Never Read a Bible Verse

[aiki]

Isaiah 28:9-10
9 “To whom will he teach knowledge, and to whom will he explain the message? Those who are weaned from the milk, those taken from the breast?
10 For it is precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little, there a little.”​

Greg Koukl, a popular American Christian apologist often exhorts fellow Christians to "never read a Bible verse." Instead, believers ought always to read a Bible verse within its immediate context and to understand it through the clarifying and qualifying lens of that context. Sometimes, this means reading two or three paragraphs before the verse and the same after the verse in order to properly grasp its meaning. At other times, even larger portions of surrounding context are required to get at the correct interpretation of a single verse. And at whatever interpretation one arrives, it must be aligned with the whole of the rest of God's word, not contradicted by it.

But, too often these days, in the midst of the highly individual-centered relativism that has blanketed the globe, Christians are succumbing to the notion that the Bible ought to reflect their understanding, their preferences; that they can mold and shape Scripture to suit themselves, rather than the other way 'round. As a result, God's word is bent to conform to their personal experience and thinking in whatever degree is desired. To this end, believers have adopted the practice of lifting verses (and single words or phrases) out of their context and stuffing into them whatever preconceived notions they like. The result is often a wildly-contorted interpretation of what the verse or word means and how it ought to apply to the believer's life.

In defense of this practice of eisegesis - reading into Scripture what isn't there, rather than drawing out of Scripture what is - believers resort to the claim that they are merely "being led of the Spirit" to the interpretations they draw from the Bible. They try to insulate their wild contortions of God's truth from criticism in this way, making their contortion of Scripture the Spirit's fault, essentially. Will the critics of the Bible contortionists say the Spirit has got it wrong? They have only to follow the Spirit as well as they, the contortionists, have done to see the "mystery" and "hidden truth" they have uncovered.

By this slippery, rhetorical maneuvering, appealing - wrongly - to the Spirit's illumination of the believer to God's truth, these abusers of Scripture squirm free of giving any sort of reasonable justification for their twisting of the meaning of God's word. Worse, their conclusions concerning Scripture are many times nonsensical and contradictory, tangled in their logic, but argued for being so under the assertion that "God's ways are higher than our ways," which is supposed to mean that the Spirit will teach us crazy, contradictory, bizarre things - but that are so only from our limited human perspective. If we could see these weird, irrational "truths" from God's side, the argument goes, we'd see they make perfect sense. This implies, of course, that the Laws of Logic that God has given to us and the capacity to Reason He has instilled in us can - and, perhaps, should - be thrown off in pursuit of "deeper truth." Logic and Reason are, in the estimation of Scripture contortionists, actually viewed as hindrances - even enemies - to truth when it comes to God's "higher ways," rather than assets. Amazing! And terribly dangerous.

It isn't, though, that Logic and Reason are always abandoned entirely. Even the wildest conjecture in which Scripture contortionists indulge relies in some way upon a line of reasoning. If it didn't, their statements about divine truth would be utterly incoherent, a meaningless "word salad." Claiming "Spirit-guidance" allows, however, for the very worst sort of reasoning and the very loosest application of logic.

The real heart of the matter seems to me to be that Scripture contortionists don't want to do the hard work of careful study; they want to be able to simply flit through God's word, an interpretive "butterfly" landing on the "branch" of one verse, then bobbing and dancing to another, and then another, making whatever connections between these branches they feel "led" to make, easy and careless in doing so.

