Bible Difficulties (90 page)

How can 1 Corinthians 7:12 and 1 Corinthians 7:40 be reconciled with the inerrant
authority of Paul's Epistles?

These two verses present a slightly different factor in relationship to Paul's apostolic authority, and therefore they will be treated separately. In the paragraph beginning with v.8, Paul is discussing the question of whether to remain single or to become married. He also alludes to the alternatives facing married couples who prove to be incompatible. In vv. 10-11 he cites an express dictum of the Lord Jesus during His earthly ministry (Matt.

5:32; 19:3-9) that forbids a married couple to break up; that is, the wife should not leave her husband, and the husband is not to send his wife away so as to divorce her. (Matthew 5:32 allows divorce only on the grounds of unchastity.) Then in 7:12 Paul moves on to the question of whether couples who have thus broken up are free to marry someone else.

He takes note of the fact that Jesus never spoke explicitly on the question (even though the implications of Matt. 5:32 point strongly in the direction of forbidding any such second marriage).

Either because he is simply drawing an inference (albeit an almost unavoidable inference) from Christ's ruling on the matter of divorce, or else because he has received some explicit revelation as to God's will in regard to a special type of marital tension, Paul makes it clear that what he is about to say is not an actual quotation from Jesus' lips.

Therefore he says, "But to the rest I say, not the Lord." Jesus never discussed what should be done when one member of the married couple gets saved and the other remains opposed to the gospel; so it was necessary for Paul to make a distinction between the explicit prohibition of divorce (on which Christ had made a definite pronouncement) and a logical and necessary inference that Paul had (under the influence of the Holy Spirit) drawn in regard to the plight of the discordant marriage partners.

There were, of course, many revelations from God contained in Paul's inspired writings; and these often dealt with matters that our Lord never discussed while on earth. But since all of Paul's teaching was given to him by revelation from the risen Christ through the agency of the Holy Spirit, it was as fully authoritative as any of the sayings of Jesus that He uttered during His earthly ministry. In other words, "I say, not the Lord" implies nothing adverse to the binding authority of what Paul taught (either here or anywhere else in his epistles) but only deals with the question of whether he can cite a recorded saying of Christ prior to His resurrection and ascension.

As for 1 Corinthians 7:40, Paul gives his counsel to those who are uncertain as to whether they should get married, and he says, "But in my opinion she [i.e., a woman who has lost her husband through death] is happier if she remains as she is [i.e., in a state of widowhood]; and I think [
doko
] that I also have the spirit of God [i.e., as I express this opinion]" (NASB).
Doko
(from
dokeo
) has the idea of "deem," "suppose," or "be of the opinion that (such and such is the case)." It does not necessarily imply any uncertainty or 410

unsureness on the part of the thinker; it simply emphasizes that that is his personal opinion or conviction.
Dokeo
implies nothing prejudicial to the soundness of the opinion held. For example, in John 5:39 Christ says to His hearers, "Search the Scriptures, for
you
think
that in them you have eternal life." The
dokeite
("you think") certainly does not suggest any uncertainty on Christ's part as to whether eternal life is to be found in the Holy Scriptures, for He unquestionably believed that it was. But he uses
dokeite
to emphasize that they themselves personally believed what was actually true.

How can 1 Corinthians 10:8 be reconciled with Exodus 32:28?

1 Corinthians 10:8 says, "We should not commit sexual immorality, as some of them did--and in one day twenty-three thousand of them died" (NIV). Exodus 32:28 says, "The Levites did as Moses commanded, and that day about three thousand of the people died."

In the preceding verses of Exodus 32, we learn that the Levites had armed themselves to execute all the leaders in the festival of worship of the golden calf; and so Moses had summoned them in v.27, saying, "Go back and forth through the camp from one end to the other, each killing his brother and friend and neighbor." The "three thousand" were slain by the sword in this direct punitive action.

