Careful speech

For various reasons that don't matter at the moment, I've been much more exposed to mainstream Protestantism over the last few months.  I've recently heard a couple people allude to Hebrews 4:15, and both went off the rails. We've talked about this before, so let's don't cover that ground again. But there are some difficulties we encounter when we're not careful, and maybe those are worth discussing in more detail.

At some point I made the decision that I'd try to express my thoughts about Scripture in the language of Scripture. I decided to use the words and phrases Scripture uses, rather than using my own. I'm not claiming to be very good at that, but I make the effort. I'm not sure where I got that idea, or when I made that decision, but I have some suspicions.

When I was a university student, I was part of an off-campus Bible study run by Kelly, one of the campus chaplains. Kelly led us through a study of 1 John that was life-changing for me, not because of content, but because of technique. We started the study by independently reading 1 John "as many times as you can over the next week." According to Kelly, when you had read a book of the Bible enough times you could quote it, then you were ready for a Bible study on that book.

I suspect it was Kelly who influenced me to try to use Scriptural words and phrases. 

See, when we express a thought in words, the words then begin to reshape the thought. So when we take a Scriptural idea and put it into words, those words begin to change the Scriptural idea in our own mind. If we're not very careful with our choice of words, we end up going wrong not only in how we express our thoughts, but in what our thoughts actually are.

Here's an example: I've heard many "brethren" refer to Satan as "the prince and the power of the air." That's not what Scripture actually says. Scripture calls Satan "the prince of the power of the air" (Ephesians 2:2, KJV). I'm sure this started out as a simple misquote, but we can see how the ideas aren't at all the same, even if the words sound similar.

Here's another example: just last week I heard someone talking about being "adopted into God's family." You can search all day long, you won't find that verse! Scripture doesn't teach adoption into God's family. It doesn't teach we are children of God by adoption. On the contrary, we are children of God when we have been born [again] of God (John 1:12–13; John 3:3). 

When scripture talks about adoption, it's talking about sonship. Galatians 4:1–5 presents sonship in contrast to childhood (I don't know the right word for that, perhaps childness?). A child might be treated as a servant in his own home, a son cannot be. 

The Spirit of God given to us connects adoption (Romans 8:15) and sonship (Galatians 4:6). 

So the person who talks about being "adopted into God's family" takes two ideas that Scripture presents in contrast and bludgeons them into a single concept. I can't think of a better recipe for spiritual disaster.

There are a great many errors we avoid when we attempt to stick to the actual words of the text.

It's not popular to say it, but the goal of Bible study isn't – or shouldn't be – to ask "how can I apply this to my life?"  A rush to find some sort of application in Scripture seems to be the source of a great many ills. If we could only learn to slow down and savor each word, we might find that God's words carry a great deal more weight and meaning than we might think. We might even find that God's thoughts center not on us at all, but on His Son, Jesus Christ.

Not everything is about us.

I'm afraid we're reaping the harvest of years of carelessness in reading and studying and quoting Scripture. Martin Luther believed the written word of God is so potent that even "one little word will fell [Satan]" We have largely abandoned that respect for the words that God has spoken. We think nothing of putting our own in their place. And I'm not talking about theological liberals, or progressive Christians here! I'm talking about people who believe in "verbal plenary inspiration."

I wrote before about hearing a preacher say, "the wages for sin is death," which is certainly not Scripture. Changing that one preposition from "of" to "for" ruins the argument of Romans 6:15–23. This was a professional preacher, paid to prepare and deliver his sermons. He didn't even seem to notice his mistake.

Well, I'm trying to avoid ranting, but I'm not doing a good job of that. I'm afraid I'm getting pretty close to a full-on rant here. 

So let's wrap this up with an admonition. And make no mistake, I'm saying this as much to myself as to anyone else. Let's act like the Word of God is just that. Let's acknowledge that God has spoken, and has spoken better than we can. Let's make every effort to think and speak in His words, not our own.