Reasoning Together: Blog

We Celebrate the Reformation. But Would We Welcome a Reformer?

2026-11-01T15:30:00Z

Every Reformation Sunday, Protestant churches remember a man who dared to challenge the religious establishment of his day. We celebrate his courage, his conviction, and his refusal to surrender what he believed Scripture taught simply because those in authority disagreed.

But there is an uncomfortable question worth asking: Would we welcome Martin Luther into our churches today? Or would we regard him as a troublesome dissenter, someone whose questions threatened the unity of the congregation?

On October 31, 1517, Luther, then a Catholic monk and professor of theology, circulated ninety-five propositions questioning the church’s teaching and practices concerning indulgences.^[1] Tradition remembers him hammering those theses onto the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg. Whether he personally nailed them there remains debated.^[2] What is beyond dispute is his invitation to theological examination.

Martin Luther (1483–1546), painted by his friend Lucas Cranach the Elder in 1529. Public domain.

His propositions began with a statement of purpose:

“Out of love for the truth and a desire to bring it to light.” Martin Luther, 1517

Luther was inviting discussion.^[3] He was asking that established teaching be examined and defended. He had not set out to establish a new denomination. The questions he raised, however, eventually brought him into direct conflict with ecclesiastical authority. In 1521, he was excommunicated.

Five centuries later, churches that owe their existence to the Reformation celebrate the man who refused to accept the religious consensus of his time.

The irony should not escape us. We honour the courage of those who challenged yesterday’s orthodoxy, yet we can become remarkably uncomfortable when someone challenges our own.

When Unity Becomes More Important Than Truth

Christian unity is a biblical responsibility. Jesus prayed that his followers would be one (John 17:21). Paul urged believers to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (Ephesians 4:3). These are not suggestions we can dismiss when disagreements become inconvenient.

But neither can we separate unity from the truth upon which it is meant to rest.

In the same prayer in which Jesus spoke of unity, he prayed:

“Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.” John 17:17 (KJV)

Paul likewise describes Christian maturity as a movement toward unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God (Ephesians 4:13). His instruction to speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15) joins two obligations that we are sometimes tempted to separate.

Unity and truth are not competing virtues. Genuine Christian unity is strengthened by a shared commitment to discovering and following what God has revealed.

The difficulty arises when unity is redefined as agreement with an institution’s existing interpretations. Under that arrangement, a question becomes a challenge to authority, disagreement becomes divisiveness, and further examination of Scripture is treated as unnecessary because the matter has supposedly been settled.

But who settled it? On what grounds? And what happens when someone presents evidence from Scripture that calls the prevailing interpretation into question?

If the answer is that the discussion itself threatens unity, we have exchanged the pursuit of truth for the preservation of consensus.

A congregation can agree on something and still be mistaken. Agreement is not evidence that an interpretation is correct. A thousand people repeating the same misunderstanding do not make it true. They merely make it popular.

There is a difference between unity built upon truth and uniformity maintained by discouraging questions. The former is a strength of the church. The latter can become an obstacle to its growth.

Two things that look alike from the outside, and behave very differently inside a church.

The Bereans Had a Better Idea

The book of Acts gives us a remarkable example of how believers ought to respond when confronted with teaching they have not previously considered.

When Paul and Silas arrived in Berea, the people received their message. Luke tells us:

“These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.” Acts 17:11 (KJV)

Consider what was happening.

The apostle Paul was teaching. Yet the Bereans did not accept his message simply because of his position, reputation, or confidence. They examined the Scriptures to determine whether his teaching was correct.

And Luke commended them for it.

There was no suggestion that their examination demonstrated a rebellious attitude. Quite the opposite. Their willingness to listen, combined with their determination to verify what they heard, was evidence of noble character.

Notice the balance. They received the message with readiness of mind. They were not looking for an excuse to reject Paul. Neither were they prepared to surrender their responsibility to examine his teaching.

If the Bereans were commended for examining the teaching of an apostle, why should Christians today be discouraged from examining the teaching of a pastor, theologian, denominational leader, or doctrinal committee?

Surely no modern minister possesses greater authority than Paul.

The Berean example places a responsibility upon both teacher and student. The teacher must be willing to demonstrate the scriptural foundation of what is taught. The student must be willing to listen carefully and examine the evidence fairly.

Neither is entitled to substitute authority, familiarity, or personal preference for the Word of God.

The Berean pattern: open to being taught, insistent on being persuaded by Scripture.

When Paul Challenged Peter

The New Testament offers an even more uncomfortable example.

In Galatians 2, Paul recounts confronting Peter at Antioch. Peter had withdrawn from eating with Gentile believers because of pressure from those associated with the circumcision group. His behaviour influenced others, including Barnabas.

Paul did not remain silent for the sake of harmony.

He writes:

“I withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed.” Galatians 2:11 (KJV)

The matter was not an insignificant personal disagreement. Paul recognized that Peter’s conduct compromised the truth of the gospel. In verse 14, he explains that they were not walking uprightly according to that truth.

Here were two apostles, both recognized as leaders in the early church, standing in disagreement over a matter that affected Christian fellowship.

Imagine someone appealing to Paul to leave the matter alone. Think of the damage to unity, they might have argued. Think of the confusion among the believers. Surely there must be a way to preserve peace without publicly confronting Peter.

Yet Paul understood that allowing the error to continue would itself damage the church.

He did not oppose Peter because he rejected unity. He opposed him because the truth upon which their fellowship rested was being compromised.

That distinction matters.

Sometimes disagreement threatens unity because of pride, ambition, or an unwillingness to listen. At other times, disagreement arises because someone has recognized a genuine problem that others have overlooked or are unwilling to address.

