Far too many modern pastors spend far too much time explaining what the text of the Bible is NOT saying rather than what it IS saying. A few examples:
I’ve been in conservative paedobaptist churches where, when an infant gets baptized, the pastor spends far more time explaining what is not happening than what is happening. 1 Peter 3 says, “baptism now saves you,” but by the time the pastor is done with the text, it means “baptism most certainly does not save you.” The language of the Bible is not explained in a way that we could make it our own and speak like the apostles did about the sacrament; instead, the language is completely negated. The pastor is not at home in the language of the Bible, so his people never will be either. Paul calls baptism “the washing of regeneration” in Titus 3, but by the time the pastor gets done with the text, the one thing baptism is not is “the washing of regeneration.” Romans 6:3ff, Acts 2:38, Galatians 3:27, 1 Corinthians 12:13, and other passages likewise get explained away rather than explained. This even happens in churches where the pastor has sworn to uphold the teaching of the Westminster Standards which explicitly call the sacraments “effectual means of salvation.” Sadly, in far too many such churches, baptism gets redefined as an ineffectual symbol.
Here’s another test case: When Jesus blessed the children who were brought to him in Matthew 19, he said “for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.” But by the time the pastor gets done with the text, he has argued for the exact opposite position: children are not actually members of the kingdom, and the kingdom does not actually belong to them. The pastor might point out that being born into a Christian home does not automatically save, that grace cannot be transmitted by natural reproduction, and so on. All well and good. But then why did Jesus say what he said and what did he mean? The pastor never actually gets around to that. The result is that the pastor is not training his people to embrace the Bible’s way of speaking about covenant children. He is training them to explain the Bible away when the text is controversial or cuts against the grain of cultural sensibilities. In this case, a text that has rich and powerful implications for Christian mothering and fathering is drained of its force and application. A text intended to train believing parents in how to view and treat their children leaves them confused rather than encouraged.
Likewise, when some pastors teach on a wife’s submission to her husband, it’s qualification after qualification: “Submission does not mean obeying him when he tells you to sin.” “Submission does not mean enduring physical abuse.” “Submission is does make the wife a doormat who never gets to share her own thoughts with her husband.” All perfectly reasonable qualifications to make, of course. But far too many pastors never actually explain what it does mean. Instead, the text gets paper cut to death — it dies the death of 1000 qualifications. The pastor never plainly restates what the text says so plainly (and repeatedly). The pastor never does what Paul does — command wives to submit to their husbands in a straightforward way. Thus, the Christian wife is given no concrete, practice guidance in how to be a wife. Her positive duties are never driven home. The pastor apologizes for the Bible more than he applies the Bible. By contrast, when the same pastor teaches on husbands loving their wives, all the positive duties are stressed, and usually in an unconditional way. There is all too often an asymmetry in the way way roles and duties are taught in marriage: wives are only told what they do not have to do, while husbands are told what they ought to do. A simple, straight-forward text gets mangled and silenced.
A final example: James 2 says, “You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.” Again, many pastors explain this away. The pastor explains what the text is not saying — that good works cannot earn salvation – which is a fine point to make. But the congregation is never told, in no uncertain terms, what James meant and why he said what he said. The pastor balks when it comes to insisting on works as a necessary component of salvation, flowing out of faith as its fruit. He fails to make the point the text is making about the necessity of obedience in the lives of Christians — that while we are not saved on account of good works, neither can we be saved without them. His preaching becomes practically antinomian because he is so afraid of sounding legalistic (apparently a concern James did not share). The same pattern happens with the other texts that describe a final judgment according to works – John 5:29, 2 Corinthians 5:10, etc.
The net result of this kind of teaching is that Christians never get comfortable using the Bible’s own language. They are not taught what many texts actually mean and how they should be applied. The fierceness of the Bible’s teaching is tamed and domesticated. The Bible is not allowed to do its challenging and convicting work in the hearts of the people. It’s as if the pastor is protecting his people from the hard-edged truths of the Bible by blunting their force and impact rather than bringing the people into direct contact with Scripture”s difficult and counter-cultural truths. This kind of preaching seeks to muzzle the Bible rather than unleash it in people’s lives. This kind of preaching is driven by an agenda other than exegeting and applying the plain meaning of texts.
Every pastor will admit some texts of the Bible are hard to understand. Many passages are complex. But many very plain teachings of Scripture are offensively simple and rather than letting the text stand on its own and say what it says, many pastors reshape and repackage the text so his congregation does not really have to wrestle with it. This is a form of pastoral malpractice.
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