Preaching the Verses vs Preaching the Message

Christ, the Bible's
Whole Message

Some preachers think that if they read some verses from the Bible and “apply” them to life they have “Preached” the Bible. That is true if, and only if, they have put the verses in the context of the word used, the verse it’s in, the chapter it’s in, the book it’s in, the Testament it’s in, the covenant it belongs to and the Bible as a whole.

That’s hard work, and very few preachers practice it.

Too much preaching treats Bible verses as though they are stand-alone, sort of proverbial instructions for life. There are really none of those in the Bible, not even in the book of Proverbs.

Some verses and passages express complete thoughts and seem to stand alone, but they do not. Some sections of the Bible synopsize Biblical concepts and doctrine, but they are not intended to be islands of theosophy. To use them thus is an aberration and could easily lead to heresy.

Take John 3:16, for example: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” Almost all Christians know that verse and it is the pivotal verse around which every other word of the Bible rotates. But is must not stand alone! It has a context and without the contest it is totally meaningless (even though we think we can ascribe meaning to it.

The context goes something like this (very simplified): God made and loved all that is. Man sinned and changed the creation for the worse. God wanted man’s love. He chose the Jewish nation to bring forth Messiah (the Savior). His chosen people could not remain faithful to Him, as can none of us. After many years of preparation, Messiah came in the form of a man named Jesus, God’s only begotten Son. He lived, suffered, was crucified, died and rose again for the remission of the sins of all who would believe. If we trust in, and only in, the finished work of Christ at the cross of Calvary, we receive an un-worked for gift of eternal life.

That is the Bible’s message.

For some, that is “inadequate.” There has to be more. There have to be rules and regulations and proof-texting Scripture provides those. There have to be special gifts, and proof-texting Scripture provides the evidence for them. There has to be more revelation, revelation that is extra-Biblical and gives more than the Bible gives.

For those people, Jesus is just not enough. And those people, my friend, are as lost as they can be.

If Jesus, in and of Himself, is not adequate to meet all of our needs, spiritual, emotional, mental and physical (and I am not talking about His “obligation” to heal us from every disease), then His trip to the cross was just a frivolous exercise in futility and God is not who He says He is.

Certain books of the Bible are often treated as though they are not related to Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection. James is one of those books. James is often presented as some sort of “rules for Christian living.” But it is absolutely NOT that. James presents us with the life changes that result when we have the Jesus of the New Covenant in our hearts. James is not “do this and you will please God.” James is “when you are saved, this is what your life will look like by the power of the Holy Spirit.”

The Ten Commandments are treated by many “Christians” as God’s standard by which we must perfectly live if we are to please Him enough to save us. In the sense that they are God’s standard of perfection that is correct. But Paul is very clear in Romans that the purpose of God’s perfect Law is to reveal how short we fall in living up to God’s standards and how much we need a Savior to fulfill the Law for us.

The “yes, but” argument does not fly. There is no “but.” The Bible always has been, is now and always will be God’s revelation of His love for His creation and His plan for its redemption. That is its intention and that is its adequacy.

“How do we apply the Bible?” We take its message of salvation, allow the Holy Spirit to internalize it into our hearts and then follow His leadership (which will always conform to the message of the Bible).

The trouble is, many preachers do not believe the salvation of the Bible is enough for Christians. They believe there is more. But if the Holy Spirit has convicted you of sin, you have recognized who Christ is, have committed your life to following Him and have allowed the Holy Spirit to take up residence in your heart, you lack absolutely nothing.

With this attitude, Christians can absolutely, delightfully devour every word of Scripture because every word of Scripture reminds them of what they used to be, how Christ came into their lives and how He made them into the unswerving, eternally secure being they are today.

With this attitude, Christians can truthfully sing: “I love to tell the story, for those who know it best seem hungering and thirsting to know it like the rest.”

The story is all we have. If we need more, we are forever lost.

