I’m one of those guys who gets incredibly annoyed seeing an athlete with a Philippians 4:13 tattoo. I’m happy when they give Jesus props for his help with their success—that’s certainly better than not giving God glory. I’m annoyed, though, because Philippians 4:13 means about exactly the opposite of what many athletes think it does. Scripture twisting is never a good thing…or is it?
I engaged in a bit of Scripture twisting yesterday. I’ve found that it is a great help with my preaching. I don’t want to overuse this tool, but if done correctly you can twist Scripture to the benefit of your congregation. Let me explain.
Yesterday, from Ephesians 4:31-32, I was trying to answer what does God’s forgiveness look like? Is it conditional or unconditional? How are we to forgive one another as God in Christ forgave us? I made the argument that the offer of forgiveness is unconditional but actually walking in forgiveness involves two parties and therefore is conditional. (See here).
In order to make this point I used Luke 17:3 and I quoted it as thus:
If your brother sins, forgive him, and if he repents, forgive him even more, and if he sins against you seven times in the day, you forgive him seven times per day.
If you grab your Bible and look up Luke 17:3 you’ll notice that this is not what that text actually says. But it’s the way we often read the text—at least it’s how we think about forgiveness. We assume that our automatic response to someone’s sin is to be unconditional forgiveness. They sin and we immediately forgive regardless of their response. But if you look at Luke 17:3 you’ll notice it says something much different:
If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him, and if he sins against you seven times in the day, and turns to you seven times, saying, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive him.”
That’s a big difference. So, I misquoted Scripture in order to emphasize the difference between the offer of forgiveness and actually walking in forgiveness. I noted that so often we don’t go that extra mile. We just emotionally forgive someone from our heart but we are never actually reconciled. But true biblical forgiveness always ends in reconciliation.
I also made the point that living by that first version of Luke 17:3 actually misrepresents God. So many in our culture believe they are forgiven by God even without seeking absolution. They take the position of Heinrich Heine who said, “Of course God will forgive me, that’s his job”. But God’s forgiveness of us is conditioned upon our repentance and faith.
So yesterday I stood before our congregation and at one point intentionally twisted Scripture, but I did it for their joy. I did it to highlight how we often misread a text and how we have developed a theology of forgiveness that is found more in psychology books and not in God’s Word.
It’s not a tool I want to use frequently, simply because I don’t want people to consider Scripture lightly. But this tool is effective mainly because the congregation believes Scripture is the authority. To misquote Scripture is a terrible thing in their mind. This is why it is so effective when you twist Scripture to support a theology that many hold, though wrongly. It helps us to see that our theology is inconsistent with God’s Word.
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