The person in this article is not quite as radical as I am, but I always say to judge by fruit, and this fruit sounds incredible. Note that he has made some radical changes to the purpose of the church he is started compared to the traditional model. One area I specifically want to point out is that he’s changed what the primary use of the money is for, and suddenly people want to give … even in a down economy!

Why I Refuse To Give Up on the Local Church

This is another long commentary. I hated not giving you the information because I know there are those who will really benefit from it. So today, I have introduced a new convention. Some of the sections are marked "(Advanced)." Children and beginners can deal with these sections at some other time, or maybe in another read through next year. Or they could be set aside for leisure study.

Matthew 13:3-15: The Parables

I mentioned yesterday that you would see a change in the way Jesus taught the people after the Pharisees blasphemed the Holy Spirit. Now, everything is in parables.

The reason that Jesus gives is interesting, and it could be frightening if we don’t keep it in context. Does God really want people to have hardened hearts and not hear the Word of God?

The answer is yes, but it is not random people. We saw yesterday that it is the "wise and prudent" from whom he hides the word (Matt. 11:25, NASB). These are those that are wise and prudent in their own estimation rather than having a true wisdom in humility before God. God speaks of them often (e.g., Jer. 9:23-24; 1 Cor. 1:27).

Thus, the point of parables is that when Jesus speaks to a crowd, he lets the Father choose who will hear and who will not hear. Parables come, and if the person "has ears to hear," then the Father will let him understand the parables. If not, then the Word of God has not been thrown to pigs and dogs (Matt. 7:6).

Matthew 13:16-23: Those Who Have Ears To Hear

In private, among those who have ears to hear, Jesus spoke more plainly, being willing to explain each parable carefully even when he seemed a little frustrated with their lack of understanding (Matt. 15:15-16).

Matthew 13:18-23: The Word

In modern times, when we say "The Word," we usually mean the Bible. That is far too small a way to use "The Word."

Jesus himself is called the Word of God (Jn. 1:1-3). Every time God speaks, in any way, it is the Word of God. Even further, though, the Word of God can be like a seed that is planted in our heart that actually grows (Acts 6:7; Jam. 1:18,21-22; 1 Pet. 1:23).

On a practical basis, we need to understand that we have the Word of God living in us, growing in us … if we are Christians. Just as we must not underestimate the supernatural power of being a Spirit-filled human being (as a result of entering the new covenant with God through Christ), so we must not underestimate the power of the Word of God within us.

It is because of the Word of God that "you may all prophesy, one by one" (1 Cor. 14:31).

We need to get out of our religious boxes and not confine the idea of prophecy to standing up in church and shouting, "Thus saith the Lord!" In a church of three or four hundred people, you may not all prophesy one by one in that manner. It would be disorderly (1 Cor. 14:31-33).

Instead, the apostles lived as people in whom the Word of God lived. They spoke what the Holy Spirit gave them to say. How many times did Peter pass the crippled man at the Gate Beautiful before the day that he fixed his eyes on him, pulled him to his feet, and healed him in Jesus’ name? (Acts 3:2-11). Would the crippled man listening to Paul have been healed had Paul not known that the Word of God comes in more forms than the Scriptures? (Acts 14:8-10).

Matthew 13:18-23: The Hearers (Advanced)

It will help us to remember that not everyone is meant to hear. We can wear ourselves out hoping to reach people that God has no intention of reaching because they are among the wise and prudent from whom God is purposely hiding the Word.

There are those that will not hear. We can speak the Word, but we cannot open spiritually deaf ears on our own. God must do that. Just as Jesus began to speak in parables and to leave the sorting of men to his Father, so we must leave the sorting of men to our Father. We must simply be faithful to let the Word of God grow within us through fellowship with God by his Spirit, through the study of the Scriptures, and through following the Spirit and the Word of God as they move inside of us—all balanced by the wise input of spiritual brothers and sisters who are with us in the church and without whom we are always in danger of deception (Heb. 3:13; Eph. 4:11-16).

Matthew 13:24-30: Tares Among the Wheat (Advanced)

This is an important parable to remember. We must be careful of our judgment, and we must be careful that in driving out those that we think are not qualified to be in the church, that we are not plucking one of our Father’s plants.

On the other hand, this parable is often taken too far today and used to justify the fact that we never put anyone out of the church, nor do we make much effort to know the lives of the flock well enough to know if anyone needs to be put out of the church.

The church must be protected. The apostle Paul is very clear about this (1 Cor. 5), and we must find the balance between the mercy and patience of the parable of the tares and dealing with things that must be dealt with inside the church of 1 Corinthians 5.

