Tag Archives: doctrine

PARTNERS IN DOCTRINE

Bible Study, ,

Philippians 3:15-16 NLT
[15] “Let all who are spiritually mature agree on these things. If you disagree on some point, I believe God will make it plain to you. [16] But we must hold on to the progress we have already made.”

Unity in Christ’s body, as it is experienced and expressed in every local fellowship, is made up of different facets. It’s through humility, for example, that we set aside our own concerns for the sake of the whole. It’s rather like a colony of termites that functions as a unit. Each termite carries out its own function for the good of the whole. Many even die to preserve the colony.

Unity in a local fellowship has a solid foundation that supports the entire structure.

Ephesians 2:19-22 NLT
[19] “So now you Gentiles are no longer strangers and foreigners. You are citizens along with all of God’s holy people. You are members of God’s family. [20] Together, we are his house, built on the FOUNDATION of the apostles and the prophets. And the CORNERSTONE is Christ Jesus himself. [21] We are carefully joined together in him, becoming a holy temple for the Lord. [22] Through him, you Gentiles are also being made part of this dwelling where God lives by his Spirit.”

The church is a family…a team working together for the good of the whole family. The church is also God’s house, a spiritual structure in which He lives by His Spirit. A house is a building made of different kinds of material that adhere for strength, safety, and purpose.

Jesus taught that the house must be built on bedrock so that, when storms blow in, it will stand firm. The bedrock, said Paul, is the truth about God, Jesus, and salvation, that makes the house secure, which is the foundation of what the Holy Spirit has revealed and written in the Word of God. The cornerstone of His house is Jesus, everything the Bible reveals about Jesus, which supports the entire structure so that it doesn’t fall apart.

What will happen if some “stones” in the wall decide to believe something different from the truth that holds the stones together? The walls will be weakened and eventually collapse because unity has been compromised.

So, in the “walls” of God’s house, there needs to be the “bonding material” of truth, every stone connected to every other stone by the truth of the “faith” that has been delivered to us and through which we have been saved.

Unity is sabotaged when false teaching creeps in and weakens the bonds of truth which hold us together. Since love and unity in the fellowship witness to the world that Jesus is real and are the hallmarks of spiritual maturity, we cannot afford to allow selfishness or false teaching to destroy what the Holy Spirit is working in His people.

Paul urges his readers and us, “Don’t allow anything to interfere with or slow down the progress you are making towards maturity.” He trusted the Holy Spirit, the builder of God’s house, to reveal the weak places in the fellowship so that each member would play his/her part in contributing to this partnership in doctrine which bound His people together in unity.

What Price Unity?

Christian Life, , ,

WHAT PRICE UNITY?

“Everyone agreed: apostles, leaders, all the people. They picked Judas (nicknamed Barsabbas) and Silas — they both carried considerable weight in the church — and sent them to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas, with this letter:

“From the apostles and leaders, your friends, to our friends in Antioch, Syria and Cilicia:
Hello!

“We heard that some men from our church went to you and said things that confused and upset you. Mind you, they had no authority from us; we didn’t send them. We have agreed unanimously to pick representatives and send them to you with our good friends, Barnabas and Paul. We picked men we knew you could trust, Judas and Silas — they’ve looked death in the face time and again for the sake of our Master Jesus Christ. We’ve sent them to confirm in a face-to-face meeting with you what we’ve written.

“It seemed to the Holy Spirit and to us that you should not be saddled with any crushing burden, but be responsible only for these bare necessities. Be careful not to get involved in activities connected with idols, avoid serving food offensive to Jewish Christians (blood for instance) and guard the morality of sex and marriage.

“These guidelines are sufficient to keep relations congenial between us. And God be with you!” Acts 15:22-29 (The Message).

What godly wisdom! It took quite a while for them to reach these conclusions but the end result is what counts, not the process. We have already examined the process by which they reached their conclusions. Now we must add one more factor to the mix.

Apart from protecting the truth of the gospel (that Jesus died as an atoning sacrifice for the sin of the world, and that His death is sufficient to satisfy the just demands of God’s law, and to free mankind from its penalty so that all who believe in Him are forgiven and have free access to the Father in Christ), they were also protecting the unity of the body of Christ.