We should be careful not to confuse the two.

The Protestant Tradition of Challenging Orthodoxy

The Protestant Reformation was not simply a disagreement about the sale of indulgences. It developed into a profound examination of church authority, salvation, grace, and the proper interpretation of Scripture.

At its centre stood a question: By what authority does the church establish its doctrines?

The Reformers did not argue that Christians should disregard two thousand years of theological reflection. They challenged the assumption that established ecclesiastical interpretations were beyond correction by Scripture.

The distinction is fundamental.

Tradition can preserve the accumulated wisdom of generations. Creeds and confessions can articulate truths that the church has studied, defended, and passed down through centuries. We would be foolish to dismiss that inheritance simply because it is old.

But age does not make an interpretation infallible.

The Protestant principle of sola Scriptura places Scripture above the church’s interpretive traditions. It does not mean that every individual interpretation is equally sound or that centuries of Christian scholarship can be casually discarded. It means that Scripture remains the final standard against which our theological conclusions must be tested.

And that principle must apply to Protestant traditions as surely as it applies to the traditions the Reformers challenged.

A Baptist, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Methodist, or Pentecostal church cannot consistently appeal to the Reformation’s insistence upon scriptural authority while treating its own denominational interpretations as beyond serious examination.

To do so would be to embrace the results of the Reformation while resisting the principle that made reform possible.

History illustrates the difficulty.

In 1893, the Presbyterian General Assembly convicted biblical scholar Charles Augustus Briggs of heresy and suspended him from the ministry.^[4] His views on biblical authority, inspiration, and historical criticism had brought him into conflict with the church’s doctrinal standards.

Yet his name remains familiar to students of biblical Hebrew through the Brown–Driver–Briggs lexicon, a reference work still widely used in biblical scholarship.

That does not establish that Briggs was correct in every argument he advanced. Nor does a heresy conviction, by itself, demonstrate that his opponents were wrong. It illustrates something more basic: the history of Christian scholarship includes serious disputes between respected interpreters and the institutions to which they belong.

Those disputes must ultimately be assessed by examining the arguments and evidence, not merely by recounting which side possessed the authority to render judgment.

Indeed, the Reformers themselves did not always display the openness to disagreement that we might wish they had extended to others. The temptation to defend one’s own theological conclusions by suppressing opposition did not disappear with the Reformation.

Perhaps that is why its central lesson needs to be learned again by every generation.

Orthodoxy Should Be Defended, Not Merely Enforced

There is an understandable concern that open theological discussion will eventually lead to doctrinal confusion. If every teaching can be questioned, some fear, what will prevent the church from surrendering the truths it has faithfully preserved?

It is a legitimate concern, but it rests upon an unnecessary choice.

We are not required to choose between having convictions and examining them.

A person who genuinely believes a doctrine is scriptural should be willing to explain why. The stronger the biblical foundation, the less reason there is to fear careful examination.

That does not mean every challenge deserves endorsement. Some interpretations are poorly reasoned. Others ignore important passages, misuse the biblical languages, or rest upon assumptions the text cannot sustain.

These arguments should be answered.

But they should be answered with evidence, not merely with appeals to orthodoxy.

There is little intellectual or spiritual merit in saying, “This is what our church teaches,” when the question being asked is whether the church has interpreted Scripture correctly.

Such an answer identifies an established position. It does not demonstrate its accuracy.

Paul’s instruction in 1 Thessalonians 5:21 is remarkably concise:

“Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.” 1 Thessalonians 5:21 (KJV)

There are two responsibilities here. We are to examine what is presented, and we are to retain what proves sound.

The first prevents gullibility. The second prevents an endless pursuit of novelty for its own sake.

Neither responsibility can be fulfilled by refusing to entertain an argument before hearing it.

Proverbs 18:13 warns against answering a matter before hearing it, while verse 17 reminds us that the first account of a dispute can appear convincing until another comes forward and examines it.

These principles are not suspended when the subject becomes theological.

In fact, if we believe that Scripture communicates truths of eternal consequence, should we not be especially careful to distinguish what the text actually says from what we have become accustomed to saying about it?

The Cost of Silence

When questions cannot be asked openly, they do not necessarily disappear.

Sometimes they are discussed privately. Sometimes those who raise them withdraw from fellowship. Sometimes sincere believers conclude that the church is more interested in protecting its established positions than in examining the Scriptures.

And sometimes an error remains uncorrected, not because it has survived serious scrutiny, but because scrutiny has never been permitted.

That is a costly way to preserve unity.

A church should be a place where believers can study together, challenge one another respectfully, acknowledge what they do not know, and change their minds when the evidence requires it.

This demands humility from everyone involved.

Those who question established teachings must recognize that disagreement does not automatically make them reformers. Being contrary is not the same as being correct. They have a responsibility to listen, to reason carefully, and to consider the strongest arguments against their conclusions.

But those defending traditional interpretations carry an equal responsibility. They must be willing to acknowledge that sincere Christians, studying the same Scriptures, can discover weaknesses in interpretations long regarded as settled.

Neither side should be interested merely in winning an argument.

The purpose of theological discussion is not to defeat one another. It is to discover what is true.

That is where genuine Christian fellowship can become something richer than agreement. We can respect someone who challenges our conclusions precisely because we recognize that both of us are accountable to a greater authority than our own opinions.

We do not have to agree on every interpretation to search the Scriptures together.

And when a disagreement cannot be resolved, we need wisdom to distinguish those matters essential to Christian confession from those over which faithful believers may continue to differ.

Unity does not require us to pretend that disagreements do not exist. It requires us to handle them with honesty, charity, humility, and a common submission to God’s Word.

