptation but Paul is not speaking to simply the times when life is overwhelming

Even if we get that right, Paul is also not talking about your ability to bear those temptations.  He does say that God won’t give you more temptation than you can bear, and if the verse ended there perhaps we could take some pride in our ability.  However, the verse doesn’t end there.  Paul says that God is the one that delivers us.

Furthermore, if this verse is talking about temptation and my ability to bear it, then it is verifiably false.  I am tempted beyond what I can bear all the time, because I choose the temptation.  I fail to take the way out that God is offering.  Instead, I choose sin.  It is dangerous to believe that this passage speaks highly of our abilities to withstand temptation because it puts the emphasis on the wrong person. I begin to look to myself as the source of my freedom from temptation.

What this verse means:

The temptation to sin is significant, but whatever temptation that you are facing is not uncommon.  In fact, the temptation, no matter how severe, will not be more than you can bear.  You will never be put into a situation where your only choice is sin.  Because no matter how severe the temptation to sin is, no matter how much the sin seems inevitable, God will provide a way out.  Again, God will provide the way out.  We experience the power of this verse, not when we take pride in God’s view of us in believing we can handle adversity, but when we are in the middle of great temptation and we choose God and his way out.

Sin is never inevitable.  Way too many of us become completely overwhelmed.  Even now, many of us feel like there is a recurring sin in our lives that we will never defeat.  We have resigned ourselves to continual defeat.  However, Paul has made it clear here that is not the case.  God has provided a way out for you.  When we choose to rely on our own strength to fight temptation, when we falsely believe that we can bear it, we end up deeper and deeper in trouble.  So when the potentially overwhelming temptation comes, do not look to your strength to bear, humbly look to God and ask for him to give you the way out.

So, by all means, make an inspirational poster of this verse.  Use this verse to inspire you when you are hopeless and sin seems to be getting the best of you.  However, when you look at the poster, your next look needs to be to God.  With that look, you will see the way out.