Paul has been describing what is needed in a minister. Now, in describing the duties of that office, he has arrived at the reason for all these qualifications. The reason, in short, is that the teacher's primary tool is truth, and his primary purpose is to equip others with that same tool. For one to be a teacher of truth, one's life really must reflect belief in that truth. That belief cannot help but show in character, and showing in character, it becomes part of the lesson taught. That said, there remain good traits and bad traits in teaching. Like the teacher, the character of the teaching also reflects the purpose for which the teacher teaches.
Barnes tells us that the purpose of teaching must not be to dictate the terms of faith, nor to denounce the errors of unbelief. On the face of it, this doesn't seem quite right. However, he continues to tell us what the purpose should be: the purpose should be a seeking to convince the unbeliever by speaking clear truth. Is he saying, then, that we should not teach with regard to sound doctrine? Is he saying that a teacher should not seek to ensure that those he teaches are grounded in the same like faith as is his own? Surely not. This is, after all, exactly the means by which the teacher learned. Those of sound faith taught him of their faith. However, the teacher must bear in mind the Scriptural admonition upon Church leaders - they are not to 'lord it over' their charges.
What Barnes is opposing here is the dictatorial attitude, the unyielding insistence on 'my way or the highway.' Such an attitude displays a lack of understanding of the truth that is to be taught. It reflects a self-image enlarged beyond reason, a person who has forgotten the reason for humility in the presence of God. It suggests that the teacher is no longer teaching God's appointed lessons, but lessons of his own.
Consider the other meaning of 'dictate.' In the world of commerce, this conveys the idea of speaking with the clear purpose of having another record our words accurately and completely. However, the one who labors at so accurately and completely capturing our words is concerned not with catching their meaning, but only in catching them. All attention is focused on rapid and accurate writing of what is being said, and in that mode the larger portion of comprehension is lost.
Doctrine cannot be established this way. Human nature will ever resist the coercive attempts of a dictatorial insistence. Barring that issue, if the lessons are given as dictation, the student will doubtless carefully record his notes and file them away for the night before the test. Yet, he cannot know when the test might be, so the studying never happens, and the test, when it comes, will be failed. Sound doctrine has not been passed on, it has merely been preserved in writing. As Scripture is already recorded for us, was this really necessary? Did it serve a kingdom purpose? Not at all. Kingdom purpose sought to save and preserve lives, not ideas.
So far, we have been considering the teacher's duties with regard to the believer. The same sorts of issues apply when confronting the unbeliever. The lies which unbelief speaks forth must not be left unchallenged, yet we are not to fall into denunciation. Denunciation serves only to anger. It is the language of rhetoric. It is the language of emotion. Shouting down the opposition displays no fervor for truth, it displays only an understanding of that truth insufficient to the task at hand. When opposition comes, our purpose must be to lovingly, patiently, and logically teach. Teaching is, after all, the job of the teacher. Shouting slogans is the job of the mob. Certainly, as teachers of truth, we will not leave lies to masquerade as truth. However, the way to destroy a lie is to expose it to the truth it pretends to be. The way to free a mind from the hold of such lies is to lead it on the paths of truth.
Simply telling an unbeliever he is wrong will accomplish nothing. He will cheerfully tell you the same thing regarding yourself. No gain is made on either side, and however much you escalate such an exchange, no gain ever will be made. Even if the situation escalates to the point of getting physical, still neither of you are likely to change your minds. If anything, you will become the more entrenched in your position. If you would have this man to change his views, you must do far more than tell him he is wrong, you must convince him that he is wrong. This you can do, but only by convincing him that the truth is true. His own mind must grasp the reasoning. His own conscience must come to the conclusion that he has been on the wrong path. He must be left with the sense that, however much you have helped, he has reached the answer on his own power, neither having been shoved into it, nor dragged into it.