What Paul is referring to is the total number who perished that day, not only from the swords of the avenging Levites, but also from the terrible plague God sent on the camp:

"And Yahweh struck the people with a plague because of what they did with the calf Aaron had made" (Exod. 32:35). The Exodus account does not give the number of slain by the plague, but 1 Corinthians 10:8 furnishes us with that total: twenty-three thousand.

This presumably includes the three thousand slain by the sword, and leaves the total of twenty thousand for those who died by the plague itself. There is no confusion here with Numbers 25:8, which gives the total of those who died in the plague at Shittim as twenty-four thousand. Since 1 Corinthians 10:7 quotes from Exodus 32:6, there can be no doubt that Paul was referring to the episode of the golden calf, rather than the similar event at Shittim.

In 1 Corinthians 15:29 what is meant by baptism for the dead?

The matter under discussion in 1 Corinthians 15:16-32 is the validity of the Christian hope of the bodily resurrection of all true believers. Current philosophical opinion in intellectual Greek circles as well as among the Jewish Sadducees was that such a reconstitution of bodily form was impossible once physical death had occurred. The appearance of resurrected Old Testament believers in bodily form to many observers in Jerusalem after the death of Jesus on the cross (Matt. 27:52) was apparently dismissed as mere hallucination, spawned of credulous superstition. But throughout this paragraph the apostle shows that the bodily resurrection of believers in the end time is guaranteed by the bodily resurrection of Christ Himself.

It is in this context that Paul moves into a discussion of the personal application of this joyous prospect to the individual believer. As older Christians fell terminally ill and it became apparent that their departure was near, they would summon their loved ones to 411

their bedside and urge those of them who were as yet unconverted to get right with God.

"Before long I will have to leave you, my dear ones," the dying saint would say, "but I want to see you all again in heaven. Be sure you meet me there! Remember that no one may come to the Father except through a true and living faith in the Son. Give your heart to Jesus!"

As they would leave that bedside, deeply moved by this earnest admonition, many of those who were still uncommitted to Christ would give serious attention to the gospel invitation and receive Jesus as their Lord and Savior. Mindful of the exhortation of their now-departed loved one, they would prepare themselves for public confession and baptism according to the practice of their local church. As they finally took this fateful step in the presence of witnesses, they would in a very real sense be submitting to baptism "
for the sake of
the dead" (the preposition
hyper
is intended to mean "for the sake of" rather than "on behalf of" in this particular context)--even though their primary motivation would be to get right with God, as sinners in need of a Savior.

No first-century believer reading Paul's epistle could possibly have misinterpreted the expression
hyper ton nekron
("for the sake of the dead") to mean that the faith of a living believer could possibly be reckoned to the benefit of a dead unbeliever, whether he was genealogically related to him or not. Throughout Scripture it is clear that saving grace is granted to no one except the believer himself, on the basis of his personal faith. Faith can never be imputed from one person to another. But one who has been deeply impressed by the testimony of a dying saint may certainly be moved to join him in repentance, faith, and commitment to the Lord--in the joyous expectation of meeting that loved one in his glorified resurrection body. This, then, is what is implied by v.29: "For what shall they do who are baptized for the sake of the dead? If dead people are really not raised up, why are they baptized for their sake?" Verse 30 carries on the same thought: "Why are we also subjected to danger every hour?" And then in v.31 he concludes: "If dead people are not raised [bodily from their graves], let us simply eat and drink, for tomorrow we die!"

In other words, if the hope of the bodily resurrection of believers is a delusion, then Christ Himself could not have risen bodily from the grave. And if He never rose from the grave, the entire gospel proclamation is a fraud; and there is no deliverance from sin, death, and hell. "If Christ was not raised, your faith is vain, you are yet in your sins"

(v.17). Therefore the doctrine of bodily resurrection is not a matter of option for the Christian; it is the very essence of salvation. But that salvation is available only to those who personally respond with repentance and faith to the Master's call. There is no conversion by proxy. Such a teaching cannot be found in any part of Scripture, and it is completely at variance with what God's Word teaches about salvation.

412

Galatians

Did Moses receive the law only 430 years after Abraham?

