The Bible tells us we ought to help those in need, both in the Old Testament moral principles (e.g. De 24.20-22) and in several notes in the New Testament, perhaps most clearly in James 1.27:

Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.

In this verse, James makes it clear he’s not talking about the church as a body taking care of orphans and widows, because the next phrase is “keep oneself unstained from the world.”  It’s an individual mandate, and while the church is made up of individuals, there’s a difference between individuals making their own choices to do good deeds, and the church doing it on their behalf.

Sometimes we see Christians in the New Testament making contributions, and churches sending money to other churches for this sort of purpose (e.g. Ac 11.27-30, 1Co 16.1-3, 2Co 8.1-4, 9.1-12, Ro 15.25-28).  We also see individual Christians contributing to this sort of work locally (Ac 2.44-45, 4.34-37).  However, we never see churches sending money to outside organizations.  If he saw these practices today, Paul might ask, as he did in 1 Corinthians 6.4, “why do you lay them before those who have no standing in the church?”  That passage concerns a different matter, lawsuits, but it’s a similar instance of taking something that the church should handle itself, and putting in the hands of outsiders.

Furthermore, a feature common to practically all of the passages in the New Testament that concern the church’s money is this: “for the saints.”  This phrase appears in 1 Corinthians 16.1 and 2 Corinthians 9.1, while in 2 Corinthians 8.4 it’s “the relief of the saints,” and “aid to the saints” in Romans 15.25.  In Acts 11.29 it’s “relief to the brothers,” and the passages in Acts 2 and Acts 4, noted above, are both clearly about the distribution of money and other help to members of the church.  It’s the same for the service of the widows in Acts 6, and Paul’s instructions that the church should help support elders and destitute widows in 1 Timothy 5 also pertain to members of the church, and so do the many passages that say the church ought to finance its ministers—preachers, teachers, and evangelists—when needed.

But while there are numerous indications that individual Christians ought to perform acts of charity, even to outsiders (e.g. Mt 5.42, Mt 19.21, Lk 6.34, Ro 12.20, Ep 4.28, 1Ti 6.18, He 13.16), there is not a single instruction or example in the New Testament to the effect that the church should provide financial assistance to outsiders.  On the contrary, Peter explicitly denied this to a needy man who was not a Christian:

Seeing Peter and John about to go into the temple, he asked to receive alms. And Peter directed his gaze at him, as did John, and said, “Look at us.” And he fixed his attention on them, expecting to receive something from them. But Peter said, “I have no silver and gold, but what I do have I give to you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk!”  (Acts 3.3-6)

This passage comes just after we’re told that the first crop of Christians took care of each other financially.  As an apostle Peter surely has access to the church’s funds, but he doesn’t share with them with this outsider—he focuses on the church’s real ministry to the world, which is sharing the gospel, and gives him a much greater gift—the message preached to him and the crowd for the rest of the chapter, and backed up by a miracle, a gift of healing from Jesus himself.

The idea of the church supporting outside organizations, or even making direct payments to needy outsiders, is not one found in the Bible.  It’s our duty as individuals to be generous even with non-Christians, but the church has a more important role in proclaiming Christ.  The aim is to save their souls, not just their bodies.

Sadly, this issue divided the church in the mid- to late-20th century, with those on the more conservative side of things labeling the practice “institutionalism.”  Labels like this one often do plenty of harm themselves, because they discourage consideration of the real moral dilemma involved, and instead encourage tribalism and the write-off of anyone who disagrees.  It turns into sectarianism, a practice Jesus condemns in Luke 9.49-50, and Paul in 1 Corinthians 1.10-17.  The Jews in the first century were divided into sects, and throughout Acts, Luke labels them αἱρέσεις-haireseis-“divisions.”  We even learn (in Ac 24.5, 24.14, and 28.22) that Jewish outsiders considered Christians to be just another αἵρεσις-hairesis at first.  It’s not too difficult to see how this term evolved into our modern English word, “heresy.”  

