Category Archives: Evangelical Culture

Evangelical Culture, Rethinking Bible Verses in Context

“Romans Road” Evangelism and the Misuse of Scripture

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I became an evangelical Christian while in college in the nineties. Most of what I knew about Christianity came from what I learned at the megachurch I attended, from InterVarsity Christian Fellowship at OSU, from my first read of the Bible from start to end, and from Christian radio. I did not realize how modern of a phenomenon evangelical Christianity was. In my view, evangelicals were recovering the “biblical” Christianity that had been lost through the legalism or liberalism of past generations of Christianity.

Evangelicalism was also simple. We were told what to believe about debated theological issues, difficult ethical questions, or hot political topics. It’s not that preachers commanded us to believe these things. It was the culture of evangelicalism. We all thought the same, voted the same, and saw the same issues as central to the gospel.

It wasn’t until after I earned my doctorate in theological studies at an evangelical seminary that I started to realize how different the biblical world was from the modern evangelical world and how different we think today about theological, political, and ethical issues than Jesus or Paul did. This has caused me in recent years to revisit the foundation that my faith was laid upon in the nineties.

One fundamental issue that I have rethought heavily over the years is our understanding of the basic gospel message. I wrote about this in my article “The Biblical Gospel vs. the Evangelical Gospel,” where I noted that the Gospels don’t present what we think of as “the gospel,” and I demonstrated that “the gospel” according to the biblical authors was centered on God’s kingdom coming to earth, not on how to go to heaven when you die, a topic that is rarely addressed in the Bible.

In this post I want to do something similar, but instead of focusing on the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, I want to look at the book of Romans and particularly the idea that Romans gives us a roadmap to salvation, commonly referred to as “the Romans Road,” a series of verses isolated from their context by the Baptist preacher Jack Hyles in 1948. I want to demonstrate that Romans is addressing an entirely different question and that the popular use of Romans to teach someone how they can go to heaven when they die is a misuse of Scripture that makes the Bible serve our theology rather than uses the Bible to teach us theology.

The “Romans Road”

One of the ways I was taught in the nineties to explain my faith was to walk people through Paul’s teachings in Romans. According to this teaching, there were four basic ideas in Romans that needed to be highlighted:

  1. We are all sinners, who have displeased God: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23, ESV; cf. Romans 3:10)
  2. We deserve the judgment of death and hell: “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23, ESV)
  3. God has freely offered heaven instead of hell: “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8, ESV)
  4. In order to experience this, we must make a confession of faith: “because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.… For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” (Romans 10:9-10, 13, ESV)

This is such a simple and memorable way to present the gospel that it has been used extensively and has become our very definition of what “the gospel” means: we sinners can escape hell and go to heaven by believing in Jesus. The problem is that this is not at all how Paul defines the gospel in Romans and that each of the passages here is taken out of context to get this interpretation of the gospel.

“The Gospel” According to Paul

Paul defines “the gospel” right at the beginning of Romans. Not surprisingly, his definition is close to Jesus’s definition. I noted in “The Biblical Gospel vs. the Evangelical Gospel” that Jesus repeatedly defines the gospel as being about God’s reign being established on earth, not about what happens to an individual when they die. From Jesus’s first words, he preached, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:14-15). The good news is that God’s reign is beginning. This is also what he taught the disciples to preach: “the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 10:7). Repeatedly Jesus’s teaching is summarized as being “the gospel of the kingdom” (Matt 4:23; 9:35; 24:14; Luke 4:43; 8:1; 16:16; cf. John 3:3, 5). The gospel, or “good news,” is not what happens when you die, but that in Jesus God is dethroning Satan and taking over the rule of earth.

This is also what Paul says at the beginning of Romans:

Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God—the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures regarding his Son, who as to his earthly life was a descendant of David, and who through the Spirit of holiness was appointed the Son of God in power by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord. [Romans 1:1-4, NIV]

Paul is introducing himself here as someone who was “set apart for the gospel of God.” This gives him an opportunity to explain what that gospel is: it is a gospel “regarding his Son.” What does it say about the Son? He has earthly royal pedigree (“a descendant of David”), but he has also been appointed as the agent of God’s rule in heavenly places by being raised from the dead. “Son of God” is a royal title. Kings from Egypt to Rome claimed divine authority to reign on earth by being the son of God.

(Interestingly, translators have had trouble with the word “appointed” in Romans 1:4. Other versions use the word “declared” for fear of giving the impression that Jesus was not Son of God until the resurrection, but the Greek word here does not mean “declared” and is regularly translated “appointed” elsewhere. The KJV used the word “declared” and modern translations have generally followed suit. The 2011 revision of the NIV bucked this trend and went with the more accurate translation, “appointed.”)

So in Romans 1:3-4, Paul takes two verses to summarize the gospel, and he summarizes it as being about Jesus’s enthronement as Son of God in power. There is nothing here about what happens when you die or about making a decision of faith. The good news is that Jesus has now been appointed the true ruler of the earth. Caesar’s actions from Rome are not what decides things throughout the world, but Jesus’s actions from heaven do. This is the good news: it is the gospel of the kingdom. God has taken the throne in Jesus.

