Means to Me

Means to Me:

If you’ve never heard the parable of the king and the elephant you should look into it.  It is a great tool for teaching the danger of subjectivity.

Oswald Chambers noted, "The greatest blessing spiritually is the knowledge that we are destitute; until we get there Our Lord is powerless."  I have great respect for Oswald Chambers, and understand where Oswald is coming from, but he is wrong on both counts.

“While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

-Romans 5:8b

The greatest spiritual blessing is not the knowledge of our being destitute, depraved, and lacking any & all ability to resolve our inherently universal sin-problem. The greatest spiritual blessing is the gift of faith in the midst of our depravity-epiphany, and subsequently being grafted into the FAMILY of God.

Our LORD is eternally the Almighty and there is a no propriety or accuracy in equating God’s abstinence with some cockamamie notion of divine impotence.

One of the biggest fails of the contemporary Christian is our subjective approach to God’s Word, i.e. The Bible.  When we fail to grasp the Author’s original intended meaning – we end up with some bizarre, strange, perverse, deviant, harmful, and even heretical or ruinous beliefs.

In my many years of teaching Sunday School I’ve heard this misguided statement countless times, “Well, what that means to me is…”  When we reduce the objective truth of God’s Word to our personal experience and understanding then subjectivity runs amuck, and the consequence is ruinous.

Proverbs 1:7 tells us, “The fear of the LORD is the foundation of true knowledge, wisdom, and understanding, but fools despise all this.”  Many equate this “fear” as our awe and reverence for God, but this is not Scripture’s position.  In Psalm 19 the Psalmist equates the “fear of the LORD” with God’s revelation – both general revelation (i.e. nature, the heavens, etc.) and special revelation (i.e. The Bible). In addition to nature, which declares, pours out, communicates, and heralds “the glory of God” (v.1); beginning in 19:7 the Psalmist EQUATES special revelation, i.e. God’s written instruction (v.7), testimony (v.7), precepts (v.8), commands (v.8), and ordinances (v.9), with “the Fear of the LORD” (v.9).

The critical significance here is that our correct approach to God’s Word, i.e. His instruction, testimony, precepts, commands, decrees, ordinances, etc., is the very “foundation of true knowledge, wisdom, and understanding, but fools despise all this.” When we cheapen, diminish, deteriorate, and acquiesce to our own subjective understanding “Well, what this means to me is…” rather than prayerfully and desperately seeking the Author’s (God) intended meaning – then we become the fool who demonstrates scorn, enmity, antagonism, contempt, and bitterness for God.

Consider this: Theology is not how humanity sees God – that’s religious philosophy – but rather our understanding of how God sees God.  When is the last time you read your Bible through the lens of active, invested, baptized membership in your local church and NOT as an individual?  Every book of the Bible was written for the people of God – not individual Christians.

Virtually every letter that the Apostle Paul wrote was to the Church (Romans, Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, etc.).  Even the letters that Paul wrote to individuals were written for the benefit of the Church – not the individual recipient (Timothy, Philemon, Titus).  Paul wrote to the church in Philippi to let them (the congregation as a collective – not individuals) know that the same God who blessed them individually with the gift of faith in Christ would see that blessing reach mature completeness, i.e. unity as the people of God invested in the Mission of God for the glory of God…

“And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you (plural) will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil 1:6).

This was not written to you as an individual believer regarding your eternal security and residence in heaven.  It was written to the people of God by God (through Paul) for us to understand how God sees things.  When we realize that essential and foundational perspective shift and approach to God’s Word (from individual subjectivity to objective truth) everything changes.

Will you invite and allow God to show you how He sees Himself through His Word – or – will you continue as the fool of Proverbs 1:7 who despises knowledge, wisdom, and understanding (thus God) and confidently utters, “Well, what this means to me is…”

Blessings,

-Kevin