44. Misunderstandings and Perversions
Misunderstandings and Perversions
Chapter 43 The tenacity with which erroneous views continue to be held is often greater than the persistence shown in maintaining truth. Misconceptions, often corrected, reappear with surprising vitality, and perversions of scripture exhibit a perseverance of survival which can be best accounted for by diabolical malice. Hence the preeminent need of getting correct and consistent views of scripture, distrusting any view of any passage not in harmony with the general tenor of the inspired Word. The first aim of Bible Study is to get at the true mind of God. When it is said that David put the Ammonites “under saws, harrows and axes, and made them pass through the brick kiln” (2 Samuel 12:31), it does not mean that he cut them up or burned them up, but put them to certain forms of labor. When Jehovah is said to be a “jealous God,” no mean, malicious feeling is ascribed to Him, but only His desire and determination not to allow His worship to be corrupted by idolatry or His people’s devotion to Him to be shared with rival deities (Exodus 20). When our Lord declares that He “came not to send peace but a sword,” and to set even parents and children at variance (Matthew 10:34-36), we are not to understand this as the motive and design, but as the consequence and result of His mission.
It is a mistake to infer from the use of past and present tenses in Isaiah 53 : “He is despised and rejected of men;” “He was cut off out of the land of the living,” etc., that this refers to some servant of God, then living, or who had already died. This is to overlook the fact that there are prophetic tenses; and that one way that prediction shows its divine character is that it speaks of future events with the same air of certainty as if already accomplished. It is the assurance of omniscience that foretells and omnipotence that will surely accomplish.
Italicized words, which indicate what is supplied by translators, to make the sense clear, sometimes not only obscure it, but introduce foreign conceptions. Some scholars boldly take the position that all such supplied words are a needless and unwarranted addition; that where the original plainly implies them they need not be italicized; and, where it does not, they should be omitted. Where God’s Spirit leaves a blank, we may only at risk, attempt to fill it. In Acts 2:41; Acts 2:47, we are told how converts were added—translators have supplied “unto them,” and “to the church,” which latter is not authorized by very few manuscripts. The inspired phrase found later on, “added to the Lord” (Acts 5:14), suggests that the meaning may be in all cases—added to Himself as disciples—a possible hint of the vast difference between divine converts and human proselytes (Matthew 23:15). When man adds converts they are often his own followers or adherents of his sect; they imitate their teacher and leader, reflecting even his vices, and are like Corinthian schismatics who boasted, “I am of Paul,” “I of Apollos,” “I of Cephas.” But when God adds to Himself the bond cannot be too close and involves no risk.
Much misunderstanding invests that whole teaching of 1 John 2:29 to 1 John 3:10. This is often taken to mean that the commission of any sin invalidates all claim to sonship! To this we have referred, but it needs more emphasis. This is obviously a total misconception, as appears from three points of view.
1. The affirmation of incapacity to sin is made of “whatsoever is born of God”—that is so much of the disciple as constitutes the divine nature in him—whatever in us does sin it cannot be what is born of God and is His seed.
2. The sinning referred to is a continuous and habitual sinning, not an occasional lapse into sin. He that is born of God does not go on sinning—the tense is a continuous present—he cannot go on in sin, because he is born of God; if he does he is a child of the Devil, who goes on sinning from the beginning.
3. The inspired writer himself acknowledges that a regenerate disciple may sin and points to the provision for such lapses into sin, in the atonement of the heavenly Propitiation and the advocacy of the heavenly Paraclete. While he writes to disciples so that they may not go on sinning, if any do sin, he reminds them of the perfect provision made for such failures (1 John 2:1-2).
How shocking the perversion of Predestination and Election to blank Fatalism! God would encourage man in coming to Him by first coming to man; in choosing Him by first Himself choosing man; in depending upon Him by assuring him that He will keep him in such dependence. The practical truth of Election is that, in every step and stage of Salvation it is God who leads the way and makes all the advances. He sought the lost sheep till He found him and then laid him on His shoulders and bore him to the fold. Instead of making us feel helpless and hopeless, Predestination should stimulate us to action and advance by the assurance of His omnipotence beneath and behind our impotence. We should learn to spell “persevere” out of “preserve”—where the same letters are found, and to “keep ourselves in the love of God,” by the confidence that He is “able to keep us even from stumbling.” To lie back supinely in unbelief and apathy, saying “if I am to be saved I will be;” or, because “God must do all,” is not only a shameful perversion of Scripture doctrine, but it is worthy only of an idiot or incurable fool, and is often a mark either of voluntary rebellion or hopeless folly. The statement in James 2:17-26, that Faith cannot justify, without works—is grossly misunderstood to mean that works are necessary to justification in God’s sight—a doctrine so diametrically opposed to the Spirit’s teaching in Romans 3; Romans 4; Romans , 5, as to seem to some irreconcilable. But we have seen elsewhere how this conflict is avoided. The sinner is justified before God upon the sole ground of faith. Works do not help, but hinder, for they become a basis of supposed merit or desert. The believer should however be, as such, justified before the world, and it is by works of love that the life of faith is indicated and vindicated in the sight of men, the fruit showing the tree to be alive and growing. In one case the question is, how is a sinner saved? By believing. In the other the question is, how is a believer to prove his faith? By bringing forth its proper fruits. The word justify here is used, not of making righteous, but of defending oneself against accusation by proving it groundless; after I am justified by faith god-ward, I am to justify my faith, man-ward.
