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Introduction:
As is our common custom on the Second Sunday night of each month,
we devote this time to answering questions submitted by our
members and guests. At this time, I only have two questions that
have been submitted. If you have one that was lost in the shuffle
at some point, please resubmit it. Or if you have a question you
would like answered, place it in the box outside my office or
e-mail it to me.
Our two questions are quite diverse, but I think I can
cover them both in one time period:
1) What is the church of Christ translation of the Bible?
2) Is it wrong to circumcise today? Discussion: I.
What is the church of Christ translation of the Bible? A.
The answer to this question is there is none. First, we
need to recognize what the church of Christ is. In Acts
2:47, the Bible tells us the Lord added to the church
daily those who were being saved. The church of Christ is nothing
more than the collection of people who have been saved by Jesus
Christ. It is not some organized entity that translates the Bible.
Nor is it an organized institution that can place some stamp of
approval or an endorsement on a translation. B.
Those who are Christians and, therefore, members of
Christ’s church are those who simply want to follow the word of
God. Thus, we do need to take care how we use the translations we
have. No doubt, the ideal situation would be for all of us to
learn the original Greek and Hebrew languages at the level of
utter scholarship so we could take the extant manuscripts, study
them for ourselves and come up with our own understanding.
However, that is just not practical. Therefore, most modern
Christians have to rely on the scholarship of others. C.
With that in mind, I simply want to share with you some
helpful hints of understanding about picking translations. 1.
Rely
more on translations that were translated by groups of people
rather than one person.
When groups translate, there is a natural set of checks and
balances. Individuals have to defend their translation to other
scholars before publication. When you are reading a translation
that comes from one individual, you may have a valuable resource
in seeing what that one individual thinks the passage means, but
you may not be getting tested and properly defended translation. 2.
Rely
more on translations that were translated by interdenominational
or nondenominational groups rather than by a specific church,
denomination or religion. If the translation is put out by a group that all
come from one denomination, there is a real possibility of their
losing sight of the actual translation and replacing it with their
preconceived doctrinal notion. A great example is the Bible
translation put out by the Jehovah’s Witnesses—“The New
World Translation.” They may have had some great scholarship go
into some of that translating, but it is very well established
that they allowed their doctrinal cart to get before their
translation horse when they changed John
1:1 to say, “In [the] beginning the Word was, and the
Word was with God, and the Word was a
god” (Emphasis mine, ELC). This is a tricky point because even
the King James Bible was translated by men who were mostly
Anglicans and trying to please the King. Yet, we can put more
reliance on those whose scholarship is not vested in a particular
doctrinal stance. 3.
Rely
on a translation that you can understand.
I know that some of our brethren have a tendency to act like the
KJV or the old American Standard are the translations we should
all stick with as if those translators were somehow inspired. If
you can understand those translations, great. If you can’t,
don’t feel bad about getting one that is more easily understood.
After all, when the KJV was translated there were older versions
that were hard to read and they simply translated it in a way that
made it easier for them to read too. 4.
Understand
the translation philosophy of your Bibles’ translators. There is actually a spectrum of translation philosophy that
most folks don’t understand. Each translation will fit on that
spectrum. The spectrum moves from one side of trying to simply
translate exactly the words that are in the manuscripts to the
other side of being concerned with only conveying the idea of what
was being taught. Grab an interlinear sometime and see the problem
of having a translation that does nothing but translate word for
word in the same order as the Greek or Hebrew and you will see why
folks move increasingly to the other side of that spectrum.
Understand a few concepts of translation. a.
Some translations attempt to be “word for word”
translations. That is, they translate the words to their
corresponding English words using the same tense, as far as
possible. And they try to put the words in as close an order to
the original as possible and yet still convey something
understandable. Perhaps the translation we are most familiar with
like that is the old American Standard Version. b.
As you move across that spectrum you get to what is called
“thought for thought” translations. That is, instead of trying
to get all the words right, these translators strive to figure out
what the thought being conveyed is and express that in the
translation. Perhaps the most well-known translation in this camp
is the New International Version. The thought for thought
translation philosophy is not bad or wrong, but we do need to be
careful with those because sometimes when conveying the thought of
the passage instead of what is actually written a translator can
stop translating the Scripture and start providing his
interpretation of it. c.
