New Thoughts (03/26/17-03/31/17)
Three Builders (03/27/17)
You’re either with us or agin’ us. This is pretty much our view of the world in general, and in matters of theology, the line only sharpens. Indeed, we can look to the words of Jesus to His disciples and find pretty solid support for this perspective, can’t we? “He who is not against us is for us” (Mk 9:40). “He who is not with Me is against Me. He who does not gather with Me, scatters” (Mt 12:30, Lk 11:23). It all seems pretty clear cut, doesn’t it? And so, we look about the landscape of Christianity in the West and we draw our lines. This denomination is with us. They’re OK. That one doesn’t. They must be rejected. We break into our camps and have nothing to do with those beyond the border.
But, Wycliffe’s commentary notes something happening here in Paul’s discussion of building the Church. There are actually three types of builders, not two. It’s not a with us or agin’ us issue. To be sure, there are plenty who are agin’ us, and many of them where clerical garb. But, there are others who, though our disagreement with them may be stark, are yet brothers. One or the other of us may be in error in regard to one doctrinal position or another. One of us may take more care for our theology than the other. But, we are still brothers. To set them in the imagery of Paul’s example, we have the wise builder, the unwise builder, and the foolish builder. Only that last category, though, falls outside the heavenly city and builds in the outer darkness. The foolish builder does not belong to God. The unwise builder does.
Our problem is twofold. First, we are too sure of ourselves, and cannot imagine the possibility that we might be the unwise builders. Thus does spiritual pride have its way with us. Second, we are inclined to mistake where the boundary lies between unwise and foolish, and to move those who are with us into the category of those who are not. How dare we? How great shall be our shame when we arrive at that Day of which Paul speaks, and discover that we have been denouncing our own family?
One thing must be clear. The dividing line between unwise and foolish is the line of heresy. As we find in the imagery of this section, the unwise may not build a lasting or beautiful structure, but at least they build upon the solid foundation. The heretic pursues the destruction of the foundation. We are not to tolerate heresy. We could, however, stand to be more tolerant of disagreement. We may pride ourselves in our theological precision and still find that we are in many ways inferior to those less careful in their exegesis. They may not appreciate the intricacies of the deep things we find so interesting, but they may yet have a much firmer grasp on the basics of Christian living. They may, for but one example, be possessed of a far more vibrant prayer life, and a far greater conviction that prayer matters. They may in turn look upon us as cold, potentially dead in our purported faith. And yet, we are both powered by the same thing: A deep and abiding love for God. We may focus on different aspects of His being, but it is His being nonetheless.
Let us, then, consider whether it is really heresy we hear on our brother’s lips, or merely, as the JFB describes it, such teaching as mixes human philosophy with godly doctrine. Here, we are likely just as guilty, and have, as we see them doing, simply mistaken our own philosophical niceties with Scriptural truths. Whether, then, it is their teaching or our own, we are likely to discover in the end that portions of what we have held to be the very Truth of God have in fact been things, ‘curious rather than useful’.
Foundational Truths (03/28/17)
As any good builder must, Paul begins with the foundation. That foundation, he says, is Jesus Christ. Clearly, this is not saying that we build atop a man, even if that man is the Son of God. Neither is he saying that only such words as generally appear in red ink in our Bibles are to be taken as fundamental, and the rest as optional commentary. This becomes clearer as we bring Ephesians 2:19-22 to bear. You are no longer strangers and aliens, Paul writes, but fellow citizens of the saints, members of God’s household. How so? Because you have been built upon the foundation. What foundation is that, Paul? The foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus being the cornerstone. In Him, and through them, the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple in the Lord. In Him you are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit.
This is quite plainly the same imagery that Paul is using here with Corinth. There is a foundation. You are the building. The teachers are as architects or general contractors directing the construction. But, it must begin with the foundation, with those doctrines which are not negotiable. That foundation is described most succinctly in Paul’s earlier declaration. “I determined to know nothing among you but Jesus Christ, and Him crucified” (1Co 2:2). There is the cornerstone. There is the measure of all else. Jesus, born of a virgin, perfectly obeying the entire Law of God, crucified, dead and buried; Jesus, risen victorious from the grave, having defeated sin and death once for all; Jesus ascended into heaven to reign forever as our King and High Priest. Here is your hope. Here is your penalty paid and your righteousness before God obtained. Here is your Atonement, your Propitiation. Here is your King. Behold the Man!
Here is all your hope and all your joy. Here, by faith alone in Christ alone is the only avenue to peace with God. For, there is no other name given under heaven by which men must be saved (Ac 4:12). There is salvation in no one else. None comes to the Father except through Him (Jn 14:6), and none comes to Him except those the Father calls (Jn 6:44). Jesus our Savior; Jesus our Mediator: “Leave out this, and you lay waste all our comforts, and leave no foundation for our hopes as sinners.” So, writes Matthew Henry. We might add that if we leave out the fact that we are sinners, we likewise do great damage to the foundation.
