Examining "A More Christlike Word"
by Brad Jersak
Day 63
“For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough.” (Paul’s concern from 2 Corinthians 11:4)
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The False Filter |
The Biblical Filter |
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The word OR the Word |
The Word THROUGH the word |
First,
when “Jesus told his disciples, ‘If anyone would come after me, let him deny
himself and take up his cross and follow me’” (Matthew 16:24), it totally did
NOT allow us to distort and twist the Scriptures to get followers after
ourselves! Part of denying ourselves is denying our perceived right to
interpret Scripture however we please. God still wants people who are “humble
and contrite in spirit and tremble at my word” (Isaiah 66:2).
Second, someone’s sharing in our home church included a description of
who will be “outside” the city pictured in Revelation 22. The list includes
“everyone who loves and practices falsehood” (vs 15). With BJ’s book continuing
to misrepresent Scripture at a 100% rate of falsehood, he should be very
concerned about how such things apply to people like him and his kin. Since
Paul warned Timothy that "evil people and impostors will go on from bad to
worse, deceiving and being deceived" (II Tim 3:13), all of us must test
ourselves by Scripture to be sure we are not only not deceiving anyone, but
that we are not “being deceived” by the Scripture-twisting thoughts of the
world, the flesh, and the devil.
Third,
each month the Logos Bible Systems offers a free book to add to my digital
library. This month’s gift was, REVEALING JESUS AS MESSIAH, A Portrait of
the Messiah and His People, by Stuart D Sacks.[1] This is a Jewish man who became a believer in Jesus Christ as the
Messiah. In this book he explores what Isaiah wrote about Jesus, particularly
focusing on Isaiah 53. And in this we have a Jewish believer in Jesus Christ
seeing what is so plainly written in the text, that Jesus was given as a “guilt
offering”, or an “atoning sacrifice” for our sins, and by the will of the
Father. No explaining it away as BJ needs to do.
Now,
by way of personal testimony, even though I know that both Jewish and Gentile
believers in Jesus Christ are “one” in our Savior, I still find it amazing to
hear a Jewish person explain how they had to get over religious roadblocks and
prejudices to truly believe that Jesus of Nazareth could be their Messiah. I
have shared some of those already. This is another one I am excited to look at.
A Jewish brother who treats God’s word as the word of God, and sees how it
points to Jesus as the atoning sacrifice for our sins, all by the will and
involvement of Yahweh his Father. And the fact it just popped up today along
this next section of the trail makes me want to see why we all need this
reminder that the Scriptures are breathed out by God as they were written down
by the writers. We do not need to explain away anything in the Scriptures, nor
do we need to cherry-pick bits and pieces of Scripture out of context. God has
already woven everything together into the most amazing document in the whole
wide world, and it thoroughly exposes BJ’s claims as the distortions that Jesus
and the apostles warned us about.
Now,
after all that good sharing, multiple witnesses giving glory to God for his
magnificent breathed-out words, I pick up where BJ makes the claim:
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BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
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“That covers the literal meaning of the story” (p. 128). |
And my response is that BJ’s views on this does NOT cover the
“literal” meaning of the book of Jonah, so here is one more reminder before
we head out on his next focus. |
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BJ’s Literal Sense |
The Historical-Grammatical Sense |
BJ’s Literalism |
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Claims “literal” but means “tropological” (moral of the story), his
“different gospel” (from outside of the Scriptures), and “typological”
(allegorical), none of which mean "literal". |
The grammatical-historical method means reading the Bible in a plain
manner, respecting grammar, word meanings, and other factors with an emphasis
on context, Context, CONTEXT. |
BJ puts people here who ascribe to the plain meaning of Scripture as
if they are stifling the Holy Spirit and missing the point of the divine and
human authors.
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The
book of Jonah fits very well with the Historical-Grammatical sense. It is not
BJ’s non-literal “Literal Sense” which isn’t literal at all. And it is not his
strawman of Literalism. But it is complete trust that what was written in Jonah
is the breathed-out words of God on the matter and do not need to be explained
away.
I’ve
started looking at how BJ addresses “the moral and the spiritual” beginning at
p. 128, and I need to make some clarifications.
