The Truth War (29 page)

And since when has it been legitimate for the church to woo the world? Didn't the apostle John write, “Do not marvel, my brethren, if the world hates you” (1 John 3:13)? And did not Jesus say, “The world . . . hates Me because I testify of it that its works are evil” (John 7:7)? Biblical Christians have always understood that they must shun the world. Here are our Lord's own words:

“If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, ‘A servant is not greater than his master.' If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you. If they kept My word, they will keep yours also. But all these things they will do to you for My name's sake, because they do not know Him who sent Me.” (John 15:18–21)

Does that sound like it gives any latitude for an evangelistic strategy that soft-pedals the offense of the cross?

The apostle Paul frankly would have had no patience for such tactics. He never sought to win the world through intellectual acceptance, personal popularity, image, status, reputation, or things of that sort. He wrote, “We have been made as the filth of the world, the offscouring of all things” (1 Corinthians 4:13). Is the contemporary church right to attempt a “more sophisticated” approach? Dare we set ourselves apart from the godly men of the past, all of whom had to fight for the truth?

Charles Spurgeon said:

We want again Luthers, Calvins, Bunyans, Whitefields, men fit to mark eras, whose names breathe terror in our [foes'] ears. We have dire need of such. Whence will they come to us? They are the gifts of Jesus Christ to the Church, and will come in due time. He has power to give us back again a golden age of preachers, a time as fertile of great divines and mighty ministers as was the Puritan age, and when the good old truth is once more preached by men whose lips are touched as with a live coal from off the altar, this shall be the instrument in the hand of the Spirit for bringing about a great and thorough revival of religion in the land.

I do not look for any other means of converting men beyond the simple preaching of the gospel and the opening of men's ears to hear it. The moment the Church of God shall despise the pulpit, God will despise her.
¹⁴

And, we might add, the moment any church sets out to make friends with the world, that church sets itself at enmity with God (James 4:4).

In practical terms, the movement to accommodate the world has diminished Christians' confidence in divinely revealed truth. If we can't trust the preaching of God's Word to convert the lost and build the church, how can we trust the Bible at all—even as a guide for our daily living? People are being misled by the example of some of their church leaders. They are buying into the delusion that faithfulness to the Word of God is optional.

Furthermore, as biblical preaching continues to diminish, ignorance of Scripture grows. That further exacerbates every problem that stems from the decline of discernment, and the cycle of disaster continues.

Christians ought to have learned by now that we cannot avoid being an offense to the world and still remain faithful to the gospel. The gospel is inherently offensive. Christ Himself is offensive to unbelievers. He is an offense to all in error. He is an offense to all who reject the truth. He is “‘a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense.'They stumble, being disobedient to the word, to which they also were appointed” (1 Peter 2:8). The message of the cross is also a stumbling block (Galatians 5:11) and “foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1 Corinthians 1:18). Paul wrote, “God forbid that I should boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (Galatians 6:14).

Authentic Christianity has always recognized that truth is unchanging. The word of God is settled forever in heaven (Psalm 119:89). Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8). God Himself does not change (Malachi 3:6). How could we ever view truth as transient, pliable, or adaptable?

This unchanging view of truth is essential for true discernment. When the church loses its commitment to the inflexibility of truth, it loses its will to discern. It forfeits precise theology, precise morals, and precise conduct.

Right thinking and right living therefore demand careful discipline and an unyielding commitment to the truth. Discernment does not survive in an atmosphere of doctrinal confusion. It will not survive where relativism is tolerated. And it cannot survive if we compromise with the world.

A FAILURE TO INTERPRET
SCRIPTURE CAREFULLY

Another basic factor leading to the decline of discernment is a widespread failure to interpret Scripture properly. Hermeneutics— Bible interpretation—is an exacting science. Good preaching depends on careful hermeneutics. But too much modern preaching ignores the meaning of Scripture altogether. Pulpits are filled with preachers who are unwilling to do the hard work necessary to interpret Scripture properly. They pad their messages with stories, anecdotes, and clever outlines—all of which disguises the weakness or lack of biblical content.

WITHOUT THE TRUE
MEANING OF SCRIPTURE,
YOU DON'T REALLY HAVE
SCRIPTURE AT ALL. THERE IS
NO MAGIC IN THE WORDS
THEMSELVES THAT GIVES
THEM POWER APART FROM
THEIR TRUE MEANING. SO
PROPER INTERPRETATION IS
CRUCIAL—ESPECIALLY FOR
THOSE WHO PREACH.

Some have even gone so far as to suggest that a preoccupation with the meaning of Scripture is unhealthy. A book that rose to the top of the Christian best-seller list a few years ago included a warning to readers that they should be wary of preachers whose emphasis is on
explaining
Scripture rather than
applying
it.

Certainly application is crucial, but careful interpretation must always come first. To attempt to apply the Word without understanding is sheer folly. Remember, we are expressly commanded to be diligent workers, rightly dividing the Word of truth (2 Timothy 2:15). That familiar text is a mandate for working hard to make sure we have the true sense of what the Bible means. In the words of B.B. Warfield, “The sense of Scripture is Scripture.”
¹⁵
In other words, without the true meaning of Scripture, you don't really have Scripture at all. There is no magic in the words themselves that gives them power apart from their true meaning. So proper interpretation is crucial—especially for those who preach.