What is the foundation? “The foundation of a church is the DOCTRINE on which it is established; that is, the doctrines which its members hold – those truths which lie at the basis of their hopes, and by embracing which they have been converted to God,” writes Barnes. It may sound judgmental to the modern ear, but the fact is that where the foundation is denied, or an alternate foundation proposed, there is no Christian church. The terminology may be employed by those in attendance, but the reality is not to be found. Go back to what Paul says here. “No man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.” This is, as the JFB says, the only foundation recognized by God. It is the only foundation suited to the temple which He is building in and through His Church.
Note this fact as well: The foundation has been laid. It is done. The fact that men are building on it already in Paul’s day must make that sufficiently clear. One doesn’t begin the superstructure when but one side of the foundation has been laid, or even two. The foundation is completed first, and then we can begin to build upon it. What does this mean for us? Well, it certainly means Scripture is settled. If, as we surely ought, Scripture is held to be God-breathed, a work organized and overseen by the Holy Spirit personally, then not only is Scripture settled, it is perfect and unchanging, just as God who spoke it through His chosen vessels is perfect and unchanging.
We cannot suppose that there are portions of Paul’s writing that we can opt to set aside, because in the end it is not Paul’s writing. It is God’s words spoken through Paul, just as the words of the prophets in the Old Testament were God’s words spoken through human instruments. To the degree that the pastor who preaches today preaches truly, building well upon this perfect foundation, he likewise serves as a human instrument in the hands of God, relaying His word to His people for His glory.
What shall we say of the continued ministry of the Holy Spirit? We shall certainly say that it does indeed continue! We shall certainly say that God does not change, and I for one will accept that those sorts of gifts that were in evidence in Corinth continue. Alongside of that, I will also insist that the propensity for counterfeit and abuse that was in evidence in Corinth also continues. Not everything that claims to be a word from God is. Not every spirit that claims to speak on His behalf does. Not every prophet today prophesies truly, any more than every prophet in the days of Isaiah, Jeremiah, or Elijah did. The Word, the record left us by our Foundation, MUST be the arbiter of Truth unto us. If the Holy Spirit speaks, and I have no cause to suppose He does not, then we can be certain of this: He speaks nothing contrary to that which He has spoken. He does not lay some new foundation, or promote a new order. The foundation has been laid. There will be no other.
Some will point back to the change between the Old Covenant and the New as leaving space for yet another new order. They will accuse those who insist on the Biblical order of worship for the Church as heirs to the Pharisees. What was wrong with the Pharisees, after all? They were so determined to preserve the temple order that they could not conceive of Christ as Messiah. But, that is not where their problem lay. Their problem was that they had ALREADY replaced God’s rule with their own ideas. They had been laying a second foundation. It had some of the appearances of the real foundation, and did its best to fit in and connect, but it was not THE foundation. It was new traditions; additions to the Law which necessarily became subtractions from the Law.
The Sadducees had their own issues, for their interest in the temple order had very little of God to it. It was politics and position. No doubt, there are those in the pulpit today who suffer from similar diseases of pride, who preach for the personal honor, or merely use the pulpit as a means to propagate their pet philosophies. Some, it must be said, take to the pulpit as a way to get women (or men, I suppose). The abuses do not, however, require a new foundation or a new order. They require now what they required then: A restoration of the proper order.
What, after all, are we to make of the whole ceremonial Law? Why was it there, if it was not right? Well, for one, it was right. It was an expression of that worship God desired, and it was suited to that time and people for whom it was established. But, it was always to be understood as an outward expression of inward reality. So it continues to be with the modern-day Church of Christ. The Church is an outward expression of inward reality, else it is not the Church. But, the ceremonial Law declares something incredibly important to us, something we may well have lost sight of in the modern era: God will not be worshiped any old way you please. It’s not acceptable to do whatever comes to mind and call it worship. It’s not acceptable to formulate your own programs, impose your own definitions of beauty, and so on. You are not God. You are His subject. He is in charge. The Glory is His and His alone. The Truth is His and His alone. There is no other of whom the angels proclaim, “To Him be all blessing and honor and glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen” (Rev 5:13). They certainly don’t sing it of you! On what basis, then, will you take it upon yourself to define worship fit for God? What excuse will you offer when He calls you to account for what you have made it?
Building the Church (03/28/17)
This gets us to the meat of the passage before us. What are you building? What materials are you using? You have the foundation – and praise be to God, that’s not in doubt, but we’ll get to that in its place. You have the blueprints. Are you following them? Are you raising up walls that remain true to the foundation, or are you building something that must topple over for being so far off balance? Are you building the sort of structure that befits the foundation, or just tossing together some ramshackle shack because you can’t be bothered? See, the concern Paul has in this passage isn’t the foundation, it’s what’s being built on that foundation. We are not, at least not yet, dealing with those who seek to undermine the foundation. It’s a question of addition rather than subtraction, I suppose, the sort of addition that comes from a certain carelessness in handling the Gospel.
