I Thessalonians 5:23,24 – “Blessed Assurance”

As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

²³May the God of peace Himself sanctify you [to be] complete, and may [the] whole of you – the spirit and the soul and the body – be kept blamelessly in the Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. ²⁴The One calling you [is] faithful, who will also accomplish it.

One last thought before I leave these two verses. I want to pause and think about v24, “The One calling you [is] faithful, who will also accomplish it.”

Faithful. The faithfulness of God. Great is Thy faithfulness.

It’s easy to read those words, to say them, to even sing them, yet not stop to ponder their enormity. I think perhaps early in my Christian life, I thought it really was all about my faithfulness. Somehow God was just there and I was over here trying to somehow become this faithful follower of Jesus. The big battle was whether I would or would not be faithful today, or even in knowing what that meant today. Of course I failed miserably.

But as I have studied the Bible and struggled through the issues of life, I have come more and more to see that it’s all about Him. The big issue in my life is not whether I am or have been or will be faithful. The big issue is that He is. Ah, Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine.

One of the verses that helped me the most to finally turn the corner was Psalm 112:7, “A good man will have no fear of bad news; his heart is steadfast, confident in the Lord.” “Confident in the Lord.”

“Confident in the Lord.” “The One calling you [is] faithful, who will also accomplish it.”

Our good God is wisely, kindly, and omnipotently ruling this world in which we live. He was for all the thousands of years before I was born and He will continue long after I’m gone. I’m alive today not because anything is really “up to me,” but because He has a great eternal plan and at least for today has allowed me to be a part of it. He will succeed whether I do or not.

Truly knowing Him, being confident in Him, brings to my world peace. It brings quiet and confidence. It brings the completeness of knowing “All is well.” And in that peace, I can truly love and be kind and even … be faithful. As I go out to my work today, I don’t know what I’ll face. I don’t know what will go “wrong.” I don’t know what people will say, what they will expect, how they’ll treat me. I know already I’ll find it physically challenging – the older I get the less and less energy I have to deal with it all. Most of the time I really don’t even find myself smart enough. Most of the time my job calls for someone far more clever than me. So, given all of that, what am I to do? Go. How? Confident in the Lord. I just need to go, confident in Him. It’s true I don’t know. It’s true I’m barely able physically. It’s true I’m not clever enough. But He is. And He will help me. So I can. I can go in peace. I can love. I can be faithful. Because He is.

I might die. But “My times are in His hands.” I honestly can say I just hope I die confident in Him. Whatever that means, when it means it.

I am so thankful for Jesus, for this saving, redeeming God who not only rescues us from hell, but gives us peace.

I so wish the whole world could realize how wonderful He is, what it’s like to live in a world ruled by my kind, wise Father. To live in peace.

I’m so thankful that we can live all day every day in this blessed assurance.

“The One calling you [is] faithful, who will also accomplish it.”

I Thessalonians 5:23,24 – “The Agent”

As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

²³May the God of peace Himself sanctify you [to be] complete, and may [the] whole of you – the spirit and the soul and the body – be kept blamelessly in the Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. ²⁴The One calling you [is] faithful, who will also accomplish it.

The translation of verse 23 is very odd to me. Most translations make “complete” into an adverb, so it becomes some variation of “completely.” This is odd to me because it is an adjective, and clearly not an adverb. Even A.T. Robertson says it is a predicate adjective and specifically not an adverb, but then says it has “the force of an adverb” (whatever that means). Then, later in the verse, most translations make the adverb “blamelessly” into an adjective, “blameless.” It seems really odd to me that we can just (seemingly arbitrarily) translate an adjective as an adverb, then turn around a phrase or two later and translate an adverb as an adjective.

Most likely anyone who has stumbled across this post, at this point thinks I am quibbling over completely irrelevant details. To such persons I have to say, my first task in Bible study is to try to determine as certainly as possible what the Bible says (and what it does not say). These are the very words of God and personally I want to be as careful as possible to translate them accurately. Whether or not we’re being “sanctified completely” or “sanctified [to be] complete” are perhaps very similar, yet still different in meaning. Similarly, whether we are “kept blameless” or “kept blamelessly” are two similar but yet different thoughts. And again, my first concern is to be sure I really do understand what the Lord is saying. It may turn out that practically speaking it makes little difference, but I don’t know that yet. I do not believe I am quibbling over irrelevant details.

