They Checked the Apostle Daily, and the Bible Calls Them Noble

He has never once looked up a verse to see whether it says what he was told it says.

Not once, in thirty-eight years. He wants to be accurate about that when he says it, because it is not a small thing and he would rather it were smaller.

It is not that he was told not to. Nobody ever said the words. What he absorbed instead was an atmosphere in which checking was the behavior of a certain kind of person: contentious, proud, the sort of man who comes in with an agenda and picks at things. He had seen one or two of those and he did not want to be one.

So he took what he was given and he took it in good faith, and most of it was probably fine, and he has no idea which parts were not, and that is the actual cost. Not that he was misled. That he has no way to know.

There is a town in Acts that did the opposite, and Luke uses a specific word about them.

The verse, and who they were checking

Here it is, in the King James Version:

These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so. (Acts 17:11)

More noble. That is the word, and it is a compliment, and it is the reason given for the compliment that matters.

Read the two halves of the reason, because both are there and people usually take one.

They received the word with all readiness of mind. They were not suspicious. They were not looking for a fight. The first half is openness, and it is listed first.

And searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so. And then they went home and checked.

Both. Not one or the other. The nobility is in the combination, and either half without the other one produces something worse.

And notice who was being checked. Paul. Not a suspect teacher, not somebody with a reputation. The apostle, in the middle of writing a third of the New Testament, and the record calls the people who checked him noble.

You are not being contentious by checking and you were never the kind of man that word was aimed at. Acts 17:11 calls people noble for searching the Scriptures against an apostle, and it is the Holy Spirit rather than a suspicious temperament who makes a man both open and careful at once.

The instruction, said plainly elsewhere

Acts 17 is a description. The letters turn it into an instruction and they do not hedge.

Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thessalonians 5:21)

Prove all things. Test them. And the second clause makes clear this is not a program of suspicion: the point is to hold fast to what survives, which means the expectation is that most of it will.

And John:

Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world. (1 John 4:1)

Try the spirits. Written to ordinary believers, not to leadership.

And Paul, in the strongest form anybody has ever put it, about himself:

But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. (Galatians 1:8)

Though we. He puts himself first on the list of people to be measured against something else. That is not a man protecting his authority. It is a man telling a church that the standard is above him and inviting them to use it on him.

You have an instruction to test and you were never handed a duty to accept without looking. 1 Thessalonians 5:21 says prove all things and Galatians 1:8 has Paul include himself in what must be measured, and it is His Spirit who makes testing an act of faith rather than of suspicion.

Why the atmosphere forms anyway

It is worth being fair about how a place ends up like this, because it is usually not sinister.

Most of it comes from ordinary experience. Every congregation has met the man who arrives with a system and an argument, and he is exhausting and he does damage, and the natural reaction is to build an atmosphere that discourages him.

But atmospheres do not discriminate. The one built to discourage the argumentative man also discourages the quiet man who simply wants to check something, and he is the one who goes quiet, because the argumentative man was never going to be deterred by an atmosphere in the first place.

So the effect lands on exactly the wrong person, and it lands invisibly, over years, and nobody intended it.

And Proverbs has a line about why checking is normal rather than hostile:

He that is first in his own cause seemeth just; but his neighbour cometh and searcheth him. (Proverbs 18:17)

That is not a verse about distrust. It is a verse about how understanding works: the first account of anything sounds complete until a second one arrives. Checking is not an accusation. It is the ordinary way a person gets to the whole of something.

You are able to check without becoming that man and you were never going to turn into him by reading a chapter. Proverbs 18:17 says the first account seems just until it is searched, and it is the Holy Spirit rather than a combative streak who makes an honest look at a passage a place where God works.

What the checking actually protects

And here is the part that matters most on this site, and it is the reason this is not a case against teachers.

A man who has never checked anything has no way to tell a good teacher from a poor one, which means his teachers get no benefit from being good. He cannot distinguish them. He takes everything at the same weight and he is at the mercy of whoever is currently in front of him.

A man who reads for himself can actually recognize somebody who is handling the text well. He can say so. He can sit under teaching with something in his hands rather than empty, and the conversation he has afterward is a different kind of conversation.

The Bereans did not stop listening to Paul. They received the word with all readiness of mind. The searching is what let them know what they had.

You have a way to know what you are hearing and you were never meant to be defenseless in a good room. Acts 17:11 puts the readiness and the searching in the same sentence, and it is His Spirit who is described as the one leading a person into truth rather than replacing the people who teach.