BJ has
no problem using the “bait and switch” method of twisting Scripture, so let’s
differentiate between what he means by “moral” and “spiritual”, and then we can
try to understand what the church fathers meant when they used the same words
but with different meanings.
When
BJ uses the term “moral”, he means his tropological view that this is all the
accounts are about. He has already tried proving this with Jonah, that it is
not a real historical account, but it has a moral to the story.
When
BJ uses the term “spiritual” he means “allegorical”. In other words, he again
bypasses the genuine historical event and treats it like it is an allegorical
description of something that is really only understood in spiritual terms.
When I
say that there is a moral to a story, or a lesson from a historical event, it
does not require treating the event as fictitious just to get a lesson from it.
To see a spiritual application behind a historical event does not require us to
treat as fictitious something the Bible treats as history.
As I
look at what BJ does with this next section, I am going to skip all the quotes
because he has cherry-picked the ones that sound right to him and I cannot go
off analyzing all the church fathers, or assessing how fair he is to what they
are saying. I will look at what he says himself and evaluate that.
Moral
Reading (Discipleship Sense) (p. 129).
I need to begin by pointing out that what BJ presents about his "moral" reading sense is NOT what we need to disciple people in how to deny themselves, take up their cross daily, and follow Jesus Christ our Lord! Just one more example of deceptive collections of words that are really of the bait-and-switch variety of dishonesty.
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BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
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“The truly literal work provides a foundation for its moral and
spiritual reading” (p. 129). |
I agree and disagree. First, I disagree on what BJ means by this since his non-literal
Literal Sense is bogus as the chart above reminds us. Second, I agree that the “truly literal” sense of the
Historical-Grammatical approach does lay the foundation for every “moral” and
“spiritual” application. Note: this is not about whether there is a moral to the story. Neither
is it about whether a historical event can mean something to the people
involved while having a spiritual application to all God’s children
throughout all time. It is about whether the historical events are treated as
historical (their literal meaning) before applying them in a
moral-of-the-story way, or in a spiritual application of a
natural/supernatural experience. |
Okay,
as this one paragraph progresses, it enters the world of bogusville in so many
ways that I again need to slow down the pace to show how deceptive the author
is being (still).
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BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
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“By moral reading, I’m not merely speaking of ‘the moral of the story’
or, worse, to the toxic purity codes of fundamentalism” (p. 129). |
Sounds like more pendulum-extreme talk. Words intended to incite an
emotional response without any demand for evidence. |
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BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
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“Rather, a moral reading of the text asks this question of any given
Scripture: ‘How will this passage nourish my growth as a follower of Jesus
Christ?’” (p. 129). |
Again, this may be a good question. This is called application, assessing how to put something into practice. However, there is a much better
question based on the reality that the Scripture we are reading (any one will
do) is breathed out by God. If we are a child of God by faith in Jesus Christ
the Holy Spirit is with us to teach us and remind us of spiritual truth, and
there will be something specific God is doing in our lives that will make one
thing stand out one time and a different thing another time. The better question is, “What is God speaking to me about through this
passage of Scripture?” |
I’m
going to add a testimony here. For the first couple of decades of my Christian
life, I did something that so many people call “having devotions”. I did not
know it at the time, but I was in control. It was “my devotions”. I read what I
wanted to read. I decided what I was learning. And I determined how I should
apply the “lessons” to my life. It was very much about me and God, and very
focused on knowing I was reading God’s word and seeking to understand the
Bible. But when I learned a better way, it so turned my life around that I want
everyone to know that we can have a vibrant relationship with the word of God
that fits the “real and personal way” God wants our eternal life to be while
taking God’s word to say what it means and mean what it says.
The
thing that changed was that I went from a me-centered focus of “my devotions”
to a God-centered focus of “spending time with God”. I went from seeing what I
could find in God’s word to identifying what God was speaking to me about in
his word. I went from loving God’s word with the limitations of my
child-centered focus to loving God’s word like a child with a God-centered
focus.
In May
of 1992 I had my first taste of reading Scripture like God was speaking to me
right then and there. Nothing magical. Nothing added to Scripture that wasn’t
there. Nothing that other believers who studied Scripture wouldn’t agree was
what God’s word said and meant. It’s just that it took on the sense of hearing
my own Father speaking into my heart exactly what he wanted me looking at on
that day.