Unfortunately, most members of congregations on the more liberal side don’t see the problem, let alone see it as a “heresy.”  They usually have no idea there’s controversy over the practice, and see it as an important aspect of both their service to their communities, and their outreach efforts, since it doubles as advertising.  But that doesn’t make it right.  There ought not to be divisions in the church.  But as God told the Israelites among the first set of laws at Sinai, “You shall not fall in with the many to do evil” (Ex 23.2).

Jeremy Nettles

Those who study eschatology—doctrines about end of the world—eventually hear the term, Rapture.  This is a relatively recent innovation in Christianity, which isn’t a strong endorsement.  It’s usually tied to the Tribulation, another loaded term. 

The basic idea is that at some point in the future, God will take away the faithful from earth and leave the wicked to suffer plagues, wars, natural disasters, and the like.  After this tribulation, so it goes, Christ will return to earth and (depending on whom you ask) establish his 1000-year reign.  Where did all of this originate?  The word rapture doesn’t appear in your English Bible.  It comes from a Latin word, rapio,  which occurs several times in the Latin Bible used by the Catholic church.  This was the translation of the Greek word ἁρπάζω-harpazo-snatch, which appears in the following passage:

For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord.  (1 Thessalonians 4.16-17)

“Caught up,” translates the word in question, which worked its way through Latin and into English as “rapture.”  For “tribulation,” we must look elsewhere.  The word appears many times in the Bible, but two passages lead some people to expect a Tribulation (with a capital T!) as part of a series of events surrounding the end of the world.

“Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then will appear in heaven the sign of the Son of Man, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.” (Matthew 24.29-31)

When Jesus mentions the gathering of the elect from the four winds, it sounds similar to the catching  up of Christians alive and dead to meet him in the air.  Revelation contributes to the puzzle:

And he said to me, “These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore they are before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple; and he who sits on the throne will shelter them with his presence.” (Revelation 7.14-15)

That description sounds like heaven, and the ones with washed robes sound like faithful Christians.  However, there are also problems with the timing of all these predicted events, and especially with the most common version of the Rapture doctrine, which states that the faithful are to be taken away before the Tribulation occurs.

Paul describes the resurrection of dead Christians again in a later letter, and there’s little or no time for the kind of shenanigans we’ve been dreaming up:

so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. (1 Corinthians 15.22-24)

This is explicitly about “the end,” and it includes no Rapture or Tribulation; only a resurrection followed by destruction.

In Matthew 24, however, just after the passage we considered, Jesus says, “Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place” (v34).  Furthermore, Revelation contains many reminders that the events described in that book would come “soon” (2.16, 3.11, 22.6, 22.7, 22.12, 22.20).  There are surely elements of both Matthew 24 and the visions of Revelation that pertain to Christ’s second coming and the end of the world, but they’re primarily about events within the lifetimes and foreseeable futures of their immediate audiences.  The first is about the coming destruction of Jerusalem, which occurred in 70 AD, just 40 years after Jesus made his predictions.  The visions of Revelation mostly refer to the persecutions early Christians would have to endure from the Roman state and populace, as well as some of the ways God would bring them victoriously through and dispense justice.

Those are the same sorts of predictions he made through Old Testament prophets like Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and Zechariah regarding the restoration of Israel to its land and nationhood—often using the very same words!  When we read further predictions under the new covenant, it’s silly to jump to the conclusion that it’s about the end of the world.  He’s told us very clearly a little about what to expect there, and we can find it in 1Th 4.13-5.11, 1 Co 15.20-28, and 2Pe 3.8-13.

People often see in their bibles what they want to see, or what they expect to see.  Most of them have not spent enough time in the Old Testament prophets to appreciate how God talks about his intervention in earthy affairs.  Too many allow pop-culture to exert influence in their interpretation of God’s word.  Don’t be distracted by such silliness.  Instead, focus on being ready for his coming, no matter how you expect that day to look.