Would We Welcome a Reformer?

As we remember Luther and the events of 1517, perhaps we should do more than celebrate the courage of a man who lived five centuries ago.

We should ask whether we possess the same willingness to reconsider what we have inherited.

Not because tradition is inherently mistaken. Not because every new interpretation deserves to replace an older one. And certainly not because disagreement is a virtue in itself.

But because truth matters more than our attachment to a particular explanation of it.

We should remember that many doctrines we now regard as familiar were clarified through vigorous disagreement. Christians debated the meaning of Scripture, tested competing interpretations, and sometimes discovered that what seemed obvious to one generation required correction by another.

That process can be uncomfortable. It can expose errors we have repeated for years. It may require us to reconsider something taught by people we respect deeply.

Yet loyalty to a teacher and loyalty to the truth are not always the same thing.

Martin Luther’s legacy should remind us that even sincere religious authorities can be mistaken, and that appeals to established orthodoxy cannot settle every question of biblical interpretation.

The lesson of the Reformation is not that Luther was right about everything. It is that no Christian tradition, including those that trace their heritage to him, should consider itself beyond correction by Scripture.

Perhaps the most fitting way to honour the Reformation is not simply to remember the questions that were asked in Wittenberg, but to cultivate churches where sincere questions can still be heard.

Where Scripture is opened rather than merely invoked.

Where disagreement is examined before it is condemned.

Where the authority of a tradition does not replace the responsibility to demonstrate its biblical foundation.

And where unity grows from a shared devotion to truth rather than the expectation that everyone must agree.

We celebrate the Reformation because someone was willing to ask questions that others preferred not to hear.

The real test is whether we are still willing to hear them.

Scripture quotations are from the King James Version (KJV).

Notes

Timothy J. Wengert, ed., The Annotated Luther, vol. 1, The Roots of Reform (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2015), including the Ninety-Five Theses and Luther’s letter to Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz. ↩︎
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Martin Luther”, on the theological development of Luther’s challenge and the disputed church-door account. ↩︎
Martin Luther, Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences (1517), opening invitation, in the University of Oxford’s digital edition of the Ninety-Five Theses. ↩︎
This Day in Presbyterian History, “The Trial of Charles A. Briggs (1891–92)”, including the General Assembly’s judgment in 1893. ↩︎

Putting Our Beliefs Through the Fire

2026-10-24T15:30:00Z

Can we claim to think critically if we refuse to take seriously the arguments against what we believe?

Confidence comes easily when everyone around us agrees. Read the same authors, listen to the same teachers, spend your time with people who share your convictions, and those convictions soon start to feel unassailable. What that proves is debatable. It may mean our beliefs are sound. It may only mean we have become good at answering the objections we already know.

So try this. Find the strongest argument against something you firmly believe, the case a well-informed and intelligent opponent would actually make, and give it the same fair hearing you would want for your own view. Go in prepared to find that you were wrong. If that outcome is off the table, you are not really examining anything.

Hard Is Not the Same as Tough

When I worked in metallurgy, I learned something about steel that has stayed with me.

Steel meant for years of heavy industrial service had to be tough as well as hard, and those are different properties. We heated it to well over a thousand degrees and then quenched it. That changed its internal structure and made it very hard and resistant to wear. It also left the steel brittle and full of internal stress. It could resist deformation and still crack under a sudden blow. A piece of steel could be extremely hard and dangerously fragile at the same time.

The fix seemed backwards at first. We heated the steel again, this time to a lower, carefully controlled temperature. This is called tempering. It relieved the internal stress and traded a little hardness for toughness, the ability to absorb shock and repeated loading without fracturing. Hardness resists being dented or deformed. Toughness absorbs energy without breaking. A material can have plenty of one and little of the other.

I think beliefs work the same way.

A person can hold a conviction very firmly and still understand little about why it should be believed. Years of reinforcement harden it. Every agreeing voice adds certainty, and every contrary voice gets waved away. In time, being right becomes so familiar that the mere possibility of being wrong feels like a threat.

That is intellectual hardness, and like steel that was never tempered, it can hide real fragility. When a serious objection lands, the person gets defensive, angry, or dismissive instead of weighing the argument. The belief stays outwardly intact, but refusing to reconsider something has never been evidence that it is true.

Tempering steel means deliberately giving up some hardness because toughness is what the job requires. Putting our convictions through honest criticism asks the same of us. We may lose some certainty. An argument we thought was decisive may turn out to be weaker than we assumed, or someone we disagreed with may have seen something we missed. Nobody enjoys finding a crack in an opinion they care about.

It Still Has to Pass the Test

Hardness resists being dented. Toughness absorbs the blow. A bar can have plenty of one and little of the other.

Metallurgy taught me one more thing. You don’t keep a piece of steel because you put time and effort into making it. It still has to meet the requirements of the job it is made for. It goes through hardness tests, impact tests, and inspections, and sometimes it fails. If the defect can’t be corrected, the steel is rejected. No responsible metallurgist would use it anyway because of the work already invested. In some applications the results could be disastrous.

I don’t see why our beliefs should get gentler treatment. We may have held a conviction for thirty years, taught it, built other conclusions on it, even staked our reputation on it. None of that makes it true. It only makes it harder to admit we were mistaken, and that is where intellectual honesty starts to cost something.

Some convictions come out of serious examination stronger than they went in. Some need to be refined or qualified. A few, if the evidence requires it, have to be given up. That last possibility is the one we resist most, especially when a belief has become part of how we see ourselves. Still, I would rather find out I was wrong than spend another thirty years defending the mistake.