At first, I was an excited newbie who was amazed at how clearly God was applying his word to my daily life. I recall a very early lesson in this in which I was reading in John 15 about the vine and the branches and had to go outside to trim a branch off a tree because it was in the way of something someone was doing. But as I sat back down at my computer to continue prayer journaling I smiled because God had just illustrated the very thing he was talking to me about in his word!
Before
that year was done, I was hit with some of the most painful discoveries I have
ever heard about. I was shocked. I was grieved. I was bewildered. But every
morning God continued showing me particular words or phrases in whatever I was
reading that I came to describe as “feeling like the ink was still wet on what
was written” because it was so precisely applicable to what I was facing.
Thirty-some years later, I have had so many morning times with God that
felt like God opened my heart to exactly what he had in mind that day. I have
now had enough opportunities to read the same passages as previously only to
discover something else standing out to impact me as I needed.
In
fact, my present journey through Matthew, and my specific focus in Matthew 16
on Jesus’ words, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take
up his cross and follow me”, has affirmed this all the more as God makes
everything as personal as needed for me to hear what he is saying, see what he
is doing, and join him in his work.
I
share this because I understand the sense of asking how a passage could nourish
my growth as a child of God. I am familiar with the Bible study method where we
end with a discussion of the application. I am in no way disparaging doing
that, especially in group settings where we might not have the same freedom to
feel how personally God is speaking Scripture into our hearts.
However, asking how a Scripture will nourish our growth in Christ leaves
it about us figuring this out ourselves, while asking how God is speaking to us
through his word makes it about what God is saying as our Father in heaven.
What is so wonderful about this is that it really comes to feel like a personal
walk with God where we hear his will on a daily basis.
What
is so difficult about this for so many people is that it does put a line in the
sand of the “get into the boat” variety where we are now aware of whether we
are walking in “the obedience of faith”, or telling Jesus we need to go bury
our parents before we do what we are told.[2]
In
other words, as long as we make the focus the moral of the story, or the
me-centered focus on how I think a passage will help me grow up in Christ, it
lacks the sense that God is speaking to us through his word. And, since I am
called to go through this book in this way, that is my testimony of how much
better it would be to do things the God-centered way, particularly as we treat
all of Scripture like the very words were already breathed out by God through
men who were carried along by the Holy Spirit to write God’s words into
Scripture.
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BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
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“That is, ‘How will it transform me so that the truth of my being (the
image of Christ) becomes the way of my being (the likeness of Christ)?’” (p.
129). |
First, that is a good question. It is not in support of BJ’s version
of a “moral reading”. It simply is what we should want to know. And what we
know should always affect what we do, how we live, and how we adjust to God’s
work of making us like his Son. Second, we can totally treat the Bible as the breathed-out words of
God while applying everything we are learning for our growth and maturity in
Christ. Paul, who never once corrected any of the history in the Jewish
Scriptures (that is MUCH bigger than BJ wants you to know), described our
transformation like this, “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the
glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree
of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit” (II
Corinthians 3:18). Because Paul meant that “when one turns to the Lord, the
veil is removed”, meaning, the veil that blinds us to the Scriptures is
removed when we are born again, we now read the breathed-out words of God
“with unveiled face”, freely “beholding the glory of the Lord” as revealed in
the Scriptures, and, by that, we are “being transformed into the same image
(as our Savior) from one degree of glory to another”, and that is all while
holding to what Paul called “the whole counsel of God” instead of twisting
and distorting what was written so that we are left applying God’s word
however we see fit. |
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BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
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“The moral meaning, then, is also tropological (it transforms the
will) and existential (it addresses my real-life dilemmas)” (p. 129). |
Replace “moral” with “allegorical”. That’s all this is about, to
convince people to treat the Bible allegorically and figuratively rather than
historically. And all without any authoritative reason to do so! However, tropological does NOT mean “it transforms the will”.