Jeremy Nettles

One of the parables found in Matthew 13 is the shortest of all Jesus’ parables recorded for us in the Gospels.  It has some competition later in the same chapter—the parable of the hidden treasure in verse 44 is just 30 words long in the original Greek, and the parable of the pearl of great value in verse 45 is only 25 words.  But at just 20 words long in Greek (or 21 in Luke 13.20-21), the parable of the leaven easily wins the title:

“The kingdom of heaven is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, till it was all leavened.” (Matthew 13.33)

Yet, for how short it is, this parable is surprisingly complex to interpret.  The reason Jesus spoke in parables was that the common people, if they really wanted to, could understand important spiritual truths brought out from everyday, physical matters.  Yet the common people seldom use leaven any more, and so we’re starting at a disadvantage.

It’s a surprise to see Jesus comparing the kingdom of heaven to leaven at all, since from the time before the Israelites were even a real nation, God had used this substance as a symbol of corruption and unholiness, and it carried over into the New Testament as well.  When God rescued Israel from slavery in Egypt, they ate unleavened bread.  A practical reason is given:

And they baked unleavened cakes of the dough that they had brought out of Egypt, for it was not leavened, because they were thrust out of Egypt and could not wait, nor had they prepared any provisions for themselves. (Exodus 12.39)

Yet, it clearly wasn’t only due to the hurried nature of their departure; God had actively planned and prepared not just for the exodus, but for this feast and the attending analogy of leaven and corruption.  Just before the exodus, on that very night, Israel observed the first Passover, and among the careful instructions God gave them about the meal they were to share was this one: “with unleavened bread and bitter herbs they shall eat it” (Ex 12.8).  Just after this, he told Moses that this was to be the beginning of a yearly memorial, saying in verse 15,

“Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. On the first day you shall remove leaven out of your houses, for if anyone eats what is leavened, from the first day until the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel.”

Clearly, he means business.  Leaven was prohibited from their sacrifices as well—not just during Passover week, but forever.  “No grain offering that you bring to the Lord shall be made with leaven” (Le 2.11).

In the Old Testament, God more or less leaves it up to his people to infer the analogy between leaven and uncleanness.  Just as nothing ceremonially unclean was permitted in God’s presence—death, decay, disease, filth, and such things—leaven was also excluded.  But Jesus makes the connection clearer when he says, “beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees” (Mt 16.11).  In the next verse, Matthew helpfully explains that Jesus meant their teaching, which is a corruption that pervades the entire nation.  Going even farther than this, Paul tells the Christians at Corinth that they “really are unleavened” (1Co 5.7), and then goes on to describe “the leaven of malice and evil,” in contrast to “the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth” (v8).  He makes a similar point in Galatians 5.9.

Yet, here we have Jesus saying, “the kingdom of heaven is like leaven,” and we are understandably confused.  It doesn’t help that, as noted above, the common people in general don’t use leaven anymore.  We harvest our bread from its natural habitat, the supermarket, and if for some strange reason we desire to play around with the chore of making it ourselves, we buy a packet of yeast to add to the dough.  But before that sort of approach became possible starting in the late 18^th century, those who made bread—which is to say, everyone—had to keep a leaven on hand at all times.  This was a small amount of continuously fermenting dough, and would be mixed in with the other ingredients—generally just flour, water, oil, and salt—and allowed to rise.  Then, while most of the dough was baked, a little would be kept back, and perhaps fed some more flour and water.  It was now the leaven, and would be used to start the next batch, of which another portion would be saved.  This process can go on indefinitely, and is still occasionally seen in the sourdough starters that some bakers like to use and even share with their friends.

