The Whole Bible for the Whole Christian
We must consider ALL of Scripture, and we must learn the basics of biblical interpretation. The cults and heretics are involved in twisting truth and skewing Scripture. We must do otherwise. We must accept all that the Bible teaches, but properly understood and interpreted.
God did not give us just some books of the Bible, or parts of some books. He gave us 66 entire books and he expects us to take them all seriously and see them all as authoritative. Sure, we must interpret Scripture rightly, and Paul commands us to ‘rightly divide the word of truth’ (2 Timothy 2:15).
For example, we understand that some things from the Old Testament do not carry over into the New Testament. The sacrificial system in the OT is one such thing. Not only is it now fully fulfilled in Christ and his work at the cross, but even if Christians today wanted to get into those OT sacrifices, there is no temple in Jerusalem to do them in!
Other things come to mind. Physical circumcision – a requirement for male Jews in the OT – is NOT binding on Christians today. Indeed, we run with what it signified: the circumcision of the heart. So to say we need the whole Bible does not mean we are careless and reckless as to how we understand and interpret and apply the whole Bible.
What I mean by being a ‘whole Bible Christian’ is that we are not to pick and choose those bits which we like and simply ignore those bits that we find to be not so appealing. That works fine in a cafeteria for lunch, but it does not work for the Christian when he approaches God’s word.
A. W. Tozer put it this way in his book Of God and Men: “The Word of God well understood and religiously obeyed is the shortest route to spiritual perfection. And we must not select a few favorite passages to the exclusion of others. Nothing less than a whole Bible can make a whole Christian.”
Yet the problem is not just believers picking those bits they want to believe and obey. Far too many Christians hardly even read the entire Bible. How many for example have ever read the whole Bible – cover to cover? How many regularly read the Old Testament? How many even regularly read the New?
But assuming some do read the whole Bible, it is still rather easy to be quite selective in what we run with. Or we can fail two of the major rules of biblical interpretation: one, every text has a context and must be read in that context; and two, we must compare Scripture with Scripture.
Since I am now reading through the book of Deuteronomy once again, let me share a few examples of how selective reading or poor hermeneutics (interpretation) can skew how we understand the Bible. The first one comes from Deut. 26. Verse 15 offers this prayer to God: “Look down from your holy habitation, from heaven, and bless your people Israel and the ground that you have given us, as you swore to our fathers, a land flowing with milk and honey.”
That text sounds really neat, and many Christians today might want to ‘name and claim’ it – at least in a spiritual sense. But one simply has to read the verses before and after verse 15 to see the full context – and that is obedience. As we read in verse 16: “This day the Lord your God commands you to do these statutes and rules. You shall therefore be careful to do them with all your heart and with all your soul.”
In other words, these wonderful promises of blessing to ancient Israel were conditional. IF Israel fully obeys all that God commanded them to do, THEN these blessings would follow. But they certainly should NOT expect such blessings if they refused to fully obey Yahweh.
We find the same in chapter 27. Verse 3 says this: “when you cross over to enter the land that the Lord your God is giving you, a land flowing with milk and honey, as the Lord, the God of your fathers, has promised you.”
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The Ground Erodes under Feminists’ Feet
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“Young Man, Be a Man!”: Young Men and Sexual Purity – Part 2
The struggle for sexual purity is real yet it is not impossible to attain. God has appointed different means (such as believing in the gospel, applying the Word and having the Word applied rightly by a healthy community, and marriage) that ought to be pursued and practiced in order to be holy. Yet, we must not forget that the goal is not purity for the sake of purity. Rather, the God-established end of godliness is to become more like Christ Jesus.
In the previous article, I wrote about two of the three principles that aid young men (and women) in pursuing and practicing sexual purity: Getting the gospel right, and applying the Word to your life by yourself and by others. In this second part, we will look at the third principle.
