I stopped attending a church once because there was just a little too much Jesus. At least, as far as their hermeneutics went. Don’t get me wrong, the scriptures witness about Jesus (John 5:39, Luke 24:27). But my wife and I kept noticing oddities in the preaching here and there in a way that didn’t make it a great fit for us. The one that I have in mind for this post comes from a sermon on Romans 11:34-35.
For who has known the mind of the Lord or who has been his counselor? Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?
The preacher went on to explain that these are questions to which Jesus is the answer. I must say that was a novel interpretation for me. I had always seen them as rhetorical questions. And even if the preacher was right, it seems to me an awkward example of reading into the text and almost certainly not what the apostle Paul had in mind when he was writing it.
Like I said, a little too much Jesus.
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