I fear it’s a carelessness we all fall prey to at times, as our views and opinions color our understanding of the Gospel, rather than the Gospel shaping our views and opinions. But, “God will have his Church trained up by the pure preaching of his own word, not by the contrivances of men.” Calvin addresses these words to us, viewing the message as being aimed primarily at those who teach and preach. They are the builders in his view, and we are the building. OK. I think the picture is bigger than that, but let us begin with the builder. He who would build aright atop this foundation must use those things suited to the project, and that’s rather Paul’s point, isn’t it? What we are building does not allow of such materials as wood and straw. Think about the detailed instruction given for the building of Solomon’s temple. Yes, there was wood involved, but no common wood, and generally one finds it was encased in gold even where it was used. But, we don’t wish to press Paul’s analogy too far.
If we would build the Church, we must use the materials God has specified in His blueprint. We must use the Bible, the prophetic, apostolic word made sure. There is your blueprint, and there is the stuff of which the Church is to be built. We must surely pray and trust that the Holy Spirit is there to direct, to serve as our reference as we seek to properly convey the Truths of Scripture, and as we seek to properly understand what is conveyed. As we have seen, if He is not at work in preacher and hearer alike, then the work is not going to get done. We need His insight to understand. We need His wisdom to impart with any clarity and power that which Scripture speaks. We need Him constantly recalling to mind what Christ has said. What we don’t need is an endless train of novelty acts performed as being Spirit-infused worship. No. The order of worship has been set out, and the Holy Spirit who declared that order is hardly likely to change it into a carnival act for our amusement. He’s not here to entertain us. He’s here to guide us. He’s here to keep us trued to the Cornerstone. He’s here to ensure that what we speak of God is what is True of God; that the Christ in whom we trust is truly the Christ who reigns. The Holy Spirit, from what we see of Him in Scripture, is not seeking to draw attention to Himself, but ever laboring to turn our eyes upon Jesus.
“Here is your Foundation!” Seek no other. But, we know that many who use His name, and call themselves His church, are in fact hard at work tearing down the Truth of God, and laboring to overthrow His work. We know that many more, though they are not intent on such overthrow, are duped into labors just as dangerous.
Barnes, in looking at this passage, brought up a point I had not even considered. He asks the question of whether we are to perceive a choice of building materials, or an inappropriate mixture of such materials, or whether what is in view is the choice of what sort of building we have decided to build. It is, I suppose, evidence of God’s abundant sense of humor that as I pause from writing this I look out the window to see a squirrel busily at work rounding up twigs and leaves to build his nest. Wood and straw: Perfectly fitting for a squirrel’s nest, or for a shed, or even a cottage, given the right climate. But, these are not materials suited for palace or temple. These are not the sorts of things we use to construct such buildings as display civic pride. You won’t find the local bank, for example, using such things – no, nor common cement. A bank must display solidity, permanence. So, it builds with stone, and demonstrates its wealth by the artistry evident in the details within and without.
Well, if such things befit the bank or city hall, how much more the temple of God! We have record of first the Tabernacle in the wilderness, then Solomon’s temple, then the temple rebuilt. We have Ezekiel’s plan for the restored temple, and at least some evidence of the magnificence of even that temple which Herod had constructed. In every case, it is a work of art. As Pastor Dana reminded us Sunday, the building of the first Tabernacle was overseen by the Holy Spirit – it being the first place we read of the Spirit anointing or indwelling. He is still overseeing the building of God’s temple, that temple which we give visible reference in the structures we call Church, but which is in fact composed of the individual lives of believers through the ages, built together as living stones, as Peter writes (1Pe 2:5).
Here was another point that came up in Sunday’s class on the Holy Spirit, which is worth keeping in mind here in the letter to Corinth. The Holy Spirit comes bringing order to chaos. It’s there in the work of Creation. The earth was formless – disorderly, chaotic, and the Spriit of God hovered over the surface implementing that good order which Father spoke through Word. And order came to fill the void. There in the work of Creation, God began building a temple for His worship. God does not author confusion but peace, Paul says later (1Co 14:33). His is an orderly worship. How, then, can we suppose it is the Spirit who comes and turns the service on its head, bringing ever sort of disorderliness, and leaving the church once more a place where, “everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Jdg 21:25)?
What are you building? A temple suitable to God, or a hovel barely suitable for a hobo? The process of sanctification in which we are engaged is the process of raising our cathedral unto God. Whatever you may think of the artistry of the cathedral, or the doctrines of their current occupants, the fundamental power of that work remains. Here is something to which men gave their best, and often in an effort the result of which they would not be alive to see. These cathedrals were the work of generations, labors of love, skill, and great expense. And they are marvelous. They serve their purpose well, built of the best materials available with one purpose and one purpose only: To direct the minds of men toward God.
Today we focus more on the reality of the church that is within, that character of life which suits man to become the temple of the Holy Spirit, as Paul will be reminding us in the next section (1Co 3:16). But, of course, we can never expect to be suited to this – certainly not in our own strength! We are in a lifelong effort to raise such a cathedral of life as befits our King. We are building our part, joined together with every brother and sister in Christ by this same indwelling Holy Spirit. Like those who returned to Jerusalem with Nehemiah, we each have our own section of the structure to attend to, but never in isolation, and never freestanding. We need each other. There’s a reason God gave us the Church to sustain us until such time as He calls us home. It is here that we are served by our fellow believers. It is here that we, as instruments in the hands of God Almighty, find ourselves made serviceable to those who work alongside of us. And in all this, we all of us together are called to give our very best to the process. It is a magnificent cathedral of living, precious stone we are building atop this most beautiful Foundation. Let us take great care how we build!
