The Pharisees Read the Same Bible

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus keeps returning to the same pattern: "You have heard that it was said," and then, "But I tell you." He is not correcting the Old Testament. Jesus is on the hillside correcting what the religious teachers had done with it.

"Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth" appears three times in the Old Testament: Exodus 21:24, Leviticus 24:20, and Deuteronomy 19:21. Jesus and the teachers of the law are looking at the same words on the same page. In each passage, "eye for eye" instructs judges. It limited justice and capped payback.

But the religious teachers had carried a courtroom law into the home and onto the street, expanding it beyond what it was originally intended to do.

Think about how strange that is. A law God gave to restrain personal revenge was being quoted as permission to pursue it. And these were not people who ignored Scripture. The Pharisees would have told you they held the highest view of Scripture in the land. They were the ones trying hardest to be biblical.

Soon you realize a thread runs underneath much of this section of the Sermon on the Mount. You can quote the Bible and still teach something God never said. You can quote a verse word for word, carry it into a situation it was never talking about, and feel more confident than ever that you are being biblical. You can study your Bible, memorize it, wield it, and still be wrong. The words were right. The application was wrong. And a wrong application can make a verse mean the opposite of what God meant.

We do this all the time. Jeremiah 29:11, "I know the plans I have for you," is on a thousand graduation cards, but God said it to exiles in Babylon, and the plan was seventy years of staying put. It promises faithfulness through a long wait, but we have made it a promise of a good job by Christmas. Or take Philippians 4:13, "I can do all this through him who gives me strength," which is typically an athlete's favorite verse and appealed to for strength to win a game. Paul wrote it from prison about being content when hungry. A verse about doing without has become a verse about winning.

Those are mostly harmless. Others are not. There are husbands who quote "Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands" (Ephesians 5:22) while ignoring the call to love their wives "just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her" (Ephesians 5:25). There is the person who claims to be "speaking the truth in love" (Ephesians 4:15) with plenty of truth and no love.

And there is the person who says, "Well, the Bible says eye for eye," and is not asking a question. They are looking for permission to do something harsh.

You know who else handles Scripture this way? Satan. In Matthew 4, the devil tells Jesus to throw himself down from the temple, "For it is written," and quotes Psalm 91. Jesus answers, "It is also written: 'Do not put the Lord your God to the test'" (Matthew 4:7). The devil had turned a promise of God's care into a dare. Jesus responds not by throwing out Psalm 91, but by interpreting it alongside the rest of Scripture. "It is also written" is how you keep one verse from being turned against the rest of the Bible.

Here is a simple test. If your use of a verse gives you permission to do what the rest of the Bible tells you not to do, you have misread the verse.

So this week, before you reach for a verse, ask what you are reaching for. Are you coming to Scripture to be shaped by it, or to be affirmed in what you think is true? The Pharisees read the same Bible as Jesus and got it wrong.

Could you be doing the same?