Few perversions are more serious than that of the so-called Kenosis (Php 2:7). “He made Himself of no reputation”—literally, “He emptied Himself”—is taken by some to mean that in some strange way our Lord laid aside not the externals of His glory and rank only, but so divested Himself of omnipotence, omniscience, as to become liable to infirmities of weakness and errors of ignorance, like other men. This is resorted to as an apology for His supposed mistakes in His teaching. If a rationalistic criticism seeks to invalidate His endorsement of Old Testament history and prophecy, or get rid of any obnoxious utterance, it is easy to say that He reflected the current errors, traditions, and superstitions of His day!
Such concessions involve us in perplexities far greater than any they solve. They leave us without any infallible Teacher. Here a solitary sentence and a single word is assumed as a sufficient basis for impugning the whole final and decisive authority of the Son of God, and the more positive His teaching the easier to evade its emphasis by making it one of the examples of the Kenosis! Without attempting to enter into a discussion of this mischievous and dangerous theory its importance demands a few words of caution:
1. No sound exposition ever bases an important doctrine on a solitary text, especially when confessedly obscure, and unsupported by other testimony.
2. No being like the Son of God could divest Himself of the very essentials of His personality. He might sacrifice externals, and consent to a humiliation of outward form and condition, but how could He the all-wise become ignorant, and the Infallible, imbibe and teach error?
3. He constantly averred that, however He may have held in suspense His divine nature and attributes for a time, He as a servant, received from the Father both His authority and His message—that what He did He wrought by His power, and that what He spoke, He spoke under His guidance, even to the very words (John 17:8; John 8:26; John 14:10, etc.).
4. If the Epistle to the Philippians teaches the Kenosis or self-emptying, the companion Epistles to the Colossians and Ephesians even more emphatically teach the Pleroma or divine filling. If He emptied Himself therefore it was but the signal for such infinite fullness as defies description. One Epistle must supply a commentary on the other (Ephesians 1:22; Ephesians 4:10; Colossians 2:3; Colossians 2:9). No perversion can well be more ingenious or complete than the wide spread misinterpretation of 1 Corinthians 11:27; 1 Corinthians 11:29. To this day, among the highlanders of Scotland, many believers dare not come to the Lord’s Table from fear of eating and drinking “unworthily,” of being “guilty of the body and blood of the Lord, and so eating and drinking damnation to themselves. No interpretation has ever more overturned both the obvious meaning of the Scripture in this passage or its general teaching throughout. The unworthiness, referred to here, is not the unworthiness of the participant, as a person, but of the participation, as an act—that is, it concerns the intelligent way of commemorating our Lord’s death. The Corinthian church had perverted the Lord’s Supper to a semi-pagan feast, and sometimes a drunken revel, in which its real significance was of course entirely lost sight of, the rich and poor separated instead of being united in fellowship, and instead of profit, damage rather resulting to spiritual life. The table of the Lord became a banquet board and the significance of the bread and cup was lost; there could be no discerning of the Lord’s body and blood in such a Bacchanalian revel, and the whole celebration, instead of being a tribute to His atoning work, became rather a travesty of the solemn tragedy of His death. The word “damnation” is absurdly out of place; the meaning is that there could be no divine approval of such conduct, but rather disapproval, no blessing but rather correction and chastisement. Hence, the further admonition in 1 Corinthians 11:30-33, where the Corinthians are warned that such a course only brings spiritual sickness and feebleness and torpor instead of health, growth and service.
How subtle Satan is! If the Lord’s Supper means anything, it is a confession and constant reminder of our absolute dependence upon Another’s death and life, His merit and desert; and the Devil uses this very memorial of such dependence on Him to turn the eye inward in morbid self-examination, to find if possible some ground of self complacency, to justify our approach. The very rite that was meant to rebuke legalism is made to foster it! the very caution meant to help us to come rightly, hindering us from coming at all!