New Thoughts (5/11/03-5/13/03)
Many opportunities had arisen through which Christianity may have been introduced to Crete. Yet, until Paul's visit, what had been introduced was apparently left to grow wild. Paul began to bring order to what he found. Perhaps he had seen it when he passed through on the way to Rome, and knew that should opportunity come his way, he must come and establish the church in truth. Whether this be the case or not, clearly he had come, and clearly he had begun to establish order. However, with other claims on his time, his stay had been insufficient to see that order fully and firmly begun. So, he leaves Titus to do that which he would have done himself. There remains his faithful representative to continue the work in his absence. In this, Paul followed the methods of every great leader; ensuring that at their departure, there will be no vacuum of leadership because they have already trained up their replacement.
Now, the coming of order to the Christians in this locale did not please everybody. A strong church will not be welcomed by those who would profit from believers. The coming of sound doctrine, and sound teaching to a congregation will be a problem for those with their own private agendas. There will be resentment and resistance by those who see their own glory diminishing. Yet, those who establish such soundness do not grow in glory as these diminish. Not at all. Rather, they cause God's own glory to shine forth, and it is this great light which eclipses the false teachers.
Order and a strong church may not be a blessing to those who have been using the church to their own ends, but it is of great benefit to civil authorities. Far from being a threat to civil order, a church founded on truth will produce model citizens, cheerful subjects, obedient to all authority so long as it does not require their opposition to the Law of God.
In our day and age we have become entirely too accustomed to the cry of separation between church and state. How this concept has been twisted! Where once the concern was that the state might seek to establish a 'state religion' to which all must submit, now there is fear that perhaps the church might influence what the state is doing. Surely the founders of our government sought out exactly such influence! Surely, being godly men, they were seeking pastoral counsel in all matters of import. Why else the establishment of prayer in congress? Why else the office of chaplain in the government? No, the cause of fallen man has fought hard to keep from their governance anything that might interfere with their sin. They would far prefer to see their sins condoned, even legislated as rights, than to have a government over them which still understood the difference between wrong and right.
A strong church is a blessing to the government because it encourages good government. It encourages a government of sound conscience. It also blesses the government because, as the church is strong, and as the government is sound, there becomes less reason for enforcement on the government's part. If the laws of the land are just, and the people of the land are taught the sound doctrines of Christian faith, doctrines which include submission to authorities, doctrines which recognize the hand of God in deputizing those authorities which are present; if this be the case, the cost of maintaining order will be minimal, the peace of the nation will be great, and the foundations of national prosperity well laid. If this be the case in a nation, there will be no cause to continue a welfare state. The heart of the people will be charitable and industrious.
Such was the dream of a nation. Such is the potential that still smolders within that nation, if it will but rise up, shake off the dust of its travels, and awaken to the truth. The call Paul gives to the church here, we would do well to apply to the nation at large. Correct what is still out of order. It's time we stop accepting the corrosion of morals which has prevailed in the land. It's time to labor hard to reverse the corrupting trend, to cease accepting a nation whose youth see fit to slaughter, to cease accepting a nation that sees so little value in life that it will as gladly kill its children as its aged. We have become a nation addicted to image, idolizing the power of the young, and seeing no longer the wisdom of age. We have become a nation where might makes right. This ought not to be! Might cannot make right, only Truth can declare what is truly right. If we will sit back and allow the laws of the land to declare what is good to be evil, and to declare evil good, what possible right can we have to seek God's blessing upon us? Will He hear such hypocritical prayers with joy? Will He hurry to respond with love to those who have allowed such a disaster to befall themselves?
An established and orderly church is of great benefit to society at large. The establishing of that orderly church, however, is a great labor. It takes much hard work to bring order into a place that has known no real order. It takes much labor to bring humility and submission into a proud and stubborn people. Also, there is an inherent danger in the successfulness of these labors. Seeing the degree of progress that has been achieved can lead to a belief that a particular church has reached its goal, has been established in such permanent fashion as to require no further efforts. If we allow the church to look thus in our eyes, then we have indeed blinded ourselves to the true state of affairs. There is no perfect church on this earth. There is no perfect church order. With all the denominations we have, yet there is not one that could honestly claim to have the Truth, the whole Truth, and nothing but the Truth in all their doctrines, rites, and practices. The best of churches stands in continued need of reform.
This is not to suggest that we should be forever embracing change, always accepting some new thing simply because it is new. Not at all. If the church is healthy, however, we should be growing in holiness and in understanding of the God we serve. With greater understanding, and a greater degree of holiness, we may well see that within our own doctrine and practice which seemed right and yet now is clearly wrong. We may find that there were things in our established practice which were, like the Law for the Jews before us, a tutor we required for a time until we were of sufficient age and understanding to know for ourselves. There may be true errors in our doctrines that need correcting, or there may be, as I have said, things right for their time but wrong for the present. God does not change. That's not the point. The point is that we approach His ideal by degree, and if we do not, in that advancement, reassess what we established as habit along the way, we may wind up discovering that we missed the path we were to take.
