Test Everything; Hold to What is Good

In 1 Thessalonians 5, Paul instructs us to “test everything and hold to what is good. Abstain from every form of evil.” (1 Thes 5:21-22). Some translations use “examine everything carefully” instead of “test everything.”

The point for the believer is to make sure that every action is in accord with what Christ would want. We are to be more Christ-like. We are not to hold to a standard of “good” that the world sets, but a standard of good that God sets. When scripture tells us to examine or test everything and hold to what is good, we are to weigh the cries, demands, and outrages of the world and do what scripture instructs, not what the world instructs. We are to abstain from evil.

This happens more and more in the world, in politics, in culture, and in shaping public policy. An injustice that comes from the world is held up and Christians are called to respond. But the world that caused the injustice proposes a solution of the world that is not in accord with scripture and is often just a lesser evil.

Scripture tells us the state is to take care of law and order. To abolish that system would not be in accord with scripture. Scripture tells us that there is neither Jew nor Greek, nor slave nor free, nor male nor female. To prioritize one class of people before the law is a sin. That is why racism is a sin. It is also why the solution is not to reverse the dynamic. It is why things like critical race theory and intersectionality are not in alignment with scripture. Those things instruct us to see the world through lenses of race, ethnicity, and diversity. But there is no diversity in Christ, just holiness. We are either holy or unholy and we are to strive for holiness. The visibly diverse body of Christ globally is one body striving to be more like Christ and less like the world.

Christians are going to be called to stand up and be bold against injustice in the coming days as we always have been. We must be now. Christians led the abolitionist movement against slavery. We must lead the movement against the latent racism that still can sink into society. But we have to fight with scripture and Christ, not with worldliness. We must bind ourselves to scripture and we must work individually, each of us, to make this world better. We must abstain from evil and not compromise in favor of lesser evils to right old wrongs with new ones.

Scripture tells us to seek the welfare of the community in which we live and to pray for it, for there we will find our welfare. We must. But we must also be careful not to be swept up into causes that pull us toward the world and our emotions when God himself demands justice, but social justice tends to reject God. We will not build a heaven on earth with those who think the government-run by sinners that brought us all these social ills will find and impose the solution to fix those problems. Instead, we must show Heaven to earth.

Much of the rage of the world focuses not really on justice and injustice, but power and lack of power. Injustice is when the party out of power wants power and justice is when they have it. For you and for me, we must examine everything and hold to what is good. And what is good?

It is good to seek the equality of all mankind before the law, to help the widows, the poor, the orphans, and the refugees. It is good to love your neighbor as yourself and do good to others that they might do good to you. It is good to remember this world and this nation are temporary and we are headed to eternity. It is good to remember we do not need and will never have real saviors and solutions through politics, but through Jesus alone.

In 1967, Travis Williams danced in the end zone after returning a kickoff for a touchdown. “Travis,” Vince Lombardi said to him, “the next time you make it to the end zone, act like you’ve been there before.”

We have not been to Heaven, but we have seen by faith a glimpse of it in the resurrection into which we place our hope and trust. We should act like we have that hope and that we have seen eternity. We should bring that to the world because we have examined it and we know it is good. We know it will last when all around us crumbles.