The Work of Fire (03/29/17)
Fire lies at the center of Paul’s image here, and it is clearly a fire of testing. While much is made of the point that this is not punishment, but assay, that matter is sufficiently addressed and has no immediate bearing. What does have immediate bearing is the nature of fire and its impact. Fire is something that at once intrigues and repels us. It is beautiful and somewhat soothing to behold, so long as it remains in its proper place. It is fearsomely worrying, irritating, and potentially life-threatening if it does not. It can, then, be either great boon or great danger depending on circumstance, and it can very swiftly change from one to the other.
This variability is visible in the text, in the testing by fire. I really like the way Calvin has captured this idea. “The nearer the doctrine of God is brought to this fire, so much the brighter will be its lustre. On the other hand, what has had its origin in man’s head will quickly vanish.” This is the point behind Paul’s choice of building materials. Gold and silver, though they may liquefy in the presence of fire will not be consumed by it. When the fires cool, the gold and silver remain. Likewise, the carefully chosen stones used to form the walls of the temple have withstood the forces of nature for eons, and a bit of fire isn’t going to make them crumble now.
By contrast, while the fire may be beautiful to observe as it dances on the logs in the fireplace, what remains when the fire has died has no beauty at all. Nor will it be reassembled into the logs we started with. Ash and soot are fit for no further use. They are something that we must remove and dispose. Here, there is both contrast and similarity, isn’t there? After all, the reason fire makes things like gold and silver shine with brighter luster is because all the impurities boil out as dross to be removed. Even so mundane a substance as solder, mixed lead and tin, has this characteristic to it. I well remember tending to the wave soldering machine in the midst of a hot Texas summer. The solder would liquefy, and there would be the dross floating on top, which one must scrape off and throw out. It was a process of purification or, in terms of Christian life, sanctification.
Sanctification has this similarity to the refining process. Oft times our lives must be brought to the boil by trial or admonition, so that the sin we keep hidden within may rise to the surface and become visible – first to us, for we are terribly adept at self-delusion. For, the sin that is hidden cannot, or at least will not be removed. It must be exposed, boiled out of us by the heat of the flame, so that it can be dealt with, scraped off and repented of.
This sanctification is not just some idealist vision of a possible future for us. It is the very command of God, and the necessary result of His presence within. If the Holy Spirit has taken up His abode in us, it must necessarily result in the fruit of the Spirit growing in us. If there is no growth, we must conclude there is no Spirit, which is to say there is no salvation. This is the same message writ differently. If you are a temple of the living God, then the living God lives in you. If He lives in you, sanctification must result, for sin cannot abide in His presence. It must go. It must be boiled off by the nearness of Him. There is the image of Isaiah 6, with its account of that prophet’s calling He finds himself in the presence of Holiness, the triple application of the term to His person by the Seraphim emphasizes this. He is not just holy. He is holy, holy, holy. I think of the water I used to buy for purpose of cleaning LPs before playing them. It was known as D3. Why? Because it was not just distilled, it was TRIPLE distilled. It was, to frame it in the poetic Hebrew style, distilled, distilled, distilled! The same applies to the holiness of God. It is so far above and beyond our conceptions of holiness as to render those conceptions as filthy rags by comparison (and in reality).
And, this utterly, unimaginably Holy, Holy, Holy God Almighty has taken up residence in the temple of which you are made an integral part. Whatever impurities remain must surely be boiled off, and as they rise to the surface, they must be scraped away by repentance, disposed of by forgiveness. And so, across the entirety of our lives, we discover that we are indeed being assayed, purified, brought to an ever greater luster.
But, that same fire which so improves our case has the exact opposite effect on impurity. It is a fire of universal testing, and it affects godly and ungodly alike. That which cannot withstand the fire will be burned off, turned to ash, and thrown away. “Who can endure the day of His coming? Who can stand when He appears? He is like a refiner’s fire; a fuller’s soap. He will sit as a smelter and purifier of silver, and purify the sons of Levi; refine them like gold and silver, so that they may present to the LORD offerings in righteousness” (Mal 3:2-3). There it is again! The very same message that Paul has declared: It’s going to hurt. Refining does. But, the end result is joy unspeakable. However great the pain of the process, the end result is salvation, whether it be to great reward, or as if escaping calamity by the skin of one’s teeth. So long as the foundation is right, and you have built upon that foundation and no other, this much is assured.
Still, there is clearly a declaration of individual responsibility in this. The teacher shall be responsible for the quality of his teaching. If indeed it is the pastor and teacher that Paul has in mind, then to the degree he has taught well and those taught by him have grown upright under his influence, there will be reward. If no other thing, think about this: Such a one will arrive in heaven, perhaps resigned to the thought that all of his years in the pulpit don’t seem to have accomplished much. Perhaps he was a missionary who never lived to see the power of God moving on those to whom he had brought the gospel; thought all those years of trial had been for nothing. Such a one arrives before the throne of God and discovers himself recipient of a significant reception by those whose lives were rescued by his work. He may not even have met these rescues. I think of the Reformers, who were so greatly influenced by Augustine. What debt of gratitude will Martin Luther have to that man when they meet? What cause had Augustine to suppose any such outcome?
