In this video, I'm going to look at 3 statements from the Apostle Paul
all of which show strong support for the teachings of Jesus about living by faith.
Many people think that I preach in opposition to Paul
and they think that because I tell them I don't want to hear what Paul said
until they have listened to what Jesus said.
More than that, if after reading what Jesus taught
even if it sounds like Paul is saying something contrary to the teachings of Jesus
I have no problem with rejecting Paul in preference to rejecting Jesus.
Today however, in this video, I'm going to act on the assumption that people watching it
have already watched the full playlist on the teachings of Jesus.
I'm going to look at evidence from Paul himself in support of those teachings of Jesus.
This evidence, like the teachings of Jesus himself, is systematically twisted or covered up
in an attempt to preach a false gospel and then blame it on Paul.
My first verse comes from Paul's first letter to Timothy.
It so strongly supports the teachings of Jesus about money
that I often have to stop myself from saying, "Jesus said..." and then I changed it to, "Well, the Bible says"
meaning that this powerful quote comes from some other part of the Bible besides the four Gospels.
In fact, it comes from Paul himself. Can you guess what the verse is?
It is this very well-known, though often misquoted verse: "The love of money is the root of all evil."
Jesus said so much to support this, but there's an especially good example in the Sermon on the Mount.
In between saying not to lay up treasures on Earth
and saying that we cannot work for God and money at the same time
Jesus says these words: "The light of the body is the eye: if your eye is single
"your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is corrupted, your whole body is in darkness."
In the context, he's saying that if you don't get what he said about not working for money straight
you cannot be trusted to deal honestly with anything else that he said.
Or to put it another way, a distortion of what Jesus said about money
becomes a root of all the other problems you have with discovering the truth.
If you ever try quoting this passage from Paul ("The love of money is the root of all evil")
please be careful to include the word 'love'. Don't say, "Money is the root of all evil" like so many people do say.
But don't be surprised if the person you share it with pretends that you did not include the word 'love'.
It's just the standard knee-jerk reaction from the church.
They'll say, "It's the love of money, you know, not money itself."
But of course, when you examine what is happening in the exchange
you can see that they are, as Shakespeare would've put it, "Protesting too much."
They are so reactionary that they will literally try to correct you for a mistake you didn't make
and it's because with or without the word 'love', the verse challenges their attachment to money.
Can you really spend most of your life working for money
while giving God the leftovers and not have at least some little love for it?
For example, If I said, "Hard drugs are destroying the country" and someone shoots back
"It's not really hard drugs that are destroying the country. Its addiction to hard drugs."
Where would you think they were coming from? Aren't they being just a little too defensive about hard drugs?
And so that's what happens with Paul's great quotation.
The churches hate it just as much as they hate anything that Jesus said.
Many years ago, the Bible Society did something quite clever with this verse, but dishonest as well.
Bear in mind that Bible translators still need to sell their product when they finish.
So, if they can very subtly touch up some of the most offensive stuff in the Bible
the translation would be a lot more popular.
So, what the Bible Society did with their modern translation, is change the verse to say
"The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil."
Well for starters, the word 'the' or the word 'a' does not appear in the original.
It's often the case with the Hebrew, and so it's left to the translator to decide
on the basis of the context, whether or not the specific 'the' is needed or the generalized 'a'.
Obviously, 'the' makes the most sense since no other root has been mentioned.
So, "love of money is the root" is the most honest translation, and the Bible Society didn't do that.
But, they did something even worse for the rest of the verse.
Translators all agree the word 'all' appears in the original manuscript: "all evils."
So, it's pretty hard to take it out without being accused of altering the text.
How does one say "all"
at the same time that they can really sneakily communicate that they don't really mean all?
Well, you can do it with an idiomatic English phrase.
When we say, "all kinds of", we don't really mean "all", nor do we mean literally "all kinds of".
When we use that phrase, we mean "a lot of".
So, that's what the Bible Society did, and the churches loved it.
Now they can say, "The verse doesn't say it's the root of all evil, it just says all kinds of evil."
Anyway, that's just a little side note.
The real point is tgat this wonderful and powerful description
of how greed is the cause of all this world's problems, came not from Jesus, but from the Apostle Paul
in clear support of everything that Jesus taught about greed and about working for money.
Now let's look at another lesser-known quotation from Paul.
It comes from the 9th chapter of his first letter to the Corinthians.
Although Paul did everything he could to carry his own weight
in terms of physical work when he was staying with other Christians
in his various missionary journeys, he wanted to communicate to the Corinthians
that he had a right to eat and sleep with them without doing the usual household chores.
Doing dishes, washing clothes
or carrying out other manual chores, which are associated with life in a community.
So this verse from 1st Corinthians 9 debunks the claim that Paul was moonlighting
that is that he was making tents in order to finance his own ministry
instead of relying on donations from other Christians.
He says, in verses 6 and 7, in reference to himself and Barnabas, who was his traveling companion at the time
"Have we not power to leave these menial tasks for others to do?
"What soldier would go to war and pay his own wages?
"What farmer would plant a crop and not eat some of it himself?
"Or who feeds a flock that does not drink milk from the flock?"
Everyone who quotes the tent-making myth
--that is that Paul had a secular job in addition to all his missionary work
is very careful to never quote what he says here.
But Paul makes it clear that we who live by faith have a right to live off the donations of others
and those of us who travel from one community to another
looking after the needs of disciples in each of them
have a right to more or less be waited on by gracious hosts when we arrive.
Preparing sermons and making videos had become our primary contribution to the Christian community now.
And finally, there's another great quote from Paul in the 7th chapter of that same letter to the Corinthians.
He talks about people who are slaves, letting them know that God will not punish them
if they're not able to leave employment.
Everywhere in the churches, you hear him being quoted as telling slaves
to faithfully serve their masters, with the people quoting Paul saying that it means that Christians who have jobs
should faithfully serve their employers..."witnessing on the job", as they call it.
But is that really what Paul was teaching?
Look at verses 21-23: "Are you a slave, don't worry about it. But (and this is a very important 'but')
"if you have an opportunity to be free, it's far better to use it.
"Those who are called to Jesus, but who are slaves, are still regarded as free in God's eyes.
"But those who've been freed from slavery are still employees or slaves for Christ.
"Just remember, that Jesus paid with his life to give you that freedom.
"So don't go back to being the servants of worldly employers."
In most Western countries today, we're not slaves. We're totally free to stop working for money.
So Paul says, "Do it! Quit your job! Jesus paid to give you that freedom!
"Don't go back into being slaves in the system"
Or as Jesus put it, "Stop working for the food that perishes, and work for me instead.
"Take my yoke upon you and learn from me. You cannot work for God and money at the same time."
Well, that's it: three powerful quotes from Paul
to show that we should stop working for money and start working for God.
If we're trapped in military service or some unbreakable contract
or if we're outright slaves in a country where slavery is allowed, well, that's a different matter.
But do not let money for your motivation for being there, and leave as soon as you're able.
What about it, folks?
Those of you who are not impressed by what Jesus has said on the subject
do you understand now the Paul was also preaching the same thing?
I'm confident that when we start recognizing how much Paul supported the teachings of Jesus
we will be a whole lot more skeptical of anything he said that might be twisted to contradict what Jesus taught.
Thank you for watching, and please share this video with your friends on social media
if you liked what it has said.
Paste a link to it on religious chat sites wherever you can find them, show it to Facebook friends
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God bless you all!
Amen!