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Hermeneutics Lesson 06

God is Lord.  He said what He meant and meant what He said.

When Satan quoted the Bible to tempt Jesus, there was no problem with what he quoted.  By leaving out part of what God said, so that he could use the Bible to support what he wanted to say, he proved that he did not regard God as his personal Lord.  The problem was that he left out part which limited the proper interpretation.  By ignoring part of what God's Word said, he applied the quote the wrong way.  My personal guess is that at least 85% of doctrinal error is a result of people doing something similar.  These errors can be eliminated if people just take the verses that someone references and look at them within the context that God put them into.  However, people don't do this is because people have been taught to look at just a verse or small portion of scripture and then accept the explanation that a preacher gives them without ever going back and verifying that he did not take that verse out of context.  This type of error is responsible for much of the doctrinal error that is accepted in the U.S. and, according to the Bible, is the spiritual cause of much sickness and death in the U.S.  While the U.S. has the highest medical costs of any nation in the World, they only have a life expectancy that can be matched by many third-world countries.  All of that fancy medical technology and expense can not prevent the judgment of God.

Death resulting from ignoring context.

Men's religious doctrinal errors can result in a judgment of death by God.  While many 'good, Godly, Bible believing, fundamental 1611-KJV only preachers' warn about sin, very few tell God's people that the consequence of continuing sin includes sickness and death for them and their loved ones.  Romans 6:16 says Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?  When our religious doctrines allow people to claim that they can directly disobey what the Bible literally says and not suffer consequences, those doctrines cause people to do a sin unto death.  When God's leaders teach that error and continue to reject correction of their doctrine from God, God sometimes also brings a judgment unto death  upon the preacher.

The word unto  means 'up to and including'.  For example, the main prayer request in most churches of America is for sickness and death.  No, not all of these are due to people doing a sin unto death,  but it is absolute foolishness to claim that none of them are or to even hold any doctrinal position which does not call for people to examine their own life for sin when these problems occur or dramatically increase.

Let me give a more specific illustration.  I have personally experienced being in the emergency room going into a coma and the doctor told me that I would probably never wake up because I was bleeding internally so badly that they could not stop it before I died.  When I woke up I was told that I had died and had to be revived.  Before this happened, 4 doctors were saying that saved people in the church were doing felony abuse to me and that it would lead to my death if not stopped.  Instead of church leaders telling people to stop the sin, they told the victim (me) that I had to forgive them and then said that they didn't have to do anything to the people doing the abuse since I had forgiven them.  In addition, to following doctrinal error about forgiveness,  I was being told that if I had enough faith,  then I could overcome any physical problem.  The claim was that if I had enough faith  then God would take away the free will of these people and force them to stop sinning even against their own will.

Their answer was to demand that the victim have greater faith  and to say nothing the sinning saved person.  The response from God was to bring a judgment unto death  into the lives of more than one person who was involved in this error.

I want it clearly understood that I am not talking about some theoretical thing or something that came strictly from the Bible.  I am talking about real life events that you can ask God about in Heaven and that I will personally answer to God for if I misrepresent what happened.  I am giving this warning so that God's people know the possible consequence of holding onto this doctrinal error that comes from ignoring the context of Bible verses which are quoted.  I was the first, in this instance, to suffer a judgment unto death,  because I obeyed religious doctrine that went against what the Bible literally said.  When started obeying what the Bible literally said, God brought healing.  When others refused to obey what the Bible literally said, they also suffered a judgment unto death.

After I awoke in the hospital and the doctor told me that I had died and they revived me, my pastor visited me in the hospital and insisted that I had to forgive  everyone involved, even though they refused to repent and they continued to do sin that the Bible says is unto death.  Years later he was removed from the pastorate, and forbidden to ever be a pastor again, for doing the very sin that he justified.  His ministry suffered a judgment unto death.  A Bible truth is that the sin which we justify is what will hurt us or our children.  He was let off easy.  Others buried adult children and suffered other consequences.  While I could go on with the judgment of God, let's turn to the doctrinal error which brought this judgment upon God's people.

When you start talking about forgiveness  to God's people, many will go immediately to Matthew 18:21-36.  Once there, they start raving about the principal of forgiveness  and refuse to consider what the context literally says.  First, Matthew 18:21 starts with Then,  which means 'after what was just said'.  In the prior verses of Matthew 18:15-20, Matthew 18:15-17 tells us to refuse forgiveness  to a brother who refuses to Biblically repent  and Matthew 18:18-20 tells us that God will make the legal record in Heaven match the lawful actions of the church.  The critical prior verses are the ones which tell us to refuse forgiveness  to a brother who refuses to Biblically repent.  Please keep this in mind as we look at all of the new Testament verses which use a form of the word forgive.

In addition, to what comes previously within the chapter, we have the context of the verses cited by people.  Matthew 18:35 says So likewise shall my Heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses..  Please notice that what this verse tells us to forgive  is a trespasses.  Ask any law enforcement person if there is a legal difference between a trespass  and a felony.  People who hold to this doctrinal error in America go much further than treating felonies like a tresspass,  but let's start with what the Bible says.

We find forms of the word forgive  112 times in 98 verses of the Bible and 61 times in 48 verses of the New Testament.  Of these 48 verses we find:

Please note these facts based upon looking at the verses dealt with above.
  1. Since forgiveness  is a blessing,  as Romans and Psalms say, then it can not be demanded.
  2. We see several conditions above where God refuses to forgive.  Therefore, we do not have to forgive under those same conditions.
  3. God forgives sins,  which are spiritual 'felonies' but only tells us to forgive trespasses.  God does not demand that we be as great as He is and certainly does not demand that we forgive  what He refuses to forgive.
  4. When God forgives  us He expects our life to change.  Matthew 18 says that the unchanged servant was sent to the tormentors  after he was forgiven  but refused to change.