“Be a Man!”: Marriage as a Means to Christlikeness
The final principle that I want to suggest is probably the most overlooked and under-discussed solution on purity: get married. Now, I would readily grant and defend the fact that marriage will not solve or rectify your sexual struggles or loneliness. Without resting your identity and treasuring Christ as your end-all, your heart’s craving for intimacy and companionship will not be satisfied either with sex or with marriage.1
Yet, even with such a qualification, it cannot be denied that one of the means that the Lord uses to meet our need for intimacy and companionship is marriage (cf. 1 Cor 7:9b). After all, was it not God himself who, after making and declaring all things ‘good’, says “it is not good for a man to be alone” (Gen 2:18)? However, the question remains: how does this relate to sexual purity? May I gently suggest that one of the many, but important reasons for the radical increase in sexual struggles among young men and women is their inexplicable delaying of marriage.
The glamour of the extended ‘carefree single life’ is a cover for immaturity, self-centeredness, worldly ambition, and a lack of disregard for the biblical teaching on marriage. And, therefore, when young men and women seek to extend their “carefree, single life” they are actually modelling what homosexuals have popularized. So, what happens when young men and women disregard the God-given desire and drive for intimacy and companionship in pursuit of worldly goals? The desire and drive do not go away. Rather, they would seek ungodly avenues to fulfil God-given needs.R. R. Reno makes this startling but astute observation namely that, “Homosexuals, especially gay men, are…associated with scrupulous self-care and glamorous consumption. They pioneered the now upper-middle-class norm of extended adolescence, the carefree single life that extends for decades. Gay life also realizes the dreams of many feminists—professional success and self-realization without the burdens of fertility.”2 (emphasis mine)
Young Christian men and women, unless called by the Lord to a life of singleness in serving Him, whatever else they may pursue in life, they ought to get married, raise children and be godly parents. Marriage and parenting have the potential to enable men and women to sober down and mature. How much more so when done within the context of a church community! It truly enables one to grow in godliness.
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Hunting Sin
Whenever the catechism speaks of a saving grace it means that the subject under consideration is a fully orbed gift from above. The Lord in His love for you has not only given the means for sanctification, our being renewed in the image of Jesus, but He has granted to you the ammunition to keep killing sin like Rambo in a southeastern Asian triple-canopy jungle.
This week in our catechism time we only have one question to look at, and this will be true for our next lesson as well. In this part of the SC we are in the midst of talking about what it means to believe in Jesus, and how we are to follow Him as His disciples. Not only that, but specifically how that hope goes about affecting every area of our lives. The writing out of the Ten Commandments and all the implications they touch on is meant to encourage us to consider the way we are living and walking in light on the glorious work of our Trinitarian salvation won unto us by the decree of the Father, the work of the Son, and the application of it all by the Holy Spirit. Jesus speaks more about the fruit born of redemption than just about any other topic.
Believers ought to have no problem understanding that when we confess Christ as our Lord and Savior that this is not a one-time event. At least, they shouldn’t. However, many cultural Christians have this idea that as long as they get baptized, sign a card, say the magic words “I believe in Jesus” that whatever they do after that is immaterial. They said it publicly, or at least intimated it by attendance at a church building for a while. Maybe even their name is still on the register as a member somewhere, that ought to be enough to get into Heaven. Right? Well, no. Our Redeemer is pretty clear that if there is no fruit which follows faith than there is no there, there. As the old saying goes you are no more a Christian by taking up space in a pew than you are a car by sitting in a garage. If there is anything that drives unbelievers away from considering the truth claims of the Christian religion its false confessors who deny its power. Why should they want to be a Believer if it apparently makes no change in the lives of the people they meet?
We need to understand that if you have truly placed your trust in the Son of the Living God than you’ve entered into a citizenship in a new kingdom which has with it new responsibilities, well not so much new as in never before seen, but in the sense of a fresh relationship to the person and work of God, especially in His commandments. No longer do they have the ability to kill you dead, and no longer do you desire to be saved by them. To expand on that a little we see this language of new meaning new to you in the Psalms for example when the Psalmist in Psalm 96 uses the term new song.
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