A few years back I quoted what Jesus said to His disciples, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6). And a man spoke up and said, “But that is just your interpretation.” There is the idea in the unsaved world and in the Christian world that it is okay take a verse in the Bible and interpret it to mean anything we want it to mean. Or that we can take a verse in the Bible and say that it means something to you and another thing to me. But I wonder how long most pilots would live if we approached flying a plane in the same manner? And how much trouble we would get into if we used the labels on how to use a chemical in this same interpretive manner! Or if we used an overhaul manual for an engine in such a hap-hazard manner! Isn’t it necessary for us to use the same logical sense in reading and understanding the Bible as we do in understanding how to fly a plane or helicopter and how we use a chemical that is made for a specific purpose, or how to understand the overhaul manual for an engine?
It has been said, that if you preach on a verse of Scripture for more than 15 minutes you will get into heresy—false teaching. And I believe that there is a lot of truth in that saying. Almost all of the heresies that have troubled the church throughout its long history have arisen because men and women have forgotten the simple principle of teaching and learning the Bible in its context and used a verse of Scripture out of its context and formed a doctrine on it. Many cults have originated because of this very thing. I am always amazed when I hear someone say, “The answer to all the world’s problems is in the Ten Commandments.” And in a sense that is true, but the Ten Commandments have been around for thousands of years and the world has gotten worse. The problem is the human sin nature that we inherited from Adam and Eve; it is impossible for humans to keep the Ten Commandments in thought, motive and action.
Many Bible teachers and pastors seem to teach almost totally of what God has done for humanity, others get stuck on practical human living for God. When this happens the Christians that are being taught will become one-sided on their Christian beliefs. There are those Christians who believe that we don’t have to witness to people about Jesus Christ because God has already chosen everyone that is going to be saved. And then there are those Christians who believe that if they don’t witness to people they may inadvertently send someone to hell. But both of these schools of thought are not biblically correct. Jesus told us to witness for Him in both word and action and no one is going to hell because you or I didn’t witness to him/her. God will use someone else and we will miss the blessing. Spiritually immature Christians have caused a lot of problems for the church.
It is a common mistake for Bible teachers to use the Old Testament Laws to dictate how a Christian is to go to church, how to give to the church, or how to dress and what to eat. There are over 600 laws in the Old Testament and too many people have decided to pick and choose the laws that they think are the most important, or the laws that they think everyone should keep and then install them into their church doctrine. What they end up with is a list of self-righteous rules that they, nor anyone else, can keep. When the church leaders in Jerusalem wanted to force Christians to keep the Law of Moses Peter told them, “Why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of the disciples a yoke that neither we nor our fathers have been able to bear?” (For context read all of Acts 15). John wrote, “For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (John 1:17).
I know that there are places in the Bible where we have to make interpreting decisions. And I believe that there are verses in the Bible that we will not know what they totally mean this side of heaven. But that does not give us a license to use any verse in the Bible any way we want to. There are several places in the Bible where I don’t know exactly what is being said. I read commentaries and listen to other Bible teachers to enlarge my knowledge of the Bible (No one knows it all). Sometimes I agree with them and sometimes I don’t, but that doesn’t necessarily make either of us right or wrong. I do know that it is false teaching to teach that anyone has to join a church, a denomination, or any religious organization to go to God’s heaven. All humans are natural born sinners destined for hell; our works don’t send us to hell and our works can’t save us from hell. “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God” (Ephesians 2:8).
It is important that we read a book of the Bible from the beginning to the end and in that way we can learn it in its context. If colleges taught their students in the same manner that many preachers teach the Bible, the students would never learn enough to graduate. If I taught you how to fly a plane in the same hop, skip and jump manner that some preachers teach the Bible, then you would never learn to fly a plane properly. One of the most dangerous things a young Christian can do is to take verses from the Bible and look at them by themselves without ever considering the context that they were written in—we need to be very careful about isolating a Bible verse. That is the reason that Paul used the word “therefore” or “because of” so often in his writings. I cannot overemphasize how important it is to read and study the Bible in its context—it is the only way to spiritual growth.