Twisted Scripture: 1 Corinthians 10:13

Saturday, March 4, 2017

Today's focus verse is one that is an encouraging principle and promise from the Word about how we can live the Christian life. Let's start with the verse itself, 1 Corinthians 10:13.

¹³No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and He will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation He will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.

1 Corinthians 10:13 (ESV)

The common twist on this is actually in the way it's usually quoted; it becomes…

God won't give you more than you can handle.

Misquotations 7:15

There are at least two problems with this twist. First, it simply isn't true. I'm in my 40th year of knowing Jesus as my Savior, and I can assure you that God gives me more than I can handle all the time; just my past 7 days have had way more than I alone could handle. If we tell struggling people "Well, you know, the Bible says that God won't give you more than you can handle!", we are seriously damaging our credibility, which will, in turn, hamper our further ability to share the things of God. If God never gave us more than we could handle, why would we need Him once we have obtained salvation? The Bible is replete with examples of people who were getting more than they could handle; let's look at one such instance in Psalm 40.

¹¹As for you, O Lord, You will not restrain
    Your mercy from me;
Your steadfast love and Your faithfulness will
    ever preserve me!
¹²For evils have encompassed me
    beyond number;
my iniquities have overtaken me,
    and I cannot see;
they are more than the hairs of my head;
    my heart fails me.

¹³Be pleased, O Lord, to deliver me!
    O Lord, make haste to help me!
¹⁴Let those be put to shame and disappointed altogether
    who seek to snatch away my life;
let those be turned back and brought to dishonor
    who delight in my hurt!

Psalm 40:11-14 (ESV)

The Psalms, being poetry, often speak to feelings common to mankind, and this is one of those places. The theme of the psalm is God's deliverance, something David cannot manage to do himself - it's literally “more than he can handle.” Yet, this bigger-than-him situation causes David to cry out to God for help, and to depend on Him for his deliverance. God brings us through situations that are more than we could handle ourselves, to demonstrate His love that is not just a saving love for our souls, but a living and active love for our lives as well. How could He do that if He never allowed “more than we could handle”?

The second problem with this twist is that it completely misses the actual promise of the text. 1 Corinthians 10:13 is talking about temptation, and comes immediately after a verse that is usually quoted correctly, even when snatched from its context.

¹²Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall.

1 Corinthians 10:12 (ESV)

In the even larger context of this chapter, Paul has warned the Corinthian church about idolatry, sexual immorality, and testing God. He then writes vv. 12-13, telling them to be on guard, yet encouraging them that God will not allow a temptation so great that they, through Him, cannot resist. This is a very big deal! We all face temptation; if you have tried to resist it yourself, you're likely thinking back to the time when you failed in those efforts, and gave in to the sin you had been resisting.

Why are we so bad at resisting temptation on our own? The main reason is that resisting temptation is spiritual warfare, but our fallen nature (what we use when we do it “on our own”) is ill equipped for that battle. Paul writes that we have a way of escape provided; let's look at a few different strategies given in the Bible. The first is from Jesus Himself, speaking to His disciples after He returned from praying in the garden of Gethsemane and found them asleep.

⁴⁰And He came to the disciples and found them sleeping. And He said to Peter, "So, could you not watch with Me one hour? ⁴¹Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak."

Matthew 26:40-41 (ESV)

The next is from Paul, instructing his protegé Timothy.

²²So flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace…

2 Timothy 2:22a (ESV)

The last is from James, Jesus' brother.

⁷Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

James 4:7 (ESV)

Did you pick up on any common themes in those three passages? “Pray” (Matthew 26:41), “pursue righteousness” (2 Timothy 2:22), and “submit[ting]...to God” (James 4:7) are three different ways of saying the same thing - we must have God's power if we are to be able to resist temptation. We must actively pray, pour His Word into our hearts, and be vigilant. This is the only way for us to be able to recognize the “way of escape” so we can take it.

There is one final caution, back in vv. 12-13, where Paul says that this temptation will not exceed our “ability.” Ability is developed through practice, and God, in the process of refining us to make us more like Him, will provide opportunities for us to increase our ability. Don't lose heart if, after successfully resisting temptation, another stronger one appears. Conversely, you may reach a point where most temptation is pretty easy to resist; that's where the warning in verse 12 becomes even more important. When we let our guard down, we become the most vulnerable to temptation.

As we have looked at what 1 Corinthians 10:13 says, and what it doesn't say, I pray that you have been blessed. It truly is an encouraging promise for us who are trying to live our lives the way Christ would have us live them. I hope you also realize how much damage this common misquotation can do, both to the truth and to our witness. The Christian life is great, having Jesus to guide, warn, and protect us; I wouldn't want to live any other way. That being said, though, we would be lying if we say that it is easy, and saying this to a hurting person will provide the opposite of comfort.