The point of examining our beliefs isn’t to get better at defending them. It’s to find out whether they deserve defending at all. A mind tempered by honest examination can hear disagreement, grant a fair objection, and revise a conclusion without coming apart. It has no reason to fear a strong argument from the other side, and it may learn something from one.

Steel Has No Say. We Do.

The comparison has a limit. Steel has no say in whether it is tempered or tested. We do. We can go looking for the arguments that challenge us, or spend our lives steering around them. We can follow the evidence, or decide in advance where it has to lead.

If we have already decided that none of our convictions could be wrong, we are not examining them at all. I would much rather learn that a belief of mine couldn’t survive scrutiny than keep holding it only because I never let it be tested.

Defective steel can look impressive on a shelf. You can polish it, admire it, and tell everyone how strong it is.

I just wouldn’t build a bridge with it.

God Is Bigger Than the Boxes We Put Him In, Part 2

2026-10-10T16:05:00Z

Part 2 of 2. Read Part 1 first

In Part 1, we looked at a teaching that sounds perfectly reasonable: before God can give someone revelation, that person must first become meek. Psalm 25:9 speaks of God guiding the humble and teaching them His ways. It describes those who are receptive to His guidance; it does not make humility a universal condition for every occasion on which God chooses to speak.

We then followed six people through Scripture: Pharaoh, Laban, Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar, Saul, and Caiaphas. Each received some communication from God, and in none of these accounts do the biblical writers point to the recipient’s meekness as the thing that made it possible. Some of them were plainly proud.

So where does that leave meekness?

Meekness Still Matters

I want to be clear about something.

None of this diminishes the importance of meekness.

A person unwilling to learn is unlikely to benefit much from instruction. Pride blinds us to our faults. It makes correction difficult and turns sincere disagreement into a personal insult.

Scripture has plenty to say about that.

Proverbs 11:2 (KJV) tells us:

“When pride cometh, then cometh shame: but with the lowly is wisdom.”

And James 4:6 (KJV) reminds us:

“God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble.”

We have every reason to cultivate humility before God.

But I hesitate when someone turns a principle governing our response to God into a condition governing God’s freedom to act.

It may be entirely proper to tell someone that meekness is necessary if he wishes to learn God’s ways faithfully. That is a statement about the disposition of the learner.

It is another matter to announce that unless someone first becomes meek, God cannot communicate with him.

That statement attempts to tell us what God is supposedly unable or unwilling to do in every circumstance.

And the biblical accounts we’ve considered make such certainty difficult to defend.

There is also a practical danger here.

When we turn biblical principles into mechanical procedures, our relationship with God can begin to resemble the operation of a machine.

Insert the correct spiritual conditions, pull the appropriate lever, and receive the expected result.

Meekness produces revelation. Faith produces this result. Prayer, if performed according to the proper formula, produces that result.

Of course, Scripture teaches us to trust God’s promises and take His instructions seriously. There is no reason to doubt that obedience matters.

But God is a living, purposeful Being. He is not a machine that responds to the correct combination of spiritual inputs.

Nor has He promised to explain every decision He makes.

I wonder how often we forget that.

God Has Never Needed Our Permission to Surprise Us

Isaiah 55:8–9 (KJV) contains a familiar statement:

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

These verses are often quoted as though they were a convenient way to end any difficult theological discussion.

Someone raises a reasonable question, and another person replies, “Well, God’s ways are higher than ours.”

Discussion over.

But Isaiah deserves better treatment than that.

In the surrounding passage, God calls the wicked to forsake their ways and return to Him, promising abundant pardon.

What stands out in the text is God’s mercy. His willingness to forgive exceeds what human beings might ordinarily expect.

The passage therefore gives us a concrete example of God’s ways challenging human assumptions.

That is a far more useful lesson than using the verse to avoid difficult questions.

Paul reaches a similar point in Romans 11:33 (KJV):

“O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!”

Paul had spent considerable effort reasoning through God’s dealings with Israel and the Gentiles.

He had not abandoned logic, careful reading, or theological reasoning.

Yet his study led him to recognize that God’s wisdom exceeded his own comprehension.

I rather like that combination.

Serious reasoning, accompanied by the humility to recognize its limits.

We need both.

Theological frameworks can be useful. They help us organize biblical teaching, recognize connections, and identify genuine contradictions in our understanding.

I use them myself.

But a framework is only as reliable as its handling of the biblical evidence.

When Scripture contradicts a proposition we’ve constructed, Scripture is not the thing that needs correcting.

That ought to be obvious.

Oddly enough, it isn’t always how we behave.

Would We Expect Less of Our Heavenly Father?

There is another consideration that I think deserves attention, one that brings this discussion a little closer to home.

Think about your own father, or perhaps your experience raising children.

Did your father speak to you only when you were agreeable? Did he wait until you displayed the proper attitude before offering advice, correcting your behaviour, or warning you about something dangerous?

I rather doubt it.

Sometimes we were stubborn. Sometimes we were argumentative. And occasionally, if we’re willing to admit it, we were downright brats.

Our fathers spoke to us anyway.

In fact, some of the most important conversations a father has with his children occur precisely when those children are least inclined to listen.

A loving father doesn’t necessarily wait for his child to become teachable before speaking. Sometimes he speaks because the child needs correction. Sometimes he warns because he sees danger the child cannot yet recognize.

And sometimes he simply speaks because he loves his child, even when that child’s behaviour leaves a great deal to be desired.

Now consider what Jesus taught about our Heavenly Father.

Luke 11:11–13 (KJV):

"If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone? or if he ask a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent?

Or if he shall ask an egg, will he offer him a scorpion?

If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?"

Notice Jesus’ reasoning.