Matthew 13:33-35: The Leaven

Some parables are not explained by Jesus, and they’re subject to a lot of interpretations by Christians. It’s not my place to interpret parables for you, as you should be able to tell from the context of our reading today.

I do want to point out, though, that these are parables. Every tiny detail does not need to work out. It’s enough to get the main points.

Also, we have to be careful to question our assumptions. "Leaven" is often used negatively in the Bible, especially in the apostles’ writings. That may mean that in this parable leaven is something bad, and it’s talking about how the church will be corrupted. It is also possible, however, that we must question our assumption and look at leaven not as something bad, but simply as something that tends to permeate everything it becomes a part of.

Matthew 13:47-52: End Times (Advanced)

Jesus says some things about the end times in the parable of the fishing net and in the parable of the wheat and tares that are interesting.

Anyone who has been a Christian for very long is familiar with the term "rapture." Rapture is a reference to the return of Jesus, where he raises up all the dead in Christ, and then living Christians immediately follow. At that point, Paul says, we will be "with the Lord forever" (1 Thess. 4:13-18).

Jesus’ parables, however, don’t paint exactly the same picture. In the parables, there is the return of Christ with his angels, and then his angels gather the wicked out of the kingdom.

It’s sort of backwards from the rapture idea. One has the saints pulled out; the other has the wicked pulled out.

What I think is important to remember is that there are two types of prophecies (and maybe more). There are warning prophecies, clear and straightforward, telling you how to prepare for some upcoming event or warning you that you’ll be punished if you don’t repent. Those are straightforward and easy to interpret.

Then there are prophecies which are sent for the future as landmarks and proofs that large, important events are on the right path.

No one has ever been able to figure out the second type of prophecy in advance. No one—not anyone—sorted out the prophecies of Christ before his first coming. There were numerous theories about the Messiah, but not a one of them was correct until Jesus showed up and explained the Scriptures and then fulfilled them.

We should be very careful about having confidence in any theories we have about the second coming of King Jesus.

Matthew 13:58: Not Many Miracles

The Bible tells us that Jesus didn’t do many miracles in his hometown because of their unbelief. I have to wonder how many miracles we miss out on because of the unbelief of America and most of the western world.

Don’t be surprised if you hear many more miracle reports from the front lines of missions in third world countries, where the people are still "ignorant" and "superstitious." Sometimes those are code words for "believing" and "in touch with spiritual things."

God has always hidden things from the wise and prudent and revealed them to babes. It is not our brilliant scientific insights that are "exposing" miracles and thus preventing them from happening. No, they happen all the time.

The fact that I’m sitting here typing this commentary on my last day of chemo after two weeks of radiation prior is a testimony to the miracle of prayer. Those things happen on a daily basis if you’re watching.

There’s an interesting blog by a Christian living in the Middle East who ministers to Muslims. You may be interested in his quite honest stories about praying for healing for Muslims.

Matthew 15:1-14: The Traditions of Men

Nothing on Matthew 14. I felt it could speak for itself.

You should notice the little regard—in fact, the distaste—that Jesus had for adding man’s traditions to the Word of God.

Tradition is not a bad word in and of itself. The traditions of the apostles are the Word of God (1 Cor. 14:37; 2 Thess. 2:15). It is to the apostles that God commissioned the bringing of the Gospel to the world (Matt. 28:19-20; Mark 16:15-16; John 14:26; 16:13; 17:8, 18-20).

The apostles have preached the Gospel to us from the Lord Jesus Christ. (Clement, 1 Clement 42, A.D. 96)

The Church, though dispersed through the whole world, even to the ends of the earth, has received from the apostles and their disciples this faith … (Irenaeus, Against Heresies I:10:1, c. A.D. 185)

I could produce dozens of quotes like that. Just as Moses brought the Law to Israel, and it was inappropriate for the elders to add traditions to the Law later, so the apostles bring the Gospel to the church, and it is inappropriate to add traditions to the traditions of the apostles (Jude 3).

Matthew 15:21-28: The Syrophoenician Woman

I mentioned yesterday that Jesus was hard on Gentiles because he was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel. Nonetheless, when they stood in faith, he gave them what they wished and often remarked upon the greatness of their faith.

In this case, it’s the Syrophoenician woman, and her persistence is phenomenal.

Whenever we run across such examples of faith, it is good to look at the reading and consider what really marked her as a woman of faith. Her persistence, clearly knowing that Jesus could do what she was asking him to do, was the hallmark I see. You may see something more. The point in either case is to learn to imitate her.

