By Angus Harley

I have made the mistake in reading the bible where, to put my view forward, I have denied what a text explicitly states, and I didn’t even know I was doing it! Take this simple example, ‘Revelation doesn’t teach a thousand-year reign.’  It most certainly does! It just doesn’t teach a literal thousand-year reign.  Another example is from James 2. ‘James does not believe in justification by works.’ I beg your pardon: “21 Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up Isaac his son on the altar?…You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone. 25 In the same way, was not Rahab the harlot also justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way?” I know, Evangelicalism does not interpret these verses in the Romish way. But that does not give us license to deny what James explicitly states. We need to explain why he said the things he said, the way he said it.

Some folks in their covenantal zeal read Jeremiah 31:31-32 as teaching that the Old Covenant is renewed in the New Covenant. Is it though? ““Behold, days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, 32 not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,” declares the Lord.” The phrase “not like” is an ‘inconvenient truth’ that refuses to disappear! If you are going to look for similarities between both covenants, it cannot be done at the expense of Jeremiah’s actual words.

Genesis 1 is a favorite for this kind of loaded reading of the bible. Here’s one I heard yesterday. ‘Genesis 1 does not teach how God made the world.’ Often accompanying this view is the comment that, ‘God does not tell us how long it took to make the world.’ Yet, the text does explicitly say how God made the world: by his spoken word (vv3, 6, 9, 14, 20, 24, 26). And just as blatant is how long it took: six days (vv5, 8, 13, 19, 31). The text couldn’t be any more specific! What some Evangelicals are trying to argue is that these textual facts must be interpreted in a non-literal manner; but in the way these Evangelicals say things, they deny the facts of the text. Those who believe in evolution, or some view other than the literal six-day position, are not helping their reading by denying what the text explicitly teaches.

Genesis 2:3 and the seventh day is said to be an ‘open-ended’ day, not the same kind of day as stated in Genesis 1, which has a morning and an evening. Yet, lo and behold, it is called the ‘seventh day’, the final of a sequence of…yes, you’ve guessed it…seven days! The other six days are not open-ended, so there’s no need to make this one. This seventh day is a complete day by the standards of Genesis 1. It is not distinguished with the formula “evening and morning” for good reason: it is being marked out as God’s special day that was separated to non-creation, a sanctified day because God had finished his work. That is, the formula “evening and morning” is functioning, textually, to indicate a day that’s ended and another day to come. If someone is going to teach an ‘open-ended’ divine sabbath here in Gen.2:3, one cannot do so by bypassing the explicit wording of the text. Similarly, the text speaks only to God’s rest, not man’s. Yet, we are told with regularity by some that the same text refers to man’s sabbath. Even if this were an implication, let’s state first and foremost what the text does say!

Another one that I heard recently is this: ‘Paul didn’t believe he was a sinner.’ Even if there were theological justification for this position, it cannot be had by simply ignoring Paul’s own words, “This saying is trustworthy and deserves full acceptance: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners”— and I am the worst of them!” (NET) (1 Tim.1:15). Another view of Paul’s theology says that the Christian’s old man is dead forever and there’s no more to say on that matter. Yet, we must also negotiate this, “You were taught with reference to your former way of life to lay aside the old man who is being corrupted in accordance with deceitful desires” (NET) (Eph.4:22). Yes, I get it, Romans 6:6. But it cannot be used to erase Ephesians 4:22!

We’re all doing it. None of us are exempt. Even so, let us deal with the wording of the text, and not what we desire the wording to be!