It is true that the next two verses in Romans (Romans 1:5-6) call people to belong to Jesus, and Romans 1:16 specifically addresses the salvation that comes through the gospel. But salvation is what happens because the gospel is true: because Jesus has taken the throne, those who trust in him will experience the blessings of the kingdom. Our salvation is not the good news itself; it is one of the side effects of the good news that God is taking charge of the earth.

Salvation in Romans

The fact that Romans 1:16 mentions “salvation” indicates that Paul does have something to say in Romans about “being saved,” but it is not what modern interpreters think. Hell is never mentioned or even hinted at in Romans. Salvation in Romans 1:16 is from the wrath of God that is being revealed “on earth” in Romans 1:18. Repeatedly Paul mentions the judgment of God that people experience:

  • “they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened” (Romans 1:21),
  • “God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves” (Romans 1:24),
  • “God gave them up to dishonorable passions” (Romans 1:26),
  • “God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done” (Romans 1:28).

All these things lead to death (Romans 1:32), but because Jesus overcame death and is enthroned over death and all hostile forces, we can experience life everlasting. And not only that, but it is a different life than the one described in the bullet points above. We can “be transformed by the renewal of [our] mind” and offer our bodies “as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God” (Romans 12:1-2). This is what salvation is: no longer living according to the flesh, but living according to the Spirit (Romans 6-7).

By making Romans about how to go to heaven when you die or about how to escape hell, we read the word “salvation” and hear something very different than what Paul intended. Not once does Romans describe heaven as a place where you go when you die. Not once does Romans describe the wrath of God as going to hell when you die. Not once does Romans describe the goal of salvation as being going to heaven. These are later theological concepts that are not on Paul’s mind. If we want to hear what Romans says, we need to stop coming to it with our questions and start going to it with an open mind, ready to hear what God might have been saying through Paul.

The Message of Romans

So what is the purpose of Romans? It is to show that God is just or righteous in saving Gentiles from the judgment described above. I used to read the words, “the righteousness of God is revealed” (Romans 1:17; 3:21), as speaking of an imputed righteousness, as if it was saying, “now we can see where we get righteousness from – God.” It wasn’t until I taught a seminary course on Romans that I noticed that Paul spells out what he means in Romans 3:5: “if our unrighteousness serves to reveal the righteousness of God, what shall we say, that God is unrighteous to inflict wrath on us?” The context there is a quotation of Psalm 51:4, which says that God is “justified” in judging David. This is not about how David can be righteous, but a question of how God can be righteous in punishing or rewarding David as he sees fit. As Paul says later in Romans, God “has mercy on whomever he wills and hardens whomever he wills” (Romans 9:18). Romans is dealing with a question of theodicy: is God good? If many of the people God made promises to (Israel) are rejecting God’s reign, and many who have never worshiped God (the Gentiles) are receiving it, is that fair? How should people understand the differing responses to Jesus among Jews and Gentiles? This is the question Romans addresses from beginning to end. In the process, Paul says some things about salvation being by God’s grace, but he is not talking about how to get saved; he is talking about how to think about God’s actions among Jews and Gentiles. Paul is justifying God’s activity of saving many Gentiles and judging many Jews in his day.

Of course, even if Romans was written to address a different question than the one we are asking, the book still has things to say about our questions, but there are a few things we should keep in mind:

  1. It is important to read Romans not on our terms, but on Paul’s terms. We can’t just listen to the book for what we want to hear and not let it challenge us about questions we weren’t even thinking about.
  2. We need to remember that Paul uses terms very differently than we use them. Just as “salvation” meant something different to Paul than it means to us, so do other key words: “faith,” “believe,” “works,” “glory,” “death,” “eternal life.” We need to be careful not to assume that Paul is using those words the way we’ve used them.
  3. We need to pay attention to the context of the verses we quote. By quoting Romans 3:23; 6:23; 5:8; 10:9-10 and others apart from the larger argument they are part of, we start hearing different things in those verses than what Paul is teaching.

The Verses in “the Romans Road”

Let us consider the four points of Romans Road evangelism and note how differently we are reading these verses than Paul intended them.

Are We All Sinners? (Romans 3:23)

“All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23, ESV).

We make two errors when we quote Romans 3:10 or Romans 3:23 in the context of “the Romans Road.” First, we read Paul more individualistically than he intends. Paul’s point is that all – Jews as well as Gentiles – have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. That’s why the fuller quote is “For there is no distinction, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. … Then what becomes of our [Jews’] boasting? It is excluded. … Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles too? Yes, of Gentiles too, since God is one—who will justify the circumcised [Jews] by faith and the uncircumcised [Gentiles] through faith” (Romans 3:22-30). We hear the word “all” as “every person,” whereas what Paul is saying is “Jew and Gentile alike.” The point being made here is not an individualistic salvation point, but a national pride point.

Second, we read “fall short of the glory of God” as if it means that God is judging us for not being as glorious as he is, something that we were never intended to be. It might be better to think here in terms of the image of God. Like the nations [Gentiles], Jews have fallen short of being representatives of God’s glory. Their justification comes not from how well they have represented God, but “by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Romans 3:24). It is in Jesus that Jews (and Gentiles!) are finally able to bear the image and glory of God (Romans 5:2; 8:18-30).

