COMMONLY MISUNDERSTOOD BIBLE PASSAGES

 

“There are some things in them [Paul's letters] hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other scriptures. You therefore, beloved, since you are forewarned, beware that you are not carried away with the error of the lawless and lose your own stability.” 2 Peter 3:16b-17

There are several lessons we can derive out of this passage:

    1. It is reassuring to know that even Peter had trouble understanding all of Paul's writings.

    2. This is the first indication we have that the NT writings were starting to be considered as Scripture on an equal footing with the OT.

    3. Note that Peter identifies at least two classes of people who tend to misuse the Bible: (1) the ignorant, who don't know any better and (2) the spiritually unstable and lawless, who should know better. I have been concentrating on this latter group recently in my various "Bible Contradictions" posts. But now I am going to turn to the first class. If I hit a raw nerve in any of my comments, please remember that I am not saying that believers who misuse or misunderstand a particular passage are heretics or that their actions are necessarily done on purpose, just that they are probably mistaken.   

4. But, finally, even the most innocent twisting of Scripture can possibly have grave consequences for those who do it and for those who listen to them and believe it. Therefore, error needs to be pointed out to avoid those consequences.

A. Psalm 121:1-2  Going back a little time in history, the famous agricultural scientist George Washington Carver was also a devout Christian. At one point early in his life he was pondering what to do for a career so he turned to his Bible and opened it up at random to this passage from Psalm 121: “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence comes my help. My help cometh from the LORD, which made heaven and earth.” So he looked at the hills outside, saw a field of peanut plants, and the rest is history. Unfortunately, he was reading in the KJV which has some problems. Why would the Psalmist think that God lives in the hills? That was a pagan concept of the time as evidenced by the prophets ranting and railing against the “high places” where the apostate Jews started to worship.

The problem is one of adding the proper punctuation since there was little to no punctuation in either the early Greek or Hebrew manuscripts. And in this case, even the NKJV realizes that the Hebrew is better rendered this way: “I will lift up my eyes to the hills – from whence comes my help? My help comes from the LORD who made heaven and earth.” The context of this particular psalm is that it is a pilgrimage song sung by those on their way to Jerusalem for one of the feast days. They have to traverse mountainous regions before they reach their goal. They look at the mountains and cry out, “Who will help me?” and the answer is: God. I am personally glad that Carver trusted a faulty translation. Otherwise, we might not have peanut butter today.

B. Revelation 3:20  Well, let's move on to a more recent Christian leader who knew the ins and outs of Scripture quite a bit better -- the founder of Campus Crusade for Christ, Bill Bright. One of his most important insights or innovations, depending on your point of view, was to start with this famous passage, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me.”  Bright applied this verse to evangelizing the lost. The whole concept of letting Jesus into your heart in the Sinner's Prayer and the Four Spiritual Laws is based on this verse. The problem is that taken in its original context at the very end of the letters to the seven churches, this verse is not addressed to non-believers at all. It is a call to us as Christians to let Jesus back into our individual lives and congregations when we have shut him out. Whether Bright's application is a valid extension of what Jesus was saying even if it does depart a bit from the original meaning, I'll leave up to you to decide.

C. I Samuel 13:14   Here is one that I have always misunderstood up to about a year ago and it always 

bothered me. “The LORD has sought out a man [namely David] after his own heart.” That is a literal 

rendering of the Hebrew. Now in English, that particular idiom means a man who thinks the same way 

as another person does; so I always assumed that the Hebrew meaning was the same. That gave me a 

problem because David certainly isn't described as one who acts or thinks like God does. There are 

actually two different understandings of what this phrase means:

    1. “The one chosen by the LORD” (NRSV Study Bible, TEV, NICOT, AB). As Kyle McCarter says, 

“This has nothing to do with any great fondness of Yahweh for David or any special quality of David.”

    2. “A man who will obey God and do what is in God's heart” (Living Bible, Joyce Baldwin). But 

even according to this understanding, “the expression does not seem to be used with reference to a 

person's private or personal moral conduct; rather, it appears to be connected with the official duties of 

the office and the promotion of the worship and service of God from that office.” (Walter Kaiser, 

Toward An OT Ethics, pp. 274-275) This last meaning is the one brought out by Paul in Acts 13:22, 

who adds “Who will carry out all my wishes” (NRSV).