I cringe when I hear a novice wrench a verse out of context and impose on it a meaning that is totally unwarranted—or even contradictory to the intended sense of the text. Unfortunately, the standard has sunk so low today that even well-known Christian leaders can twist Scripture beyond recognition, yet no one seems to notice. One man who pastors a church of several thousand people recently appeared on nationwide television preaching a message on Acts 26:2, Paul's defense before Agrippa. Paul said, “I think myself happy, king Agrippa, because I shall answer for myself this day before thee touching all the things whereof I am accused of the Jews” (KJV). This man pulled out the phrase “I think myself happy” and preached a sermon on the importance of positive thinking in the midst of adversity! But Paul was not telling Agrippa anything about positive thinking; he was saying, “I consider myself fortunate” (NASB) to be able to make a defense. That preacher had corrupted the intent of Paul's inspired words because he was using the verse out of context to teach an unbiblical doctrine.

Another preacher preached a sermon from Mark 2, which tells about some men who brought their paralyzed friend to Jesus and lowered him through the roof of the house so he could be healed. Mark 2:4 says, “They could not come nigh unto him for the press” (KJV). This man took that phrase as his text and waxed eloquent, sermonizing for more than a half hour about how the press—the news media—are still keeping people from Jesus even to this day! But that verse has nothing to do with the news media. “The press” in that verse refers to the dense crowd. The whole sermon was based on an utter corruption of the meaning of the text.

Bible interpretation is a skill that requires diligent work, an understanding of the meaning of the original languages, a working knowledge of grammar and logic, a grasp of the historical settings, competence in theology, and a broad understanding of the whole of Scripture. Those who lack expertise in Greek and Hebrew must be all the more careful, checking commentaries, dictionaries, and other study helps to analyze the text as carefully as possible.

The postmodern canard is that Bible interpretation is a wholly subjective exercise, and there is therefore no single objective, intended meaning to any text. One person's impression is ultimately as good as another's. As a matter of fact, that idea is one of the main reasons many in the Emerging Church movement are ambivalent about preaching. Who is to say a preacher understands Scripture any better than the novice reader?

A similar attitude causes some people to spurn the use of commentaries and similar resources in their Bible study, as if their own uninformed first impression is just as good as careful study using reference tools. It is becoming more and more common all the time to hear people say, “I don't read commentaries and books
about
the Bible. I limit my study to the Bible itself.” That may sound very pious, but is it? Isn't it actually presumptuous? Are the written legacies of godly men of no value to us? Can someone who ignores study aids understand the Bible just as well as someone who is familiar with the scholarship of other godly teachers and pastors?

One textbook on hermeneutics answers the question this way:

Suppose we select a list of words from Isaiah and ask a man who claims he can bypass the godly learning of Christian scholarship if he can out of his own soul or prayer give their meaning or significance: Tyre, Zidon, Chittim, Sihor, Moab, Mahershalahashbas, Calno, Carchemish, Hamath, Aiath, Migron, Michmash, Geba, Anathoth, Laish, Nob, and Gallim. He will find the only light he can get on these words is from a commentary or a Bible dictionary.
¹⁶

Good answer. It reveals the utter folly of thinking that objective study is unnecessary. The person who is not a diligent student cannot be an accurate interpreter of God's Word. Scripture indicates that such a person is not approved by God and should be ashamed of himself (2 Timothy 2:15).

People do not usually buy into false doctrine purposely. They err because of laziness, ineptness, carelessness, or foolishness in handling Scripture. In 2 Timothy 2:17–18, Paul describes the destructive impact of false teachers this way: “Their message will spread like cancer. Hymenaeus and Philetus are of this sort, who have strayed concerning the truth, saying that the resurrection is already past; and they overthrow the faith of some.”

The Greek verb translated “strayed” is
astoch
ï , which literally means “to miss the mark.” It suggests that Hymenaeus and Philetus were aiming at the truth; they just missed it. They weren't actually trying to devise error, but being careless and unskilled in handling the truth, they turned to “profane and idle babblings” (v. 16), which led them to conclude that the Resurrection had already taken place. And their error, absurd as it was, had already upset the faith of others. Now it was spreading like cancer. That is precisely why in verse 15 Paul urged Timothy to be a diligent student of the Word of truth.

What Paul was calling for is exactly the opposite of the shoot-from-the-hip ad-libbing that takes place in many contemporary pulpits. You can see this daily on Christian television. It is one of the chief reasons some of the celebrity televangelists come up with so many novel doctrines. I'm convinced many of them improvise their theology as they speak.

That is a dangerous, deadly approach. It invariably perverts the truth, and it subverts people's ability to differentiate between sound doctrine and error. How can we be discerning if we don't even know how to interpret Scripture rightly? We can't establish sound biblical principles for discernment until we understand what Scripture means.

THE NEGLECT OF CHURCH DISCIPLINE

Yet another reason discernment is so rare today and apostasy is such a serious problem is the almost universal failure of churches to follow Jesus' instructions in Matthew 18 on how to deal with sinning church members. Sadly, few Christians obey Christ in this crucial area of confronting sin in one another's lives. Jesus addressed this topic:

“If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he hears you, you have gained your brother. But if he will not hear, take with you one or two more, that ‘by the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established.' And if he refuses to hear them, tell it to the church. But if he refuses even to hear the church, let him be to you like a heathen and a tax collector.” (Matthew 18:15–17)

If you see a brother in sin, go to him. Confront him. Try to lift him up, build him up, strengthen him. Urge him to repent. If he refuses to repent, he must ultimately be put out of the church. Paul said not even to eat with such a person (1 Corinthians 5:11). This is not to suggest you should treat him like an enemy, but rather that you love him enough to seek his repentance by whatever means possible. Paul even instructed the Corinthians to “deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus” (v. 5).

The church must hold up a high and holy standard. Avery clear line must be drawn between the world and the church. Known and open sin cannot be tolerated. As soon as the church stops dealing with sin seriously, the world mingles with the church and the difference is obliterated. That is why Christians are not supposed to be able to go on sinning unchallenged by one another.