He begins with the ordinary experience of earthly parents. Even imperfect human beings understand something about caring for their children. They know how to give good gifts.

Then Jesus asks us to reason from the lesser to the greater.

If imperfect earthly fathers know how to care for their children, how much more can we trust our Heavenly Father?

That is a remarkable way to teach us about God.

Now, I recognize that Jesus is speaking specifically about prayer and the Father’s willingness to give the holy spirit to those who ask. We should respect that context. The passage does not promise that God will communicate whatever we want, whenever we want, regardless of our disposition.

But surely Jesus’ reasoning reveals something about the character of our Heavenly Father.

Would we imagine that an imperfect earthly father might speak patiently to a stubborn child, while our infinitely wiser and more loving Heavenly Father is somehow unable to communicate until we have achieved the required measure of meekness?

Is God less capable of dealing with His children than we are?

I find that difficult to reconcile with Jesus’ teaching.

And here is where the distinction matters.

A child’s stubbornness may prevent him from appreciating his father’s instruction. He may misunderstand it, resist it, or ignore it altogether. Meekness certainly makes a difference to how instruction is received.

But the child’s attitude does not determine whether his father is capable of speaking.

Of course, we cannot simply transfer every feature of human parenting to God. Human fathers are imperfect, and God’s dealings with His children are governed by wisdom far greater than ours.

I wonder whether we’ve become so concerned with identifying the conditions under which God communicates that we’ve overlooked the character of the One doing the communicating.

He is our Father.

And that ought to count for something.

The Trouble With Having God Figured Out

I suspect the attraction of theological formulas is that they offer certainty.

And certainty can be comforting.

We want to know how God works. We want principles that can be taught, remembered, and applied. We want to make sense of difficult passages and explain why things happen as they do.

There is nothing inherently wrong with that desire.

The trouble begins when we cease distinguishing between what Scripture explicitly teaches and what we have inferred from it.

A genuine biblical pattern becomes an absolute rule. An inference acquires the authority of a commandment. Before long, we are defending something far more restrictive than the passage from which it supposedly came.

And because we’ve grown attached to our explanation, the biblical exceptions become annoyances to be managed.

Perhaps Pharaoh must secretly have been meek.

Perhaps Laban possessed some spiritual qualification we’re not told about.

Perhaps Nebuchadnezzar had satisfied a condition before receiving his dream.

Perhaps Saul’s prophetic experience belongs in a separate category that conveniently leaves our original claim untouched.

Some of those possibilities may be worth investigating. We should not dismiss distinctions that genuinely arise from the texts.

But neither should we keep adding qualifications merely to protect a conclusion that Scripture never required us to reach.

At some point, intellectual honesty demands that we reconsider the original proposition.

Maybe the biblical principle was sound all along.

Maybe our mistake was in making it absolute.

And that brings me back to meekness.

Perhaps the Box Is Ours

There is a certain irony in all this.

We may become so convinced that meekness is a necessary prerequisite for receiving revelation that we resist the very passages which challenge that conviction.

We insist that the learner must be willing to be corrected, while refusing to reconsider what we’ve learned.

Surely that ought to give us pause.

Meekness involves more than accepting instruction from people with whom we already agree. It includes a willingness to examine our own conclusions, especially when Scripture presents evidence that makes them uncomfortable.

I am not suggesting that God acts arbitrarily, that biblical principles are unreliable, or that doctrine is somehow unimportant.

Quite the contrary.

I believe sound doctrine matters too much to allow our favourite explanations to become substitutes for the biblical text.

God has revealed His character, His purposes, and His promises. We ought to take that revelation seriously, which means allowing the whole of Scripture to inform our understanding, including the passages that do not fit neatly into our expectations.

Pharaoh, Laban, Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar, Saul, and Caiaphas are all part of the biblical record.

Their experiences deserve to be heard.

And if those accounts require us to qualify something we’ve been teaching for years, perhaps that is exactly what we ought to do.

I don’t imagine we will ever exhaustively explain why God acts as He does in every circumstance. There is much He has revealed, and much we still have to learn.

But I would rather live with a question Scripture leaves open than offer a confident answer Scripture doesn’t support.

After all, the purpose of studying the Bible is to understand God more faithfully, not to become increasingly skilled at defending our own explanations of Him.

And perhaps the greatest test of our meekness is what we do when the Word of God challenges something we were quite certain we already understood.

God has never been confined by the boxes we’ve constructed for Him.

We might do well to stop mistaking those boxes for the boundaries of His Word.

God Is Bigger Than the Boxes We Put Him In, Part 1

2026-10-10T16:00:00Z

Part 1 of 2. Go to Part 2

It is comforting to believe we have God figured out.

We discover a biblical principle, find a few verses to support it, and begin to understand how God works. Before long, someone develops a teaching around it. The teaching becomes familiar, then widely accepted, and eventually we can scarcely imagine anyone questioning it.

Everything fits nicely.

Until, of course, we encounter a passage of Scripture that refuses to cooperate.

And then what?

We can reconsider our understanding. Or we can find some ingenious way to explain the troublesome passage without disturbing the theological framework we’ve spent years constructing.

I suspect most of us have done the latter at one time or another.

The difficulty is that a perfectly sound biblical principle can gradually become something Scripture never intended it to be. We begin with an observation about how God works and end with a declaration about how He must work.

And occasionally, about what He cannot do.

That is quite a leap.

Let me illustrate with a teaching that, on the surface, seems perfectly reasonable: the importance of meekness in receiving revelation from God.

When a Biblical Principle Becomes a Formula

Psalm 25:9 (KJV) tells us:

“The meek will he guide in judgment: and the meek will he teach his way.”

