Your Bible Is Not a Better Crystal

The devil quoted Scripture to Jesus. Having a verse was never the test.

If having a Bible verse made you right, Jesus would have jumped off the temple.

The devil had a promise ready. Angels would carry Him. His foot would not strike a stone. He was offering words from a Psalm as the reason Christ should throw Himself down.

He was trying to get Jesus to disobey God with Scripture in His ears.

That should make us a little slower to end an argument by announcing that we have a verse. The devil had one too. Jesus answered him with the Scripture his proposal violated:

Jesus said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.

Matthew 4:7

The promise was real. The demand attached to it was wicked. Quoting God’s words did not turn the demand into God’s will.

We need to understand that before we congratulate ourselves for not believing in crystals.

A person can carry a stone for protection, hoping its presence will keep trouble away. A Christian can develop a similar attachment to a Bible. Keep it close. Read the prescribed amount. Repeat the promise when frightened. Expect the religious routine to protect a decision that has never been submitted to God.

The object has changed. The desire to control the outcome survives.

Your Bible is not a better crystal. You cannot use it to keep God from interfering with your life.

Daily reading is good. Memorizing Scripture is good. The trouble begins when those habits become your answer to a question about something else: how you treated somebody, whether you told the truth, why you refuse to admit what you did.

A finished reading plan does not answer any of those questions.

Consider a husband who reaches for Ephesians 5 whenever his wife questions his conduct. He knows what the chapter says to her. He can explain submission. He can explain authority. But read a few lines farther and the same passage addresses him:

Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it;

Ephesians 5:25

The command asks him to give himself. He cannot use the chapter to make every sacrifice her responsibility. Whatever he believes she needs to change, he still has to answer for how he treated her.

Her commandment remains in the chapter. So does his.

This is no permission to discard a passage because it makes somebody uncomfortable. Scripture has authority over both of them. That is precisely why neither gets to use the other’s duty as an exemption from their own.

Reading in context is dangerous to anyone who only wants God to correct the other person.

That includes the reader already preparing to send this article to somebody else. Before it becomes evidence against them, let it ask something of us.

James writes:

But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.

James 1:22

Notice who gets deceived. The person hearing the word can mistake the hearing for obedience. James then describes a man looking at himself in a mirror, leaving, and forgetting what he saw. There was nothing wrong with the mirror. The man walked away unchanged.

We can finish a chapter, feel serious about God, and leave the actual demand sitting on the page.

When did you last let a passage settle an argument against you?

Take the verse you reach for when somebody challenges you. Write down what it says. Underneath it, write down what you think it gives you permission to do.

Those are two separate statements. Read the surrounding passage and check whether the second actually follows from the first. Identify who is being addressed, what is being promised or commanded, and what you supplied yourself.

At the temple, the promise concerned God’s protection. The proposed jump came from the devil. That gap is where the temptation lived.

You can use that test on an explanation from a pulpit, a post, or a book. You can use it on mine.

One of the free samples from 100 Plain Questions About the Bible asks how to read a verse without a commentary sitting on top of it. It puts the full verse before the short answer. Read them together and check whether the answer follows from the text. You get to examine the work before deciding whether the rest of the guide would help.

Two complete questions are available to read free, without signing up. If they help, the full guide includes the print PDF, phone PDF, and EPUB. Choose any amount from $5; $25 is suggested. Every amount gets the same three files, and your purchase supports this publishing work. If you already own it or were promised it through the fundraiser, you do not need to buy it again.

Read the two free questions from 100 Plain Questions About the Bible.

Then bring the same scrutiny back to the passage you have been using to defend yourself. You can admit that you were wrong. You can repent without finding a verse that makes the wrong thing right.

Leave the Bible open long enough to read the part that addresses you.

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