There is also an entrenched resistance among Scripture contortionists to the idea that someone who has studied the Bible for 50 or 60 years, or longer, will have insight into, and knowledge of, God's truth inaccessible to the contortionist who has, say, only a single decade of time with God and His word. It rankles the Scripture contortionist that they might have to endure the same length of study and experience before they can speak at the same level as the believer who has many decades of walking with God and an expansive knowledge of the Bible under their belt. It bruises the Scripture contortionist's pride that they might have to defer in any way to believers senior to themselves in the faith. Out of this pride comes an unteachableness and defiance that leads the Scripture contortionist into an ignorant, unskilled, and God-resisted "investigation" of His word. (James 4:6; 1 Peter 5:5)

It's bad enough that Scripture contortionists handle God's word in this way, but these abusers of Scripture often propose to teach fellow believers the nonsense they have constructed out of their eisegetical deformities of the Bible. They sell their "deeper truth" to others by statements like, "Never before has this truth been revealed," or "very few have ever understood this," or "God has given me 'special knowledge' you need to hear." Beware! The blind always lead the blind into the ditch of falsehood and spiritual catastrophe! (Matthew 15:14)

Small changes to language make a huge difference to meaning. Consider the following two statements:

"Let's eat, Grandma!"

"Let's eat Grandma!"

The removal of the comma in the first sentence totally changes the meaning of the second, doesn't it? This is much more the case when context is ignored. Consider:

Ephesians 2:1
1 And you were dead in your trespasses and sins,

Colossians 3:3
3 For you are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.

Removed from their contexts, it could be argued that these verses are talking about the same "deadness." They both use the word "dead," right? This links the verses, then, yes? Same word, same meaning. Simple. So, then, the first verse says the believer was dead in trespasses and sins and the second verse says the believer still is dead. The second verse also says that the "sin-dead" believer's life is hidden with Christ in God. Therefore, although the believer is "dead in sin," their life is protected - hidden - in God Himself. That's a relief, eh? Even though the believer is "dead in trespasses and sins," even though they have a life full of sinfulness that makes them dead, they're okay because at the same time, their life is hidden with Christ in God! This "deadness" must refer to physical death because, however good or bad, everybody dies physically, which explains how a believer is dead (that is, they will one day die physically) but have a life (spiritually, of course) that is protected by God. But the verse from Colossians seems to imply that being "dead" is necessary to being "hid with Christ in God. In the verse, being dead comes before life hid in Christ, right? That would mean, then, that the sin and trespasses that cause being dead have to be in the believer's life. What a deep truth! It turns out sin is important to the believer's life. They can't be hidden in Christ if they aren't dead first! Wow! So, believer's ought to make sure there is sin in their life so they can then be hidden in Christ. Sin isn't the enemy but a necessary part of Christian living! I don't think anyone has ever seen this before! What amazing truth the Spirit has revealed to me!

Are you getting a headache yet?

In reality, the two verses taken, in context, are talking about completely different kinds of being "dead." The first speaks of the state of spiritual deadness of a person before they're saved. The second, refers to the condition of being dead to sin through new life in Jesus Christ which is the necessary effect of salvation. I can, in later posts, explain this in detail, if readers so desire. My point in the above distortion of the two verses cited is to show how, when context is thrown off and sound reasoning and constraints of logic are cast aside, interpreting God's word can quickly lead to catastrophic, even heretical, results.

One other thing: The more obscure the language that a person uses to explain God's truth, the more stilted, and arcane, and convoluted the phrasing of things, the warier you should be of what is shared. Generally, this unnatural form of communication, this high-sounding style of speech that would be foreign to the person's common way of speaking, is a BIG tip-off that nonsense is likely issuing forth. I'm not talking about terms, mind you - justification, sanctification, atonement, ordo salutis, aseity, omniscience, dispensationalism, etc - but about manner. If you can't penetrate through the way something is shared, if the style of phrasing is defeating your comprehension, look for a different source of truth.

Anyway, never read a Bible verse. Always read a Bible verse in its context. The further removed from its context a verse is, the less truth it will hold.

 

[sandman]

And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise.

And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee To day, shalt thou be with me in paradise.

 

[d taylor]

That is why The Gospel of John is a great book. It sums up its context for the whole book in John 20:31

but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name.

So when a verse like this Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me has everlasting life. is used to say, hey here is how to receive God's free gift of Eternal Life. It can be used alone to show that this is true.