Jesus’ point, then, is not just that the kingdom of heaven spreads out to fill the whole earth.  His point is that this very process strengthens it, and it’s never used up, even when mixed into nearly 50 pounds of flour (the quantity in the parable), because it’s not an exhaustible resource.  It’s alive, and when it spreads to another part of the world or another segment of the population, it’s not diluted or weakened.  Instead, it breeds new life, and any portion of it can serve to continue the spread of God’s kingdom, farther and farther.  It always starts small, and like the tiny mustard seed in the parable right before this one (Mt 13.31), it’s easy to underestimate.  Don’t misjudge it!  Don’t try to save it for fear of running out.  Let it do its work in you and your immediate vicinity, and then spread it around as much as you can!

Jeremy Nettles

So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. (Genesis 3.6-7)

The ancient Greeks told a story very similar to this, usually called Pandora’s Box.  In that myth, the chief god Zeus commissions the manufacture of the first woman, Pandora, as a punishment for man’s acquisition of fire.  Not content with the severity of that punishment—yes, they envisioned woman as a curse upon man—Zeus also gives Pandora a container which he orders her not to open, knowing that sooner or later her curiosity will get the better of her.  When it does, the woman finds the jar contains every evil thing, and she is unable to stop them from escaping and filling the world. This is obviously a much later retelling of the account of Adam and Eve.  The similarities are striking, with the first woman being formed by God and presented to pre-existing man as a gift, the woman’s choice to disobey God’s simple instruction, and thus the entrance of all evil into the formerly safe, peaceful, and innocent world.

The differences, however, can tell us a lot.  The motivations behind the details even help us to better understand what God tells us in Genesis.  In contrast to the Greeks’ re-imagined story, God didn’t give Eve to Adam as a curse pretending to be a blessing.  The verses leading up to Eve’s creation demonstrate that Adam is incomplete, without Eve.

Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. (Genesis 2.19-20)

We could’ve missed it, but comparison to the corrupted Greek myth makes God’s true motivations all the clearer.  Adam is alone, and that is not good.  He sets out to rectify that situation, and Eve is the result.  

Another difference is that, while Zeus used a reverse-psychology approach to get Pandora to open the source of all evil, God didn't do this.  He provided the choice, of course, and knew that they would eventually choose rebellion, but he meant what he said, and punished Adam and Eve for disobeying.  The entrance of evil into the world wasn’t his goal—it was a tragedy.

Finally, and perhaps most strikingly, while the Greeks weren’t shy about blaming everyone else for what goes wrong with man, God makes it clear in Genesis that all humans are responsible for evil.  The Greeks blamed woman—that silly twit just had to know what was under the lid, and now everything’s ruined.  But while Eve was deceived and was the first to eat the forbidden fruit, is Adam any better?  He knows the command as well as Eve does, and can’t even claim he was tricked.  “She also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate” (Ge 3.6).  He’s not exactly an unwilling participant, and he’s certainly not the model of a patriarchal head of his household, who’s in charge and responsible for not just himself but those in his care.  No, instead when God confronts him about his sin, he responds, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate” (Ge. 3.12).

Funnily enough then, the Greeks are simply telling the story from Adam’s perspective, without a shred of awareness that Adam is part of the problem.  Adam blamed Eve.  These Greeks blamed Pandora, and women in general, for all their misfortune and suffering.  Adam, in his quest to shift the blame from his own shoulders to anyone else, also blamed God himself, by calling Eve, “the woman whom you gave to be with me.”  That fact only bears mentioning in this conversation in order to imply God is really the one responsible for this catastrophic turn of events.  We’re meant to roll our eyes at Adam’s weaseling, and then upon reflection to see his faults in ourselves, too.  That lesson seems to have been lost on the Greek storytellers, who instead take Adam’s idea of blaming God and run with it, so that they assign evil motives to Zeus every step of the way and cast these poor, innocent primordial men as victims—of Pandora’s foolishness, and the gods’ malice.

This is not a good way to look at the world, for many reasons.  Look where it got Adam:

“Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” (Genesis 3.17-19)

God doesn’t much care for excuse-making and blame-slinging, no matter who’s doing it.  The road to redemption starts with acknowledging your need for it.  Rather than blaming each other and God for all that is wrong in the world, look at your own contributions to evil.  We must acknowledge our guilt, or we won’t obtain forgiveness.

