The Double-Edged Sword

The sixth weapon mentioned by Paul in this passage is the “sword of the Spirit which is the Word of God.” The writer of Hebrews says in 4:12 “For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.” John in Revelation 1 says “These are the words of him who has the sharp, double-edged sword.” “Double-edged sword” must have been a common expression among Christians.


This is odd, because most knives are not double bladed. But the Bible insists that it is a two-edged blade. Why?

The Bible is God’s Word—without error in all that it teaches. We take that for a fact. Our standards teach this.” The Bible is the rock on which our church stands. Hence it is a two edged sword, cutting against the false doctrines of the world, but cutting out the sinful parts of ourselves as well.

Do you remember the first cutting tool you ever used? It was probably a pair of plastic scissors. Those things cut terrible, but they were safe. Grown-ups knew better than to give us something sharp, because we’d run with them, or poke our sister with them. So we used those plastic scissors at home, at school, and even in Sunday school.

We got the equivalent of plastic scissors in our Bible lessons, too. Children’s Bible lessons are safe. All the stories of war, incest, rape, adultery, and God’s wrath got left out. The story of Noah became a story of cute little animals. The story of David and Goliath had the gorier parts cut out of it. We were told that Jesus died for us, but we didn’t have a clue what “dice” really meant, much less about the true bloody horror of crucifixion. The Bible was like plastic scissors—safe and sanitized.

As we grew older, we learned to use other knives, starting with the butter knife, then graduating to the steak knife. I got a pocket knife for my birthday. But still there were some cutting tools I was not allowed to use—switchblades, razor blades, and bowie knives. Certainly not a chain saw. My folks still wouldn’t let me cut fruit in the kitchen without supervision.

In Sunday School, we grew up a bit in our Bible stories, too. We saw the pictures of Jesus on the cross and realized that those nails must have hurt. We understood that the world was not safe. The Devil was real. So was temptation. This knowledge did not destroy our faith or ruin us. The more we learned about the suffering of this world, the more we understood about the infinite grace of God, who suffered on our behalf

When we reached junior high and high school, we arrived at the time of what educators call “concrete thinking.” That’s when we learn to tell the difference between right and wrong, and our opinions about them are set in concrete. We learned the rules and the boundaries of real Christianity. We learned about cults and other religions, and how ARPs are just a little bit better than most other Presbyterians. If we had good Bible training, we learned those arguments and proof texts we needed to defend those views.

In those days, right and wrong seemed all so simple. We could not understand why others couldn’t accept the easy answers we had been taught. We would never say it, but we knew that everyone else must be stupid not to see it. We lived in the confidence and certainty of those who only knew one side of the blade of the Word of God.

We didn’t know it, but we were still children. In our immaturity, God tolerated our partial understanding. We had the Word of God, the Sword of the Spirit--single-bladed version.

That’s fine for kids. But for adults, it’s not enough. We need the Word of God, not just to defend against external foes, but internal foes as well. As the writer of Hebrews says, we must allow it to penetrate us through our joints and marrow, between our own souls and God’s Spirit. If we can read God’s word and not be cut by it, then we’re not really reading God’s word. We are still children.

Take the commandment “thou shalt not commit adultery.” Kids find that easy, because they thinks “adult” has something to do with age. That’s a grown-up sin, which doesn’t apply to them.

When we learn that adultery can mean any illicit sex. Even so, most of us were “good kids” ho didn’t think it applied to us. But the teenage mind can be endlessly creative when it comes to sex. We often found excuses and evasions about the sexual restrictions of the Bible.

But then we read Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount that if we look at a woman with lust in our hearts, then we have committed adultery with her in our hearts. This commandment doesn’t give us the right to condemn people with loose morals, because if we condemn them we must also condemn ourselves. The commandment is a two-edged sword. It isn’t enough just to be celibate. God wants us pure. He doesn’t just want us to be obedient. He wants us to hunger for Him. That’s a lot harder than just avoiding adultery.