Of course most people want to bring in verses from other books to say no, you also need this and this etc....

 

[aiki]

That is why The Gospel of John is a great book. It sums up its context for the whole book in John 20:31

but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name.

So when a verse like this Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me has everlasting life. is used to say, hey here is how to receive God's free gift of Eternal Life. It can be used alone to show that this is true.

Of course most people want to bring in verses from other books to say no, you also need this and this etc....

Actually, John 20:31 doesn't sum up the context of the entire Gospel; it only offers the over-arching reason for the writing of the Gospel. Within the Gospel itself are a vast multitude of facts and truths that extend well beyond John's basic reason for the writing of the Gospel. The Gospel of John certainly fulfills the purpose for its writing expressed in John 20:31 - and much more. It would be a wild over-generalization to say that the entire Gospel serves ONLY the purpose described in John 20:31.

I've written the above thinking that you were probably only joking in what you wrote - an ironic response to the OP of this thread. I hope so, anyway. If not, you almost completely missed the point of what I wrote and have, in a way, illustrated the very sort of thing the OP was talking about.

I'm just going to assume you were being facetious in your reply to the OP...

 

[d taylor]

Actually, John 20:31 doesn't sum up the context of the entire Gospel; it only offers the over-arching reason for the writing of the Gospel. Within the Gospel itself are a vast multitude of facts and truths that extend well beyond John's basic reason for the writing of the Gospel. The Gospel of John certainly fulfills the purpose for its writing expressed in John 20:31 - and much more. It would be a wild over-generalization to say that the entire Gospel serves ONLY the purpose described in John 20:31.

I've written the above thinking that you were probably only joking in what you wrote - an ironic response to the OP of this thread. I hope so, anyway. If not, you almost completely missed the point of what I wrote and have, in a way, illustrated the very sort of thing the OP was talking about.

I'm just going to assume you were being facetious in your reply to the OP...

Really then do you know The Gospel of John is unique in that there are no parables, that it list 8 miracles to show Jesus is who He says He is, The Son of God, The promised Messiah.

Almost every chapter contains both an invitation to believe and a reason to believe in Jesus as The Christ. John revels that Jesus is The Messiah.

The other books of the New Testament are written primarily to believers, this is the one book who was written to people who had not yet believed in The Messiah, for God's free gift of Eternal Life. That is the purpose of that book.

 

[aiki]

Really then do you know The Gospel of John is unique in that there are no parables, that it list 8 miracles to show Jesus is who He says He is, The Son of God, The promised Messiah.

John was very keen to emphasize the divinity of Jesus. He succeeds, I think. But he does much more than this in the Gospel that he wrote: He describes the interactions between Jesus and his disciples; he records Christ's teachings; he tells of Jesus' exchanges with the Pharisees; he relates miracles Jesus performed, etc. Through all of these things, the divine nature of Jesus is portrayed, but his nature isn't the ONLY thing John's Gospel outlines.

Almost every chapter contains both an invitation to believe and a reason to believe in Jesus as The Christ. John revels that Jesus is The Messiah.

Uh huh. Not sure what this has to do with my observations about the fourth Gospel...

The other books of the New Testament are written primarily to believers, this is the one book who was written to people who had not yet believed in The Messiah, for God's free gift of Eternal Life. That is the purpose of that book.

It is one important, basic purpose of the Gospel, yes. To think that it is the SOLE purpose of the Gospel, however, is to operate under a false dichotomy. It isn't that either the Gospel is ONLY for the purpose you've highlighted or it is not, but that the Gospel of John is for the purpose you've pointed out AND for many others, too.

All of Scripture is given by inspiration of God, the apostle Paul wrote (2 Timothy 3:16-17), and so all of Scripture, whether penned by the hand of the apostle John, or the apostle Peter, or the apostle James, or whoever, is ultimately from God, from Christ, who is God. And so, when other things about the matter of salvation appear in other texts of Scripture beyond what the apostle John wrote, they have, as divinely-inspired texts, the authority to qualify and clarify what John wrote (and vice versa).

