This is a topic that has been on my heart and mind for some time. I read the verse today in my daily Bible reading and it struck me again. After some consideration, I decided it was an opportune time to blog about it.
The phrase above is found in I Corinthians 15 in which Paul is making his defense for the resurrection. To sum up (because I'm sure all my regular readers know it very well), he says that if there is no resurrection, Christ is still dead, and we have no future hope; if Christ is dead, we are living our lives to serve a god that doesn't exist, and once we're dead, there's nothing more. Serving someone who doesn't exist with no hope of reward for it = most miserable.
I've heard this phrase applied to other things, and I've come to believe it is a gross misapplication that elevates something to the same height of importance as whether or not Christ is still dead (and therefore, whether or not He is God, and whether or not God exists at all). For the most part, I've heard this phrase applied to the argument for the KJV that if we do not have the exact words of God, we are of all men most miserable.
So I ask you, of those tribes around the world who have no Bible in their possession because there is no Bible in their language or because of lack of sufficient funding to buy such a Bible, are they of all men most miserable? They have no written word of God, but due to the work of the Holy Spirit, they've become children of God. Children of God are of all men most miserable???
No. Resoundingly, no. It is a saddening thought to me that someone would elevate the earthly possession of a thing to the same height as whether or not Christ is alive.
Whether or not I own a Bible, have the opportunity to own a Bible, or any other detail about the Bible - even if I thought my Bible were FULL of errors (which I don't) - it STILL would not effect my salvation and therefore, it CANNOT be so weighty a matter as make me of all men most miserable.
Now some could argue that if we don't KNOW that we have the exact words of God, that therefore we can't KNOW that Christ is risen. Guess what. We weren't there to witness it; we can't KNOW, and yet, we know. By faith. In our fallen selves, we can't KNOW any of it is true anyway. In our fallen nature, there is no reason to believe that Christ is alive - resurrection from the dead? What are you, crazy?
Yet we know. Why? We've been changed! Owning a Bible does not make a person's faith stronger. It just doesn't. You don't get suddenly more Christlike by having a Bible in your home. The Bible is a wonderful, wonderful gift. It is not on par with Christ's death. Without Christ's death, the Bible would be useless. But even without the Bible, Christ's death is NEVER useless because that's not the only means of spreading the Good News!
If all we had were verbal traditions passed down from generation to generation of what happened, do you think that people couldn't get saved? Sure they could. Why? Because the written word is not necessary. How can I say that? Because there wasn't one in Corinth when Paul went there and shared The Word with the people. But God had much people in that city, thus, they were saved!
In conclusion, saying that we need SPECIFIC information in order to know a thing is bizarre. That's like saying I can't know how old I am if I've never seen a calendar. There are seasons! Much more generalized things, but they still keep time very well.
Please don't misunderstand my feelings and very high regard for the Bible. The Bible is precious and it's full of information and wisdom and exhortation. It is beautiful and lovely and deep and a very useful gift from God. However, it is NOT as lovely as the reality of what happened. Christ came, lived, died, and rose again. Without THAT, I am most miserable.
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2 comments:
I'm going to try this on my phone since I'm blocked at school and wont have time later.
I haven't heard anyone use your first argument.
Second, what Paul says is a hypothetical. "If Christ be not risen." Within the world the way God made it we need special revelation to be saved. General is not enough and God does not speak as He used to. Within this world if we then removed the Scriptures, a hypothetical just like Paul's, we would be miserable. We would not be saved; we would see in general revelation that there is a God who is Creator and deserves to be served but we would not know of Christ. We would be without hope. Serving God in a way we don't know without any expectation of the future. This is where the Bible argument goes.
Also, it may be used not as an absolute "most miserable " but as a description of the state as very bad using Biblical language. Often Biblical phrasing is used in arguments apart from the actual context. Maybe this is part of what bothers you.
Yes, it's all hypothetical. Exactly.
My point is this: We say constantly that God does not need us to preach and teach in order for people to be saved; He can use rocks if He wanted to. But for whatever reason, to say that He doesn't need the Bible is treachery.
Using your argument, if there were no preachers, we would be of all men most miserable because no one would be telling others. It's not just the Bible - it's the preaching of the Bible. But we'd never say that we're needed; that sounds Arminian.
This is my point.
Yes, men preaching the Word of God is the way God's deemed to make Himself known; but hypothetically, if we didn't have the Bible, there would be another way. Just like if the people had been silent, the stones would have cried out.
That's all I was trying to say. We don't raise ourselves up to that level, but we do raise the Bible to it. It is my belief that neither we nor the Bible ought to be on par with Christ's work of redemption. It is the foundation. Without redemption, there is no us preaching, and there is no Bible to preach from. But without the Bible or us, there is still redemption; God would use something else because Christ wouldn't have died for nothing.
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