Then we move to “paraphrase” Bibles that attempt to
make the Bible really easy to understand by paraphrasing.
Paraphrasing means to reword for clarity or simplicity. It is not
bad, it is like when a preacher reads a passage and then says,
“In other words…” and provides a simple clear statement.
However, we have to grasp this. A paraphrase Bible is not a
translation of the words of the original languages. It is a
person’s interpretation of what they think God meant. It is a
person’s or a group’s assessment of what a particular passage
means and then saying that instead of what was actually written.
Further, the paraphrase is sometimes not even based on the
original texts but on someone else’s translation. No doubt,
sometimes the paraphraser’s assessment may be correct, sometimes
maybe not. I’m not saying don’t ever use one. I’m saying
that you must understand that with a paraphrase translation you
are not getting the translation, you are getting someone’s
opinion of what it means. So if you have one, use it as a
reference book in the same way you might use a friend calling them
up and saying, “Hey, what do you think this verse means?”
5.
I’m not going to tell you which translations to use or
which ones are the best examples of which category. Usually, each
Bible has a preface with an explanation of their translation
philosophy at the front of their Bibles. II.
Is it wrong to circumcise today? A.
In Galatians
5:2-4, Paul makes a pretty strong statement: “Look: I,
Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be
of no advantage to you. I testify again to every man who accepts
circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law. You are
severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you
have fallen away from grace” (ESV). Does this mean those who are
circumcised today are going to hell? Does it mean we are
condemning our boys to hell if they are circumcised? In our modern
culture, circumcision is relatively normative. While the
percentages are actually dropping, more than half of all boys born
in the United States are circumcised.[1]
Are all these boys condemned to an eternity in hell just because
they were circumcised? Are their parents? No. B.
Notice very carefully that Paul is not just talking about
the act of any circumcision. Rather, he is talking about those who
become circumcised out of a desire to be justified by the Old Law.
That was exactly what he was arguing against in Acts
15, when some of the Pharisees demanded that the Gentiles
first had to be circumcised and then could become Christians.
Instead of viewing the New Covenant as superceding the Old, they
simply saw it as being added to the Old. They believed a person
had to submit to the Old Law before they could submit to the new,
thus they believed every one who wished to be justified by Christ
had to first submit to the Law. In that scenario, Paul refused to
let Titus be circumcised according to Galatians
2:3-6. C.
However, in another scenario, Paul not only permitted
circumcision, he performed it. In Acts
16:3. Why this seeming contradiction? Because in Titus’
case the push was to be circumcised in order to be justified by
keeping the Old Testament law. In Timothy’s case, it was a
matter of expedience. Paul did not circumcise Timothy so Timothy
could be saved. He did it so Timothy would not be a stumbling
block for other Jews. Certainly, mature Christian Jews needed to
understand that circumcision wasn’t necessary, but Paul was
seeking the lost Jews, not the saved ones. He was going to go to
people that still believed the Jewish nation was the chosen people
of God and everyone had to become a Jew to be saved. If, somehow,
they discovered that Timothy was not circumcised, it would set up
a roadblock to any and all teaching. So Paul removed the
roadblock. The point for us, however, is that God does not, in the
New Covenant, condemn any and all circumcision. Rather, He
condemns trying to be saved by keeping the Old Testament,
including circumcision. Thus, circumcising our children for health
and hygiene reasons or to be like their dad, which are the two
most common reasons, is lawful. D.
The important thing for us to note, however, is that God is
not concerned about circumcision of the flesh. He is concerned
about circumcision of the heart. Romans
2:29 makes that clear. Colossians
2:11-15 also drives it home. Serving God is not about
removing an actual part of our flesh. It is about removing the
sins of the flesh, cutting the flesh’s hold off of our heart and
submitting to God. We undergo that circumcision when we are
baptized into Christ and then live to serve Him always. Conclusion: As always, I do not answer these questions because I think I know all the answers. I answer them because I think the Bible has all the answers to all the questions we need ask. If you feel I have misrepresented what the Bible says on some issue, please feel free to talk with me about it. I want us to be able to help one another serve God and understand His word. If you have any questions you would like discussed during our second Sunday night of the month, please get them to me.
Glory
to God in the church by Christ Jesus
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