It’s nice to tweet a Bible verse. In a cyberworld of tense news, negative comments, and harsh attacks, it’s encouraging to see Scripture on social media.
But the 140 characters available on Twitter miss an important component—the same element that’s missed in any verse-of-the-day platforms, many songs, and some sermons.
Context. We miss the context.
This isn’t just about Bible verses. I get aggravated when news reports miss parts of a story that would help explain what happened. Often reporters quote people without including key sentences that were stated before and after the recorded lines. Without getting the context, we can’t adequately grasp the full meaning of the event—and we might actually get a very wrong impression.
Yet Christians have been doing the same thing with the Bible for centuries.
A crisis of faith
Perhaps you learned this verse in your youth: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13, NKJV).
Does this mean I can hit every three-pointer I shoot, as long as I pray about it first? Of course not. The biblical context is about contentment in any and all circumstances. The book of Philippians is largely about joy in difficult circumstances. It includes a hymn to Christ, who suffered death on a cross. In context, we see a message of endurance, not unfettered success.
After I almost died of encephalitis in March, 1996, a group of people came and read Matthew 17:14-21 to me. (This is where Jesus’s disciples fail to heal an epileptic boy, and Jesus chides them for their lack of faith.) As they saw things, I was displaying a lack of faith by admitting I had brain damage and confessing my own epilepsy.
But did Jesus really say that my sins and lack of faith were the reasons I became sick and wasn’t being healed? What was the context? Why did the disciples need to hear those words? And what else does the Bible say about sickness and healing? If my lack of faith caused my sickness, I would have been sick long before.
The same people also quoted Hebrews 11:6— “Without faith it is impossible to please him” (KJV). By this point I knew it was better to be nice and guide them through the scriptural context, instead of arguing my case. I read to them the rest of Hebrews 11, discussing what happened to many of those “people of faith.” I also read about Paul’s own prayer not being answered (2 Corinthians 12:7-10), and I read these verses in context.
Getting out of your room
Don’t get me wrong. It’s important to memorize, believe and meditate on all Scripture, but we shouldn’t try to understand Bible verses apart from their setting.
As followers of Christ, we honor Scripture by letting it talk to us instead of forcing it to say what we want it to say. Without examining context, we can assemble our own “Twitterverse” of pious thoughts, interpreted any way we like. But context draws us out of ourselves and beyond the individual verses, into the world of the Bible. As we study all of this, we hear God’s voice and enter a transforming dialogue with him.
Think of it this way: A Bible verse is like one room in your house, but there are other rooms around it. Then there’s the entire house, the neighborhood, the city, the state, the nation, the world. If we only talk about the couch in the den without the kitchen or community or world, we fail to understand – and honor – the full reality. Along the same lines then, we must study Paul’s visit to Philippi, the condition of that town and the church there, Paul’s own situation when he wrote the epistle, the text of the entire epistle, and the words immediately before and after Paul said he could do all things through Christ. That will give us the full reality of the biblical text.
The poetic prayer journal of a particular psalm might reveal an emotion, not a doctrinal statement. A prophetic revelation for Israel isn’t shown respect if wrenched out of context and forced to fit America in 2017. We can learn from Paul’s epistles and apply his instructions to our lives, but the situations in our congregations are somewhat different. We must study and grasp his teaching in its original context, then ask, “How do his points apply in the here and now?”
Hard habit to break
Taking verses out of context is a hard habit to break—for us, and for those we lead. What we learn and what we say are crucial. How we say it is important also. You can become annoying as you correct people, or you can lovingly broaden their understanding of God’s Word.
Let’s not become like the voices we disagree with. If we do, we miss the overall context of loving God and his people. Gently display pastoral care when declaring important biblical truth. Reveal a heart of love. Correction is best received when voiced with care – not control or condemnation. As we lead people to biblical truth, let’s love them– while we let Scripture say what it truly says.