There is nothing difficult about that statement. God values meekness. A person willing to receive instruction is far more likely to benefit from it than someone convinced he already knows everything.

James 1:21 likewise instructs believers to receive the Word with meekness.

I would hardly dispute the importance of either passage.

But suppose someone takes that principle a little further and teaches that before God can give someone revelation, that individual must first become meek.

Perhaps you’ve heard some version of this.

The reasoning is easy enough to follow. God teaches the meek. Therefore, if someone wishes to receive revelation from God, he must first satisfy the condition of meekness.

It has a certain tidy appeal. First comes meekness; then comes revelation. A spiritual sequence, almost mathematical in its precision.

Psalm 25:9 speaks of God guiding the humble in what is right and teaching them His ways. The Hebrew verbs describe instruction and direction, particularly in how one ought to live. But this is not the same as saying that God communicates only with the humble. Divine communication can also take the form of warnings, rebukes, correction, or the disclosure of future events. These may involve instruction, but they serve different purposes. The psalm describes those who are receptive to God’s guidance; it does not establish a universal condition for every occasion on which God chooses to speak.

Interestingly, the preceding verse says:

Psalm 25:8 (KJV):

“Good and upright is the LORD: therefore will he teach sinners in the way.”

The psalmist celebrates God’s goodness in teaching sinners and His guidance of the meek. Both statements are true. Neither attempts to catalogue every circumstance in which God might communicate with a human being.

Perhaps the better question is whether the rest of Scripture supports the restriction we’ve placed on Him.

And here the biblical record becomes interesting.

Pharaoh’s Dreams Weren’t Caused by Bad Hummus

Seven good years, then seven lean ones: Joseph explains Pharaoh's dreams (Genesis 41).

Consider Pharaoh in Genesis 41.

The Egyptian ruler had two dreams. In one, seven healthy cows were devoured by seven sickly cows. In the other, seven good ears of grain were swallowed by seven thin ears.

The dreams troubled Pharaoh, as well they might. His magicians and wise men could offer no satisfactory interpretation.

Eventually Joseph was summoned from prison.

Before explaining anything, Joseph made clear where the answer would come from.

Genesis 41:16 (KJV):

“It is not in me: God shall give Pharaoh an answer of peace.”

Then, in verse 25, Joseph explained:

“The dream of Pharaoh is one: God hath shewed Pharaoh what he is about to do.”

Think about those words for a moment.

The dreams weren’t the unfortunate result of something Pharaoh had eaten the night before. Joseph explicitly identified their source. God had communicated something to the Egyptian king about events that were going to affect an entire region.

Now, here is what interests me.

Was Pharaoh meek?

Was he a believer in the God of Israel? Had he undergone some spiritual preparation that qualified him to receive these dreams? Was God’s spirit upon him?

Genesis doesn’t tell us.

And that matters.

We shouldn’t assume Pharaoh was incapable of humility merely because he was an Egyptian ruler. But we have no grounds for inventing a spiritual qualification that the writer never mentions.

The narrative directs our attention elsewhere.

God was revealing seven years of abundance followed by seven years of famine. Joseph would interpret the dreams, Pharaoh would appoint him to oversee Egypt’s preparations, and the resulting food reserves would preserve countless lives, including the family through whom God’s promises to Abraham were unfolding.

There is a great deal happening here, and very little of it depends on our assumptions about Pharaoh’s spiritual condition.

There is another detail worth considering.

Pharaoh received the dreams, yet he didn’t understand them.

Apparently, receiving a communication from God and understanding what it means are two different matters. Pharaoh had one; Joseph provided the other.

That alone should make us cautious about treating every instance of divine communication as though it followed an identical spiritual process.

And Pharaoh is hardly an isolated example.

Laban Received a Warning He Hadn’t Asked For

Jacob’s father-in-law, Laban, does not emerge from Genesis as a particularly admirable character.

His dealings with Jacob involved deception, manipulation, and a ready willingness to adjust arrangements whenever it suited him.

When Jacob finally left with his family, Laban pursued him.

Before he could confront Jacob, however, God intervened.

Genesis 31:24 (KJV):

“And God came to Laban the Syrian in a dream by night, and said unto him, Take heed that thou speak not to Jacob either good or bad.”

God came to Laban in a dream.

We are not told that Laban had repented of his earlier conduct. There is no account of him seeking God’s guidance or cultivating the meekness necessary to receive a divine message.

Indeed, the circumstances suggest he was quite determined to have things his own way.

Yet God spoke to him.

Why?

The surrounding narrative points toward God’s concern for Jacob and the protection of the family through whom His promises were being fulfilled.

Laban’s spiritual maturity, whatever it may have been, isn’t the focus of the account.

God wanted to restrain him, and He did.

Laban even acknowledged the encounter when he confronted Jacob.

Now, someone might object that this was a warning rather than the kind of revelation a believer receives when seeking God’s guidance.

Fair enough. Those are different circumstances, and we ought to recognize the distinction.

But that concession raises a question of its own. If God can communicate with someone without first establishing the spiritual conditions we’ve proposed, perhaps our original rule was too broad.

We might need to distinguish between the disposition of someone who desires to learn God’s ways and God’s freedom to address someone for reasons of His own.

The latter appears repeatedly throughout Scripture.

Nebuchadnezzar Had a Humility Problem

The Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar provides an especially striking example.

In Daniel 2, he received a dream concerning a great image representing successive kingdoms. Daniel was eventually brought before him to explain its meaning.

Daniel 2:28 (KJV):

“But there is a God in heaven that revealeth secrets, and maketh known to the king Nebuchadnezzar what shall be in the latter days.”

Daniel leaves little uncertainty about the source of the dream.