 

[Daniel Marsh]

Hint: Informative means your post is too long.

Isaiah 28:9-10
9 “To whom will he teach knowledge, and to whom will he explain the message? Those who are weaned from the milk, those taken from the breast?
10 For it is precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little, there a little.”​

Greg Koukl, a popular American Christian apologist often exhorts fellow Christians "never to read a Bible verse." Instead, believers ought always to read a Bible verse within its immediate context and to understand it through the clarifying and qualifying lens of that context. Sometimes, this means reading two or three paragraphs before the verse and the same after the verse in order to properly grasp its meaning. At other times, even larger portions of surrounding context are required to get at the correct interpretation of a single verse. And at whatever interpretation one arrives, it must be aligned with the whole of the rest of God's word, not contradicted by it.

But, too often these days, in the midst of the highly individual-centered relativism that has blanketed the globe, Christians are succumbing to the notion that the Bible ought to reflect their understanding, their preferences; that they can mold and shape Scripture to suit themselves, rather than the other way 'round. As a result, God's word is bent to conform to their personal experience and thinking in whatever degree is desired. To this end, believers have adopted the practice of lifting verses (and single words or phrases) out of their context and stuffing into them whatever preconceived notions they like. The result is often a wildly-contorted interpretation of what the verse or word means and how it ought to apply to the believer's life.

In defense of this practice of eisegesis - reading into Scripture what isn't there, rather than drawing out of Scripture what is - believers resort to the claim that they are merely "being led of the Spirit" to the interpretations they draw from the Bible. They try to insulate their wild contortions of God's truth from criticism in this way, making their contortion of Scripture the Spirit's fault, essentially. Will the critics of the Bible contortionists say the Spirit has got it wrong? They have only to follow the Spirit as well as they, the contortionists, have done to see the "mystery" and "hidden truth" they have uncovered.

By this slippery, rhetorical maneuvering, appealing - wrongly - to the Spirit's illumination of the believer to God's truth, these abusers of Scripture squirm free of giving any sort of reasonable justification for their twisting of the meaning of God's word. Worse, their conclusions concerning Scripture are many times nonsensical and contradictory, tangled in their logic, but argued for being so under the assertion that "God's ways are higher than our ways," which is supposed to mean that the Spirit will teach us crazy, contradictory, bizarre things - but that are so only from our limited human perspective. If we could see these weird, irrational "truths" from God's side, the argument goes, we'd see they make perfect sense. This implies, of course, that the Laws of Logic that God has given to us and the capacity to Reason He has instilled in us can - and, perhaps, should - be thrown off in pursuit of "deeper truth." Logic and Reason are, in the estimation of Scripture contortionists, actually viewed as hindrances - even enemies - to truth when it comes to God's "higher ways," rather than assets. Amazing! And terribly dangerous.

It isn't, though, that Logic and Reason are always abandoned entirely. Even the wildest conjecture in which Scripture contortionists indulge relies in some way upon a line of reasoning. If it didn't, their statements about divine truth would be utterly incoherent, a meaningless "word salad." Claiming "Spirit-guidance" allows, however, for the very worst sort of reasoning and the very loosest application of logic.

The real heart of the matter seems to me to be that Scripture contortionists don't want to do the hard work of careful study; they want to be able to simply flit through God's word, an interpretive "butterfly" landing on the "branch" of one verse, then bobbing and dancing to another, and then another, making whatever connections between these branches they feel "led" to make, easy and careless in doing so.