But, the same holds for the meanest, most average pastor, if he teaches in accord with the foundation. The same holds for the teacher of the youngest children in the church. The question is not stature among men, nor is it the power of ones arts. The question is simply this: Did you build properly atop the foundation? Did you erect a temple or a shack?
As to the individual who is taught, the same test applies, and the same questions must be asked. What have you built? What sort of architects have you been following? Do you chase after preachers of vain imaginations, and allow their straw and stubble to corrupt the building of your soul? Do you take great care to heed only such preaching as accords with Scripture, acting as good Bereans to ensure that any stubble or straw that may be found is thrown out rather than added in? Are you careful of your ears and eyes? I think we tend to view that admonition to care as a matter of avoiding sinful, pagan inputs. Of course, we ought to avoid viewing pornography, or listening to advice that we cheat and lie. Those are obvious. But, the care must go far beyond such obvious assaults on piety. The worst assaults are those that seem plausible.
The Pharisees were not led astray by obvious idolatry. They weren’t off to worship Moloch. They were enticed by things that sounded pious, but were in fact vain imaginations. They left the foundation, or decided to add a wing here, an ell there. They decided that their ideas of holiness were superior. God really should have consulted them. No, I don’t suppose that thought came to mind, but it was the result. There were those who held to the foundation, I must suppose. There still are. Yet, what they built was not the temple God commanded. They followed their own design, and wound up with a structure unfit for God’s purpose.
So far as we are concerned in these verses, the one assurance we have is this: The foundation remains true in spite of what we build. Even if it be found that the entirety of our conception of doctrine above and beyond those foundational essential truths is no more than fantasies we have concocted in our own minds, the foundation remains. The fundamental truth of Christ and Christ Alone remains. We may have found ourselves trying to add works to the mix, or having become overly intrigued by angels and spiritual powers. We may have elevated ourselves well beyond what is right and reasonable in our self-estimation. But, we retained the foundation, and the foundation stand firm, even after the fires of testing have scoured the entire structure of our building from it. Praise God anyway! It is but the fire of sanctification, and you shall be brought through.
In the meantime, I return to the example of the rebuilding of the temple under Nehemiah as an encouragement to care in the present. We don’t build alone. We are not building a personal abode, but we are being built together. We are living stones in the work of God. We are intended to be built together, a wall of believers. We each labor on our section, and attend to it. It is to be hoped that we do our utmost to see that work done right, but we are prone to mistakes and laziness. So is the one to our left and our right. And, of course, we are to somebody’s left and right, and thus fill the same sad role for them. But, it need not be this way! We are intended to care one for another. You can call it enlightened self-interest, or you can recognize it as God’s design. The fact remains. No wall will long stand alone. There’s a reason why corners are square, why the cornerstone is at the corner. One wall lends strength to the other. If the wind blows from the East, the walls facing north and south will give backbone to the one facing east. If it blows from the South, the east and west-facing walls will serve that role. Without them, the wall remaining would be blown over in a trice.
Another memory. We were attending a church on the Cape that had an extension built that had never been finished. But, the room was there, empty though it remained at the time. Word came of an approaching hurricane. As it stood, the winds of a hurricane would have made quick work of that structure, for there was nothing to brace the walls that would face the wind. If that wing was to be saved, there would need to be some reinforcement. So, we went and set supports in place in the interior, adding beams to take the load of the wind when it came. The structure held, the winds abated, and at a future date we proceeded to complete the work of making it a proper sanctuary and a proper building. This is in part because it was a structure made of wood – in the physical sense, not the spiritual sense we are addressing here. A building of stone would have greater resilience to the wind, although earthquake might be another matter.
As we build together, if we are taking care both for our own work and for our brothers to either side, we arrive at a building far more resilient that that which we build alone. Our walls are connected, the tiers of brick or stone interleaved to give strength to that connection. And so, when trials come, we are able to stand. It is not because of our great strength, either as individuals or as a congregation. It is quite simply because we have built according to the blueprint God has given us. We have been doing as He instructs, and His instruction is perfect.
It is eminently to be hoped that as we come to the end of our days we are found to have built well, both as to our individual parts and as to the complete work. The JFB comments to this effect: When the Lord returns to His temple of a sudden, the flame of His return shall burn every part of the building, and what will not stand the fire will be consumed. For all that we want to know the timetable, and convince ourselves that we have a clue one way or the other, the fact is that His return, whenever that may be, shall be ‘of a sudden’. There will not be advance notice given so that we can finally get our act together, do a spring cleaning, and roll out the red carpet. His arrival will be of a nature to assess how we have regarded His majesty in the course of daily living. How do we act in His absence? For that has much more to say of the character of our sanctification than how we act in His presence.