Doctrine is important since our lives must be anchored in the truth, but the fellowship of believers also needs to be closely guarded. The conditions contained in the letter to the Gentile churches had more to do with fellowship than faith. Idolatry and the sexual impurity that accompanied idolatry had been part of the rebellion that contributed to the exile the Jews experienced in their past history.

Apart from it being an abomination to the Lord, these things had become abhorrent to Jews. For Gentile believers it had been their way of life and contributed to the rift between Jew and Gentile as did the consumption of the non-kosher meat offered to idols, and sold in meat markets.

Gentile believers were called to distance themselves from these practices for their own sake as well as for the sake of the new culture that brought Jew and Gentile together under a new system called the kingdom of God. They could not afford to cling to the old way of life just because it was their “right”.

The early church did all in its power to preserve unity because love and unity are the hallmarks of the church, or should be. The modern church is infected with the spirit of democracy, everyone deciding for himself or herself whether to obey the leadership or not. It’s no wonder the church has, by and large, become the laughing stock of the world. Whenever someone does not “agree” with the leadership, off he goes to start another “church” or to join somewhere else until he does not “agree” there.

The unity that Jesus pleaded for is no longer a priority in the church, yet it was the core of the Hebrew creed: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD, the LORD is one..” Deuteronomy 6:4.

Where has the attitude gone that was displayed by the leaders as they faced this crisis in the church – “It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us…” Whose church is it, anyway?

Follow Jesus

Bible Study, , ,

FOLLOW JESUS

“The apostles and leaders called a special meeting to consider the matter. The arguments went on and on, back and forth, getting more and more heated. Then Peter took the floor. ‘Friends, you well know that from early on God made it quite plain that He wanted the pagans to hear the Message of this good news and embrace it — and not in any second-hand or roundabout way, but first-hand straight from my mouth. And God, who can’t be fooled by any pretence on our part but always knows a person’s thoughts, gave them the Holy Spirit exactly as He treated us, beginning at the very centre of who they were, cleaning up their lives as they trusted and believed Him.

“‘So why are you trying to out-god God, loading these new believers down with rules that crushed our ancestors and crushed us, too? Don’t we believe that we are saved because the Master Jesus amazingly and out of sheer generosity moved to save us just as He did those from beyond our nation? So what are we arguing about?'” Acts 15:6-11 (The Message).

Thank God, someone had the good sense to examine the simple facts instead of formulating doctrines based on reason and not truth!

We don’t know what they were arguing about but, whatever it was, it got them nowhere until Peter came up with his story. It is dangerous to make experience the criterion for a doctrine, for example, we know that Scripture is full of stories of miracles that God did then, but we cannot say that God no longer does miracles today simple because He may not have done a miracle for us.

At the same time, when we match our experience with Scripture, we know that we stand on solid ground, because God confirms His word to us through experience.

Peter had the wisdom to match his experience with God’s Word to realise that the answer to their dilemma was right there for them. God Himself had supplied the answer by giving the Gentiles the gift of the Holy Spirit in the same way He had fallen on them so that they would be in no doubt about their salvation. This was God’s confirmation that salvation comes by faith alone and not by any additions to faith with which the Pharisees wanted to burden the Gentiles.

They themselves had not fully understood the complete and final work of Jesus on the cross; otherwise they would not have made this such an issue that it warranted a church council to settle it. In spite of the fact that it was settled there in Jerusalem in unity, the Judaisers continued to dog the footsteps of the apostles as they carried the gospel across the Gentile world.

It is still very much alive today and still robbing many people of the truth of Jesus’ simple invitation, ‘Follow me!’ He did not come to set up a new religion and He certainly did not burden His followers with the rules and rituals that we see in so many “denominations” today.

For example, for whole groups of people, the church is a building — not the people who are the temple in which God dwells by His Spirit, and is treated with superstitious reverence as though bricks, stones and mortar are somehow holy. Priests and ministers are the professionals and the laity subject to them and their superior knowledge and wisdom. Where do we find this in God’s Word? All God’s people together are a royal priesthood.

I suspect that many sections of the church are still enslaved to the old covenant with its rules and rigmarole; altars, sacred garments, dietary laws, symbols, etc., and have never stepped into the freedom of God’s grace, resting in Christ alone for His gift of righteousness which no amount of effort on our part can earn.

What a tragedy that the spirit of the Pharisees is still very much alive in the church and doing what the Pharisees tried to do to Jesus — kill the truth!