Training in Righteousness

“All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16-17 ESV).

When I was growing up, I was brought up under the Christian and Missionary Alliance Church denomination. If you are at all familiar with the name A. W. Tozer, it was the same denomination he preached under. And this church denomination had its beginnings with a man by the name of A. B. Simpson who was a Presbyterian minister who left the Presbyterian church pastorate to minister to the migrants in New York City, I believe. 

But he was not trying to start another church denomination. He was concerned for the migrants in New York and the people of the world and the disenfranchised of the world, and this was the focus of his ministry. And this led to him eventually organizing with other believers in Christ who had the same heart for missions as he did. And eventually they became the C&MA and were, at least at one time, maybe the 5th largest mission society there was. I think we had more churches in foreign countries than in America.

Anyway, I lived in Akron, Ohio (USA), at the time, and my family and I attended the gatherings of the church in a building on Brown Street. And during my senior year of high school we gained a new pastor by the name of Richard Sipley who was with us from 1967-1977. And I learned more about the Scriptures under his ministry than I ever learned under any other minister of the gospel in my 73 years of life. And he was the most godly man I have ever known in my life, too, although he was not perfect. 

He taught me how to study the Scriptures for myself, and he instilled in me a hunger for God’s Word. And one of the things that he taught that I have never forgotten is that we should go into the Scriptures fresh, like we never read them before, and that we should let the Holy Spirit speak truth to our hearts. And we should listen to the Lord and then put into practice what we are learning. But this whole idea of going fresh into the Scriptures was monumental for me, and the Scriptures truly began to come alive to me.

And why is this so important? Because when we are growing up we have parents and other relatives and friends and other church people and pastors and teachers who are influencing us and our way of thinking and believing. And so we formulate beliefs based off all these influences. And sometimes we learn things wrong or we get things wrong. And sometimes we carry those wrong concepts and understandings of what the Scriptures teach throughout our lifetime, and those beliefs may lead us in the wrong way.

I remember that Pastor Sipley also recommended that we purchase a new Bible so that we were starting fresh with one we hadn’t already marked up with our ideas or thinking or what we learned previously. And this helps us to then be open to hearing from the Holy Spirit what he wants to teach us so that we are not shutting out the Spirit by holding on to preconceived notions about what the Bible teaches that could be wrong. I had to unlearn lots of things that I learned wrongly, the deeper that I got into the Scriptures.

And another thing he recommended which greatly helped me was a more modern translation of the Scriptures. Why did this help? Because I have always had a low reading comprehension level, so a learning disability, in other words, that never got treated at all until I began college. And I still struggle with comprehending what I am reading sometimes. So, I really struggled to understand the KJV of the Bible, for that is not the language that I speak. I speak 21st century American English.

Okay, so another HUGE thing that I learned along the way is that we must read and interpret the Scriptures in their context. Too many people are pulling Scriptures out of context and they are making them say what they do not say, either innocently or deliberately. A lot of this is being done deliberately these days in order to deceive naïve minds, and it is working, for many people are deceived and they are believing the lies over the truth. And so context is everything! 

And this is especially true if we are reading in the Old Testament, which takes me to the passage of Scripture quoted above. For, although all Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, etc., all Scripture does not directly apply to us. For example, we don’t live under the Old Covenant that God had with his people of old. We can learn lessons from those passages of Scripture, and some of them do teach the same moral laws as are taught under the New Covenant, but we aren’t under the Old Covenant. So we have to interpret the old in light of the New Covenant.

And even in the New Testament, we must interpret Scriptures in light of their immediate context, in light of the book that they are written in, and in light of the teachings of the New Testament, as a whole. For Scripture must agree with Scripture. Jesus and the NT apostles did not teach one thing and then turn around and teach the exact opposite. So if the Scriptures disagree with one another, according to our interpretation, then we need to go back to those Scriptures and in prayer seek understanding from God on their meaning. For he is not a God of confusion. 

And I am not saying that we are going to understand everything. I don’t understand everything, but I believe I understand what is most critical that I understand in order for me to live and to teach the truth of what the Scriptures teach regarding our salvation from sin and eternal life with God, in particular. For knowing and living the truth determines where we will spend eternity. And we know the truth by listening to the Holy Spirit’s voice, by being open to his leading us to all truth, and by studying the Scriptures in their context so that we don’t end up misinterpreting the Scriptures.

Your Word  

An Original Work / December 27, 2011

Based off Psalm 119

Praise You with an upright heart as

I learn of Your righteousness.

I seek You with all my heart;

Do not let me stray from Your law.

I have hidd’n Your word in my heart

That I might not sin against You.

Open my eyes that I may see

Wonderful things in Your word.

I am a stranger on earth.

I have chosen the way of truth;

My heart is set on Your word.

I will walk about in freedom,

For I have sought out Your truth.

Teach me knowledge and good judgment, 

For I believe in Your law.

Your hands made me, and they formed me;

Give me understanding, Lord.

I put my hope in Your word.

Your word is a lamp to my feet

And a light unto my path.

You are my shield and my refuge;

In Your word I put my hope.

My heart trembles at Your word, Lord.

May my lips o’erflow with praise.

May my tongue sing of Your truth, Lord.

Your salvation, Lord, long I.

Your word, Lord, is my delight.