Sunday, July 25, 2010

Teach to the Text, Not the Section/Chapter Headings!

Please...Please...Please teach to the flow of the passage, and don't arbitarily begin/end your teaching with chapter headings or section headings.

Here is one section in Ephesians 5 in my Bible:

Wives and Husbands

22Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. 23For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
25Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, 27and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church— 30for we are members of his body. 31"For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh."32This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. 33However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.


But to teach this properly I suggest you teach starting from verse 21, rather than verse 22:

21Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

Beginning there gives the proper context!

Watch for this as you teach.

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Extra credit:
Learn more about the history of how chapter and verse designations were created.

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