Second of all, I want to acknowledge that pretty much everything I will say in this post I’m saying on precariously thin ice. I’m always reminded of John Eadie’s warning, “Interpretations are generally false in proportion to their ingenuity.” Apparently most of the world’s scholars seem to think this juxtaposition of adjectives and adverbs is not only reasonable but also called for in this passage. It is perhaps reckless and even arrogant for a neophyte like myself to question them and even more so to contradict them. My problem is that in my studies not one of them offered any defensible explanation for this juxtaposing of the adjectives and adverbs. It was rare to find anyone who even noticed the difference – which is scary coming from men who are writing commentaries on the Word of God and who, for the most part I am sure were capable of careful exegesis. It makes one wonder how closely they really looked at the text. On my part, if I’m wrong, all I need is someone to show me clearly why, and I would be very happy to learn something which I obviously don’t know. But until they do, I see no reason to depart from the simple truth that adjectives are adjectives, adverbs are adverbs, and that they should be translated accordingly.

In my translation offered above, I have tried to maintain this grammatical consistency.

And, although humbly (I hope) aware of John Eadie’s warning, this is where I head off on “my own.”  I think it is a very different thing whether we are “sanctified completely” (adverb) or “sanctified [to be] complete” (predicate adjective). The focus of the adjective isn’t so much on the process as on the accomplishment of it. God doesn’t just sanctify us completely, but He sanctifies us because His goal is for us to be complete. Here again I hearken back to the Jewish concept of peace, which is precisely this – the idea of things being “complete.” Our God is a redeeming God. In a sense, the entire work of salvation is about redemption, it is about God through Christ and in the power of His Spirit, picking up His broken creation and making it complete again. Even as an unregenerate man, we all are made in the image of God. All of us. But like our image in a broken mirror, the pieces are out of place and even missing. God’s great eternal goal is to pick us up, put all the pieces back together, and make us complete again. That will be peace. Because He is the God of peace. Because He is a Redeemer.

And then I personally think it is interesting that in the latter half of the verse Paul is praying not that we should be “kept blameless,” but that we should be kept “blamelessly.” Even as I myself read the words, the “kept blamelessly” just doesn’t settle well in my brain – but as I said above, I am trying to translate accurately and it is what it is. It is very awkward to me too when we add the prepositional phrase “in the Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Maybe I’m just plain wrong, but it is also possible that this is just another case where, in the ancient world, they simply didn’t think like us.

I guess what I have to say is that for me personally, retaining the adverbial “blamelessly” really emphasizes the agent here. Who is doing the “keeping?” It certainly isn’t us, since the verb is a passive – the passive makes it very definite that we are being “kept.” Although we of course already know the answer to this question, verse 24 leaves no doubt who’s doing the keeping: “The One calling you [is] faithful, who will also accomplish it.” Of course God is the active agent here and we are those being kept. We will in fact be kept and we will be kept blamelessly. The focus is not on us – whether we are “blameless” but on the God who keeps us and who does it blamelessly. This is even emphasized by the opening words, May the God of peace Himself …” The “Himself” is a reflexive pronoun and, in the Greek, it is the very first word of the verse.

As verse 24 assures us, God is faithful and He will accomplish it – He will accomplish this sanctifying of us to be whole and keeping us blamelessly.

Verses 12 to 22 have set a pretty high bar for all of us. Reading a whole series of admonitions like “Be joyful always,” a legalist would have good reason to despair. But Paul’s prayer reminds us that while the Christian’s call is in fact a high calling, it is God’s faithfulness, not ours, that is our hope. “He who begun a good work will complete it” (Phil 1:6). He is the God who “is able to keep you from falling and to present you before His glorious presence without fault and with great joy” (Jude 24)

I would like to suggest that, by keeping our grammar precise, we particularly keep the focus on the Lord as the active agent. Paul isn’t so much praying that the people would do all these things, but rather committing them to the God who can and will accomplish it. That is what grace does. The Law says to us, “Do this and live.” Grace says, “Live! And do this.” Sure He wants us to do it, but, as we know Him and walk with Him, we find whatever success we enjoy we are keenly aware it was Him and not us that accomplished it. To be “better” I need to know Him better. “Beholding His image, we are changed into that image.”