There is also an entrenched resistance among Scripture contortionists to the idea that someone who has studied the Bible for 50 or 60 years, or longer, will have insight into, and knowledge of, God's truth inaccessible to the contortionist who has, say, only a single decade of time with God and His word. It rankles the Scripture contortionist that they might have to endure the same length of study and experience before they can speak at the same level as the believer who has many decades of walking with God and an expansive knowledge of the Bible under their belt. It bruises the Scripture contortionist's pride that they might have to defer in any way to believers senior to themselves in the faith. Out of this pride comes an unteachableness and defiance that leads the Scripture contortionist into an ignorant, unskilled, and God-resisted "investigation" of His word. (James 4:6; 1 Peter 5:5)

It's bad enough that Scripture contortionists handle God's word in this way, but these abusers of Scripture often propose to teach fellow believers the nonsense they have constructed out of their eisegetical deformities of the Bible. They sell their "deeper truth" to others by statements like, "Never before has this truth been revealed," or "very few have ever understood this," or "God has given me 'special knowledge' you need to hear." Beware! The blind always lead the blind into the ditch of falsehood and spiritual catastrophe! (Matthew 15:14)

Small changes to language make a huge difference to meaning. Consider the following two statements:

"Let's eat, Grandma!"

"Let's eat Grandma!"

The removal of the comma in the first sentence totally changes the meaning of the second, doesn't it? This is much more the case when context is ignored. Consider:

Ephesians 2:1
1 And you were dead in your trespasses and sins,

Colossians 3:3
3 For you are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.

Removed from their contexts, it could be argued that these verses are talking about the same "deadness." They both use the word "dead," right? This links the verses, then, yes? Same word, same meaning. Simple. So, then, the first verse says the believer was dead in trespasses and sins and the second verse says the believer still is dead. The second verse also says that the "sin-dead" believer's life is hidden with Christ in God. Therefore, although the believer is "dead in sin," their life is protected - hidden - in God Himself. That's a relief, eh? Even though the believer is "dead in trespasses and sins," even though they have a life full of sinfulness that makes them dead, they're okay because at the same time, their life is hidden with Christ in God! This "deadness" must refer to physical death because, however good or bad, everybody dies physically, which explains how a believer is dead (that is, they will one day die physically) but have a life (spiritually, of course) that is protected by God. But the verse from Colossians seems to imply that being "dead" is necessary to being "hid with Christ in God. In the verse, being dead comes before life hid in Christ, right? That would mean, then, that the sin and trespasses that cause being dead have to be in the believer's life. What a deep truth! It turns out sin is important to the believer's life. They can't be hidden in Christ if they aren't dead first! Wow! So, believer's ought to make sure there is sin in their life so they can then be hidden in Christ. Sin isn't the enemy but a necessary part of Christian living! I don't think anyone has ever seen this before! What amazing truth the Spirit has revealed to me!

Are you getting a headache yet?

In reality, the two verses taken, in context, are talking about completely different kinds of being "dead." The first speaks of the state of spiritual deadness of a person before they're saved. The second, refers to the condition of being dead to sin through new life in Jesus Christ which is the necessary effect of salvation. I can, in later posts, explain this in detail, if readers so desire. My point in the above distortion of the two verses cited is to show how, when context is thrown off and sound reasoning and constraints of logic are cast aside, interpreting God's word can quickly lead to catastrophic, even heretical, results.

One other thing: The more obscure the language that a person uses to explain God's truth, the more stilted, and arcane, and convoluted the phrasing of things, the warier you should be of what is shared. Generally, this unnatural form of communication, this high-sounding style of speech that would be foreign to the person's common way of speaking, is a BIG tip-off that nonsense is likely issuing forth. I'm not talking about terms, mind you - justification, sanctification, atonement, ordo salutis, aseity, omniscience, dispensationalism, etc - but about manner. If you can't penetrate through the way something is shared, if the style of phrasing is defeating your comprehension, look for a different source of truth.

Anyway, never read a Bible verse. Always read a Bible verse in its context. The further removed from its context a verse is, the less truth it will hold.

 

[aiki]

Hint: Informative means your post is too long.