II Timothy 3:16 says “All Scripture is God-breathed, and useful for rebuke, correction, and instruction in righteousness.” All Scripture—not just part of it. But all Scripture is not easy to understand. We don’t agree always on what all Scripture says. As we grow in maturity, our understanding of Scripture has to grow with it.

Paul knew the Bible better than most people of his day. He may have had the entire Old Testament memorized. But when he encountered Jesus on the Damascus Road. God blinded him. He did not just take away his physical sight, he also took away his spiritual sight. Everything he thought he knew about the Bible had to be changed. The facts were still there, but the meaning had changed. His guide to life failed him. Then gradually over a three year period, he regained a new understanding of the Scriptures. Now he saw them differently. He who was a teacher became a learner.

Paul remained a learner of the Bible till the end of his days/ While he was imprisoned in Rome, he sent to Ephesus for “the books, especially the parchments.” The parchments were his Bible. Even at the end of his life, he still needed to learn more about the Word. It was still cutting into him.

Martin Luther was a German monk in the Sixteenth Century. Monks didn’t actually spend much time reading the Bible in those days. They just recited formulaic prayers and learned dogma from priests. But Luther read the Bible. until one day, he came across this tatement in the book of Romans-- “The just shall live by faith.” It changed him, and the Protestant Reformation began.

Karl Barth, in the Twentieth Century, was a professor at a liberal seminary. To him, the Bible was just a good book. But he read the same words that Luther read—“the just shall live by faith” and recognized that he was a sinner and needed to be saved.

ARPs are great students of the word, but only the single-bladed Word. We are great at recognizing doctrinal difference, and can go on at length over Biblical minutiae. But we are often guilty of reading the Bible for the wrong reasons. We want to find out what’s wrong with everyone else. We do not want to let it change us.

Where is the next Paul? The next Luther? The next Barth? Maybe right here. Maybe one of us will allow God to perform surgery on or hearts and remake us in His image, and therefore change the world.

How do we let the Bible change us? Here are some suggestions:

Read it! Most Christians don’t read the Bible. They read about the Bible. Devotions tell us what others say it says/ Sermons that tell us what the preacher says it says. But how can the Bible challenge us if we don’t read it?

Read it humbly. To many people, Bible verses are like Tinker Toys. They are a collection of sayngs that we can put together to make any kind of doctrine we wish. But it often surprises us in what the Bible actually says.

In seminary we learned two words about Bible study—exegesis and eisogesis. Exegesis is the science of getting truth out of the Bible. Eisogesis is the practice of putting what we think into the verses, of making the Bible say what we want it to say. Too much of what is presented as Bible study is really just eisogesis.

A proud man learns nothing. A humble man learns everything. Some people string a few proof texts together and become convinced they know it all. How can we learn anything, if we already know everything?

Read it prayerfully. The Bible is the sword of the Spirit. Without the Holy Spirit applying it to our hearts, it makes no sense. We need to read it on our knees, asking God at all times to open it to us.

Read it deeply. Have you ever held a conversation with someone who you realized was not paying any attention. They only want to talk about themselves. We do the same thing with the Bible. We only listen to what we want to hear, or what we have been told to hear. It is only when we listen deeply that we a be changed deeply by it.

Read it all. The most important messages in the Bible does not come from reading Bible verses. It comes from reading chapters, books and section. We often miss the forest of meaning while examining the trees of verses.

Read it relevantly. If you are reading the Bible every morning, and you go away every morning feeling more confident in your beliefs and affirmed in your opinions, then you don’t understand the Bible. The Bibl ought to challenge us and our beliefs. The meat of the Scripture is not in what we know, but what we don’t know.

The Bible is a storehouse of wisdom—an endless fountain of the mysteries of God. It is not safe for any of us. But it is good. The more we read it, the better it becomes. Don’t neglect to know the one book that can truly change the course of your life.

Someone asked Charles Finney once how he defended the Bible. He said “I do not defend it. The Bible is a great lion. It an defend itself.” God is not tame. His word is not tame. It is alive and powerful. Read it, and let that power loose.



The Sword with Two Edges

Ephesians 6:17