The message of Romans 3:23 is that the playing field between Jew and Gentile is level (cf. Romans 3:9). What the Romans Road tries to make Romans 3:23 say is that we are all sinners. Now Paul knew as well as we do that nobody is perfect, but Paul never expected anyone to be perfect and neither did the Old Testament Law, which included rituals to deal with our imperfections. Romans Road evangelism gives people an improper view of what God expects and leads to unhealthy levels of guilt.

I have a friend who when asked how he is doing will always answer, “Better than I deserve.” He has taken Romans Road theology to its logical conclusion: we deserve the wrath of God rather than the love of God. Not only is this not what Romans 3:23 is saying, but it opposes what Paul is arguing in Romans. Paul argues that God “will repay each person according to his works: to those who [persist] in doing good … he will give eternal life, but for those who are self-seeking, … there will be wrath and anger” (Romans 2:6-8). By misreading Romans 3:23, we have made Paul’s argument out to be that we all deserve hell, when Paul’s point is more that God is just in treating Jews and Gentiles the same as each other. In Paul’s view, many Gentiles deserve God’s commendation rather than his judgment (Romans 2:13-16, 26-29).

Do We All Deserve Hell? (Romans 6:23)

“For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 6:23, ESV).

As a young Christian, I often used Romans 6:23 to explain the gospel. I didn’t need the full Romans Road; all the aspects of the Romans Road gospel could be found in this verse: sin, wages, death; God, gift, eternal life in Jesus, Messiah and Lord. I would explain that we have all sinned and that death is what sinners have earned just as wages are what an employee has earned. I would explain that eternal life is not what we deserve but is a “free gift,” and that it can only be obtained by making Jesus Lord, thereby surrendering to him.

The first thing that made me realize that this interpretation of Romans 6:23 is problematic is when I started studying the Old Testament Law. There were sins that lead to death and sins that do not lead to death. I was surprised to discover that sacrifices could be made only for sins that do not deserve death; there was no sacrifice for sins punishable by death (Exodus 21:12-14; Leviticus 4-5; Numbers 15:30; etc.). This severely challenged my view that sacrifices were substitutes. I had always thought that the wages of sin is death, but God allows an animal’s death to be a substitute for the person’s death. That idea is foreign to Scripture. Sacrifices were offerings to restore one’s relationship to God, not substitutes for one’s own blood.

So why does Paul say the wages of sin is death? In context he is discussing the difference between Adam’s sin and Jesus’s free gift. That is how this section of Romans begins. Paul says in Romans 5:12-21 that death came into the world through Adam’s sin. “Therefore, as one trespass [Adam’s sin in the Garden] led to condemnation for all men [mortality/death], so one act of righteousness [Jesus’s sacrifice] leads to justification and life for all men [Jew and Gentile].” (Romans 5:18, ESV). Paul expounds this idea through the next three chapters of Romans. In Romans 6, Paul is calling people to no longer live in Adam’s sin, but to “present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life” (Romans 6:13). Romans 6:23 sums up the argument so far: the wages of [Adam’s] sin is death [mortality], but the free gift of God is eternal life [by living in] Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Romans 6:23 says nothing about us deserving hell or judgment. It is a call to live in Christ rather than in Adam, to live in the Spirit rather than in the flesh. That’s why Romans 7–8  contrasts the flesh and the Spirit. “For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace” (Romans 8:6). To make Romans 6:23 out as if it were bad news about what someone who commits a single sin deserves is to miss Paul’s argument. It is not as if because we fail to be perfect, we deserve a spiritual and eternal death. The Torah made it clear that most failures do not result in death. The point is that we are mortal because sin entered the world through Adam, but immortality is now available through Jesus.

Romans Road evangelism has the danger of making salvation out to be an intellectual transaction: you really deserve hell, but God is so gracious he’ll give you heaven instead if you pray this prayer. Romans 6:23 instead teaches that there are two paths: one, the way of Adam, leads to death, and the other, the way of Christ, leads to life. Watch that you walk the path of righteousness rather than the path of sin.

Has God Freely Offered Heaven Instead of Hell? (Romans 5:8)

“But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8, ESV)

The third part of the Romans Road is stronger than the first two. The only dangers here come in (1) missing the Father’s love here and (2) making this about escaping hell and going to heaven. Some evangelistic proclamations make it out as if God the Father is the angry judge waiting to punish sinners, and Jesus is appeasing his wrath. I have addressed this in my post “Did Jesus Experience the Father’s Wrath?” In short, God so loved the world that he gave his only Son. Or in the words of this passage, “God shows his love for us.” This is why it doesn’t work to say we are “just sinners saved by grace.” Biblically we are God’s children, predestined to bear his image and glory (Romans 8:29-30). We are instruments of God’s love through and through. Presentations of the Romans Road that emphasize the Father’s love here are good. The similar Four Spiritual Laws also has this strength in that it begins with God’s love.

But there is also the danger of making this about heaven and hell, which it is not. Romans 5–8 is looking forward to “the revealing of the sons of God” (Romans 8:19), which will transform creation. Romans has a very this-world focus, and Christ’s death for us is not so we can go to heaven when we die but so we can live a new life and redeem the whole earth (Romans 8:19-23). We look forward to the return of Jesus and the final defeat of all evil on earth (Romans 11:26). A better reading of Romans is one that looks to the transformation of earth rather than one that looks forward to a disembodied state after death.

