My small group was having a discussion this week about why the writers of the New Testament had to correct so much false doctrine. But as I thought about it, the real issues is why does the church today have so much false teaching present. Looking at the early gentile believers, they didn’t grow up using the Old Testament, nor did they have the New Testament. So they relied on men of God to bring them the word of God. So I could see how easy it would be for them to follow someone who brought false teaching into the church.
But today’s’ church has the complete revelation of God’s word. We have both the Old and New Testaments. We have that which is perfect and complete. So how is it possible for false teaching to invade our church.
Most of the time it’s because people have incorrectly interpreted Scripture or they have allowed something else to supersede Scripture. When you read through the New Testament, this seems to be a major issue in the early church. Mainly because they didn’t have the New Testament yet. So they were relying on people to come to them and speak the Word of God. Words of knowledge, and prophecy.
Today, we have God’s word in its entirety. We don’t need any further special revelation from God. His word is all sufficient for all our needs. Nothing is to be added and nothing is to be taken away. Yet, even with having God’s word, why are so many people following false teaching? The reality is that most people don’t want to take the time to research truth for themselves and spend the needed time in God’s word to fully understand it’s meaning.
“All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right.” 2 Timothy 3:16
God’s word is the most powerful and beneficial thing we can have in this life. I believe with all my heart that “All Scripture” means every verse, every phrase and every word that it contains and it’s all vital to live that life that God desires for us to live. My problem comes when people take God’s word out of context. When they don’t take the time to understand God’s word through proper techniques of hermeneutics. Time should be spent to study the context of the entire book, chapter and even the bible as a whole. There should be a historical and cultural examination that considers the audience that the passage was written to and their culture, along with that of the author. We must perform a complete literary analysis that considers what type of genre it represents. Is it a narrative? Is it prophecy? Is it poetry or apocalyptic? To gain the correct understanding from God’s word, we must know and seek these answers.
Otherwise, we will read a verse like Matthew 19:21 where Jesus said, “If you want to be perfect, go and sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” And out of context, we could say that everyone should sell all our possessions and give their money to the poor in order to be perfect. But that’s not what Jesus is communicating in this passage. Or if he is, I’ve never heard of anyone following it.
So all Scripture is inspired and useful, as long as we apply correct hermeneutical principals to the text.
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