He is our Hope.

I Thessalonians 5:23,24 – “The God of Peace”

As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

²³May He, the God of peace, sanctify you [to be] complete, and may [the] whole of you – the spirit and the soul and the body – be kept blamelessly in the Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. ²⁴The One calling you [is] faithful, who will also accomplish it.

As soon as I started studying these two verses I was intrigued by Paul’s reference to the Lord specifically as “the God of peace.” This is probably a place where we really see the Jewish concept of peace shine out. At least for us Americans, we think of “peace” only as the absence of conflict. We think, for instance, in a war, there is “peace” when no one is shooting. In our lives, “peace” is when everyone else “leaves us alone.” But the Jewish concept of peace is much, much larger than that. It is more the idea of “completion,” of everything being in its place, everything being as it should – our family healthy, the crops growing, the house solid and watertight. That is the concept of the Hebrew word “shalom,” which is translated as “eirene” in Greek (as here) and “peace” in English. (Yes, in Greek it is “eirene,” which becomes our girl’s name Eirene in English).

I haven’t studied enough to know for sure exactly what was the Greek concept of “peace”, but I note in Greek:English dictionaries they define it about the way we would. What’s important here though is that even if Paul is writing in Greek, he has a Jewish mind. As is the case with all the Biblical writers, we have Jewish men writing whether they express their thoughts in Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek. No matter which language they’re writing in, they’re thinking like a Jew. I would suggest that is specifically why Paul calls Him “the God of peace” when he wants to express this prayer that we should be sanctified “completely” and that “the whole of us” be kept blamelessly. The One who provides completeness is “the God of peace.”

I want to pause and ponder on this name “the God of peace.”

Even a cursory perusal of the Bible would tell us the concept of peace is enormously important to God. Scanning a concordance, it is almost surprising how often the Bible refers to peace. In many of the NT epistles, He is called “the God of peace” as in II Cor 13:11, “the God of love and peace will be with you,” or as in Heb 13:20, “Now may the God of peace …” There are many, many such references. Of course we have Jesus’ words, “Peace I leave with you; My peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid … I have told you these things, so that in Me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (John 14:27 & 16:33).

Of course we also have the glorious passage of Phil 4:4-9, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus ... think on these things, and the God of peace will be with you.” We can add to this many, many OT references to peace. In Psalm 4:8, David says confidently, “I will both lay me down in peace and sleep, for Thou Lord only makest me dwell in safety,” and in 119:165 he assures us “Great peace have them that love Thy Law.” The book of Proverbs would have us know of wisdom that “Her ways are pleasant ways, and all her paths are peace” (3:17).

Isaiah is, of course full of very familiar and comforting references to peace:

“You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You” (26:3).

“The work of righteousness will be peace, and the effect of righteousness, quietness and confidence forever” (32:17).

“All your children shall be taught by the Lord, and great shall be your children’s peace” (54:13).

“‘Peace, peace to him who is far and him who is near,’ says the Lord, ‘And I will heal him.’ But the wicked are not so. They are like the troubled sea, which cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt. ‘There is no peace,’ says my God, ‘for the wicked’” (57:19-21).

When Jesus was coming into the world, the angels’ message was “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men” (Luke 2:14), and when the risen Jesus appeared to His disciples He greeted them, “Peace be with you!” (John 20:19).

Of course, we all know “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, and peace …” (Gal 5:22).

Even in the Old Testament and under the Law, the Aaronic Benediction was:

“The Lord bless you and keep you.

The Lord make His face shine upon you

and be gracious to you.

The Lord lift up His countenance upon you

            and give you peace”

 (Numbers 6:24-26).

The true and the living God is “the God of peace.”

Whether we wish to admit it or not, we humans live troubled lives. We attempt every sort of scheme and imagination trying to somehow find peace for our lives, but what we need is the God of peace. Jesus wants to step into the raging storm of our lives and say, “Peace, be still.” If we’ll let Him, He brings with Him a “great calm.” He is the Prince of Peace and He and He alone can bring real peace to our lives and to our world. And, as we noted above, this peace is not just the absence of conflict; it is the comfort of a completed world, a world where the parts and pieces are all there and in their proper place. To know that peace, we need in the very center of our hearts and lives the God of peace.