While I did not go through the verses within the Old Testament, a study of those verses will pretty much teach the lessons listed above.  A couple of famous Old Testament verses which use forms of the word forgive  include:

The student is welcome to go through those verses and try to find one that teaches something different.  However, they are adviced to first pray for God to show them His truth and then carefully consider the context.

People insist upon taking Matthew 18 out of context when they ignore, and even refuse to acknowledge the existence, of the word trespasses.  They point to this section of the Bible and insist that God's people must forgive  'everything'.  However, as we just saw, that is not what the Bible teaches.  People who make this claim not only are taking Matthew 18 out of context with itself but they are taking it out of context with what the rest of the Bible teaches.

Now, there is a major difference between the Biblical use of trespasses  and a sin unto death.  Further, you are demanding that God's people be greater than God when you demand that they forgive an ongoing, unrepentant sin, since God refuses to do that.  In addition, 1John 5:16 says ...There is a sin unto death: I do not say that he shall pray for it.  You can not forgive  someone doing a major sin against you, such as causing a death or permanent medical problems, without praying for them about that particular sin, which 1John says we do not have to pray for.

In addition, to the doctrinal error taught about forgiveness,  preachers claim that we must 'forget', which they claim means that we must say that the sinner does not have to restore anything nor must they do anything to make up for the damage caused by their sin.  In other words, they not only justify an ongoing life of sin for saved people but insist that God requires the victim to pay for all consequences of the sin done by someone else.

What is preached as 'forgetting', is actually mercy.  God does the action of mercy  when He 'does not make us suffer the consequences of the sin that we did'.  Forgiveness  'removes the legal record and prevents further legal consequences'.  However, it does not remove current consequences.  If a boy gets a sexually transmitted disease and truly repents  asks God for forgiveness,  then he receives it.  However, he is not healed from the disease and does not have all of the consequences removed unless God also gives him mercy.  We all know that sometimes God gives mercy  by removing al of the consequences and sometimes God leaves us with those consequences.  Therefore, mercy  is not something that we can expect to receive every time that we truly Biblicallyrepent  while forgiveness  is something that we can expect to receive.  That is: we might have to live with the consequences of our sin in this life but the consequences do not go into eternity like the consequences of unforgiving sin.

I will deal with only a couple of the verses that people use to claim that we must 'forget' about unrepented sin by our brother.  In these verses you will see how they took them out of context.  Using the examples here, and what is already shown in this lesson, the student should know enough to check the context and reject doctrinal error.

In Psalms 103:12 we read As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us.  People use this verse to say that God 'forgets' our sin and expects us to do the same for others.  However, the prior verse (Psalms 103:11) says For as the Heaven is high above the earth, so great is his mercy toward them that fear him.  Please notice that this verse literally says that the next is based upon God's mercy,  not His 'forgetfulness'.  In addition, our verse says that this mercy  is limited to them that fear him.  We already spent a lesson on this subject and how it is not what is popularly preached.

In Isaiah 38:17 we read Behold, for peace I had great bitterness: but thou hast in love to my soul delivered it from the pit of corruption: for thou hast cast all my sins behind thy back.  Most of the time when this verse is used in preaching the preacher quotes only the last phrase and takes it out of context with the rest of the verse.  Please notice the colons within this verse which make for thou hast cast all my sins behind thy back  equivalent to but thou hast in love to my soul delivered it from the pit of corruption.  Both of these phrases are made the polar opposite (colon followed by the word but)  of I had great bitterness.  In this first phrase the word had  is past-tense and means that this is no longer true.  A person who had great bitterness,  but no longer has it, must have stopped the sin causing the bitterness  before they got rid of the bitterness.  Thus, once more we see true Biblical repentance before God does something like thou hast cast all my sins behind thy back.  In addition, the phrase delivered it from the pit of corruption  also is past-tense (delivered).  That means that the soul  of the psalmist is no longer in the pit of corruption.  He 'stopped his sinning' before God cast all my sins behind thy back.

Let me deal with one more thing before we close this lesson.  1Corinthians 5 tells us to do church discipline to members who do certain sins that are greater than trespasses  and for which they refuse to truly Biblically repent.  This chapter not only tells us put away from among yourselves that wicked person  but also says that we are to actively To deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.  Now there are preachers who claim that we forgive  people before we put them out of the church as instructed in 1Corinthians.  However, 2Corinthians 2:7-10 says that since they had not restored this man to fellowship, they had not forgiven  him.  Thus, it is impossible to forgive  and then put people out of the church.  People who are put out of the church are not forgiven.  In addition, unless you restore  a person to full fellowship, you have not forgiven  them.  Yes, they may still be required to restore what they stole or destroyed and yes they may never have full trust restored to them, and no the fellowship may not be as close and trusting as in the past, but fellowship must be restored if you truly forgive  someone.

American churches are full of people with ongoing sin in their lives and who refuse to repent  because of the doctrinal error which claims that they can demand that people and God 'forgive and forget' all sins, even ongoing unrepented sins.  The churches that accept this doctrinal error not only have lost the power of God but they have destroyed the testimony of the church and of God with lost people in America.  This ongoing sin is one of the main reasons that people claim judgment is coming on America.  While they preach against sin, they do not stop the underlying doctrinal error.  They claim the God of the Bible as Lord,  but prove that their religion is their true 'lord' when they ignore the context of the Bible in order to claim that the Bible supports their erroneous doctrine.  If you would avoid this error and have God testify that you made Him your personal Lord,  then you must keep what the Bible says within the context that a verse is given.

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