The truth must be made clear. It must be taught in a fashion that those who are listening can follow and comprehend. Truth is powerful, but to know its power, we must understand its message. To truly know its power, we must do far more than understand. We must allow it to become part and parcel of who we are. This is what we seek to give believer and unbeliever alike, a soul-deep comprehension and assimilation of truth, a living out of truth. This is what can counter the myths and lies of this age, as it has done in past ages.
For all its vaunted science, the modern age remains steeped in mythologies. What has changed, where anything has changed, is that man has made himself the center of his mythology. It is a sad sort of mythology, for it points to nothing greater than the self, no hope of change, no hope of justice, simply what is. It denies the future, claiming that only this present life exists. It seeks escape from the judgment that the soul knows must come by claiming that no man will escape the finality of physical death. They have focused all their tales on the merely physical in hopes of escaping the issues of the soul. But the soul is the greater part of the man, and cannot be escaped though one should try his entire life to do so. How shall a man escape himself?
If man is the end-all of his own life, if this is all there is, then all hope of justice is gone. Clearly, justice, justice such as the conscience of men can look upon and call truly just, is not to be found among courts of human decision. If justice were just, what need of lawyers? To what end the defense attorney if the prosecutor and the judge are men of true justness? If the focus of the court were purely on arriving at the truth of a matter, and requiring or giving satisfaction as the matter deserved, there would be no need of a defense attorney. His whole purpose appears to be to protect the defendant from any improprieties on the prosecutor's behalf, and beyond that, to do his utmost to ensure that - if his defendant is guilty - justice is not served. What justice is that?
Yet, we are a people aware of justice. From birth, we are keenly aware of it. Nobody teaches us about fairness, it is an internal monitor in us. In large part, nobody needs to teach us as to what is right or wrong. Such knowledge is innate to our being. The training is merely required to exercise our attentiveness to the message of our thoughts, to build a habit of obeying the conscience over the desires of the moment.
The truth of this mythology which seeks to put man at the center, is that in denying man a soul, denying man a day of honest judgment, it has denied man all hope. Robbed of soul, robbed of conscience, robbed of any basis for morality, existence is made pointless. To seek to do good is no better than to seek doing bad in this system, for in the grand scheme of things, it won't have mattered except to the extent that it has made our path easier. If crime is the easy road, what reason can be given not to pursue it? The halls of justice are not deterrent, so long as we can afford a good 'defense.' It's not really a court of justice, it's a gambling hall. Since the truth of the matter is of no more concern than our fair treatment, since truth can be set aside for a reasonably good technicality, we need only calculate the odds of our getting off free.
The popular motto of the justice system today is "if you can't do the time, don't do the crime." This is a deterrent? It's nothing but a sadly honest statement of the nature of the system. This is not an admonition to walk the paths of righteousness, it's an invitation to the gambling table. It's a suggestion to the criminal to determine to the best of his own abilities whether crime will pay or not, in his case. The deterrent of a perfect judge in a courtroom with perfect knowledge of the case has been taken away. There is no certainty in this system that goodness is really the better choice, that right will eventually prevail.
In such a system as this, the odds are really in favor of might winning out. It's a system in which popularity trumps propriety, where pleasure beats purity. It's a system where the only moral standard is our own opinion. How can this lead to anything but conflict? Since every man's standards are but his own, conflict is all but guaranteed every time two men meet.
Faced with a system such as this, it is indeed imperative that we offer truth in its place. It is imperative that we declare the solid, unchangeable standards of Scripture when we are confronted with this baseless pseudo-morality. To leave such nonsense unchallenged is to accept its truthfulness. It is to join in with the mad chorus declaring that what's right for me is right, and what's right for you - though it would be wrong for me - is right, too. It's to accept that all paths lead to the same goal. It's to sing with the new-agers that all gods are equal, that it's not who you worship or how you worship, so long as you worship. It's accepting religion in the form of man.