Later, in Daniel 4, the king received another dream. This one concerned his own downfall.

Nebuchadnezzar was a proud man. He was impressed with his power, his kingdom, and, most of all, himself. His eventual humiliation was intended to teach him that the Most High rules in the kingdom of men.

But consider the order of events.

God revealed the warning before Nebuchadnezzar learned the lesson.

The dream was part of the means by which God confronted his pride.

Had someone insisted beforehand that God could communicate only with a person who had already become meek, this account would have presented an awkward difficulty.

One wonders how the proposed formula would have worked in that situation. Nebuchadnezzar needed to become humble before God could warn him that he needed to become humble?

There is a problem somewhere in that reasoning.

Belshazzar Had Not Humbled His Heart

Daniel 5 takes us a step further.

Belshazzar was holding a feast, drinking from vessels taken from God’s temple and praising gods of gold, silver, brass, iron, wood, and stone.

During the festivities, the fingers of a man’s hand appeared and wrote a message on the palace wall.

Understandably, the atmosphere changed.

Daniel was summoned to interpret the writing. Before doing so, he confronted Belshazzar with his conduct and reminded him of what had happened to Nebuchadnezzar.

Then came this remarkable statement:

Daniel 5:22 (KJV):

“And thou his son, O Belshazzar, hast not humbled thine heart, though thou knewest all this.”

Belshazzar had not humbled his heart.

Daniel says so explicitly.

And yet the writing on the wall was a message from God. Verse 24 attributes it to Him.

Here we have a man whose pride is condemned in the very account that records God communicating judgment to him.

Certainly, a message announcing judgment is different from instruction given to a receptive student. We should never erase those differences merely to make our case easier.

Still, the point stands.

Belshazzar’s failure to humble himself did not prevent God from communicating with him.

If we’ve been teaching that meekness is an absolute prerequisite for any communication from God, what are we to do with this passage?

We could invent an exception, I suppose.

But after enough exceptions, perhaps it is the rule that deserves another look.

Saul Wasn’t Exactly Seeking Spiritual Instruction

Then there is Saul.

By the time we reach 1 Samuel 19, Saul’s relationship with David had deteriorated badly. Saul was pursuing him, intent on apprehending him.

He sent messengers to take David.

But when those messengers encountered a company of prophets, something extraordinary happened.

1 Samuel 19:20 (KJV):

“And the Spirit of God was upon the messengers of Saul, and they also prophesied.”

Saul sent another group.

They prophesied too.

Then a third group. The same result.

Eventually Saul went himself, and the spirit of God came upon him. He also prophesied.

Now, we know that Saul had experienced God’s spirit earlier in his life. But that hardly explains away what is happening here.

On this particular occasion he was pursuing David with hostile intentions. He was not seeking guidance or demonstrating a willingness to submit to God’s instruction.

And yet the text tells us that God’s spirit came upon him.

We aren’t told the content of these prophecies, nor are we given a detailed account of what Saul understood about his experience.

What we do know is that the prophetic activity was attributed to God’s spirit and that Saul’s attempt to seize David was interrupted.

This is important because we sometimes confuse God’s activity as he works in a situation and at times in people with divine approval of the totality of a person’s conduct.

God’s spirit coming upon Saul did not somehow validate Saul’s intentions toward David.

The episode appears to demonstrate, among other things, that Saul could not simply carry out his purposes against David as he pleased.

And once again, God’s action is not explained by the recipient’s exemplary spiritual disposition.

Caiaphas Prophesied While Plotting Against Jesus

Perhaps the most unsettling example comes from the Gospel of John.

In John 11, the religious authorities were discussing the growing influence of Jesus. They feared that if matters continued, the Romans might intervene and threaten their position and nation.

Caiaphas, the high priest, offered what he evidently considered a practical solution.

Better for one man to die for the people than for the whole nation to perish.

It was a political calculation.

But John adds something important about those words.

John 11:51 (KJV):

“And this spake he not of himself: but being high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus should die for that nation.”

Caiaphas prophesied.

Indeed, John goes on to explain that Jesus would die not only for the nation but also to gather together the children of God who were scattered abroad.

Did Caiaphas understand all that?

The narrative gives us little reason to think so.

John recognized in his words a significance that went well beyond the high priest’s immediate intentions.

And what happened next?

John 11:53 (KJV) tells us:

“Then from that day forth they took counsel together for to put him to death.”

An extraordinary contrast.

Caiaphas spoke prophetically concerning the death of Jesus and then participated in the decision to bring that death about.

I find this account particularly revealing because it challenges more than one assumption.

We sometimes suppose that a person who speaks prophetically must necessarily understand the full significance of what he says. We may also assume that divine involvement requires a corresponding degree of spiritual maturity or moral approval.

John’s account gives us reason to be careful with both assumptions.

We would be unwise to make his example a general model of how prophecy operates. The circumstances are quite distinctive.

But those distinctive circumstances are part of Scripture too.

We cannot simply set them aside because they complicate a familiar explanation.

Perhaps We’ve Been Asking the Wrong Question

Consider what these accounts have in common.

Pharaoh received dreams disclosing future events. Laban received a warning. Nebuchadnezzar received dreams, one of which confronted his pride. Belshazzar received a written announcement of judgment. Saul prophesied under the influence of God’s spirit while pursuing David. And Caiaphas spoke prophetically while participating in the plot against Jesus.

Their experiences differed considerably, and those differences matter. A dream, a warning, a prophetic utterance, and a message of judgment each need to be understood within their respective contexts.

But across these very different accounts, something becomes difficult to ignore.

The biblical writers do not identify the recipients’ meekness as the prerequisite that made God’s communication possible.