D. Ephesians 2:8-9 “For is is by grace you have been saved through faith; and this (that) is not of 

yourself, it is the gift of God.” (NIV) Most popular teachers assume that the pronoun “this” refers, as it 

does in English, to the last noun mentioned: faith. That fits well into the ultra-Calvinistic idea that God 

chooses whom He gives faith to and those to whom He withholds it. Most translations leave it 

somewhat vague as to what “this” refers to. The problem is, as commentators will point out, the 

pronoun is neuter in gender while grace, salvation and faith are all feminine nouns. So they feel that the 

pronoun must refer instead to the scheme of salvation, the concept of salvation or the whole experience 

of salvation. The Anchor Bible says “It may refer to the eternal election by grace and the 'outpouring' 

of grace mentioned in 1:4-8, and to the preaching of the 'true word, the message that saves' (1:13).” In 

other words, “this” may refer to the whole paragraph rather than to our personal faith.

 

And then there are some uplifting passages suitable for framing, which may not mean exactly what you think they do.

E. Philippians 4:13   “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”Since it has the word “strength” in it, this verse is most often misused in the context of physical strengthening in order to engage in rock climbing, running or other competitive sports activities (Look it up some time on Google Images).

Or it is widely applied to God's wish for all of us to live a completely fulfilled and triumphant life here on earth, with the usual emphasis on ME.

One cartoon makes fun of those misapplications by having a woman say to her husband who is quoting this verse while struggling with a jar lid, “It's a pickle jar, Tom. Twist the lid, not scripture.” Another cartoon I have seen pinpoints the specific problem. As a man leaps to his death attempting to fly, he shouts, “I can do all things.” His watching friend adds, “except read Bible verses in their proper context.” So what is the original context of this teaching? Paul is writing from prison where he says that he is in distress and has barely enough food to eat. Nevertheless, he is confident that God will give him the strength to get by so that he can continue to minister to those around him. Hardly the description of what most people would call a prosperous life lived to the full for selfish ends.

F. Jeremiah 29:11  How about this saying often found on plaques written in pastel and pink that seems to point to the same rosy future for all believers: “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord. Plans to prosper you and not harm you. Plans to give you a hope and a future.” The problem is that these words were addressed to a people defeated by the Babylonians who would soon be forced to leave their homeland, and go in bondage and uncertainty into a foreign land where they would all die without ever returning. The plans for the future referred to the long term future of Israel as a whole, where their children would eventually return from exile. It is a complete error to apply this verse out of context to the belief that God has individual plans for each of us which will clearly be worked out within our lifetime without any harm or distress happening to us in the meanwhile.

G. Revelation 10:6  And then there is the teaching found in the favorite old hymn, “When the Roll is Called Up Yonder.” It says that time itself will cease, as supposedly taught in this verse. At least that is what I was told while growing up. Some Bible commentators have even seen confirmation of this fact in scientific speculation that time is actually slowing down and will eventually stop. That may possibly be true, but is that what the Bible really says? It all stems from a slight rewording and total misunderstanding of the KJV, which says. ““And sware by him that liveth for ever and ever, who created heaven and the things that therein are...that there should be time no longer.” This translation is also followed by a few older or obscure translations: (Douay-Rheims, Geneva Bible, Jubilee Bible, New Matthew Bible and New Testament for Everyone). All other translations render the true meaning as, “There will be no more delay” or “There is no more time for waiting.” But the idea will probably remain in popular Christian culture for some time to come, assuming that time doesn't stop before then.

H. Proverbs 29:18  “Without a vision, the people perish.” It has been attributed on the internet to Ronald Reagan, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Rosa Parks, and even Oprah Winfrey. Of course they were all quoting from Proverbs 29:18. That is why I had to include this priceless quote from Abraham Lincoln: “Don't believe everything you read on the internet just because there's a picture of a famous person with a quote next to it.”

Well, getting back to Proverbs, this is a favorite verse used in church planning meetings to show that we need to start out with a vision statement first. That might be a good idea, but that isn't really what the passage means. All those who use this verse are relying again on an inaccurate KJV translation.

Here is how modern translations render the original Hebrew:

    Where there is no prophecy, the people cast off restraint. RSV, NRSV

    Where there is no revelation, the people cast off restraint. NIV

    Where there is no one in authority, the people break loose. NEB

    Where there is ignorance of God, the people run wild. Living Bible

    A nation without God's guidance is a nation without order. TEV

I.         1. The body as God’s temple (3:16-23)

2. The Corinthians judge the Apostles (4:1-21)

3. Judging immorality in the church (5:1-5)

4. Corinthians’ boasting (5:6-8)

3'. Judging immorality in the church (5:9-13)

2'. The Corinthians go to pagan judges (6:1-8)

1'. The body as God’s temple (6:9-20)

There are two parallel passages found in I Corinthians stating that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. Both of these passages are popularly considered as admonitions to Christians to take good physical care of themselves: avoid excess drinking, smoking, and pill-popping. There is nothing wrong with these teachings, but that isn't really what these two passages are all about.

