This is part one of Read It Again, a series on verses we get wrong and the reading habits that would have caught the mistake. We start with three sayings almost everybody can quote and almost nobody has looked up.
Somebody in your family says it at every funeral. God will never give you more than you can handle. It gets said over casseroles, in hospital hallways, and at the graveside with a hand on your shoulder. The person saying it loves you. And if you asked that person for chapter and verse, you would get a long pause.
That pause is where this series begins. Over ten posts I am going to take verses the church has worn smooth from handling and read each one in the place where it was written. Every post hands you one reading habit, small enough to remember and strong enough to catch the mistake before it leaves your mouth. I am not out to embarrass anyone. Most of us learned these sayings from people we love. So did I.
The first habit is the simplest one in the series. Open the book and check the words.
God Helps Those Who Help Themselves
Ask a room full of churchgoers whether this one is in the Bible and a good many hands will go up. It sounds like Proverbs. It has the rhythm of something your grandfather would have underlined.
You will not find it anywhere from Genesis to Revelation. Ben Franklin printed it in Poor Richard’s Almanack in 1736, and the idea was old when he borrowed it, going back to the Greek fables. Scripture says something close to the opposite.
“For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.”
Romans 5:6 NKJV
The gospel begins with people who could not help themselves. Paul’s phrase is “without strength.” A man who believes God helps those who help themselves will work hard, and that part is fine. He will also decide that his neighbor’s trouble is his neighbor’s own fault, and that his own standing with God rests on his effort. Both conclusions are poison, and both grew from a verse that does not exist.
Money Is the Root of All Evil
This one is in the Bible, almost. Here is what Paul wrote to Timothy.
“For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.”
1 Timothy 6:10 NKJV
Three words fell out on the way to the bumper sticker, and they change the whole sentence. Paul’s subject is the love of money. Money sits in a drawer and does nothing. The love of it lives in the heart, and a poor man can have it as badly as a rich one. A few verses later Paul tells Timothy how to instruct wealthy believers, and he does not tell them to empty their accounts. He tells them to stop trusting their riches and to be rich in good works (1 Timothy 6:17-18).
The misquote lets everybody off. The man without money assumes the verse is about somebody else. The man with money hears an attack on his bank account and stops listening. The verse as Paul wrote it searches both of them.
More Than You Can Handle
Now back to the funeral. The saying is a rewrite of this verse.
“No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it.”
1 Corinthians 10:13 NKJV
Read it slowly and look for the word suffering. You won’t find it. The verse is about temptation. Paul has spent the chapter on Israel in the wilderness, on their idolatry and immorality and grumbling. His point is that no believer can claim the pull toward sin was too strong to resist, because God always leaves a door open. The next sentence says, “Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry.” The way of escape is for running.
Paul does speak to the weight of suffering, in another letter, and what he says there runs against the slogan.
“For we do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, of our trouble which came to us in Asia: that we were burdened beyond measure, above strength, so that we despaired even of life. Yes, we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves but in God who raises the dead.”
2 Corinthians 1:8-9 NKJV
Paul says the load was beyond measure and above his strength, and that he thought he would die under it. The apostle was handed more than he could carry. Then he tells us what it was for. He was to stop trusting himself and trust the God who raises the dead.
Paul was given more than he could handle. He says so in plain words, and he says it taught him to trust the God who raises the dead.
The Habit
Open the book and check the words. Before you quote a verse, find it. Read it off the page. Then compare what the page says with what you were about to say.
That sounds too simple to need teaching. But quoting from memory is how each of these went wrong. A saying gets repeated by people we trust, it picks up the feel of Scripture, and after enough years nobody checks. A concordance or a free site like Blue Letter Bible will find any verse from three or four words you remember. If the search comes back empty, you have learned something. If the verse comes back different from your memory, you have learned more.
Ask the same questions every time. Is it there at all? Are any words missing or added? Is the verse talking about the same subject the saying is talking about?
The Words Under the Verses
| Word | Original | Strong’s | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| philargyria | φιλαργυρία | G5365 | Love of money, fondness for silver. The sin Paul names in 1 Timothy 6:10 is an affection of the heart |
| rhiza | ῥίζα | G4491 | Root. The NKJV reads “a root,” one source of evil among others |
| peirasmos | πειρασμός | G3986 | Temptation, testing. In 1 Corinthians 10 the setting is enticement to sin |
| ekbasis | ἔκβασις | G1545 | A way out, an exit. The door God leaves open in every temptation |
For the One Who Was Told They Could Handle It
Some of you were told that God would never give you more than you could handle, and then He did. The marriage ended, or the child died, or the diagnosis came back the way you begged it wouldn’t. And since the saying had to be true, you decided the fault was in you. A stronger Christian would be standing up under this.
You were handed a sentence Paul never wrote. The man who wrote half the New Testament was pressed past his strength in Asia and expected to die there. If the weight on you is more than you can carry, you are standing where an apostle stood. He found a God there who raises the dead, and he wrote it down so you would look for the same God in the same place. Tell Him you cannot carry it. Paul says that confession is what the trouble was sent to produce.
Discussion Questions
- Write down a few Bible sayings from memory, then look each one up. How close were you?
- Read 1 Corinthians 10:1-14. What kinds of temptation does Paul have in view, and what does the “way of escape” look like in verse 14?
- Read 2 Corinthians 1:3-11. What did Paul say his suffering was for? How does that differ from “you can handle it”?
- Why do you think “money is the root of all evil” is easier to live with than what Paul wrote in 1 Timothy 6:10?
- Who first taught you one of these sayings? How would you gently show that person what the text says?
Going Deeper
Pick the verse you quote most often and look it up this week without trusting your memory. Blue Letter Bible and STEP Bible will both find a verse from a few words. Then read Romans 5:1-11 and mark every phrase that describes what we were when Christ acted for us. If you have not read the Feed Yourself series, start with Stop Eating From Someone Else’s Plate, where the Bereans of Acts 17:11 show what checking the words looked like in the first century.
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