Eidios= form in the greek. Not appearance. this is leaving the door wide open for “conservatives” to rule and dominate the lives of those who do not study nor understand. Abstain from every form of evil means NOT putting yourself in the way of evil. If my lady friend is at my house and we are “alone” (God forbid) some of my brethern consider this the “appearance of evil” simply because they don’t approve. Oh yeah I Cor. 13:5-8 ” Love thinks no evil” Also in response to Paul not eating meat in order to keep others from sinning….I Cor 10:29 ” Why is my liberty judged by another man’s conscience” hmm you are correct, LEGALISM

I’m an atheist, but I couldn’t agree with you more. You are correct, when today’s Christian leaders get done talking about the proper way to live Christian lives, whatever vestiges of Christian freedom the bible might have allowed are stripped away. You can never drink alcohol, a weaker brother might see this. If you love god, why would you want alcohol anyway? Be filled with the spirit, not wine!!!!. You can never watch an r-rated movie, because you could be using God’s time better by evangelising the lost or studying the bible. That which you are free in Christ to do, actually becomes a laundry list of “don’ts” after today’s “conservative” Christian leaders get done with it.

By the way, do you believe that John McArthur is a legalist? His defenders deny this, but he teaches exactly as you stated other leaders do: he attempts to convince his hearers that exercising Christian liberty is time that could be better spent studying the bible or doing some sort of good work. What’s more important, building up the body of christ, or drinking a beer and watching a movie? These guys turn freedom in Christ inside out.

However, I would have to disagree with you if you said Paul didn’t teach the same way. Paul is the one that said he would never eat meat again if it made his weaker brother offend, and that is a perfect justification for the legalism discussed here.

Technically “avoid every appearance of evil” is a correct translation, although it’s not very clear and thus there are better ways to say it.

“Appearance” has multiple meanings. One is basically “the event of appearance”.

If Bob the Magician suddenly appears in front of me, then I can say “I just saw an appearance of Bob the Magician”

THIS is the appearance that is in 1st Thess. 5:2, ie “”Avoid evil every time there is an appearance of it” in the sense of “Every time it appears”

Unfortunately, people have forgotten this meaning of the word and thought that the verse means “Avoid every thing that appears (seems) like evil” and said that you can’t ever be over at your girlfriend or boyfriend’s house if nobody else is there because it APPEARS like you might have had sex.

For that reason I think something more like “Avoid evil every time it appears” would be a better form of the word to use.