Where Did Jesus Get It? …Plagiarism in the Church

Then He [Jesus] went out from there and came to His own country, and His disciples followed Him. And when the Sabbath had come, He began to teach in the synagogue. And many hearing Him were astonished, saying, “Where did this Man get these things? And what wisdom is this which is given to Him, that such mighty works are performed by His hands!”

Where did Jesus get the material for His teachings?

Most simply speaking, Jesus got it from scripture and the Father God.

Jesus did not try to pawn off someone’s teachings as His own- word for word or regurgitated with some new revelation spun on it. Jesus got His stuff straight from the source.

Of course, we could all say that what we sing, pray or write is our own if it originated with the Bible. That is saying, we could legitimately claim that it was our own IF that was where we actually got inspired. Today though, it is more often than not that we read something somewhere, heard a song, or whatever and had an “Aha!” moment where we wanted to spread this idea or revelation and then take credit for it. Granted there are the cases of inadvertent credit taken, but that is -not- what we are talking about here. We are talking finding a great thing and turning it out as our own or flat out trolling the internet or books and so on for material to rehash as our own.

It’s plagiarism. It’s deception, it’s self-promotion, it’s sin. It gets particularly sticky when we are talking about spiritual things, as we are today. After all, everyone can read the Bible and get the same message out of a portion of scripture then teach about it.

For example: We hear someone give a sermon and it inspires us to share it. That is good to do if we say we heard a sermon and so and so person said such and such. It is plagiarism when we are inspired by someone’s sermon and then re-fabricate it and share it as our own revelation.

What is the difference? Motive. 

Why is this happening in the Church?

In a nutshell, the hard truth is that the Church is not going to the source: the Lord. The Church is complacent and out of shape. She does not know how to talk to God or listen to Him. She never reads her Bible anymore. How can she hear if the Church rarely or never converses with the Lord or seeks His face? We already know the answer. She cannot.

How have you seen this issue play out in the Church?

Have you made this mistake before?

Last 5 posts by Kajsa Huckaba

• The Coming Revival and The Church - January 18th, 2012
• Lawlessness and The Church - December 26th, 2011
• Will they know you belong to Jesus? - October 19th, 2011
• Is this Jesus? - July 19th, 2011
• Chutes And Ladders – How to advance in a lose-a-turn world - July 13th, 2011