Every one of us, I believe, values preciseness. In other words, we want folk around us to be exact, correct, and definite. If you ever fly on a plane, precision would be a chief virtue for your pilot, right? What about when you're having your taxes prepared, don't you want accuracy from your tax preparer? What if you're facing surgery, don't you want that person cutting on you to be careful?
It seems we DEMAND precision in EVERY area of life, EXCEPT when it comes to our spiritual lives. As stated earlier, we would NEVER settle for an inaccurate pilot. We would NEVER tolerate a careless tax preparer or an inept surgeon, Am I right?
Please understand my stress in this article, I'm not talking about false teaching per se. Many of us would recognize and condemn false teaching in a heart beat. My concern is for inaccurate teaching, teaching that is not precise.
Folks, hear me loud and clear, imprecise, inaccurate bible teaching negatively impacts both WHAT you believe and HOW you live. For example John MacArthur one of my favorite Bible teachers of all time has written a new book which inspires the following thoughts. Romans 1:1 from the NIV states: "Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God". So what's wrong with the NIV's rendering of this verse? The problem is the word, "servant". According to the Greek, the language in which the New Testament was written, the word "servant" should actually read "slave". The Greek word translated by our English bibles as servant is the word, "Doulos" (pron, doo-los) and means slave, NOT servant. There is a world of difference between a "servant" and a "slave", a servant is hired, whereas a slave is purchased. A servant has rights, whereas a slave has no rights. One writer puts it this way, "A servant may serve another, but the ownership does not pass to that other. If he likes his master he can serve him, but if he does not like him he can give in his notice and seek another master. Not so with the slave. He is not only the servant of another but he is the possession of another". When Paul declares that he is a doulos of Christ, he is declaring that he is slave, not some hired hand. Paul understands that he was bought with a price out of the slave market of sin, and that He belongs totally to Christ his sovereign master. Paul understood when he used the word doulos , that as a slave, he had no rights of his own and that his will was swallowed up in the will of another, namely Christ's. I looked at seventeen (17) different English translations of this verse Romans 1:1, and only one of the seventeen translations translated the Greek word doulos as slave, all the rest translated doulos as servant. I can only speculate that the translation committees chose servant instead of slave because of the negative social connotations. Face it, to consider oneself a slave in today's social context is demeaning and politically incorrect. Because of imprecise teaching, we have replaced the slavery motif with that of some hired man idea.
Folks, as followers of Christ we are slaves, we belong to Him. We are not our own we were bought at a price. As slaves, we have no rights of our own and our wills are swallowed up in His. I hope you see the point, imprecise Bible teaching has had tremendous negative impact on how we view ourselves as Christians and how we live as Christians.
It is my prayer and desire to see men return to clear, accurate bible teaching because too much is at stake
For His Glory,
CoolImprov
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