We have the ultimate defense against this nonsense, for we bear the truth. The truth is powerful in the face of lies, just as the light is powerful to dispel darkness. Here, we must see that Truth is more than the cold facts of theology, as Charlie Peacock has been wont to call them. We cannot teach another of Truth if it is not an integral part of who we are ourselves. Charlie put it this way: "Truth, to be understood, must be lived." I would say this is all the more applicable to the one who would teach. Perhaps we could rephrase it thusly, "truth, to be understandable, must be lived out before us." The power of a truthful life is indeed such as will easily vanquish every falsehood it encounters. This is the crux of what Calvin is telling us. Truth is powerful. It bears along with it the very power of the God who is Truth. However, that power is only useful where Truth is borne truthfully.
This is why Jesus was so hard on the hypocrites he encountered as the teachers of God's people. They had taken the tool of Truth and made of it a powerless thing, because they refused to use the tool according to instructions. Yet, the tool, in this case, is stronger than its wielder. Truth is indeed powerful. It is sufficiently powerful to show itself true even when in the hands of a liar. Truth cannot be bent out of its way, it cannot be disposed with. Truth will make itself known and understood to those who seek it out.
What, then, was the error of the hypocrites, that they could hold such a tool and not understand it? As I said, they failed to follow the instructions. Truth, to be understandable, must be lived. Where truth is being lived, there cannot help but be love. This is the power behind the truth. A life that understands God's Truth must behold God's love. A life that beholds God's love, truly beholds it, cannot but become a conduit, a reflecting pool if you will, filled by that love it has beheld, and giving freely from that infinite supply to all with whom it comes into contact. This is a true life, able to tear down the strongholds. This is the life of a teacher who can speak into the lives of believer and non-believer alike. This is life in the power of the Holy Spirit, who teaches us all things, and who teaches truly, only relaying to us what He has heard in the Father's presence.
Love alone will not suffice. Love without the understanding of truth is not really love yet. This is what we saw in action in the sixties, love without truth. It works no better than does truth without love. They are equally incorrect in their opposite ways. The two must be joined. We must approach those in error not with an intent to shout them down, not with louder words in hopes of drowning out their message. No, we must seek out their faculties of reason. We must come in the loving hope of correction, the desire to help them to recognize the deception that has laid hold of them, and to show them the road back to righteousness.
The majority of those who are pursuing their blind course are not doing so out of some great desire to hit the wall. They follow the course precisely because they are blind. Within their deepest places, they seek truth as surely as do we, but they are as imperfect as we. They are in the place we once were ourselves, devoid of Truth, and thinking our course to be right. It took somebody coming to us, showing us where we had gone off course, showing us where the real road lay, to bring us out of our delusion. It will take the same for them. And, just as a stranger's voice could not really show us what we needed to see, we cannot show them if we are just strangers on the street. What does a stranger know of my life? No, teaching takes time. It needs the time to establish connection, to establish trust. Only when trust has been established, when love has been shown real, can real teaching begin.
A large part of that trust is wrapped up in living out what we claim to believe. As I noted before, nobody's going to believe a lesson that the teacher hasn't learned for himself. Over and over I have heard this same truth brought out by the teachers around me. When God gives them a particularly important message to teach, it is imperative that they learn it before they teach it. The lessons of the Church invariably apply equally to all. Every teacher remains a student, and quite often it will be his own lessons that are most painful to learn. But they must be learned, else they cannot be taught to any effect.
However, life experience in itself is not the end all of effectiveness, either. Experience is only useful when it is the experience of sound doctrine. If all we have experienced is sin and rebellion, we are not fit to teach a pig. If we have read all about God and righteousness, but have not experienced God and righteousness, our teaching will be accurate but ineffectual. We must have both. We must have sound doctrine. To teach anything else is worse than useless, it is a danger to ourselves and to all we teach. To teach unexperienced truth is equally dangerous. Our students will learn no more from us than that same head knowledge, and will be in danger of thinking - as we appear to think - that this head knowledge is enough. It isn't. God's looking for life knowledge, knowledge that involves us from head to toe, from morning to night, from finger to heart. He's looking for those with a heart after His own heart. He isn't looking for a people with very clear concepts of what God is, what goodness and purity look like, and what the penalty for sin is. He's looking for a people upon whose hearts He can write these things. The mind is necessary, but the mind is not enough. God wants the heart.