Who can stand in the day of His coming? What will remain of my work? These are questions to ask daily, if not oftener. They are not a call to try and assess our brother and determine whether he’s going to make it or not. Yes, we are to care for one another, and to call one another back when we see things going astray. But, we are not to pass judgment before the time (1Co 4:5). Indeed, with very limited exception, we are not to pass judgment at all. This is something different than discernment. If we see a brother sinning, of course we seek to admonish and restore to grace. If we see a brother insisting on the course of sin, we MUST apply church discipline, however unpleasant we find the task. If Aaron had to accept the discipline of his sons without mourning, surely we must accept that the honor of God is of greater weight than the end state of a lost relative. Yes, we rightfully rue their loss and the eternity that awaits them. But, God is glorified, and for this we must rejoice even in sorrow. And ever and always, we must remain humbled by the realization that there, but for the grace of God, we would find ourselves.
How Much is Tolerable? (03/30/17)
There is a certain risk introduced by Paul’s final point here. To hear that our work might be burned away but we shall be saved could lead us to a less careful approach to faith. If I’m going to be saved anyway, why sweat the details? Indeed, why work at all, given that salvation is by grace alone? But, this is simply not to be accepted. Rather we must hear Paul’s words in the warning tone in which they are intended. Yes, there is the comfort that salvation is not at risk. But, there is still a very real personal loss in view.
There is also a clear limit to the sort of work that may be burnt off without causing this most ultimate harm. You will recall the point I brought forward from Wycliffe’s commentary. There are three types of builders, but here we are only considering those two who have not done damage to the foundation. The non-negotiable doctrines have been kept intact. Whatever may call itself a church, it is a false claim unless there is belief in the key matters of faith. That is to say, if the Incarnate Christ is denied or His divinity, there is no church. If the Atonement of His death on the Cross is denied there is no church. If His real, physical Resurrection and Ascension are denied, whatever else this group may be, it is no church. Then, too, where His instruction and example are denied, the same must hold true. As Barnes writes, “Where those doctrines are denied no association of people can be recognized as a church of God.”
I have to say that where there is lip-service paid to these doctrines and yet other purported gods are granted equal footing, then we must first conclude that the claims of agreement are false and that once more, this is no church of God. In that light, I find I take exception to what Clarke has to say. He writes, “If he have sincerely and conscientiously believed what he preached, and yet preached what was wrong, not through malice or opposition to the Gospel, but through mere ignorance, he shall be saved.” I am not at all comfortable with that assessment. This comes dangerously close to the Unitarian Universalist standard of believe what you like, so long as it’s sincere. If I preach that all paths lead to God and sincerely believe it, I do not bear any conscious malice toward the Gospel. Yet, I deny a most fundamental claim of that gospel. Do I do so as opposing the Gospel, or merely (in my estimation, at least) as offering further alternatives? Does this fit within Clarke’s escape clause? I would be hard pressed to decide.
I am far more comfortable with the boundaries laid down by Barnes. Thus far, we must be agreed or we are not Christians. There can be no debate on these points. If, on the other hand, we have differing views on those things we refer to as secondary issues – even if our views elevate them to primary issues – we remain brothers and ought rightly to seek the spiritual welfare and cooperation of one another. Do you hold that free will defines faith rather than predestination? I will insist you are wrong about that, but I will not doubt your faith. Do you accept infant baptism as the teaching of Scripture? Or do you insist that only baptism subsequent to faith counts? Either way, it is your love for God and your concern for obedience to His Word that informs your position, and you are family to me, though we may attend our separate congregations. Do you wish to exercise your charismatic gifts? If it be done in accord with such instruction as Scripture offers on their use, how shall I complain of it? If I, on the other hand, refrain, how shall you?
But, there is that boundary: Are you being pushed off the foundation? If I see that this is the case, and I account you a dear brother or sister, what love do I show for you by leaving you to your self-destructive pursuits? It’s easier for me, yes, and it may preserve peace (such as it is) in our relationship, but it is not loving. The moment your pursuit of non-essential differences leads to an altering of the essentials, we have trouble. We have moved from building with hay and stubble to taking a sledgehammer to the foundation.
Where we err in secondary matters, perhaps we can accept Clarke’s assessment. It was done from earnest pursuit of God’s truth, however much we may have veered into error. It was not malicious insistence on our own ideas of righteousness, it was just failure to arrive at accurate conclusions. It is hard, in fairness, to see how this does not wind up as a failure of the Holy Spirit, who, after all, is charged with bringing us into all Truth, but as He cannot err, nor can He fall short of His purpose, being God, the problem is very clearly with us. The degrading impact of sin on our mental faculties is so acute that even with so perfect an Advocate, we still insist on getting it wrong.
And, make no mistake: We insist on getting it wrong. We shall all of us, I rather suspect, find ourselves mortified by our errors and by our wasted labors (or excessive idleness) when we come before our Savior. We shall be saved, and we shall have an eternity of joy ahead of us, but that moment in which our deeds in the flesh are weighed and rewarded as befits them is not, I think, going to be particularly pleasant for any man. Yet, we will be saved. But, those whose errors have been in regard to the essentials? Those who have sought to destroy the foundation, or ignored it entirely in preference for some other foundation? For these, there is no hope to be offered. There will be no eternal joy to offset the momentary pain of assessment. There will instead be an eternity to know the punishment of the unforgiveable sin of rejecting Christ.