No, we are not to blindly embrace change. Most assuredly, all should be checked against the doctrine we know, and the Scripture upon which is, and can be, its only solid foundation. All things should be checked against that foundation, even the structure of doctrine we have already built upon it. Every house requires periodic maintenance, and God's house is no different. If it is not cared for, it will fall into ruin. The words of Matthew Henry should stand as a constant warning to God's church today. "No easy thing is it to raise a church...The best are apt to decay and go out of order." The only thing that can prevent this tendency toward decay and disorder is attentiveness to the maintaining and reforming work the Spirit prescribes for God's children.
We mustn't allow doctrine to take on the stubbornness of habit. That stubbornness hides a deep weakness. It insists on its established ways simply because they are established ways, because it eliminates any need for thoughtful consideration of action. All must be exactly as it always has been because change makes us uncomfortable. What was to be a rule to promote life in us has become a wall to protect us from life. This is not the way it should be. Doctrine, when sound, is indeed a great protection. But when doctrine becomes our god, it has displaced the God from whom that doctrine should flow. It has become an idol, and an agency of provoking the anger of Him we claim to love. When the Spirit says 'change,' we dare not allow our established patterns to keep us from the change He seeks. Shall we test the commanded change against the revealed will of God as given us in Scripture? Absolutely. This is His established rule for us, that what is revealed by the Spirit - given our imperfect hearing, and our tendency to accept all that is spiritual as being of the Spirit, - should be validated against the word of His revelation.
There is nothing new under the sun. Where reformation comes, it is not to create some new work, but to correct what has wandered from the truth of the old, established work. It may feel new, because we have allowed the error to remain for so long that we have known nothing else. But if we will search out what the Spirit of reformation is requiring of us, we will find that it is a return to the ancient ways. We will find that what He asks of us echoes what He has ever asked of His people. It is a permanent charge for the church: set in order what is yet lacking. Correct what is still out of order.
For this work Paul has left Titus in Crete. Yet, it was not because such work was beneath Paul. In fact, what he asks of Titus is the doing of exactly what he himself would do were he still there. The labor he asks of others is not beneath him to do himself. Nor is the labor beyond all others to do, such that he must insist on doing it himself to see it done right. The labor of correcting and ordering the body is a labor that, in the long run, falls to each and every one of us to perform. We all share in the responsibility for the health of the body God has placed us in. It requires the work of many hands to keep that body healthy, to keep doctrine sound, to keep worship true. It requires obedient workmen under godly leadership to keep the house in order. We need to understand that the work our pastors seek from us is nothing they would not gladly put their own hands to. Like Paul, however, they have many demands upon their time, many labors that require their attention. Like Paul, they are not so proud as to think that every labor requires that same personal attention. They are not so proud as to think that certain of these labors are beneath their station. Not at all. They simply need the assistance of men of like mind and spirit, to carry the work forward in one place while they carry the work forward in another. Thus, by all available means, the work progresses, the walls are rebuilt, and the boundaries of the kingdom both established and expanded. Thus the work of God proceeds at a greater pace because many hands make light the work.
There is, of course, the final level of correction in which we must be involved: internal correction. If we would have a church that remains in the spirit of reformation, we must ourselves remain in the spirit of reformation. If we would have a church that is pure and holy, we must ourselves become pure and holy. It must begin with us. Before we can correct the body, we must correct ourselves, look with the eyes of Truth, hear and heed the speaking of the Holy Spirit within us, and set in order the things He points out to us. In the end, we are the church. If we, individually, are out of order, you can be assured that the church body we are attached to will also be out of order. It's inevitable. If a member of the body is hurting, the whole body hurts. If a member of the body is twisted out of shape, the whole body will suffer from the twisting. All must be held in order, or nothing is in order.
We live in an age where we tend to think that actions that effect only ourselves are acceptable whatever they may be. But this is not true. Even those things that seemingly effect only ourselves will have an effect on all with whom we are associated. The responsibility we have been given for maintaining ourselves pure and holy before God is a responsibility that is more than personal in nature. It is a social responsibility. It is a communal responsibility precisely because we are not individuals in isolation, but individuals in a community. A godly community cannot be made from ungodly individuals. The sins of the individual do not harm only the individual. We need look no further than the record of the Exodus to see this truth. When Israel fought the Canaanites for possession of the land of promise, the sins of one man, who thought his transgressions to be a secret known only to himself, brought the wrath of God upon the whole community of which he was a part.
The body must reject what is foreign to itself. In the physical, we see this in the forming of cysts, by which the body protects itself from this foreign intrusion. In the spiritual, we must develop a similar mechanism. Where there is an intrusion, a foreign spirit, we must do all we can to prevent its assimilation. What fellowship can light have with darkness? If the darkness will not give place to the light, then it must be ejected. The body must protect itself by whatever means it may. Give such an intruder one warning, then a second. If he will not change with that, then he must needs be rejected, sent back into the outer darkness. Perhaps, time will change him, and the body may later accept his return, but not until change has come, not until he has been made fit for the body he would join.