ARE YOU A COMPETENT MINISTER OF THE NEW COVENANT?

“He (God) has made us competent as ministers of a NEW COVENANT – not of the letter, but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” ( 2 Corinthians 3:6)

To what is Paul referring when he uses the term “letter?”

To some it makes no difference. They just keep on sanctimoniously continuing in doctrines that belong to the Old Covenant and are too steeped in religiosity to trust in or commit to a New Covenant. They stubbornly cling to teachings they received as children or as babes in Christ and would never trust themselves with a New Covenant. They lack faith in Christ to be the New Covenant.

When using the term "letter," Paul is speaking about the Law of Moses, the essence of the Old Covenant. You can test that with the context of Romans, Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians and Hebrews) 

The passage that follows (2 Corinthians 3:7-18 and all through 2 Corinthians, chapter 4), considered in the context of the words used, the verses they are in, the book they are in, the Testament they are in, the Covenant they refer to and the Bible as a whole, is a call to be STEEPED in the New Covenant.

Why do some pastors just throw these parts out? Is it because they do not conform to their distorted habit of walking with one foot in the Old Covenant and one foot in the New Covenant?

Consider Hebrews 8:13. Following a magnificent discourse on the New Covenant and its High Priest, Jesus, we read, “By calling this covenant “new,” he has made the first one OBSOLETE and what is obsolete and aging will soon disappear.”

Does this mean that the Old Covenant is obsolete? Exactly! That is exactly what it means. But those who hate people who pick and choose Scripture, elect to ignore this passage, again because it does not conform with what they have heard all of their lives.

In many cases, preachers preach as though Scripture is a series of behavioristic rules and regulations designed to help us be good in God’s eyes. News flash! You cannot be good in God’s eyes by doing the things Scripture “requires” of Christians. You can only be good in God’s eyes if He sees you through the advocacy of Jesus Christ.

If that’s the case, what does one do with books like James, which has always been preached by most as a “guide for Christian living?” The answer is: YOU STOP PREACHING JAMES LIKE IT IS A “GUIDE FOR CHRISTIAN LIVING” AND START TEACHING IT AS A BOOK THAT DESCRIBES THE HEART-CHANGE THAT RESULTS FROM A PERSONAL RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD THROUGH CHRIST, THE ONE WHO IS THE NEW COVENANT!

Most preachers are MUCH too LAZY to do that. They just take the book one verse at a time as if each verse is just a New Testament proverb about being a wise Christian. That it is not. By its own testimony, it is a book about Godly wisdom coming from above, not from the techniques of the world. It is consistent with the concept of the New Covenant being written on our hearts.

If you are saved, you are a creature of and must be committed to the New Covenant. If you are not committed to the New Covenant, you are not saved. You might think you are saved. You might even “feel” saved. Maybe you had an experience that you think was a saving experience. But if you are not aware of and committed to the New Covenant, you are not saved.

You would be well served to admit your stubbornness, repent of bad preaching (preaching a lot of Bible verses and calling it Bible preaching), and receive the blessing of the New Covenant (Christ), whose gift is eternal life and whose Law (love God and others) is written on our hearts.

The Proper Use of Scripture

IJohn 1:9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Many people have that verse as their favorite Scripture. They may use it as a source of comfort. They might consider it some sort of release to sin; being assured that there is forgiveness for them. For some people, every time they sin they “claim” this verse to soothe their conscience.

God does forgive. He has forgiven us in Christ. He sees us as perfect through the shed blood of Christ. But this is not the proper application of this verse. (The idea that there is only one interpretation but many applications is born of ignorance and is untrue. Scripture is not intended to be “applied” randomly and “as needed.”) The statement in John 1:9 is true, of course, but it is meant to be applied to the context of the entire book, not as a stand alone passage.

The verse in question is a part of a great dissertation by John, one who had seen Jesus with his own eyes as the one who created the entire universe, including mankind. It is not about us, it is about Him. It is John’s message about Him to us. In this book John is proclaiming what he has seen (Jesus) and what he has heard (Jesus message of the Kingdom of God).

