All or Nothing

Biblical Christians consider themselves "people of the book", so to speak. We aim to be serious about Scripture. The Bible is our sole authority on matters of faith and practice. It is God's Word. And we're serious about that. So we read it for all it's worth. We try to understand and try to conform our lives and minds to what God has to say.

Why is it, then, that we seem to be so blind to some of the obvious things?

When I was young, I was told, "Never use 'never' and always avoid 'always'." (If you didn't smile at that, you missed the joke.) Those extreme terms like "never", "always", "all", "none", "nothing", "everything", and the like are difficult to maintain. You can disprove "never" by finding just one. So they should be used sparingly and carefully. And, yet, we find these kinds of statements littered throughout the Bible. "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." (Rom 3:23) "There is no one who does good, not even one." (Psa 14:3; Rom 3:12). "Apart from Me you can do nothing." (John 15:5) "No one can come to Me unless it has been granted him from the Father." (John 6:65) Absolute statements, some even from the lips of our Savior.

In that last reference I highlighted the word "can" because along with the universal "no one" He addressed ability, or, in this case, inability, making a statement about the universal inability of human beings to come to Christ. According to Jesus there is a baseline truth about human beings -- "No one has the ability to come to Me" -- followed by the only available hope for that to change. He was not vague, evasive, or unclear, and, yet, we Christians like to be vague, evasive, or downright unbelieving about what He said. We are quite certain that, regardless of His "no one" let alone His "can come", everyone has the innate ability to do just that -- come to Him.

Why do we do that? Why do we ignore or modify the clear statements of Scripture like that? I'm not talking about skeptics or "the Left"; I'm talking about genuine, unquestionable Christians who are otherwise quite serious about taking God at His Word. Why, when we come to things like that, do we dodge and evade the clear statements?

David was not unclear when he made the claim that there is none who does good (Psa 14:3). He even emphasized it -- "no, not one." Paul repeated it (Rom 3:12). In fact, both were quite sure there was "none who seek for God" (Rom 3:11; Psa 14:2). And, yet, we're all quite sure that there are lots who seek for God and who do good. We don't relegate it to hyperbole. "Oh, he didn't mean literally 'not one'. He just meant that doing good is extremely rare." That would be hyperbole. No, we understand it to mean, "Lots of people do good, including believers, unbelievers, and anyone else you might imagine." We reinterpret Scripture from our faulty perceptions (Jer 17:9) of our experience. Why do we do that?

Paul wasn't vague when he wrote, "A natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised." (1 Cor 2:14) Here, too, he addresses a universal inability. That is, "All natural human beings lack the ability to understand the things of the Spirit of God." But we're absolutely certain that the exact reverse is true -- all human beings have the ability to understand the things of the Spirit of God. Why do we do that?

John wasn't speaking in strange terms when he claimed, "No one who is born of God practices sin, because His seed abides in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God." (1 John 3:9) Now, you might say he was vague about "practicing sin". "The King James says, 'Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin.' See? Vague." But stepping back from "sin" or "sinning continuously", clearly there are universal absolutes in this text. "No one" and "cannot" are included in here. And, yet, almost no one believes that. John is clearly making an absolute statement about the ability of the one born of God to continue to do something in regard to sin. We're all mostly convinced that he meant ... nothing at all. Why do we do that?

Check yourself sometime. See what you do when you run across these universal statements. There are reasons not to take some universally. For instance, does "the world" (a universal term) refer to every single person on the planet or can it have variations in meaning? As it turns out, it may mean the physical world (e.g., John 1:9), the world of humans (e.g., Luke 2:1), the moral world (e.g., John 7:7; John 15:18-19), the world in terms of time (present or future) (e.g., John 12:31; 2 Cor 4:4). So know your "world" before applying a singular meaning to the term. That is, we do need to accurately handle the word of truth (2 Tim 2:15). But let's not jettison the obvious because it isn't what we're used to, isn't what we like, isn't what we're comfortable with. Let's take God at His Word, realizing that it won't always be warm and fuzzy to do so, but recognizing that the truth will set us free (John 8:32).