Is It Really About a Confession of Faith? (Romans 10:9-10)

“If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.” (Romans 10:9-10, ESV)

In the twentieth century, evangelism became more and more about bringing people to a moment of decision, the moment when they would be “born again” (a misunderstanding of John 3:3, 5, and the same misunderstanding that Nicodemus himself makes), the moment when they would be “saved” (though Paul speaks of salvation largely as a future act, Romans 5:10, etc.). And what better passage to emphasize making a decision in your heart and confessing it with your lips than Romans 10:9-10? The irony is that Paul is doing something very different in Romans 10, and biblically, confessions don’t mean as much as we make them out to (cf. Matthew 7:21-27).

Romans 10 is difficult to understand, and I have only recently begun to feel like I see where Paul is going here. Paul uses a series of passages in Romans 9 (Genesis 21:12; 18:10, 14; 25:23; Malachi 1:2-3; Exodus 33:19; 9:16; Isaiah 29:16; 45:9; Hosea 2:23; 1:10; Isaiah 10:22-23; 1:9; 28:16) to explain why Israel is largely failing to obtain salvation.

Romans 10:9-10 is not a major point Paul is making, but a transition comment. Paul has just quoted Deuteronomy 30:14 (“The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart”), and he is using it to make the point that Gentiles could receive this word as well. Look at the next three verses: “For the Scripture says, ‘Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.’ For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing riches on all who call on him. For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Romans 10:11-13, ESV). The argument is very similar to the one we find in Romans 3:21-31, but here the point is that what is needed is something Gentiles as well as Jews can do, as long as Jews faithfully proclaim the message to Gentiles (Romans 10:14-17). This is what Paul is doing, proclaiming to Gentiles the gospel of God’s reign being established in Jesus’s resurrection and ascension. That makes Paul’s ministry a fulfillment of Isaiah 52:7 (Romans 10:15). Romans 10:9-10 is not about what we must do to be saved, but about how you don’t need to do Jewish things to be saved. Many who do Jewish things have missed out on salvation altogether (Romans 9:31; 10:3).

Often Paul’s message about not needing to do works of the law (Jewish things) gets misinterpreted in evangelical preaching to mean that we are not rewarded for our good works, but we have already seen in Romans 2:6-11 that Paul says we are rewarded for our good works. Evangelical preaching tends to make everything about the moment of decision and praying the sinner’s prayer, but to Paul it is about keeping in step with the Spirit (Galatians 5:16-25), about walking in Christ rather than in Adam (Romans 6:1-23), and about working out our salvation with fear and trembling (Philippians 2:12-13). By omitting verses like these and selecting verses that can be read out of context to promote the Romans Road gospel, we preach a somewhat different gospel than the one the Bible presents.

Conclusion

Romans is not a roadmap to heaven. It is not about how to escape hell. Romans is assurance that God knows what he is doing and that we should therefore obey him. As Paul says at both the beginning and the end of the letter, he wants “to bring about the obedience of faith” among all nations (Romans 1:5; 16:26). The good news or “gospel” is the announcement that Jesus is on the throne. The result of this announcement shouldn’t be that we all grab a “Get out of hell free” card, but that we should submit to his Lordship and walk in Jesus now rather than in Adam. That is the true Romans road.

The popular Romans Road evangelism flattens this and makes Romans about teaching that we all deserve hell but can get to heaven by saying, “Lord, Lord.” The true teaching of Romans is that sin leads to death, righteousness leads to life, and by being more like Jesus we can escape enslavement to sin (Romans 6:5-14) and live that righteousness that leads to life. We choose to offer our bodies as living sacrifices not because we want to escape hell, but because we can … and because it is what we have always wanted (Romans 7:16-20).

A popular reading of select verses from Romans gives improper levels of guilt, an emphasis on our intellectual beliefs, and a desire to escape hell and obtain heaven. A good reading of Romans gives us excitement about who God is and what he is doing, an emphasis on our actions as being actions appropriate to the reign of God, and a desire to transform the earth and bring about the new creation. One approach is popular; the other is biblical.

Evangelical Culture, The Gospels

Teacher, You Insult Us Too! A Sermon on Jesus’ Woes against the Pharisees and Lawyers (Luke 11:39-52)

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Today I preached a sermon on Jesus’ Woes against the Pharisees and Lawyers (Luke 11:39–52). This is not an easy text to preach from,. We don’t often know what to do with passages like this in the Gospels. We like the positive stories that focus on God’s love or mercy or grace. We like to think of ourselves as receiving that same love or mercy or grace. But when there are negative stories, filled with rebuke, we read through them quickly and think, “Those people must have been really bad.”

In fact through much of Christian history, we have assumed that the Pharisees were legalistic, hypocritical, self-centered people with a holier-than-thou attitude … nothing like us. But if you actually study the Pharisees, you’ll find that this couldn’t be farther from the truth. We know of several first-century Pharisees like the great Rabbi Hillel who taught God’s people that the Torah could be summed up in the instruction to not do to others what you hate. Or like Rabbi Gamaliel that we read about in Acts who convinces the Sandhedrin not to persecute Christians. Or the Apostle Paul who still identifies himself as a Pharisee at the end of his life (Acts 23:6; 26:5; cf. Philippians 3:5). No one in the early church would have heard the word “Pharisee” and thought it meant legalistic, hypocritical, self-centered people with a holier-than-thou attitude. People would have assumed Jesus was talking about a group of Jews who loved God, loved neighbor, and were committed to the Bible and to living a righteous life.

