You’ve probably heard people quote, as if it were Scripture, things like “Cleanliness is next to godliness” gold “God helps those who help themselves. “As popular as these sayings are, they are no in the Bible; and as such, they must be evaluated on the basis of what the Bible does it tell. Failure to do so may cause us to act on unbiblical shapes.
Let me illustrate the use of the line “God helps those who help themselves.” This saying is generally used with an additional understood word inserted to tell us that “God helps only those who help themselves. “Anyone who has seriously undertaken to assimilate the entire message of the Bible into his life should know that the Bible actually teaches something very different. In fact, it teaches something contrary to this popular saying. The Scriptures teach that God helps the homeless and He even cautions against helping ourselves in cases where that is a substitute for trusting and waiting on God. Think, for example, of the scene at the foot of Mount Sinai when people decided to help themselves instead of trusting God. instead of waiting on God I wouldn’t be surprised if this saying was coined by someone in that crowd who wanted to make a golden calf and go back to Egypt without Moses.
There is not only a problem with unbiblical If sayings such as the above are taken as biblical truth, there is a serious problem with some biblical truths that have had such a consistency unbiblical applied interpretation that the incorrect interpretation is commonly accepted as the correct one. One of the most important, in my opinion, is the common misinterpretation of 1 Thessalonians 5:22. The misunderstanding of this verse is undoubtedly rooted in the King James translation of the text where it is translated: “Refrain from all appearance of evil. “
What is the wrong interpretation? It goes like this: “Don’t do anything that can even Appear Be evil! With this misunderstanding of the text, Christians have feared things like going to a bar to witness or helping an alcoholic friend. After all, they reason, someone might come by as I go in or out; and for them, it could Appear I’m doing something wrong Therefore, they refuse to do a good thing on the grounds that it might seem like a bad thing.
That Teselonians The text has nothing to do with things that only appear to be bad. It is an important text that deals with the things that really are bad. Failure to understand and pay attention to the true teaching of this text is the source of many defeats in the Christian community. Rather than being encouraged to adopt a paranoid lifestyle based on what others imagine in vain, the apostle Paul is proposing a plan for victory over the real evil that lurks in our path, planted there by the evil one to ensnare us.
Here is the true meaning of the text. The word that is translated as “appearance” refers to the moment when a thing appears or appears for the first time. We often use the English word in this sense. For example, someone might announce: “Carrie Underwood appears in the Grand Ole Opry next month. “By this statement we certainly do not understand that something or someone who only seems to be Carrie Underwood will be at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville. If that’s what the promoters mean, they will have a furious audience once someone spots the difference at show time.
Suppose for a moment that Carrie Underwood was evil. (I know, that’s hard for me too!) Through the ads, you know when and where it will appear. The apostolic warning is to avoid its appearance. Our biggest problem with evil is that, like Carrie, she is very attractive, at least the evil we bow to is considered quite desirable.
Holding the analogy for a moment (forgive me Carrie!), The apostle Paul is saying: stay away from the Grand Ole Opry on this particular night. No, don’t cruise through the parking lot hoping to see the girl. Don’t linger at the entrance just to see who’s busting your tickets and for how much. Don’t take the free tickets that the guy from work offered you, with the sole intention of going to see the warm-up group that plays before Carrie takes the stage. Avoid it! Stay away – far far!
In the front yard of my house we have several flowers, reeds, that cut through the ground in familiar green shoots each spring. Those little one-inch-tall green shoots are the look of reeds. I know they are reeds. My wife knows that they are reeds. (We both know they’re not evil, it’s just an illustration.) We don’t have to wait 30 days or so for them to flower to recognize them as jonquils.
Similarly, when evil first appears, we don’t have to wait for it to flourish and become a seed. In fact, we shouldn’t wait for it to do so. Tea better the moment to avoid evil is in its appearance. The more we entertain evil or entertain ourselves with evil, the stronger its influence becomes on us. The power of evil over us, like that of a magnet, increases with our closeness to it. Therefore, we must walk away at our first opportunity.
Let me make a practical application of the truth in the Teselonians He passed. Any married person can experience a moment of dissatisfaction in their marriage. Any married person may find someone other than their spouse attractive and desirable. Any married person could be tempted to cheat on their spouse. The best way to resist temptation is to attack it when it appears.
Before any of us Act unfaithfully, we have thought unfaithful. This is where evil makes its appearance: in our life of thought. Now don’t get me wrong – any moment it is a good time to get out of sin. Tea better time, however, is to get out before you really walk in. When you find yourself thinking of another man or woman in a romantic way, wishing your spouse was more like that person, be careful: evil is showing up. When you find yourself imagining what it would be like to be with that person, be careful: evil is appearing. When you find yourself comparing all the positive qualities of that person with all the negative qualities of your spouse, be careful: the evil has appeared and you are feeding the attractiveness.
Many Christians are led into sin because they do not heed this important biblical principle. We tend to think that resisting temptation will be easier. It is not like this. Does it? No, it just gets harder. When temptation appears, we naively think that we will accept it, for a whileBefore we walk away But before long, the intoxicating effect of sin drives us crazy and we find ourselves doing what we wouldn’t do.
I encourage you to take the battle of sin seriously. Stop worrying about the things that it just seems to be sin to others and start to resist real sin in its first appearance. Resisting at this early stage still requires the strength of the Holy Spirit, so ask God to give you the power to resist evil when it appears in your life. Oh by the way, don’t be naive here either, you mean Will Appear. No one reading this article should say, “Well, that doesn’t apply to me.” Such thinking is dangerous. Please, let’s prepare ourselves to avoid the appearance of evil whenever and wherever it appears in our lives.