How to Have Power

Wednesday, August 6, 2008

This week, let's look at Ephesians 3:16 (through verse 19).

¹⁶[I pray] that He may grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, ¹⁷and that the Messiah may dwell in your hearts through faith. [I pray that] you, being rooted and firmly established in love, ¹⁸may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and width, height and depth, ¹⁹and to know the Messiah's love that surpasses knowledge, so you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Ephesians 3:16-19 (HCSB)

God is omnipotent. If you've grown up in church, you've probably heard that so much that its meaning is often taken for granted - it's just one of those three “omni” words you had to learn in Sunday School (the others being omnipresent and omniscient, for those who didn't grow up going to Sunday School). God has all power, and He has promised to give it to us!

Before Jesus went back to heaven, He promised that He would send the Holy Spirit to help us do the things He wanted us to do.

⁸"But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth."

Acts 1:8 (HCSB)

So, this means that we already have the power, right? One would think. Check out this video, though.

How often are we, in a spiritual sense, like those people? We're “stuck on an escalator,” not realizing that we have the power to change the situation we're in. How do we get out of that cycle? Paul tells us in the remainder of the passage above.

One of our pastor's favorite things to say is that “victory is not you overcoming sin, it's Christ overcoming you.” We don't have to look within for this power - what God commands, God supplies! Look at the last part of verse 17 into verse 18; we should be “grounded in love.” What does that mean? There are a couple of ways to look at it. You could think of it the way a tree is grounded - its roots are in the ground, and it gains its nourishment from the ground. You could also thing of it the way an electrical circuit is grounded - a way for things the circuit can't handle to be directed away from it, so they do not damage it. God's perfect love can do both these things - it can be the source of our growth, and our protection.

But it's not even limited to those two things. Paul prays that the Ephesian church will know the “breadth and width, height and depth” of God's love. We know in our heads that each of these dimensions is infinite, but do we know it in our hearts? Do we really believe that God's love and power are infinitely deep? Way back in 1917, Frederick M. Lehman penned the words to the hymn “The Love of God.” Here are verses one and three.

The love of God is greater far
Than tongue or pen can ever tell;
It goes beyond the highest star,
And reaches to the lowest hell;
The guilty pair, bowed down with care,
God gave His Son to win;
His erring child He reconciled,
And pardoned from his sin.

Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade;
To write the love of God above
Would drain the ocean dry;
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky.

Finally, Paul says that they need to be “filled with all the fullness of God.” To be filled with God, we must empty ourselves of us. The more we cling to our plans, our desires, and the way we think things ought to be, the less room there is in us for God to reveal His plans, His desires, and the way He wants things to be. When we are willing to surrender ourselves to His leading, He can guide us.

If you still feel powerless, perhaps it is because you're trying to do the wrong thing. As a teenager, I felt a call that my life should be given to full-time Christian service - becoming a pastor was the way I thought it was going to work out. However, I began working during high school, and to save money, I attended a community college once I graduated. I became distracted from my calling, and really struggled. I bounced from job to job, not really feeling contentment in anything. A few years later, I determined that I hadn't been succeeding at much of anything, although the effort I was putting forth should have been bringing much more success. That's when it occurred to me - maybe I wasn't being successful because I wasn't doing that at which God wanted me to succeed. I decided to go to a Christian university (Bob Jones University) and follow the call I had received, majoring in Youth Ministry.

The first day of classes, I met this really nice lady named Michelle, who became my wife at the end of that school year. Through talking to an Air Force Chaplain recruiter on campus, I decided to check out the Air Force, where I've had a successful 11-year-and-still-going career. I'm not a pastor, obviously, and I'm not even working with anything related to the ministry in the Air Force. However, I have used the training I received during that year of college; I've been able to study my Bible more effectively, I can put together a sermon or Sunday School lesson if needed, and I'm a Cub Scout leader. But, even if I hadn't gotten anything else from that year at BJU, the family God has given me with Michelle is an overwhelming blessing.

The above is my testimony (the short version). By no means have I arrived - I still find myself struggling with things, and often I'll ask myself “why are you struggling with this so much?” Sometimes, the answer is to not try so hard to do it myself, but let go of it and let God work it out. He's much better at those things than we are!

My prayer for you this week is the same as Paul's prayer for the Ephesian church. I pray that we will live grounded in love, and that we will be able to shed our impotence in favor of God's omnipotence, and allow His spirit to overwhelm us.