Last week I published a short teaching about “Bible Babies”—Christians who, just like actual babies, become mono-focused. They have no awareness of anything outside of what they are currently fixated on. Give a baby a rattle, and his entire world becomes that rattle.
Bible Babies similarly become fixated on single Bible verses and ignore the immediate and wider contexts of those verses, so Bible Babies often misinterpret those single verses. That is to be expected of baby Christians, but they ought to grow up after a few years. Tragically, some Bible Babies have been believers for decades. (Some are pastors.)
Here is an example of something I often hear from the mouths of Bible Babies:
Ephesians 4:30 says, “Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. See,” they continue, “that proves we are ‘sealed for the day of redemption,’ so our behavior has no bearing on our future salvation! We’ve been sealed!”
If that were the only verse in the Bible, I might agree with those Bible Babies. But I’ve grown up enough to realize that Paul didn’t write only Ephesians 4:30, but he wrote an entire letter to the Ephesians, not to mention many other books of the New Testament. So, I ask myself, “What else did Paul write that would help me understand what he meant in Ephesians 4:30?”
And I don’t have to read very far, because about five seconds after he penned Ephesians 4:30, Paul penned Ephesians 5:3-5:
But immorality or any impurity or greed must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints… For this you know with certainty, that no immoral or impure person or covetous man, who is an idolater, has an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.
Because I am not a Bible Baby, I now have a more balanced understanding of Ephesians 4:30. Obviously, Paul didn’t mean that being sealed for the day of redemption guarantees there is nothing Christians can do to forfeit salvation, because he warned the very same people, just seconds later, that immorality, impurity and greed could disinherit them from God’s kingdom. It is so obvious that only a Bible Baby could miss it.
Apparently, the seal of which Paul wrote is not necessarily a permanent or unbreakable seal. The Greek word he used refers to a wax or clay stamp that was marked via a signet, which is why some translations use the words “marked” or “stamped” instead of “sealed.” So, believers are indeed marked by the Holy Spirit, with the future day of redemption in mind. But as Ephesians 4:30 states one second earlier, they can grieve Him. And as Ephesians 5:3-5 indicates, they can grieve Him so much that He can remove His seal. And that, of course, harmonizes with the rest of the New Testament.
Don’t be a Bible Baby.