And isn’t it sad that the whole world, it would seem, sees Him not as the God of peace? They see Him as many things – the Great Rule-Giver, the Cosmic Kill-Joy, the capricious God who expects too much and throws lightning bolts at everyone who fails. In American churches, He is the God whose service means you have to live a frantic life of endless busy-ness. And yet through it all, His voice is calling, “Peace, peace, to him that is far and him that is near.” Oh, that we would all stop listening to all the other voices screaming in our ears and whispering, whispering, whispering in our hearts; that we would pause and listen to Him, that we would pause and let Him speak peace to us, that we would welcome Him into our lives and let Him bring His peace.

He is “the God of peace.”

“Peace be unto you.”

I Thessalonians 5:19-22 – “How Should We Then Live?”

As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

¹⁹Do not be quenching the Spirit. ²⁰Do not be despising prophecies. ²¹Examine everything. Retain the good. ²²Disassociate [yourself] from every kind of evil.

As I related in the last post, I believe these three verses form a single telic unit. Paul’s basic thought is mirrored in Luke’s description of the Bereans, saying they were “more noble than the Thessalonians, for they received the Word with all readiness of mind, and searched the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so.” The basic admonition here is that we should take seriously the Holy Spirit’s work of bringing us the Word, that we should neither disdain nor make light of any preaching or teaching we hear, but then that we should make it our habit to be personally examining those teachings and only holding on to that which is truly Scriptural.

Isn’t it interesting that our admonition is in a letter to the Thessalonians, while in Acts, Luke specifically tells us this was apparently a weakness of theirs – that this is exactly what they did not do as well as the Bereans! They needed an admonition to take the Word more seriously, which is exactly what we’re finding here in vv.19-22.

I would sadly suggest this problem is pervasive today. I have known very few people in my life who really took the Bible seriously. Again, I say this sadly, and I hope humbly, but I fear we are massively guilty in this generation of having quenched the Spirit, of having despised or made light of Bible teaching, and then been utterly devoid of any real personal effort to know our Bibles, to be able to “see whether these things are so.” In short, I fear there is very little Bible in American Christianity today.

It makes me very sad because faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. We can only know real faith to the extent we know our Bibles, and without faith it is impossible to please God. Faith arises from the very great and precious promises of God – but if we don’t really know those promises, there is nothing to build faith on. It is only when we know the Truth that that truth can set us free. The fruit of the Spirit only grows in the soil of God’s Word. If we would know love and joy and peace, we must know our Bibles. If we would buttress our hearts with grace, we must have a real, personal relationship with the Lord. Someone once said, “To look into the Bible is to see the very face of God.” When we read and study the Word, and if we’re doing it because we want to know Him, our hearts take their place beside Mary at Jesus’ feet and we too are doing “the one thing needful.” To see His face is to be changed.

I will be forever grateful that one of the first books I ever read as a Christian was “How Should We Then Live?” by Francis Schaeffer. In that book, Schaeffer argued that humanity must have absolute truth or we will always degenerate into chaos, anarchy, and some form of totalitarian oppression. That absolute truth upon which the human race must base its very existence is none other than the Bible, the Word of God. Schaeffer argues that Bible truth was the strength of Western Culture and that, as that culture turns away from the Bible, they too degenerate into chaos and ultimately some form of totalitarian oppression. He wrote those thoughts in the 1970’s and I have sadly watched as his words have proven true in the 50 years since.

Now the fact is I can’t really do anything about an entire culture that quenches the Spirit – but I can change me. Paul’s admonition is very real and very needed. I can honestly say that I have tried to keep up a constant habit of Bible reading and study down through the years – thanks in some large degree to Francis Schaeffer’s early admonition in my Christian walk. It has been a wonderful freedom in my life to know God’s truth and to have it constantly crashing through all my misperceptions of reality, shattering my paradigms, and allowing me to see the world through His eyes. I just wish so much other people could see this, that they could experience for themselves this miracle of the Spirit’s work to open our eyes and see the truth – the truth that truly sets us free.