Let's look at what scholars have to say about I Corinthians 3:16-17: Because the plural form of “you” and “your” appears in these verses, it is almost universally felt by Bible commentators that their intended audience is actually the church, the assembly of believers, rather than each individual believer.

“...since there is only one God, he can have only one temple in Corinth, and they are it. They became that new temple by the fact that 'God's Spirit lives in you.' Most likely Paul meant by this not that the Spirit dwelt in each of them, true as that would be for him, but that the Spirit of God 'lives in your midst.' That is, Paul is here reflecting on the church as the corporate place of God's dwelling...”

                                Gordon D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians

Concerning I Corinthians 6:19, there is slightly more disagreement, but the corporate meaning of body is still stressed by some commentators.

“...the Christian society is the particular sphere in which the Holy Spirit operates...At this point he is trying to impress his readers that they collectively are Christ's body, his physical presence in the world..” Orr and Walther, I Corinthians

“Your body: Paul's words regard the body of every believer, but also the bodies of all the believers together...'your body' implies that the whole of the bodies is a temple of the Holy Spirit.” F. W. Grosheide, The First Epistle to the Corinthians

One very important implication of this proper understanding of “body” in these passages involves the teaching that some people derive from I Corinthians 3:17. Since it contains a threat against anyone who destroys God's temple, it has been said that those who commit suicide obviously fall into that category. But in reality, the curse is directed toward those who through their actions harm the corporate body of Christ, the church and its individual congregations.

J. I Corinthians 11:27-29 Here is another passage from I Corinthians and involving the communion service, in which the meaning of the word “body” is often misunderstood. The main problem in interpretation concerns the ending phrase in which there is a warning against those who do not judge, recognize or discern the body rightly. In the church I grew up in, we applied this to the question of whether children should take communion. If they were too young to really discern that the communion bread stood for Christ's body, then we were afraid that God might condemn them for partaking. Some denominations deal with that concern by limiting communion only to those who have undergone proper training through a catechism course.

Then there are most Christians who would agree with the interpretation that focuses on the proper decorum and seriousness which we should observe while taking communion. Other groups zero in on the self-examination aspect to say that one can't partake of communion unless there has first been a prior confession of the sins in one's life. All of these practices may be important, but are they really the main emphasis of the passage?

What happens when you look at the larger context of these verses? The limits of the whole passage in question are clearly marked by a literary device called an inclusio: the use of similar phrases to start and end a section dealing with one basic issue.

    “I hear that there are divisions among you...When you come together, it is not really to eat the Lord's supper. For when the time comes to eat, each of you goes ahead with your own supper, and one goes hungry and another becomes drunk...you show contempt for the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing...” vv. 18-22

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    “So then, my brothers and sisters, when you come together to eat, wait for one another. If you are hungry, eat at home, so that when you come together, it will not be for your condemnation.” vv. 33-34a

The particular passage in question is sandwiched between these two similar statements that set the tone for the whole section. Paul is telling the Corinthians that if they don't properly consider the whole body of Christ to include the poorer ones in their congregation, but instead treat them as second-class citizens while continuing to partake of the Lord's Supper, then they are eating and drinking judgment on themselves.

Why do we misinterpret these various passages in I Corinthians by applying them almost exclusively to our individual selves instead of their proper emphasis, which is on the Christian community as a whole? The book entitled Misreading Scripture With Western Eyes hits the nail on the head when it explains that we live in an individualistic society where the most important thing in our lives is on reaching our own personal potentials and goals, not on finding our role in building up the corporate temple of God, the body of Christ, the Church.

In addition to the above are some popular sayings that people, even some Christians, think are in the Bible, but actually aren't. Here are three examples:

    1. “God works in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform.” Not in the Bible at all, it is part of a poem by William Cowper.

    2. Here is one that my mother-in-law used to quote: “There is no rest for the weary.” Actually, it is a misquote from two verses in Isaiah which say that there is no rest/peace for the wicked, referring to eternal damnation. “No rest for the weary” actually contradicts a promise of Christ found in Matthew 11:28 which says that there is rest for the weary for those who turn to Him.

    3. Lastly, is the old standby, supposedly misquoted even by Louisa May Alcott, which says that money is the root of all evil, rather than “love of money” as found in 1 Timothy 6:10.