Jeremy Nettles

Interpreting a written document is difficult, and the stakes go up, the more important the document is.  There’s a reason lawyers are very well paid for their work: it involves learning to properly interpret and apply a vast body of text, written over a long period of time by many different hands, in a form of language not used by the common people.  They do all this in order to help their clients comply with the law and defend those clients before a judge, if necessary, who is often compensated even more generously for his expertise.  In the Bible, we’re dealing with a collection of incredibly important texts, and many people have an interest in reading God’s words and especially his instructions in one particular way or another.

As a result, some have devised systems of interpretation and application, just as lawyers have done with the law.  One of these principles occasionally thrown around is called the Law of First Mention.  The idea here is that the first time a word or topic shows up in the Bible, it is the touchstone—the clearest, simplest, most authoritative expression of the idea, and therefore the key that unlocks all of the other instances.

We see Jesus doing something like this to settle the debate over divorce:

And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?” He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” (Matthew 19.3-6)

There it is—an important issue, subject to competing interpretations by the lawyers of the day, settled by a simple appeal to “the beginning.”  The first time it’s mentioned, God’s intent for marriage is clear.  He himself joined the first husband and wife into “one flesh,” and thus the argument is settled.

There’s value in going back to the beginning.  Examining anything’s origins is a good way to better understand its core meaning and more fully comprehend its development over time.  For example, the creation account teaches us many things about God’s purpose and intentions for his creation.  

However, it’s foolish to make the first mention of a topic the authority at the expense of everything else God has said.  That would be to deliberately ignore later and perhaps more precise instructions from God, on the basis that we liked the old ones better.  Worse than that, it would throw us wildly off the trail in many areas.  For example, consider the passage from which Jesus was quoting when he settled the divorce question.  He quoted Genesis 2.24, and the very next verse says, “And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.”  This is the first appearance of both the word and the concept of nudity in the Bible, and to use Jesus’ language, “from the beginning,” there was nothing remotely wrong or dangerous about flagrant nakedness in daily life. Ok, now we clearly have a problem.  

In case you find this argument appealing, let’s note that Adam and Eve realize they are naked after eating the forbidden fruit, and immediately fashion a crude covering of their more vulnerable areas.  Shortly thereafter, God finds these to be insufficient covering, and provides better clothing for them even as he’s busy banishing them from their original home in Paradise: “And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them” (Ge 3.21).  Whatever happened to the “first mention”?  There’s still something important to learn from the origins, but it’s a terrible standard for our behavior today.

This approach would also have us continuing to follow many obscure Old Testament laws that don’t pertain to us anymore.  Tassels are first mentioned in Numbers 15.37-40, for one example.  They are not an optional fashion accessory, but a requirement.  For another example, pigs first appear in Leviticus 11.7, and while Jesus later made it clear (Mk 7.18-20, Ac 10.13-15, and Ro 14.14) this is not an issue under his covenant, we’d conclude from the “first mention” that pork is forbidden for human consumption and always will be.

We haven’t even discussed yet, which arrangement of the books holds sway?  This doesn’t matter until you move past the book of Judges, but after that point the Hebrew arrangement differs from the Greek Old Testament, and both differ from our modern arrangement.  The same books are included, but in a different order—what comes “first,” then?  This may seem like a silly question, but the doctrine of first mention would demand we reach a firm answer to it, in order to establish priority, and thus authority.  

We’re barking up the wrong tree.  While there are good reasons to pay attention to origins, the real answer is to consider all that God has said, not to pick and choose based on some man-made standard that would have us walking around both naked and also wearing tassels—but free from defilement brought on by bacon consumption.  Even if you like that idea, it makes little difference in God’s eyes, and he’s the one who gets to make the rules.  Pay attention, and don’t just obey the ones you like, or the ones you think are important.

Jeremy Nettles