Angela was furious. “I thought it was free,” she complained. “Look at all these payments they’ve taken!”
Her friend was trying to be patient. “Did you read the terms and conditions? You don’t often get anything for nothing.”
We can be misled when we ignore information in an advertisement, especially any terms and conditions.
More importantly, if we take verses out of the Bible and ignore the context we can be misled. Consider the following examples:
| Extract from Bible verse | Reference | |
| 1 | “…let every man kill his brother, every man his companion, and every man his neighbour.” | Exodus 32:27 |
| 2 | “You shall not sow your field with mixed seed.” | Leviticus 19:19 |
| 3 | “…you who have followed Me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” | Matthew 19:28 |
| 4 | “…beware of men, for they will deliver you up to councils and scourge you in their synagogues” | Matthew 10:17 |
| 5 | “…we shall all be changed” | I Corinthians 15:51 |
Which of these verses would you like to apply to yourself or to your family? Could you go into a Bible bookshop and buy a notecard with one of these verses on it?
All of them are genuine Bible quotes—words spoken to believers. However, in order to understand them it is essential to look at the context. As the Bible translator Myles Coverdale said over 400 years ago:
“It shall greatly help you to understand Scriptures if thou mark not only what is spoken or written, but of whom, and to whom, with what words, at what time, where, to what intent, with what circumstances, considering what goeth before and what followeth after.”
For example, number 1 followed a disastrous incident in the Israelites’ wilderness journey; number 2 is part of the Jewish Law of Moses, numbers 3 and 4 were spoken by Jesus to his 12 disciples, and number 5 was written to baptised Christians.
It can be comforting to apply an encouraging Bible verse to ourselves, but it is false comfort if we change the original meaning. While the whole Bible is given for our benefit, it cannot all be applied directly to us.
God’s gift of salvation really is free (Romans 5:17-19), but this most certainly does not mean that we can sit back and do nothing: terms and conditions apply, and we do well to read them.
Anna Hart