The Letter of the Law or the Spirit of the Law

THE SPIRIT OF THE LAW or the LETTER OF THE LAW — Don’t Be Like Dennis

A while ago I was having a conversation with a Christian friend of mine. We had been friends for a number of years and he had me in weekly to do a corporate devotional  for his employees. This was a very worthwhile and a blessed ministry. In the course of our conversation, he said something that both surprised and shocked me. My Bible studies had for over 35 years been based on an exposition of the Bible text; these were rich in word studies based on the original languages, culture and in the foundation of the Scriptures linguistically and grammatically in particular. I had always tried diligently to leave out any element of subjectivity. I was at my core and expository preacher, certainly not a devotional preacher. I did not believe that my personal take on any passage could rise to anywhere near the level of an expository, empirical  rendering of the Scriptures.  I abhorred the notion that a believer could of his own volition and understanding, however sincere,  believer the final authority on God’s Word.

Every week I do an online, “Forensic Bible Study.” We are at  5,000 viewers a week, and many people are being taught, edified and blessed. I hear from them regularly. This is my style and lives deep in my heart. I study the Scriptures daily in their original languages. That is where I have found the truth. I am en unapologetic expository preacher.

My friend told me that he was not a fan of this approach to Scripture. He was not a “line upon line, precept upon precept” kind of Christian. I honestly did not think I had anyone like that in my circle of Christian friends. He told me that the Bible to him was “not about the letter of the law, but the spirit of the law.”

It is difficult for me to express how offensive and vexing this statement was from a Christian friend whom I had liked and admired for a number of years. What he was in fact saying to me was that, in the end, he himself was the arbiter of what the Bible said– not Vines Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words, not Thayer’s Greek Lexicon, not the Daker & Bauer Lexicon, not the Dictionary of New Testament Theology by Colin Brown, not the Bible Lexicon of Kohler & Baumgartner, not the brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew-English Lexicon, nor the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament by Kittel & Fridreich. These mattered not at all to my friend. What matter was what he personally understood to be “the spirit of the law.” In other words, he was his own final authority on the Scriptures. I found this to be most appalling and perhaps even bordering on the blasphemous. I have prayed for him, as my pity will always be evoked by any Christian who is bound in spiritual growth by his own existential level of understanding beyond which he cannot rise.  His name is Dennis.  Don’t be like Dennis.