This is why we have stories like the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector (Luke 18:9–14). The whole point is that even the worst of the worst, a traitorous tax collector, could be justified by God if he sincerely repents, and even the best of the best, a righteous Pharisee, could miss out on God’s justification if he looks down on others. If you come in with the assumption that Pharisees are legalistic people, very different from us, you just hear this passage as saying legalistic people won’t be justified but we will. We tend to associate ourselves with the good guys in stories and associate people we don’t like with the people we don’t like in stories. And it makes us bad readers of the Bible. But Jesus told this story knowing that his original audience would have viewed the Pharisees more positively and would have taken this as a warning.

And the same is true of the Woes against the Pharisees. If we have in mind these awful people, different from us, then we won’t get much of this passage. On the contrary, if the Pharisees of Jesus’ day were those who were committed to the Bible, to honoring God, to loving others, and to living a righteous life, then might this passage have something to say to those of us today who are committed to the Bible, to honoring God, to loving others, and to living a righteous life? If Jesus had warnings for the leaders of God’s people in his day, might he have warnings for those of us who lead God’s people in our day? If the Pharisees and lawyers needed to repent in the time of Jesus, might we need to repent today?

In this post I want to walk through the passage verse-by-verse and think about how God might want to challenge us.

The Setting: Jesus and Purity (11:37–41)

While he was speaking, a Pharisee invited him to dine with him; so he went in and took his place at the table. The Pharisee was amazed to see that he did not first wash before dinner. (Luke 11:37–38, NRSV)

Our story picks up after Jesus has been teaching in public. A Pharisee hears Jesus teaching about the kingdom being present and about our need to be filled with light rather than darkness, and the Pharisee does what any good person would do – he invites Jesus to dinner. The first thing the Pharisee notices is that Jesus doesn’t do what other people who are passionate about God do. Leviticus had given laws about how to be pure, and most the laws were not about morality but about what you’ve touched and about what you eat. His immediate question is going to be, “Wait, does Jesus really care about purity? Why isn’t he doing what we all do to honor God.” He doesn’t ask the question. He just thinks it, and Jesus addresses him.

Then the Lord said to him, “Now you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness. You fools! Did not the one who made the outside make the inside also? So give for alms those things that are within; and see, everything will be clean for you.” (11:39–41)

Jesus’ point is that often the things we do to honor God are external things, but God is after something deeper. We might go to church. We might raise our hands in worship. We might pray prayers or sing songs or talk to other Christians or even share the gospel, but these are actions that can be cleaned up easily. What’s on the inside? Is there greed? Is there wickedness? Is there lust for power or for control? Is there anger or envy or deception? Jesus says give all these things away, and then you will be truly pure from the inside out (cf. Mark 7:18–23).

Specifically Jesus is concerned that we might have greed on the inside – you know, the very basis of the American Dream; the very attitude we cultivate in American culture. This is what Jesus warns is on the inside of those who look good on the outside. If Jesus had some things to say about this to the Pharisees, he has a lot more to say to us today. He calls for a true almsgiving – one that includes not only money for the poor but giving all of ourselves to the poor. If we struggle in this area, he has some woes to speak to us.

The First Three Woes (11:42–44)

“But woe to you Pharisees! For you tithe mint and rue and herbs of all kinds, and neglect justice and the love of God; it is these you ought to have practiced, without neglecting the others.” (11:42)

God doesn’t care as much about whether we tithe as about what we do for the poor. Are we agents of justice in the world? Are we agents of God’s love? Often in the church today we are so focused on external things like tithes and building projects and programs, and God wants us to go deeper. The things that Jesus is passionate about in the gospels are often not the things we are passionate about in the church today. Jesus continues:

“Woe to you Pharisees! For you love to have the seat of honor in the synagogues and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces” (11:43).

How many of you feel good about your involvement in church? That is what Jesus is criticizing here. This isn’t criticism of these super elitists out there somewhere. This is a criticism of us who love to do things in the church, who love the praise we get from others for our church involvement. Jesus is hitting where it hurts! If most of what we do for the church is done inside these walls and is done to get us recognition, then woe to us!

“Woe to you! For you are like unmarked graves, and people walk over them without realizing it.” (11:44)

The passage started with the Pharisee thinking Jesus might not be concerned enough about purity. Now Jesus reveals that there is a deeper purity that the Pharisee hasn’t even thought about. Unmarked graves were a problem because the Bible teaches that you become impure if you have touched something that is dead, but it is hard to be sure you are honoring God if you don’t even know where the things are that dishonor God. But Jesus makes the point that if you have greed and wickedness inside you rather than love and justice, you are the thing that causes uncleanness.

People see what it looks like when you follow God, and they think the life you are living is OK, so they do the same and think they are OK. But honoring God goes much deeper than your church involvement and your worship. It must be rooted in an inner disposition to love your enemies and to care for those in need.