Yes, He is interested in our doctrine being sound, but if that doctrine does not dwell in our hearts, then no matter how truthful it may be, it is not yet sound. Adam Clarke tells us that unless doctrine is sound, it us useless to profess it. I think this is particularly true when we consider what I've just said - that doctrine must be a matter of the heart to be sound. If this is not the case, our profession of faith and belief is in reality a lie. If the heart is not convinced, then we don't really believe it. We have merely memorized the script, locked away a few important facts and figures in memory so we can pass the test; but the content is meaningless to us. Like a recording, we can repeat it back on a moment's notice, but it doesn't inform who we are.
If belief hasn't informed our own being, then what we claim to believe, what our minds have recorded but not assimilated, is as useless to those we attempt to teach these things to as it has been to us. It is a waste of time and a danger to our souls to sit under the influence of one whose doctrine is a matter of head alone; a waste because in his lessons truth will have lost the power to change life, and a danger because the best he can hope to accomplish is to make us in his own image, and thus deprive us of the power he has been deprived of.
Come out from under such teaching! Abandon such ways if they are yours! I recently sat through a class which was intended to lay down a groundwork of sound doctrine. There was a great deal in that class that I could not but disagree with, but the underlying themes of the class, I think, were undeniable. The teacher's main theme for the entire course was, "How's your heart?" In this, though I take issue with his doctrinal specifics, he was absolutely correct. Doctrine that hasn't penetrated to the heart, that hasn't assumed control of the heart, is vain and empty knowledge.
Another favorite comment of his is, "doctrine is what you do, not what you say." This is to be hoped, certainly, yet I would challenge us to find any man who fully lives out his beliefs. Yet, he is right insofar as a statement of belief which has absolutely no reflection in the professor's life is worse than vanity. It is a lie. It is a claiming ownership of something that is not his. Shall I claim to be Greek because I know a bit about Greek culture? Shall I claim to be African because I've read a little of African history? Shall I claim to be President because I've learned what the requirements of the office entail? Clearly, to make such claims would be utter nonsense. The same holds true for the claim of being a Christian. If our claim is based on nothing more than knowing a few - or even a great deal of facts regarding Christian faith, and yet the claims reflect nothing about my life, then the facts of my life will shout out a refutation of the lying claims of my lips. Paul puts it this way later in this very letter, "They profess to know God, but by their deeds they deny Him (Ti 1:16)."
Lord, wake us up to this fact. Cause Your truth to dwell in us, not simply to catch our attention, but to be woven into the very fabric of who we are. Oh God! Make us a people who truly live out the life You have given us. Engrave Your words, Your commandments, upon our hearts, my Lord and King, that we might come to the place where we are faithful to do them. Holy One, You know us, You know our weakness and imperfection. You have forgiven us much, and we are forever awed at Your mercy towards us. Yet, by Your Word, we have also come to know ourselves, You have given us to know our true condition, and knowing this, we know that much remains to be corrected in us. We are still so far, dear God, from living out the belief You have given us to believe.
By Your grace, You have caused us to believe the truth You have declared. By Your grace, You have sent the Holy Spirit unto us to lead us into all truth. By Your grace, You have provided us with teachers, for faith comes by hearing Your words, and to hear, we must be taught. You have, in Your infinite grace, provided all that is needful for us to believe, and to believe truly. Father God, if there be in me any portion of Your truth that has remained stuck in my head alone, which has not traveled the pathways to my heart; if there is any part of Your truth that has not fully laid claim to my life, I ask that You bring it home to me, that You would etch it there. Work upon me, God, to make this life a reflection of Your truth, to be a life of sound doctrine lived out.