Because the Scripture has been chopped up into chapters and verses (using the excuse that it is therefore easier to “find one’s way around in the Bible”), there is a tendency to ascribe to short parts of it that which is not a part of the whole. That’s an eternal mistake.

The book of John is about the magnificent salvation that has been made available to any person. In keeping with Paul’s message in Romans, John recognizes that we all sin. He also tells us repeatedly that in Christ, God has provided forgiveness for our sin because He is our atoning sacrifice. It is about the evidence God has placed in our hearts under the New Covenant (Christ) of that salvation.

He tells us in no uncertain terms that there is only one Christ. He says there will be others who claim to be Messiah (and some who just think they are Jesus, not even knowing who Jesus is), but that they are imposters. Those who are in Christ will immediately recognize the imposters because we have the Holy Spirit who gives us discernment. He tells us we can know teachers of false doctrine by the power of the Holy Spirit so we can test them.

John is concerned about teachers of false doctrine. He warns us about those who would lead us down the paths of heresy, legalism and religious behaviorism. He implores us to keep our focus on Christ alone. He tells us that the love of God for us causes us to love one another. That reflects what Christ said when asked about the greatest commandment (love God and love your neighbor as yourself).

He says, “Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God,” a reminder that the New Covenant is written, not in stone or on paper, but in our hearts.

John concludes by telling us why he wrote the book. It was not to give us platitudes to live by, but to assure us of the nature of the one who was from the beginning: Christ, our Lord and Savior. He proclaims that if we continue to focus on sin instead of Christ, we are not saved and need to take a look at our eternal condition before God. But, he says, if we are saved, we will recognize and run from sin, keeping our focus on no other but Jesus. Jesus is the one true God and everything else is just an idol.

The Proper Use of Scripture

Most people have read A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, but what if you had not? If someone turned to chapter 4 and read, “I know your purpose is to do me good…” and then read, “Scrooge advanced to listen to their talk,” what would you conclude the book is about?

The answer is you would not have any way of knowing what the book is about. Any answer you gave would be pure conjecture. The two quotes have no context and without context it is impossible to know the story from these short quotations.

The same principle applies to Scripture. You just cannot select a section, read it and understand it apart from its context of the word used, the verse it is in, the chapter it is in, the book it is in and the Bible as a whole. Any time you do that, you are not “preaching the Bible,” you are preaching your philosophy.

Take for example 2 Corinthians 1:8-11. By itself, it seems to be a short discourse about difficulties, wherever we find them and the necessity to rely on God and not ourselves.

Both things are contained in the passage and both are true, as far as they go. Paul had difficulties and so will we. We need to rely on God and not on ourselves. But to think this is the point of this passage is a mistake and does a disservice to the Word of God. This passage cannot be applied haphazardly as some form of encouragement to the church when things are hard, or some vague, mystical positive attitude.

Sadly, somebody divided Scripture into chapters and verses that were not there in the original texts. They are there to make it easier for us to find our place, but they tempt us to quote sections and apply them incorrectly. The old adage “Scripture has only one interpretation but many applications” is simply not true. Scripture has only one application: the revelation of God’s character, His love for His creation and His plan for its redemption.

This passage is about God’s faithfulness, but that’s not all. It is about why we can count on Him in every situation because of Christ. The pivotal verses are verses 19 and 21: “For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by us – by me and Silas (or Silvanus) and Timothy – was not ‘yes’ and ‘No,’ but in Him it has always been ‘Yes.’”  “Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm IN CHRIST. He (God) appointed us, set his seal of ownership on us and put his Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, GUARANTEEING WHAT IS TO COME.”

That, and only that, is true to the narrative from verse 1 through the end of the book.

We would all be better off if we would stick to using Scripture as it was intended to be used; not a series of truths to be applied as we need them, but as the Truth, who is Jesus.