The Woes Insult Us Too! (11:45)

At this point a lawyer speaks up, and notice his words:

One of the lawyers answered him,  “Teacher, when you say these things, you insult us too.” (11:45)

Notice how introspective this lawyer is. He doesn’t say, “Thank God I’m not a Pharisee.” He doesn’t say, “Yeah, I guess Simon here is kind of hypocritical.” He says, “Wait, doesn’t this apply to me too?”

Lately I have been thinking about how bad of Bible readers we are. We always compare ourselves with the people who are commended in the story and never with the people who are being criticized. We read this passage and think, “Man, those Pharisees were pretty awful people.” Maybe we even think about people we don’t like and conclude they are the Pharisees of today. Our response is far more arrogant and less humble than the response the lawyer offers.

A friend recently told me that he went to a Bible study on the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector. In the parable, the Pharisee thanks God for not making him like the wicked tax collector, and the tax collector simply asks for mercy. Jesus say the tax collector goes home justified rather than the Pharisee. My friend said after the study, the leader prayed and basically thanked God that we’re not like the Pharisees. He missed the message of the passage.

If we read the woes against the Pharisees and feel better about ourselves afterwards, we are misreading them! We should respond to the Woes against the Pharisees as the lawyer does: “Teacher, when you say these things, you insult us too.”

Insulting us is exactly what Jesus wants to do. Sometimes we need to be shaken into deeper levels of obedience. So Jesus continues!

Heavy Burdens Hard to Bear (11:46)

And he said, “Woe also to you lawyers! For you load people with burdens hard to bear, and you yourselves do not lift a finger to ease them.” (11:46)

What is Jesus talking about here? The lawyers were the Bible teachers. They were the ones who would tell the people (who were illiterate), “Here is how the Bible says you should live.” And this process involves a whole lot of interpretation.

The Bible says to wash yourselves or items that have been touched by a bodily discharge or a dead animal, but what if we don’t know what all has touched a person or an item? The lawyers wanted to keep the people safe and so they instructed them to wash in all situations.

The Bible says not to do work on the Sabbath, but what is God going to consider work? The lawyers interpreted that for the people.
And sometimes the Bible says what to do in a specific situation that the lawyers had to determine whether and how to apply in a different situation. They did their best to interpret those things.

The same is true of us. We read the 613 laws of the Old Testament and have to determine what applies in the new covenant and how. What should Christians today do with laws about the Sabbath, about not bearing false witness against your neighbor, about ceremonial washings or Jewish holidays, about sexual purity, about theft or coveting. Some of these we say are to be applied strictly in any situation. Others we say are not.

This is what the lawyers did in Jesus’ day. The rabbis referred to this as binding and loosing. Those who were designated lawyers had the authority to make a decision regarding whether a certain act was permitted or not permitted, whether a person was bound by the law in a certain case or not bound by the law, and the belief was that as lawyers made these declarations on earth, the heavenly council would back up their decisions and make them so. This is what Jesus promises that the disciples will be able to do when he says, “Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven” (Matthew 18:18, NRSV). Jesus is giving the disciples the authority of lawyers. This passage is about how we determine that the law applies in a modern context.

This doesn’t mean we can go against what the Bible says. It means that the church has a responsibility to determine how the Bible rightly applies in a new context. And we do this all the time. Most Christians today think that we are not bound today by Paul’s instruction that women should not pray or prophesy without a head covering or by his statement that it would be better not to marry. We also tend to be pretty lenient about Jesus’ instructions about wealth or the Old Testament teachings on gluttony. But then we are pretty strict about other issues related to sex and gender, foul language, drinking, political beliefs, work ethic, physical appearances and other things depending on what church we belong to.
In all of this, we as the church are binding and loosing. How are we doing? Would Jesus say to us today, “Woe also to you Christians! For you load people with burdens hard to bear, and you yourselves do not lift a finger to ease them”?

I think there are a few ways we can tell if this is the case. First, are we sending the message that Jesus’ burden is heavy or light? People are leaving the church in droves right now and even speaking of how they have been hurt by the church. That is a bad sign. Second, are our interpretations loosing the bonds of injustice? Jesus could see a disparity between the rich and the poor that he repeatedly challenges in the Gospel of Luke, including in our passage where he notes that the problem with many of the Bible teachers is that they are filled with greed and wickedness. Is this true of our teachers today? Third, do many of the things we are strict about have to do more with external appearances than with justice and the love of God? Fourth, do our interpretations place ourselves in the seat of honor? Are we stricter on issues we ourselves don’t struggle with and more lenient on the issues we do?

I have a confession to make. Twenty years ago the church where I was now preaching had a female pastor and I told her that I don’t think what she was doing was biblical. I followed the strictest interpretation of 1 Timothy 2:12, where Paul tells Timothy that he does not permit a woman to teach, and I ignored Galatians 3:28, where Paul says there is no male or female in Christ Jesus, or Romans 16:1 where Paul commends a deaconess to the Romans who will be ministering to them on his behalf, or Romans 16:7, where Paul refers to a female apostle. I remember the dinner I had with her and her husband where I loaded them down with a burden hard to bear and did not lift a finger to ease it.