Galatians 3:17 states: "The law, which came 430 years afterward [i.e., after God's covenant promises to Abraham] does not invalidate a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to make the promise void." This is by way of proof that the basis of God's covenant with Abraham and his seed was the promise of grace, not the merit of keeping the Mosaic law--even though the law was added in order to lead all sinners to Christ (vv.

22-24). Actually there must have been closer to 645 years intervening between Abraham's migration from Haran at age 75 and the issuing of the Decalogue to Moses and the Israelites at Sinai. This would be 215 years more than the 430 that Paul refers to.

Is this a real discrepancy? Not at all! There has simply been a misunderstanding as to the
terminus a quo
that Paul had in mind.

In Galatians 3:16 Paul referred to the promises made to Abraham in Genesis 13:15 (after he had returned from his sojourn in Egypt) and in Genesis 22:18 (after he had returned from Mount Moriah and the near sacrifice of his son Isaac: "And in your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice" NASB). If Isaac was about twelve at the time of the near sacrifice, this particular renewal of the covenant promise must have occurred when Abraham was 112, or 37 years later than his migration from Haran. This factor makes it untenable to argue, as some have done, that Paul is simply relying on the unreliable Septuagint reading in Exodus 12:40 ("But the sojourn of the sons of Israel that they sojourned in Egypt
and in Canaan
was 430 years").

The insertion of "and in Canaan" takes in the 215 years between Abraham's departure from Haran and Jacob's migration to Egypt in 1876 B.C. Paul had just referred to the

"promises," including quite specifically one reaffirmed 37 years later than Abraham's first arrival in Canaan. Hence there would be no way in which the figure 430 would apply.

The real solution is not far to seek. Paul is contrasting the two main stages in the history of Abraham's race: the age of promise and the age of law. The promises of the covenant of grace were repeated several times to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as well.

Essentially these later covenant renewals were identical with the original pronouncements in Genesis 12, with only minor variations from Abraham to Jacob. In fact, the final appearance of God to Jacob in order to reaffirm the Abrahamic promise took place just before Jacob left Canaan for Eqypt in 1876 (cf. Gen. 46:2-4). Therefore the total of 430

years was very accurate indeed, and the rendezvous between Israel and Yahweh at Mount Sinai occurred at precisely that interval of time. There is no discrepancy whatever.

413

Ephesians

Is Ephesians 4:8 a misquotation from Psalm 68:18?

Ephesians 4:8 quotes Psalm 68:18 (19 Heb.) as follows: "Therefore it says: Àscending on high, He led captivity captive, He gave [
edoken
] gifts to men.'" But the Hebrew text reads a bit differently: "You did ascend [
àlita
] on high; You did lead captivity captive

[
sabita sebi
]; you did take/bring/fetch [
laqahta
] gifts among men." Is this a purposely slanted translation? Was this a deliberate tampering with the Old Testament original in a way incompatible with treating it as inerrant and authoritative? Some have argued that this is the case. But they have not sufficiently considered the context of the Psalms passage, nor have they taken into account the implications of the words interpreted in the New Testament adaptation.

Interestingly enough, Paul is not following the Septuagint rendering here, as if he had not checked with the Hebrew original. On the contrary, the Septuagint quite literally translates
laqahta
("You did take") as
elabes
. It is actually the Aramaic Targum, the traditional interpretation of orthodox Jewry, that interprets the Hebrew
laqahta
as
yehabta
"You have given"). In other words, the implication of "You have taken-brought"

the gifts was in order that they might be conferred on men; not that God was to keep them for Himself ("as if He needed anything" from men's hands--as Paul pointed out in Acts 17:25), but rather gifts in the hands of the Lord are there for the purpose of bestowal on men. Thus the Targum brings out what is implied by the Hebrew verb, especially in connection with
ba'adam
, "among men"--i.e., to be bestowed
among
men. This last phrase the Targum interprets as referring to the recipients of these gifts from God and simplifies the wording as
libene nasa'
("to the sons of men").