Misunderstood Bible Verse: “For I Know the Plans I Have for You”

          I’ll confess it. I had a shirt in junior high school with this verse displayed. 

          “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’” -Jeremiah 29:11

          It’s a very encouraging verse. I even thought the book name and chapter/verse number sounded cool. The idea that all Christ-followers were looking at a prosperous and harmless future? Sign me up.

          But it’s not a message that the prophet Jeremiah said to all subsequent Christians. God was communicating, through Jeremiah, to His discouraged and repentant followers, living in exile. God is continuing on his “gracious promise” (v.10) to end the exile and the restoration to Judah (27:22). To the exiles, the overarching plan of prosperity, blessing and harm-free circumstances, even if not in the immediate future, was a very encouraging message, especially in contrast to the false prophets who were making false promises of more instant gratification.

          But it’s hard to make the argument that this encouragement is applicable to all Christ-followers, especially how literally one interprets the passage. Jesus’s apostles and the Church of early Rome experienced the opposite of earthly prosperity and harm-free circumstances, as Jesus predicted.

          So, God does have plans to prosper and not to harm His followers at the gates of eternity. But materially and physically? Not necessarily. Perhaps for when we suffer as Christians, we should more remember verses like 1 Peter 1:3-8, written by the Bible’s go-to guy on suffering.

          “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade—kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, 9 for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.”