Which Spirit?

Did you know there are some disagreements about what should and shouldn’t be in your Bible?

That’s often because, if you look back at the oldest copies of scripture that we have, all of the crumbly, ancient scrolls and fragments, there are disagreements there about what should and shouldn’t be in your Bible.

These are usually small differences—a word or two changes, or maybe some spelling. That’s not surprising, since people wrote all of it by hand! On a rare occasion, though, there’ll be a much bigger discrepancy.

Take Luke 9:55-56, for instance. In the NIV, it reads: “But Jesus turned and rebuked them. Then he and his disciples went to another village.” Most Bibles will have something similar.

But sometimes you also get a footnote between verses 55 and 56, like in the English Standard Version:

Some manuscripts add And he said, “You do not know what manner of spirit you are of; ⁵⁶for the Son of Man came not to destroy people's lives but to save them”

If you read an older translation, say, the King James Version, those extra lines are included. When the KJV was written, people were unaware that many old copies of Luke don’t contain that portion.

Why am I telling you all of this?

Well, for one thing, I think it’s helpful to understand why there are some differences like that in different versions of the Bible.

But I also told you that because, recently I was reading Luke 9 in a translation that includes those words, and I thought I don’t remember Jesus ever saying this! A couple disciples had just floated the idea of calling down fire from heaven to incinerate some people who’d refused to listen to Jesus. Christ, not surprisingly, vetoed that. In this translation, Jesus “spoke sharply to them, ‘You do not know what spirit you are listening to, for the True Human Being came to help people, not hurt them.’” (9:55-56 FNV) 

“You do not know what spirit you are listening to.”

The disciples assumed that their suggestion came from the Spirit of God. Jesus had to explain to them that their plan sprang from a very different spirit, the one Paul warned the Ephesians about: “the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.” (Eph 2:2)

In my mind, this should have been obvious to them. Jesus, Mr. Love-your-neighbor-as-yourself, the notorious friend of sinners, didn’t want James and John to fry anyone. Yet, these men who walked with Christ and learned from him every day couldn’t see that.

I wonder what I’m not seeing.

I wonder what impulses or convictions of mine are, to someone else’s mind, obviously not from Jesus.

Because I don’t always stop to consider what spirit I’m listening to. I might assume it’s the Spirit of God, when, really, it’s just the preference of Nance, the opinion of the culture, the comfortable compromise, or the path of least resistance.

What about you?

Do you know what spirit you’re listening to?

You can listen to this week's devotional right here!