Putting Words in God’s Mouth?

 A man told a friend, “My dad always said I loved alphabet soup growing up. But really it was just him putting words in my mouth.” Hmmm – I wonder if God might sometimes say that same thing about the things people say He said in His Word? The following (clearly fictional) story by James Meadows is a little lengthy but clearly illustrates the point. One Sunday, a minister was talking on baptism and illustrating that baptism should be performed by sprinkling and not by immersion. He said, “In the Bible where it says that John baptized in the River Jordan (John 3:23), it didn’t mean ‘in’ but close to, round about, or near by. Again, when it tells us Philip baptized the eunuch in the river (Acts 8:38), it didn’t mean ‘in’ but close to, round about, or near by.” When the service ended, one old fellow stopped by and said, “Preacher, that was the best sermon I ever heard, and it uncovered many mysteries of the Bible to me. For example, the Bible tells us Jonah was ‘in’ the belly of the great fish for three days and three nights (Jonah 1:17), but now I see he was not ‘in’ the fish, but that he was just close to, round about, or near by the fish floating in the water. Then there’s the story about the three young Hebrew men who were thrown into a fiery furnace but not burned and didn’t even get their hair or clothes seared. I thought that sounded impossible, but now I see they were not ‘in’ the furnace at all, but really were just close to, round about, or near by. But the hardest thing of all for me to believe was where Daniel was thrown into the lions’ den for a whole night but wasn’t hurt. Thanks to your sermon I now see he wasn’t ‘in’ the den but was close to, round about, or just near by, kind of like when you go to the zoo. The revealing of these mysteries was very rewarding to me. But the greatest comfort to me was because I have lived a wicked life and sinned much and the Bible tells me that the wicked will be cast into hell. But now I see I won’t really be case “into” hell at all, but just close to, round about, or near by. So every Sunday from    now on, I won’t have to be ‘in’ church, I can just be close to, round about, at the lake near by.”

The idiom “put words in someone’s mouth” is to suggest someone said or meant something that he or she did not actually say. Almost all believers agree that being saved from sin requires sinners to get “into” Christ. The spiritual blessings accessible to those “in Christ” are too numerous to list here. Ephesians 1:3 sums it up by saying God has “blessed us with every spiritual blessing in Him” (Christ]. So how does someone  “dead in sins” (Ephesians 2:1) come into Christ? The apostle Paul answers in Galatians 3:27 – “For as many of you as  were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.” That verse follows hard on the heels of the statement in verse 26 that “you are all the sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus” (note Paul didn’t say by “faith alone”). Both statements are part of a long argument by the apostle that sinners are not saved by keeping works of the law of Moses or any other law whereby we can earn, pay for, and merit God’s salvation. But Paul, unlike many preachers and believers in Jesus today, had no hangups in saying that faith in Christ and baptism into Him are part and parcel of the package we call “salvation from sin.” There is no ambiguity if we take God at His Word — if we want to be “in Christ” and not just close to, round about, or near by, we must be baptized into Him. Those words are in and from God’s mouth. We best leave them alone.

  by: Dan Gulley, Smithville, TN