Too long for you, you mean.

 

[Margot Lugo]

Isaiah 28:9-10
9 “To whom will he teach knowledge, and to whom will he explain the message? Those who are weaned from the milk, those taken from the breast?
10 For it is precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little, there a little.”​

Greg Koukl, a popular American Christian apologist often exhorts fellow Christians to "never read a Bible verse." Instead, believers ought always to read a Bible verse within its immediate context and to understand it through the clarifying and qualifying lens of that context. Sometimes, this means reading two or three paragraphs before the verse and the same after the verse in order to properly grasp its meaning. At other times, even larger portions of surrounding context are required to get at the correct interpretation of a single verse. And at whatever interpretation one arrives, it must be aligned with the whole of the rest of God's word, not contradicted by it.

But, too often these days, in the midst of the highly individual-centered relativism that has blanketed the globe, Christians are succumbing to the notion that the Bible ought to reflect their understanding, their preferences; that they can mold and shape Scripture to suit themselves, rather than the other way 'round. As a result, God's word is bent to conform to their personal experience and thinking in whatever degree is desired. To this end, believers have adopted the practice of lifting verses (and single words or phrases) out of their context and stuffing into them whatever preconceived notions they like. The result is often a wildly-contorted interpretation of what the verse or word means and how it ought to apply to the believer's life.

In defense of this practice of eisegesis - reading into Scripture what isn't there, rather than drawing out of Scripture what is - believers resort to the claim that they are merely "being led of the Spirit" to the interpretations they draw from the Bible. They try to insulate their wild contortions of God's truth from criticism in this way, making their contortion of Scripture the Spirit's fault, essentially. Will the critics of the Bible contortionists say the Spirit has got it wrong? They have only to follow the Spirit as well as they, the contortionists, have done to see the "mystery" and "hidden truth" they have uncovered.

By this slippery, rhetorical maneuvering, appealing - wrongly - to the Spirit's illumination of the believer to God's truth, these abusers of Scripture squirm free of giving any sort of reasonable justification for their twisting of the meaning of God's word. Worse, their conclusions concerning Scripture are many times nonsensical and contradictory, tangled in their logic, but argued for being so under the assertion that "God's ways are higher than our ways," which is supposed to mean that the Spirit will teach us crazy, contradictory, bizarre things - but that are so only from our limited human perspective. If we could see these weird, irrational "truths" from God's side, the argument goes, we'd see they make perfect sense. This implies, of course, that the Laws of Logic that God has given to us and the capacity to Reason He has instilled in us can - and, perhaps, should - be thrown off in pursuit of "deeper truth." Logic and Reason are, in the estimation of Scripture contortionists, actually viewed as hindrances - even enemies - to truth when it comes to God's "higher ways," rather than assets. Amazing! And terribly dangerous.

It isn't, though, that Logic and Reason are always abandoned entirely. Even the wildest conjecture in which Scripture contortionists indulge relies in some way upon a line of reasoning. If it didn't, their statements about divine truth would be utterly incoherent, a meaningless "word salad." Claiming "Spirit-guidance" allows, however, for the very worst sort of reasoning and the very loosest application of logic.

The real heart of the matter seems to me to be that Scripture contortionists don't want to do the hard work of careful study; they want to be able to simply flit through God's word, an interpretive "butterfly" landing on the "branch" of one verse, then bobbing and dancing to another, and then another, making whatever connections between these branches they feel "led" to make, easy and careless in doing so.

