Contrary to popular opinion, doctrine matters. It matters because our practice is built upon it. The Church of Jesus Christ must be committed to Bible-centered beliefs. Those who think Biblically, live Biblically. We must agree on core doctrine and agree to disagree on peripheral teachings. There are doctrines we must agree on like the deity of Christ and the authority of Scripture; but there are others where sincere and intelligent Christians differ; such as order of events pertaining to the Lord’s return and degree of separation from worldly practices. We must always be learning, growing and evaluating things by the Word of God, the only rule for faith and practice. We must strive to be careful, seek to be objective, always be reasonable, always loving.
The Bible is authoritative and the things we agree to disagree on should be relatively few. We need to be willing to work hard together (in love) to understand what God is saying. God intends for us to understand the majority of what He says. I believe in the view that for every passage of Scripture there is one interpretation but many applications. Sometimes disagreements Christians have with Biblical teaching come from a lack of diligent study. Haddon Robinson said “God overlooks ignorance, but ignorance can do great damage”. Timothy Peck said “The Bible is like a roadmap that exposes us to our wrong beliefs about life”. If you find yourself disagreeing with a significant portion of your church’s teaching, you have 1 of 2 issues going on (both necessitate movement of some sort). 1, you are solid doctrinally and the church isn’t; you’re in the wrong church – you need to do some moving with your feet. Or 2, you are not sound in the faith and have some moving to do in terms of your heart and mind. Allow God to change you. (I like to say it’s like we are all carrying around a bucket of rocks – those are our beliefs. When we realize one doesn’t line up with the Word of God, we must take it out; replace it with what is true).
Not every hill is worth dying on. There are some areas to agree to disagree on but there are more areas to agree on. From the very beginning true believers have shared a core set of beliefs which they held to be far more important than anything on which they may differ. There were called the rule of faith and included the following: A belief in the authority of God’s infallible and inerrant Word, which reveals the truth that God exists in three persons, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Jesus Christ was born of a virgin, He suffered, died (substituted Himself in the place of sinful man), rose again and was exalted at the right hand of the Father. He will come again. The Holy Spirit brings the benefits of Christ’s saving work to all who believe n Him. Christians are to unite with a local church, submit to the authority of its leadership, live a holy life and share the gospel. God will judge the world and receive His own to Himself at the end of time.
Many churches have a good doctrinal statement, but when you observe the life of the church you don’t see it in practice. What I want to know is this: do they truly lead people to love Jesus and the Word of God? Do they live holy lives and stand for truth?
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I am enjoying your commentaries. I finding it difficult to to take issue with anything you have said. Keep up the fine work of preaching, both from the pulpit as well as from the blog.
ReplyDeleteBryan
I am glad to see someone else believes that doctrine matters. What we say we believe is important because words are important. Words are important because Jesus is "The Word".
ReplyDeleteBryan