In the meantime, we have a problem. For, all of us, however careful we seek to be, battle this tendency to shape Scripture to our own preferences, rather than seeking to have our preferences shaped by the Scriptures. We love our different gospels. How could we not? They match our present state of being, and therefore affirm whatever it is we are doing. Who doesn’t like being right? Who doesn’t want to be free of criticism? It’s the entire motivating force of humanity!
What is the process of parenting a child? It is a process of affirming that which is good in the child, and casting aspersions upon that which is bad. It is the task of shaping their preferences to something that will suit them for a ‘good life’ with good socialization skills. Likewise, governments by and large operate to the same ends: Seeking to inculcate certain desires and preferences in those they govern. This may be to good purpose or bad, but it remains the nature of government to do its best to shape the will of the governed. So, too, the business of advertising and entertainment. We may claim that entertainment reflects the taste of the masses, but that is only marginally true, if at all. It is a concerted effort to shift tastes in the direction approved by the entertainer.
We bring these same tendencies with us into the church. We come to Scripture with a system of understanding, a worldview. Our natural tendency is going to be to interpret what we read in Scripture through the filter of that worldview. It is no surprise, or ought not to be, that every philosophy and cause finds it reasonable to purport that Jesus agrees with them. It fulfills the old adage that to a man with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Worldview has shaped interpretation. It takes great effort to grant the Scriptures permission to shape worldview. And, I would say this, as well: It only gets harder.
It was one thing, fifteen or twenty years ago, to find my views reversed on certain matters of doctrine. It was one thing then to discover that what I was certain was the clear teaching of the Bible was in fact incorrect. It would be quite impossible, I should think, to convince me now that I had it right the first time, and need to go back to that. In similar vein, somebody who has been raised all their life in a church holding one particular set of views on some secondary issue will find it incredibly difficult to come to Scripture unbiased, to weigh the various views on the matter with dispassionate equanimity.
The matter of charismatic gifts is one such issue. Opinions on the matter, whether from experience of the exercise of these gifts, or from life in a church that soundly rejects their continued reality, are firmly in place and any attempt to look to what the Bible actually says on the matter will tend to be seen either as confirming one’s current views or as being inapplicable for some reason or other. I suffer the same danger, though I like to think myself more dispassionate. I have experienced the gifts, and I cannot deny their reality. I have also seen, repeatedly, the abuse of the gifts, the counterfeit, the careless pronouncements of doctrinal positions that are at best hay and straw, and more often of late seem to have a near total disregard for the foundation. At the same time, I see a reaction to the gifts from the conservative side that is just as irrational. It is not, so far as I can see, built up from the clear argument of Scripture, but rather issued in response to excesses observed in practice. But, the answer to excess, as Paul demonstrates in this letter, is not a proclamation of anathema, but to bring clear-headed, doctrinally sound correction to practice.
That the gifts are abused does not render the gifts themselves false. Were this the case, the same must be said of preaching. Some preach falsely, therefore all preaching is false. Who would uphold such an argument (apart from an atheist)? But, even the atheist, in proclaiming such a thing, would effectively be preaching, so the whole thing falls down by its own absurdity. How does the same not apply to those who insist the gifts have passed from the stage, in spite of the evidence, because they don’t like the abused permutations that are on the landscape? I don’t like them either. But, I don’t see them as evidence that the Spirit’s gifts are defunct. I seem them as evidence that the depravity of man remains total. So it was in Corinth, so it is today. The Church, for all that, is utterly corrupt in many of its apparent manifestations. We all have our list of denominations that have done such harm to their foundation as to have nothing of Christian remaining. We have all witnessed the church services in which it is found inappropriate to bring Christ into the equation. We have all, I suspect, read the account of the ‘pastor’ up in Canada who refuses to vacate the pulpit in spite of admitting to having no faith in Christ. And yet, this abomination has the audacity to call itself a Christian church! But, I shall not reject the Church on the basis of this clear counterfeit. I reject their claim.
Rather than expending a great deal of energy battling one another on secondary matters, we do well to battle ourselves. Where have I bent the Gospel to my preferences? Where have I been working in wood and straw, rather than the precious gold of God’s Truth? What excuses have I been making for myself so that I need not grant Scripture and Scripture’s God permission to change me?
Open my eyes, Lord. Create in me a clean heart. Render me more attentive to what You are doing and what You would have done. Let me become more concerned with Your glory than my reputation and comfort. Grant me to love You more than me, that I may serve You as You would be served.
Assurance and Charity (03/31/17)
I remain truly touched by the relief that final clause must have given to the Corinthians. How often we see Paul taking this step. You are believers. You are elect saints of God by His calling. That doesn’t make you perfect or infallible. It does, however, assure you that you will be saved. Your sins will be washed away. It also assures that come that day, whatever errors you have retained or pursued will be removed. But, as Calvin and others point out: Only the error. Yes, and being the elect of Christ and temples of the Holy Spirit, you will, “willingly submit to the loss” of your labor, as your ignorance is corrected. So will I.