There is also an entrenched resistance among Scripture contortionists to the idea that someone who has studied the Bible for 50 or 60 years, or longer, will have insight into, and knowledge of, God's truth inaccessible to the contortionist who has, say, only a single decade of time with God and His word. It rankles the Scripture contortionist that they might have to endure the same length of study and experience before they can speak at the same level as the believer who has many decades of walking with God and an expansive knowledge of the Bible under their belt. It bruises the Scripture contortionist's pride that they might have to defer in any way to believers senior to themselves in the faith. Out of this pride comes an unteachableness and defiance that leads the Scripture contortionist into an ignorant, unskilled, and God-resisted "investigation" of His word. (James 4:6; 1 Peter 5:5)

It's bad enough that Scripture contortionists handle God's word in this way, but these abusers of Scripture often propose to teach fellow believers the nonsense they have constructed out of their eisegetical deformities of the Bible. They sell their "deeper truth" to others by statements like, "Never before has this truth been revealed," or "very few have ever understood this," or "God has given me 'special knowledge' you need to hear." Beware! The blind always lead the blind into the ditch of falsehood and spiritual catastrophe! (Matthew 15:14)

Small changes to language make a huge difference to meaning. Consider the following two statements:

"Let's eat, Grandma!"

"Let's eat Grandma!"

The removal of the comma in the first sentence totally changes the meaning of the second, doesn't it? This is much more the case when context is ignored. Consider:

Ephesians 2:1
1 And you were dead in your trespasses and sins,

Colossians 3:3
3 For you are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.

Removed from their contexts, it could be argued that these verses are talking about the same "deadness." They both use the word "dead," right? This links the verses, then, yes? Same word, same meaning. Simple. So, then, the first verse says the believer was dead in trespasses and sins and the second verse says the believer still is dead. The second verse also says that the "sin-dead" believer's life is hidden with Christ in God. Therefore, although the believer is "dead in sin," their life is protected - hidden - in God Himself. That's a relief, eh? Even though the believer is "dead in trespasses and sins," even though they have a life full of sinfulness that makes them dead, they're okay because at the same time, their life is hidden with Christ in God! This "deadness" must refer to physical death because, however good or bad, everybody dies physically, which explains how a believer is dead (that is, they will one day die physically) but have a life (spiritually, of course) that is protected by God. But the verse from Colossians seems to imply that being "dead" is necessary to being "hid with Christ in God. In the verse, being dead comes before life hid in Christ, right? That would mean, then, that the sin and trespasses that cause being dead have to be in the believer's life. What a deep truth! It turns out sin is important to the believer's life. They can't be hidden in Christ if they aren't dead first! Wow! So, believer's ought to make sure there is sin in their life so they can then be hidden in Christ. Sin isn't the enemy but a necessary part of Christian living! I don't think anyone has ever seen this before! What amazing truth the Spirit has revealed to me!

Are you getting a headache yet?

In reality, the two verses taken, in context, are talking about completely different kinds of being "dead." The first speaks of the state of spiritual deadness of a person before they're saved. The second, refers to the condition of being dead to sin through new life in Jesus Christ which is the necessary effect of salvation. I can, in later posts, explain this in detail, if readers so desire. My point in the above distortion of the two verses cited is to show how, when context is thrown off and sound reasoning and constraints of logic are cast aside, interpreting God's word can quickly lead to catastrophic, even heretical, results.

One other thing: The more obscure the language that a person uses to explain God's truth, the more stilted, and arcane, and convoluted the phrasing of things, the warier you should be of what is shared. Generally, this unnatural form of communication, this high-sounding style of speech that would be foreign to the person's common way of speaking, is a BIG tip-off that nonsense is likely issuing forth. I'm not talking about terms, mind you - justification, sanctification, atonement, ordo salutis, aseity, omniscience, dispensationalism, etc - but about manner. If you can't penetrate through the way something is shared, if the style of phrasing is defeating your comprehension, look for a different source of truth.

Anyway, never read a Bible verse. Always read a Bible verse in its context. The further removed from its context a verse is, the less truth it will hold.

Aiki, this is so deeply and beautifully written. I have studied the Bible for many years but never appreciated it more until I slowed down and moved through it with help. Your wise and wonderful words will linger with me from now on. Thank you for giving so much in your remarkable writing. I will be on the watch for more of your inspiring thoughs! God Bless you!