Tropological means that the Scripture is taken in a “figure of speech” kind
of way. That has nothing to do with how it is applied. In other words, this
is quite misleading to suggest that if we use the allegorical, figurative,
tropological sense of the Scriptures we get transformed wills. All we get is
a severely limited understanding of Scripture! We are far more likely to get
a transformed will from the Historical-Grammatical approach since it treats
Scripture as God’s breathed-out words with the authority to teach us how to
live in everything so that we cannot interact with God’s word without at
least knowing how our wills should adjust to God’s. Also, the tropological sense is totally NOT required to attach to
God’s breathed-out words with all our hearts so that there is that
“existential” awareness of how his word speaks to our real-life situations
today just as it was speaking to the real-life situations we read about in
God’s living and active word. My conclusion on this point is that the transformation of the will and
the application of God’s word to real life do NOT require treating the Bible
allegorically where the Bible is treating itself historically. |
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BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
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“Using the book of Jonah as an example, the moral meaning is overt:
don’t be like Jonah, whose xenophobia blinded him to the other”4 (p.
129). Footnote (p. 136): “‘The other’ is a sociological term that refers to
people, groups, or cultures who have been marginalized, excluded, or
demonized. ‘Othering’ describes ways that the in-group does this.
‘De-othering’ is essentially including the other as Jesus did.” |
First, no, the book of Jonah is NOT an example of the moral meaning.
It obviously does have application to our wills and life situations, but that
does not require an allegorical treatment of the book. We can see the
applications of God’s activity with Jonah to situations in our own lives, but
that does not require the use of allegory, fiction, or spiritualizing away
the history of what is written. BJ simply does not like a God who does miracles, and who judges and
condemns sin, so he is claiming something of his moral approach that we don't need to know and do the will of God. Treating the history in God’s word as history is a much better way to
learn how to live by every word that comes from the mouth of God. I also believe that BJ’s preference for judgmental terms like xenophobia, or “the other”, misrepresents the issue of what was going on with Jonah, so I will simply leave it at that. It is totally misleading to add those particular judgments against Jonah when Jonah’s history as one of the people of Israel gave him other reasons to struggle with what God was asking him to do. Jonah’s issue was not that he knew the Ninevites were the enemies of God and deserving of divine condemnation. His issue was that he did not want to trust God to lead him in what to do in this particular situation as God was present to do a different work than Jonah had ever witnessed. This is the same as Peter telling Jesus that he most definitely would NOT go to the cross because Peter didn’t even understand his own confession that “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God” (Matt 16). The application to us not telling God how he has to do things is as contemporary as it was for both Jonah and Peter, both historical men in real-life history. My point is that I have a particular distaste for people using soapbox
words (interjecting words that immediately polarize people into their
prejudices so everyone is standing on their proverbial soapboxes fighting
over those words and meanings instead of looking at the words God used and
accepting what they mean and how they apply). It is far better to use the
words God used and apply them in the direct counterpart in our language and
our time and our situations. |
The
next bit (p. 129f) he is just repeating his point so I will leave it with my
above response. There is absolutely no reason to treat Jonah as fictional. And
there are ample men who trust God’s word as God’s word who have made plenty of
good applications of the history of Jonah to the lives of each following generation.
© 2024
Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8
Email: in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the
English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text
Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of
Good News Publishers.)
A More Christlike Word © 2021 by Bradley Jersak Whitaker House 1030 Hunt
Valley Circle • New Kensington, PA 15068 www.whitakerhouse.com
Jersak, Bradley. A More Christlike Word: Reading Scripture the
Emmaus Way. Whitaker House. Kindle Edition.
Definitions from the Bible Sense Lexicon (BSL) in Logos Bible Systems
[1]
Sacks, S. D. (1998). Revealing
Jesus as Messiah: Identifying Isaiah’s Servant of the Lord (p. 3). Christian
Focus Publications.
This
is the link to the July 2024 free book offer: https://www.logos.com/product/9115/revealing-jesus-as-messiah-revealing-jesus-as-messiah-identifying-isaiahs-servant-of-the-lord
[2]
This is based on the account
of Jesus telling his disciples to get into the boat and go to the other side,
but one of them asked if he could stay home until his parents died and then
follow him. Since that’s not what Jesus said, it was immediately apparent who
got in the boat and who went off to do others things first. Many church folk do
not want that kind of relationship with God’s word, or God’s Word! See Matthew
8:18-22, and Luke 9:57-62 for a similar passage.
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