Perhaps one of my grandchildren may one day stumble across these feeble scratchings. If you do, then can I say to you, get a Bible and start reading it. You can start anywhere. It’s all good. I promise you, if you will, if you will open a Bible and start reading it, God will meet you there. Or should I say, you will meet Him? I promise you that, as you read, the Word will jump off the page at you. It is not like any other book that just lies there on the table. The Word of God is alive. It reaches out and grabs you. Maybe not in the first ten seconds you’re reading. Maybe not even in the first two weeks. But if you keep reading, it will happen. I promise you. And when it does, it will set you free. If you do and if you find my promises true, then gradually try to learn how to actually study it for yourself. I early learned how to use a Concordance, how to look up Greek and Hebrew words, how to use a Vine’s dictionary, and later had the privilege of learning the Greek and Hebrew languages themselves. But please realize, the Lord will start setting you free as soon as you start looking seriously into His Word. From there on, just make it a lifetime’s journey to ever be reading and studying the Bible – however is the best you know how – and again I promise you, 50 years from now, you’ll be glad you did. 50 years from now you’ll still be learning and He’ll still be setting you free.

Don’t quench the Spirit. Take the Word seriously.

Then you’ll know the answer to the question, “How Should We Then Live?”

I Thessalonians 5:19-22 – “Taking the Spirit’s Work Seriously”

As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

¹⁹Do not be quenching the Spirit. ²⁰Do not be despising prophecies. ²¹Examine everything. Retain the good. ²²Disassociate [yourself] from every kind of evil.

This is a passage where I think the exegesis becomes critically important. Based on a cursory reading (especially in English and with the uninspired verse divisions), this entire passage can appear to be a staccato of (not necessarily related) imperatives. One can easily see each of these verses as independent thoughts, only perhaps generally related, and treat each verse almost as a proverb – what I would call “the Proverbs approach.” As I’ve read a number of commentaries, many people do exactly that and derive from it a great deal of instructive material. It is as if one could preach a series of five messages by taking a different Sunday for each of these verses (v21 containing two possibly independent thoughts). On the other hand, there’s a sort of modified “Proverbs approach,” where people assert that vv.19,20 and v.21 each form single independent thoughts, while verse 22 stands completely alone.

I will argue that all five thoughts express a single very interrelated intent. I support this based on three reasons: First of all, I find this whole section from (at least) v.12 on to be very deliberately structurally organized into telic groupings. In vv.12,13 there are five phrases describing those ministers we are to respect, and how we are to respond to them. Then vv.14,15 contain five main imperatives how we are to express concern for others. This is then followed by the three personal admonitions of joyfulness, prayer, and thankfulness of vv.16-18, which are then followed by another set of five thoughts, our vv.19-22, followed by what appear to be the three thoughts of vv.23,24, followed by three thoughts in vv.25-27. Fives and threes. If one takes the time to look, I think it is apparent that each of these groupings are to be understood as telic units. I do not think Paul intended this entire section to work like the book of Proverbs. For me personally, the order I see in the Greek leads me to conclude otherwise. I think our present passage, vv.19-22, needs to be treated as a unit.

I would argue further that this is particularly apparent in vv.21,22. Perhaps due to the uninspired verse divisions, many commentators will take v.21, “Examine everything. Hold on to the good” as one thought, then v.22 as an entirely independent thought, which they translate something like “Avoid every appearance of evil.” However, the two Greek words for “hold on to” and “avoid” almost rhyme and appear very deliberately intended to be read (and understood) together. Verse 22 should not be translated or understood as an independent thought, but that is exactly where people go when they fail to see the order in the passage – which then leads to interpretations which I feel the text simply does not support.

Finally, on the one hand I find the collective thought of the passage to be quite instructive and compelling, while on the other hand, what I see in those who take the “Proverbs approach” is almost a homiletical free-for-all. Taken separately, it is as if people can build entire messages on each verse, but then make them mean almost anything the writer or preacher wants them to mean. But the Bible doesn’t mean everything at once. In a particular passage, the writer (and the Spirit who inspired their writings) is thinking something. He has some thought he is trying to communicate. You and I are no different. It may be true that someone can take anything you or I say and give it a million different meanings, but the fact remains, we meant something – not everything. I find suspicious any interpretation that seems to almost invite such a homiletical free-for-all and I feel that is exactly what I see in this passage from people who take the “Proverbs approach.”

