The Footnote That Took It Back

Six in the morning, and the house was still, and Nadim read a line and something in his chest moved.

He read it twice more. Then a fourth time, slowly, and by then his eyes were stinging and he did not entirely know why, which is not a thing that happens to him often.

And then his eye went down the page.

There was a note at the bottom, small type, set off by a rule, and it said what the phrase meant in context, and it explained that it belongs to a particular situation and should not be applied in the way readers commonly do.

He read the note twice as well.

Then he sat there for about three minutes and the thing in his chest had gone.

He is not angry at the note. This is important and it is why he has never mentioned it to anybody. The note is probably right. The man who wrote it has given his life to this and knows a great deal more than Nadim does, and the note is careful and is not trying to take anything away from anybody.

It just took something away.

And this has now happened enough times over about six years that Nadim has developed a habit he only noticed in the spring: he reads the note first.

Down the page, small type, before the passage. So he knows what he is allowed to feel before he feels it.

He is forty-four.

And he cannot remember the last time a line went through him at six in the morning, because he has arranged his reading so that it cannot.

And you may have that habit. And you may have got it the same way, without deciding, out of caution, from people who meant you nothing but good.

Paul tells Timothy what Scripture is for and who it is for

Take this off before we go a step further, because you have carried it six years and it was never yours.

You are not an unqualified reader. You never were. Scripture says of itself what it is and what it is for, and it names the ordinary person as the one it equips, and it is the Holy Spirit, not a note in small type, who makes a line land in a man's chest. Set it down here at this table. It is heavy and it has been between you and the page since.

Now hear it, and hear who the equipping is aimed at.

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.2 Timothy 3:16-17

Useful.

That is a working word, not a decorative one. And the purpose clause at the end is the part to sit with: it is aimed at the servant of God, thoroughly equipped, which is the plainest possible description of somebody who is not a specialist and is expected to be able to use this.

And God-breathed means the wind in it is His own. When something moves in a man at six in the morning, that is not an accident of mood that a footnote later corrects. That is the thing doing what it says it does.

You are the person it was aimed at. That stands written, and His Spirit is the one who breathed it and is the one who applies it, and He has never once needed a reader to be credentialled first.

Now let me be careful here, because there is a deep ditch on this side and I have no intention of putting you in it.

Nothing here says the footnote is an enemy. It is not. The man who wrote it has given his life to this and he is guarding people from real error, and error is real and has hurt people, and Scripture praises that kind of care.

And nothing here says the plain sense is always the right one. It is not. Some passages genuinely do belong to a situation, and reading them without knowing that has caused actual harm to actual people, and refusing all help is not faith, it is pride wearing faith's coat.

The point is only about the order you now read in, and Scripture calls itself useful to the ordinary servant, and His Spirit is the one who does the applying while you are still on the passage.

Here is the tender part, and Scripture is gentle with it. You are not protecting yourself from error.

You are protecting yourself from being moved and then embarrassed. That is a smaller fear than it feels, and His Spirit has never once handed a man something at six in the morning in order to humiliate him at seven.