Context is Overrated
If the devil showed up at most churches and told them to take a big risk because the Bible said: “He will order his angels to protect you” [1] and the churches could see plainly that he was the devil, they would say :
“You are taking that verse out of context.”
Such a response takes guidance not from the Bible and the Spirit, but from sophistry and word play. A game the devil is happy to play.
When Jesus responds to the devil, He references no hermeneutics or academic or systemic methodology.
He responds to the Devil’s presentation of Scripture with Scripture.
Who is the Master ?
Jesus frequently reminded His followers that “a disciple is not above His master.”
So why is that when Jesus subdues the Devil with the Word of God, the people claiming to be His followers on earth respond in a different way ?
Is it because the people claiming to be His followers see themselves as superior to the Master ? Have they replaced spiritual truth with intellectual satisfaction ? Have they overlooked what it means to be a single listener with ears to hear and chased after a message the world can understand ? Are they trying to walk back the views of the Bible because they are embarrassed by them and failing to represent Jesus on the earth ?
All of these things are true.
Him Who Has Ears To Hear
As a whole, the original culture, the original community, the original crowd rejected the message of Jesus.
We can get into why they did this [2], but consider:
His original audience understood current events in Palestine better than we do today.
His original audience understood the language better than we do today.
His original audience understood the laws, rulers, history, interactions, parable references, nuances, and many, many other things back then better than we do today.
And they rejected Him.
So if you think you are going to understand Jesus better and accept Him into your life better using the things the crowd had more than we do, think again.
You won’t.
Jesus presents His message to Him who has ears to hear.
Becoming like the crowd as they were in history will never make you into a follower of Jesus. If anything, it will make you a betrayer of Jesus.
Academic truth, which can be widely understood with enough education, is never going to teach you anything personal about yourself or about what God wants to do in your life.
Accusations of Narcissism
When a person sets out to do what Jesus says, they are often accused (especially at Bible colleges and the academy) of ripping something from the first century Roman world and transplanting it into the modern world for their own gain.
As if following the one innocent person who laid down His life for the world is going to make you into a selfish person.
The truth is that however much you try to change the community and reshape a large group of people, you can only change yourself.
You can only change yourself.
I have a hard time picturing the Jesus presented in the New Testament rebuking someone for trying to bring too much of His teachings into their lives.
While it is possible to suppose someone might become fanatical and claim to be more like Jesus for wearing a beard and trying to speak Aramaic, this kind of fanaticism is very rare.
Sophistry (and the pride lurking beneath it) are vastly more common.
Living By the Spirit
If you were going to practically set out to understand the Bible, how would you do it ?
Keep in mind here that the old testament book Jesus quotes more than any other is the book of Psalms.
David writes a lot of things about God that were not previously understood or written about. David said that if we make our beds in the depths, God is there. David wrote that God knitted us together in our mothers wombs. Jesus quoted David as saying the coming Messiah would be his Lord and the Lord.
How did David understand all these things ? Was it by going to seminary ? Was it by making systematic comparisons of scrolls as if any prophecy came about by someone’s interpretation ?
No. David was led by the Spirit.
The Bible says we are to be led by the Spirit in many places.
But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. Galatians 5:16 ESV
When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. John 16:13 ESV
What if we made this our strategy of understanding the Bible ? By asking God’s Spirit to reveal to us what He intends for us to understand ?
In Acts 8 we hear about an Ethiopian leader who was struggling to understand Isaiah and prevailed in the end.
How did the Ethiopian understand the Bible ?
He understood the Bible by means of Philip who was sent by the Spirit to reveal the meaning of Isaiah to the Ethiopian.
What good thing is the Spirit going to leave out when He tells us something ? The Bible tells us :
For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. 1 Corinthians 2:10 b ESV
We should read the Bible in all it’s greatness. We should read for the intent, for the spirit of the passage. We should read it for its perfection and all of its life changing gravity.
Why don’t we try to understand the Bible that way any more ? Is it because we haven’t chosen decisively to trust God to reveal His Word to us ? Is it because we want to be perceived as having big brains ?
Is Modern Theology a Bible Apology Tour ?
When I first here the cliché “that was taken out of context”, my first thought is of a politician who has been asked by the media about something he said in the past.
The attempt of the appeal of “context” is to re-connotate the original meaning into something that is more widely accepted. [3]
The Bible warns about posturing like this.
You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. James 4:4 ESV
Very often a pastor reads:
Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it. Proverbs 22:6 ESV
And the pastor thinks, “Oh no ! What about if a parent does raise up a child in the way he should go, but he does depart from it and never returns ! What an embarrassment to the church !” And so he puts together a way to dilute the passage without realizing he is setting out down a plan B path couched on the premise that the Bible is false.
Of course, the pastor (or in my experience, Bible school teacher) could respond to such a hypothetical parent by inquiring to what extent the child was raised in the way he should (“how insensitive to the parent!” cries the uncaring crowd) or by leaving God room to do something amazing later in the child’s life.
Instead people settle for the lowest possible explanation they can reach.
Or the pastor sees that we can do all things through Christ and sees this verse is a loose fitting way or a way to use the surrounding verses about giving to manipulate more money from the congregation.
Bringing “Balance” to a Radical Faith
Another way the life saving message of the Bible is watered down to make it more acceptable to everyone is to emphasize the genre each verse is presented in.
Bible commentators come across a verse that says something like:
But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; 1 Corinthians 1:27 a ESV
And they say that because of the overall purpose of the genre of the book (which is an epistle) and the overriding theme of 1 Corinthians (which is something flimsy they made up like “everyone coming together” or something blah like that) that we need understanding about how to bring everyone together.
And this understanding requires wisdom.
And so they take up context for the very purpose of saying the exact opposite of what the Bible teaches because they are embarrassed by the Word of God or they think people will stop donating to their school or attending their church.
Summary
God’s Word is perfect exactly the way He revealed it to us.
He is perfectly capable to bring us to fully understanding it in the same amazing power that He first revealed it to us.
This understanding is not limited to an elite, academic class of believers. It’s available ordinary, uneducated people. To people who are not game show champions or silicon valley software engineers.
Let the walls we have built up to hide and obfuscate the Word of the Lord fall down.
May our pursuit of God in our lives not be a matter of word play and academics.
If you want to seek the God the way He wants you to seek Him, be ready to become like a child. Be ready to sit at the feet of Jesus and listen to the life He has for you.
[1] Cf Matthew 5:6 b New Living Translation
[2] See the parable of the four soils, and do not look for politically correct explanations like inclusiveness and the role of minorities.
[3] It is highly possible that someone could be called on the carpet for saying something too milquetoast (such as by a smaller group of people, donors, a para church organization, an elder board, but not by the mainstream media), but I have yet to spectate anything like that.