I have already looked at this propensity for false doctrine that is a perpetual plague upon us in this present age. Holding the Truth in our hands, yet we find the falsehood more intriguing, more enticing. We manage to avoid gross error, praise God. We don’t take to smashing the foundation or ignoring it entirely in favor of our fever dreams. But, we are not careful of our doctrine. Or, careful though we are, being finite in our understanding we yet get things wrong and hold the error to be right. We will all of us have sufficient cause to be corrected. But, given this propensity, how wonderful to know, “Yet, you shall be saved.” To be sure, you will suffer loss. It may be the loss consists in discovering how much damage your error did to those who were taught by you. It may be that you don’t have so high a standing as you thought you might. It may be the embarrassment of discovering just how wrong you were in your idea of who God is and what holiness is.
Again, I am drawn to that scene from Isaiah’s commissioning – Woe is me! I am undone (Isa 6:5)! The realization expressed by Malachi: Who can stand before His Holiness (Mal 3:2)? The near panic of Peter, realizing, at least in some degree, who shared the boat with him: Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord (Lk 5:8)! I cannot imagine that there will be so much as one who comes before Him on that day and fails to feel this overwhelming awe when Holiness is finally comprehended as we see Him as He truly is. I don’t imagine even an Apostle will fail to feel his utter worthlessness and filthiness in that moment. There will be, no doubt, a sense of overwhelming relief to realize we have not heard, “Depart from me. I never knew you.” Even if we don’t hear, “Well done, good and faithful servant,” at least there is that. And the erroneous views we have clung to ‘til the end? Washed away, burned away in a moment!
Here are words of hope for all. Here, also, are words to encourage charity towards those with whom we disagree. Not every man who holds to a false doctrine is therefore a false Christian. Indeed, I would go slightly farther than Barnes is willing to with that assessment, and suggest that every Christian is likely holding to some bit of false doctrine. But, we may be mistaken without being false. So he surmises of others. I think we must, in honesty, include ourselves in the scope of that conclusion. We may be mistaken. We almost certainly are mistaken on some point or other. There are some very few of whom we must say they are not, at least so far as concerns the writings we have from them, and that is the small set of men responsible for the promulgating of the Scriptures as they were overseen and directed by the infallible Holy Spirit of God Himself.
Matthew Henry sees the same point. “Those who hold the foundation of Christianity, though they build hay, wood, and stubble upon it, may be saved. This may help to enlarge our charity.” That is the key for us. That is the line in the sand, if you will, the point at which we must stand against any attempted alteration. This is the point where Martin Luther found himself, when he faced the wrath of Rome and said, “Here I stand, I can do no other.”
But, as inclined as we are toward error, we are equally inclined to enforce our opinions as law. There was a song out of Ireland, as I recall, back in the 80s, which carried the line, “Think what you like, if you agree with me.” We get that way. It’s not just the authoritarian state. It’s all of us. I could argue that this is what we see playing out in the news day after day. It’s a plague on our campuses. It’s a plague in the public square. It’s a plague that winds up invading the corporate boardroom and nearly every facet of life today. If you evince a view that is not in keeping with my pieties, I shall see you destroyed.
But, it’s not so very different in the church, is it? It should be, but too often it is not. We denounce not those who have crossed the line into heresy, but those who hold to different opinions, or even different priorities. It poisons our ministry. How so? Well, it’s a point I’ve made often enough. If you are one convicted of the need to pray fervently for hours on end as an intercessor, you will incline to see everyone else as somehow inferior or damaged, given that they don’t do the same. If you are called as an evangelist, you may tend to consider all who don’t share your fervor as lazy, disobedient Christians at best, suspect goats at worst. If you spend long hours in the text, seeking to squeeze out every drop of meaning, you may become frustrated with those who settle for a surface reading. The list goes on. Where we should be charitable, we choose instead to be judgmental. And in all that process, it never seems to dawn on us that we are just as worthy of correction as those we would denounce.
How much greater our charity toward one another if we would include ourselves in these hard assessments! What if we remained aware that it is as likely to be our own works which, while done in sincere desire to please and praise God, are yet found to be no more than worthless products of our own design? Vain imagination is not a disease that only infects the other guy. It infects us all, and our hearts being so deceptively wicked, we become convinced that our particular vanities are the unmitigated, unquestionable Truth. Watch out! It is but a short distance to the point where even the Spirit cannot (or at least will not) bring correction to our stiff-necked pride. How much loss do you wish to suffer on that day? I dare say that you, like me, would prefer it be minimal. That being the case, how much more mindful we ought to be of our propensity for error. How much greater the need for humility as to our own condition and charity as to that of our brothers! By all means, remain vigilant. Defend the Foundation, not that He particularly needs your help, but His Truth matters, and the purity of His Church is worth defending. But, don’t let valiant defense of the Foundation turn into a burning down of the wall that supports your own! Let us see to our own construction. Let us stand in mutual aid with those who build beside us. So long as they are with us, they are not against us.