So, how do I see it all fit together? Taken together, the first admonition, “Do not be quenching the Spirit” is immediately explained by the “Do not be despising prophesyings.” “Prophesyings” in the first century church were the very specific work of the Holy Spirit using gifted people to bring direct revelations from God to the congregation. Today we think of “prophecy” as only the foretelling of the future, but of course that was only ever one very small part of prophesying. God’s prophets down through the ages may have at times predicted future events but their main function was simply to speak for God. Their work in the church is clearly explained in I Cor 14:3, “But everyone who prophesies speaks to men for their strengthening, encouragement, and comfort.” Apparently the very specific way Paul wanted people to avoid “quenching the Spirit” is that they should not despise or “make light of” these prophesyings, which at the time were integral to the teaching and preaching ministry of the church.

Since the Scriptures are now complete, we no longer need this activity of direct revelation from God. Our completed Bible is “given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be mature, thoroughly furnished for every good work” (II Tim 3:16,17). The Spirit work of direct revelation is complete. However, the Holy Spirit remains the agent of illumination, using gifted preachers and teachers to open our understanding of that completed revelation, hence the admonition to “Despise not prophecyings” is still quite pertinent to us.

I would like to suggest that the whole point of vv.19-22 has everything to do with how you and I respond to this Spirit work of bringing God’s Word to us. The phrase translated “Despise not” can also be translated “Do not make light of.” The central question is, “How do I receive the Word?” It is easy to despise a teacher or preacher because I don’t like their looks, or I find their presentation boring, etc., etc. But to do so I may actually be “quenching the Spirit.” It is probably easier yet just to “make light” of even a good teacher or preacher’s message – to sit there but not really listen – for whatever may be our excuse this week. On the other hand, as we’ll see in this passage, it is just as much “quenching the Spirit” if we just sit there and take everything they say as Gospel.

In fact, this passage is structurally very similar to Acts 17:11, “Now the Bereans were more noble than the Thessalonians, for they received the Word with all readiness of mind, and searched the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so.” When it says “they received the Word with all readiness of mind” we know they were not “quenching the Spirit” and “despising (or making light of) prophesyings.” They took it very seriously that someone was preaching or teaching the Word to them.

But then what did they do? “They searched the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so.” Here’s where in our passage they “Examined everything; retained the good; and disassociated [themselves] from every kind of evil.” What God wants each individual person to do is to keep their heart and mind open. If someone seems to be teaching or preaching the Word, then listen to them. Take the Spirit’s work very seriously. He may be trying to teach you something – even if you don’t like the person speaking or their delivery, or even the main thrust of what they’re saying.

But then, if you really take it seriously, you will “examine everything.”  That means you will take it a step further by seriously asking, “Is this Scriptural?” Is that really what the Bible is saying? God wants each person to examine what is said, then retain or “hold on to” what in fact was good Spirit-given teaching. If upon inspection you find it was not Scriptural then it is evil. God says to “disassociate yourself from it” – no matter what it was. Any Bible teaching, no matter how seemingly good or moral or appealing, if it does not derive from the Scriptures themselves, is evil. Remember the Lord’s warnings in the book of Revelation about adding to or taking away from the Scriptures? Remember Isaiah’s words, “To the Law and to the Testimony! If they speak not according to this Word, it is because there is no light in them” (8:19,20).

I am keenly aware now, late in my life, what a pernicious sin it is to assume the position of a Bible teacher or preacher, then use that as a platform to fill people’s heads with all sorts of maxims which do not derive from the rightly-divided Word. Those ideas fill people’s minds and actually eclipse the real truth of God’s Word in their hearts. Satan loves to raise even wonderfully moral, seemingly religious people – people who actually quench the Spirit’s work by replacing it with “truths” of their own, truths that do not derive from the Spirit-given Word. Such people cannot and will not exude the grace and truth and love of Jesus. The very specific import of v22 is exactly this – that, having found some “teaching” to not derive from the Scriptures, we should recognize it as evil – whatever “kind” it may be – and disassociate ourselves from it. God is saying to do like the Bereans, receive it with an open mind, check it out, then firmly hold on to the good, and reject all else as evil.

I have more I’d like to write down in reflecting on this passage, but I think I’ll end this post and take up those thoughts separately.