Instead, we repeatedly find God communicating in circumstances that served His larger purposes.

That observation suggests we may have been asking the wrong question.

We ask what spiritual qualification these individuals must have possessed before God could communicate with them.

The narratives invite us to consider why God communicated with them in the first place.

When we begin with a formula, we tend to examine the biblical accounts in search of whatever conditions will make the formula work.

When we begin with the accounts themselves, we may discover that God has been doing things our formula never anticipated.

And surely that ought to teach us something.

Which leaves an obvious question. If meekness is not a condition God must wait for, does it matter at all?

It does, and more than we might think. But it matters in a different place than the formula puts it. That is where we will pick up in Part 2.

Continue to Part 2: Perhaps the Box Is Ours →

Why Topical Teachings Can Be Misleading

2026-09-23T00:00:00Z

A teaching can contain many Bible verses and still misrepresent what the Bible says. This happens when passages are gathered around a topic without first establishing what each passage means in its original setting. The quotations may be accurate, but the argument assembled from them may be something the biblical writers never intended.

Verses become surprisingly pliable when we pull them out of their immediate context and the larger discussion (discourse) to which they belong. Detached from those connections, they can seem to support ideas that the surrounding passage resists or even rules out. We have kept the words but lost the connections that help us understand them.

In Grasping God’s Word, J. Scott Duvall and J. Daniel Hays explain how this happens in topical preaching. They recognize that teaching by topic is legitimate, provided each passage is understood in context and the message respects those contexts. The danger comes when a teacher moves between passages, joining statements from separate discussions into a message of the teacher’s own choosing.^[1] Listeners hear one biblical reference after another and reasonably assume the conclusion must be biblical too.

But the number of references cannot settle that question. A Bible verse can be quoted accurately and used badly.

A test case: John 14:13–14

Consider John 14:13–14 (KJV):

And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it.

Read on its own, this can sound like a blank check. Ask for whatever you want, add “in Jesus’ name,” and the result is guaranteed. It is easy to see the appeal, especially when someone desperately needs help.

The setting

To understand the promise, we need to follow the conversation in which Jesus makes it.

He is speaking to his disciples during the farewell discourse associated with the Last Supper. His death and departure are approaching. They will have to continue his work without his physical presence, and he is preparing them for that. Immediately before the promise about prayer, he says in John 14:12 (KJV):

Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father.

Then comes “And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name.”

That “And” connects the promise to what Jesus has just said. His followers will continue his work, and they can ask for God’s help as they do so. The connection between their work and his is plain. The promise about prayer belongs within that setting.

What “in my name” means

“In my name” carries weight here. It involves agency—acting on someone else’s behalf. A representative receives authority from another person and answers to that person’s purposes. Being authorized to represent someone does not give us permission to do whatever we happen to prefer.

A modern power of attorney offers a limited comparison. It grants authority within a defined scope. The person exercising it cannot enlarge that authority simply by wanting something outside it.

Similarly, invoking Jesus’ name cannot give his authorization to a request merely because we have made it.

His name refers to the person himself: his character, authority, teaching, and purposes. To ask in his name is to depend on him while seeking to act faithfully on his behalf. Saying “in Jesus’ name” at the end of a prayer should express that dependence; the words cannot substitute for it.

The stated purpose

Jesus also tells his disciples why that kind of prayer will be answered: “that the Father may be glorified in the Son.” We cannot read “whatsoever” apart from Jesus’ stated purpose: that the Father may be glorified in the Son. A request driven by selfishness does not become guaranteed because we have attached Jesus’ name to it.

The larger discourse

As the conversation continues, Jesus says in John 15:7 (KJV):

If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.

Here, asking grows out of abiding in him and having his words remain in his followers. That relationship shapes what they want and what they seek. A little later, Jesus connects asking with the work he has given them. John 15:16 (KJV) reads:

Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you.

They have been chosen to go and bear lasting fruit. Within that calling, they are invited to ask the Father in Jesus’ name. Asking, representing him, and bearing fruit belong together throughout the conversation.

Having followed that connection within John’s Gospel, we can consider a related passage in 1 John 5:14 (KJV):

And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us.

Here the connection with God’s will is explicit. Believers can pray confidently as they seek what accords with His purposes. This supports the reading that emerges from Jesus’ own words in John 14–15.

None of this excludes prayer for personal needs. Our needs matter, and bringing them to God may be entirely consistent with His will. The difficulty comes when we turn Jesus’ assurance into a guarantee of whatever outcome we choose. In this passage, he promises continuing help to those who represent him and carry on his work to the Father’s glory.

Why this matters

Getting this wrong can hurt people.

Someone may pray sincerely, expecting a result they have been taught Jesus guarantees. When it does not come, they wonder whether their faith was too weak. Perhaps they begin to doubt God’s faithfulness. They are left trying to explain why God failed to keep a promise He may never have made to them in that form.

That is a heavy burden to place on someone through careless reading.

Reading responsibly

Responsible topical teaching takes time to hear each biblical writer before bringing passages together. Who is speaking, and to whom? What situation is being addressed? What comes before these words, and what follows? How does this passage contribute to the larger discussion?

Those questions give us a sound basis for connecting passages. They also leave room for Scripture to challenge what we expected to find.

Before asking how a verse supports our topic, we must ask what it contributes to the biblical writer’s own argument. We may have to change the teaching we planned to give.

That is a good reason to read carefully.

Notes

J. Scott Duvall and J. Daniel Hays, Grasping God’s Word: A Hands-On Approach to Reading, Interpreting, and Applying the Bible, 4th ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Academic, 2020), chap. 8, “The Literary Context,” subsection “Topical Preaching.” ↩︎