I have another confession to make. A few years later I was the associate pastor of a church in Columbus, and I was asked to come up with a membership curriculum for the church. I decided that if people want to be members of this church, they had to commit to a few things: reading the Bible devotionally every day, attending services every week when possible, and giving 10% of their income to the church. I also added a statement about living a holy life, but I never spelled out what that was, and I did not consider that some of the people in my church lived paycheck to paycheck and could not possibly give 10% of their income to the church. The 10% standard was given to a different people in a different time – a people who weren’t paying taxes in addition to tithes and who lived off the land rather than in a modern monetary system. Some of us today are wealthy enough that we can afford to give far more than 10% and some of us would struggle to put food on the table if we gave 10% of our income. These situations call for us in leadership to lift our finger to reduce the burden on the poor, but I did not do that.

I have a third confession to make. A few years ago I was an associate pastor at another church and someone asked if she could be a member in the church. Someone in leadership raised a concern: this woman lived with a man she was not married to. This person felt that the woman was not committed to holiness and therefore could not become a member of the church. I pointed out that (1) the man was not a Christian himself and did not care what rules we put on her, (2) he was absolutely opposed to getting married, and (3) he was the father of this woman’s child. We had a heated discussion about this situation and eventually it was decided that she could not become a member of the church. We as a church would rather break up the father and mother of a young child or tell the mother she cannot become a member of our church than lift a finger to ease this woman’s burdens. This woman now no longer attends church.

Have I loaded people with burdens hard to bear and not lifted a finger to ease them? Have I “lock[ed] people out of the kingdom of heaven” (to use Matthew’s wording of the final woe that we’ll talk about in a minute)? This passage is not about some hypocritical group of people who lived in a different time and place. This passage is about you and me, and we need to repent!

Building the Tombs of the Prophets (11:47–51)

“Woe to you! For you build the tombs of the prophets whom your ancestors killed. So you are witnesses and approve of the deeds of your ancestors; for they killed them, and you build their tombs.” (11:47–48)

Matthew gives us a little more of what Jesus said here than Luke does. Matthew 23:30–31 (NRSV) says, “You say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ Thus you testify against yourselves that you are descendants of those who murdered the prophets.”

In other words, there have always been two groups within God’s people: those who speak prophetically … and those who oppose that speech. The claim that the lawyers make – that they would not have shed the blood of the prophets like their fathers did – shows that they are sons not of the prophets, but of those who killed the prophets. But Jesus isn’t just being cute with his words here. There is a subtext to this: those who are building the tombs of the prophets are about to kill the greatest prophet of all, showing whose sons they truly are. So Jesus says:

“Therefore also the Wisdom of God said, ‘I will send them prophets and apostles, some of whom they will kill and persecute,’ so that this generation may be charged with the blood of all the prophets shed since the foundation of the world, from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who perished between the altar and the sanctuary. Yes, I tell you, it will be charged against this generation.” (Luke 11:49–51, NRSV)

But these acts of shedding the blood of prophets have continued throughout history. In the 15th century, great Christian thinkers like Jan Hus and Joan of Arc were executed for heresy. In the 16th century, around a thousand people were killed by church leaders for challenging the corrupt church of their day. In the 17th century many Quakers in America were put to death, and in Europe Galileo was put on house arrest until he got sick and died. Even in the 20th century some of the greatest modern prophets like Dietrich Bonhoeffer or Martin Luther King were killed by people who didn’t like their message. We might not be burning people at the stake anymore, but how many people have committed suicide because of pressure to conform that was placed on them by the church, and many Christians have become convinced that they are fighting in holy war against people who have a different message about God than they do.

If we are going to repent, we have to lay down our desire to control others. If we are going to speak against people, it needs to be against ourselves and against those who are in power, not against outsiders. We have a tendency as Christians today to judge those that we think we are holier than. Paul calls out the tendency to judge others in Romans 2: “Therefore you have no excuse, whoever you are, when you judge others; for in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, are doing the very same things.” (Romans 2:1–2, NRSV)

Or Jesus calls this out in Matthew 7: “Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye?” (Matthew 7:1–3 , NRSV)

Jesus calls out even our anger as consisting of murderous thoughts: “You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not murder’; and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire.” (Matthew 5:21–22, NRSV)

Do you think when Jesus calls out those who would murder the prophets in his day that he doesn’t insult us also? We have to be careful to do what Peter says: “Rid yourselves, therefore, of all malice, and all guile, insincerity, envy, and all slander.” (1 Peter 2:1, NRSV)

The Key of Knowledge (11:52)

And then we come to the final verse:

“Woe to you lawyers! For you have taken away the key of knowledge; you did not enter yourselves, and you hindered those who were entering.” (11:52)

When we abuse our power as messengers of the gospel, we take away the key of knowledge, and we hinder people from entering.

I am struck by another woe that Matthew records that is not in Luke: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cross sea and land to make a single convert, and you make the new convert twice as much a child of hell as yourselves” (Matthew 23:15, NRSV). God forbid that this could be said about us.

The only way we enter the kingdom of God is if we love like God loves. As Jesus said, “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” (Matthew 6:14–15, NRSV).

If we ignore Jesus’s teachings about anger and judgment, then woe to us. If we read passages like the Woes against the Pharisees and Lawyers and don’t take the message to heart or if we think it’s about someone else, then woe to us.

