Abstain from every form of evil

Test all things; hold fast what is good. Abstain from every form of evil. – 1 Thessalonians 5.21-22

We are surrounded by a world of evil. Every time we think things can’t get any worse – things get worse. For all the wonders of modern technology it is also a source of exposing us to more evil. It is everywhere.

Yesterday we saw how to not quench the spirit by testing what we hear and grabbing on to the good. When we do that we see evil for what it is – and we abstain from every form of evil that we encounter.

The King James translation was a excellent one. It had this ‘abstain from all appearance of evil.’ That doesn’t mean, as I have heard preached, that we abstain from anything that anyone anywhere at any time perceives to be evil. That puts the authority for our actions in the hands of other men. All they have to say is ‘that looks evil’ and then we have to stop. I heard the ‘appearance of evil’ applied to facial hair and wire rimmed glasses and types of music and watching television and any number of other things that someone thought of as evil.

The actual meaning is much more serious. We examine the scriptures and when we see what the Bible call evil we abstain from that evil. All of it. Every form of it. Whenever evil appears we keep away from it. Like Job, we are to ‘eschew’ evil.

And yet how often do we cosy up to evil? How often do we get as close as we can without actually embracing it?

We can’t pick and choose the evil we abstain from. We are to abstain from every Biblical form or evil. It doesn’t mean that others get to tell us what looks like evil to them. If the Bible says it is evil we avoid it all cost.

We really can’t afford to play games with evil.