The Good News

But there is good news in all this. First John says, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:8–9, NRSV). In other words, we have two choices before us: we can be like the Pharisee in Luke 18 who voids all his righteousness by looking down on the tax collector, or we can be like the tax collector who beats his breasts and cries, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner” (Luke 18:13, NRSV).

I bring this passage to our attention to call us to beg God for mercy and to change our ways. If we have been focused on externals, let’s ask God to change what’s inside our hearts (Luke 11:39–41). If we have given to the church but not stood up for justice, let’s ask God to help us fight for justice and the love of God (Luke 11:42). If we have focused on the recognition we get in church, let’s ask God to help us do things without recognition (Luke 11:43). If we have caused people to turn away from the kingdom, let’s repentant and ask God to teach us to love like Jesus loves (Luke 11:44, 46–52). This is a lifelong battle. I am still trying to figure out what this looks like. I don’t think I focus on the condition of my heart enough or stand up for justice enough. But God is faithful. If we repent and ask him to do these things in our heart, he will!

Evangelical Culture

Who Are “the Lost” according to the Bible?

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Christians have developed our own language, and we tend not to realize how we may even use biblical terms in different ways than the Bible uses them. Today I have been thinking about the word “lost.” This word is often used in evangelical churches to refer to those who have never accepted the gospel. The idea is reinforced by songs we sing (“I once was lost but now am found”), prayers we pray, labels we use for those who do not have “a personal relationship with Jesus,” and the way we read the New Testament. The term “lost” is a biblical term, but might the Bible mean something different by the term than “those who do not know Jesus”?

There are four passages where the word occurs in the Gospels, and ironically it is never used of those who do not know God. In Matthew 10:5-6, Jesus sends out the Twelve with instructions not to go to those who don’t know God: “Go nowhere among the Gentiles and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” In context, “the lost sheep of the house of Israel” refers back both to Matthew 9:36, where Jesus encountered his own people who were “harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd,” and to Ezekiel 34, which Matthew 9:36 draws the image from. In Ezekiel 34, “lost” does not mean not knowing God or not being among God’s people. It is a reference to God’s people who have been mistreated by their leaders (the shepherds) and who therefore have become vulnerable to hostile nations (Ezek 34:5-6) or even to the shepherds themselves, who are devouring the lost sheep (Ezek 34:7-10). Being “lost” means not having access to the pasture that is needed. Sure, this could be equated with non-churchgoers, but in its original context it is a reference to those involved in the believing community who are simply “harassed and helpless.”

The second use of the word “lost” is in Matthew 15:24. Jesus has been feeding the hungry (Matt 14:19-21) and healing the sick (Matt 14:34-36), and in Matthew 15:22 an outsider, “a Canaanite woman,” comes to Jesus looking for healing for her daughter, and he says, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Again, “lost” does not refer to people who don’t know God; it refers to people who do, the insiders, “the children” of God (Matt 15:21)! This use is similar to the first instance. Jesus is coming not to tell the lost how they can escape hell; he is coming to help them overcome oppression, whether by the corrupt leadership of Israel or by demonic strongholds. The lost are insiders who are down on their luck.

The final two passages are slightly different in their usage, but they too do not use the term as if it is often used today. The word is used several times in Luke 15, in reference to the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son. In each case the emphasis is not on those who have never known God or who lack a personal relationship with God, but on those who have gone astray. Twice Jesus identifies the lost with the “sinner who repents” (Luke 15:7, 10), and in the third example he refers to someone who had been close to the father but had left to “squander his property in reckless living” (Luke 15:13). Nowhere here is “lost” equated with the modern idea of a person who doesn’t know the gospel. It is a person who has walked away from the Father to live for his own pleasure.

The final use of the word “lost” in the New Testament is in Luke 19:10 in reference to Zacchaeus, who had gotten rich by betraying his brothers and sisters and taking their property as tax to the Romans. As the man repents, Jesus pronounces salvation upon him (Luke 19:9) and then concludes with the maxim: “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10). This usage is similar to the other one in Luke: the lost are those who know God but have become consumed with themselves.

So there are four New Testament passages that describe “the lost.” In each case the lost person is someone who knows God. In two of these the person has been abused by the religious leaders; in two the person has gotten caught up in sin.

One thing that concerns me about the modern usage of the term is that it creates an insider-outsider mentality. We who have come to an evangelical faith are “the found” and those who have not are “the lost.” This mentality is reinforced in evangelical tradition with the songs we sing (even our children’s songs: “I’m on the inside, on which side are you?”) and with the way we read these passages. We read the story of the prodigal son and think of “non-believers,” and never question whether we are squandering our inheritance. We read the story of Zacchaeus and don’t ask ourselves, “How about me? In what ways do I need to repent?” We think of ourselves as being “the found” simply because we have a correct doctrine of God. The prodigal son had a correct “doctrine” of the father, but he was lost as ever when he was wasting the inheritance he received from his father. Zacchaeus had a correct doctrine of God, but he was lost as ever when his focus was on wealth rather than on caring for the poor. Insiders – churchgoers – are often lost and Jesus is calling out to us in these passages, but we cannot hear him because we think these passages are about someone other than ourselves. We need to hear the references to “the lost” in these passages and be aware of the fact that biblically “the lost” are people who know the Way but who are not properly walking in it. Perhaps we once were found, but it could well be that in the current moment we are lost and are truly the ones in need of the gospel!

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