Matthew 16:1-12: The Frustration of Jesus

In chapter 15 we read that Jesus fed more than 5,000 people with five loaves and two fish. He fed more than 4,000 people with seven loaves and a few fish. He healed whole crowds of people, who were left marveling.

Immediately, thereafter, we read at the start of chapter 16 that the Pharisees asked him for a sign.

Is it any wonder that he told them forget it?

Worse, his disciples immediately follow by worrying about whether they had remembered to buy bread for a man who can feed thousands of people with a few loaves! Is it any wonder he said, "How can you not understand?" (v. 11).

Matthew 16:13-20: Peter the Rock (Advanced)

This passage of Scripture has been a hotbed of contention between the Roman Catholic Church and the Protestants ever since the Reformation. To any serious student of history, however, it cannot be.

Jesus calls Peter the Rock in this verse, and says that he will build the church on Peter. The Roman Catholic Church has historically interpreted this to mean that because Peter lived in Rome and appointed the first church leaders in Rome, that everything Jesus says here applies to the leaders at Rome, in particular their bishop, who is now known as "the pope."

Since Protestants don’t agree with this, they have attempted to use the Greek word for Peter (petros) and the Greek word for rock (petra) to distinguish between Peter and the Rock. They have also tried to deny that Peter ever really went to Rome.

Historically, none of these arguments work. The reason that the name Peter is petros and rock is petra has to do with the way names work in Greek. Peter, being a man, needs a name ending in -os. You don’t name guys Petra, not in ancient Greece. It messes up the language.

On top of that, if you’ll excuse my flippancy here, any 1st grader can tell that Jesus is calling Peter the rock from the context. You will rarely go right when you pick at words to make a sentence say something drastically different than what it seems to say. (The exception is if you can prove a translation error, in which case there are plenty of good translations out today. You should be able to get at least one or two of those to back your new wording.)

Peter, obviously, is not the main rock of the Church. Jesus is. Jesus is called the chief cornerstone repeatedly (Matt. 21:42; Acts 4:11; Eph. 2:20; 1 Pet. 2:5-7). Together, all of us are being built up into a spiritual habitation for the Lord, and we are all stones in this building (1 Pet. 2:4-10). This does not change the fact that Jesus said what he said to Peter, the very first rock added to Jesus in the building.

Secondly, there is abundant historical evidence that Peter was in Rome. It is the consistent testimony of the early Christians, and even Protestant scholars admit that Babylon was almost certainly a code name for Rome in 1 Peter 5:13, indicating Peter wrote that letter from Rome and even describes himself as an elder there (5:1).

However, there is no historical evidence that any early Christians tried to transfer Peter’s authority to the church at Rome. Roman Catholic apologists have made diligent, and disappointingly dishonest, attempts to establish that they did, but those don’t hold up. The first Roman bishop to claim that he had primacy over all churches—or perhaps only over Roman and north African churches—was Stephen, and that wasn’t until over 200 years after Christ. His claims were rejected by everyone.

The full historic arguments are covered at Is the Roman Catholic Church the One True Church as briefly as possible. The arguments are far too long to address here, but I am confident, after numerous debates with Roman Catholic apologists, that the arguments are not doubtful.

Matthew 16:13-20: Can the Church Fall? (Advanced)

Jesus says that the gates of Hades will not be able to stand against the church which will be built upon Peter (as well as the other apostles—Eph. 2:20).

Does this mean the church can never fall, as some major ancient churches claim in defense of themselves?

If it does, then Jesus’ prophecy failed because overall, the "church" suffered a terrible fall in the fourth century. It merged with the government, allowed the government to control many of its leaders, and became filled with people who never would have been allowed into the church before that time. The result was violence, bloodshed, intrigue, and political involvement that makes the church after the fourth century incomparable with the church before it. (See Fall of the Church for more information.)

So what does Jesus mean?

Notice that it is the "gates" of Hell that will not stand before the church. Gates are not offensive weapons against which the church must defend. Gates are defensive weapons, and rescuing people from Hades is what the church is all about!

When the church stands and obeys Christ, the gates of Hades will be completely ineffective at stopping it.

When it marries the world, loses holiness, enters into fellowship with the unrighteousness (2 Cor. 6:14-18), and puts its cares in the things of the world, then the gates of Hell will still not prevail. They will simply stand, unassailed by a worldly, counterfeit church.

Matthew 16:21-23: Peter Rebukes Jesus!

You know things are wrong when the disciple is rebuking the Master!

We must all be aware that just because we have recently come from the height of our spirituality, we are not immune to being influenced by earthly, self-confident thinking. In fact, perhaps we are more prone to thinking wrongly because our spiritual high may have made us overconfident!

Peter’s great pronouncement, which led to Jesus’ calling him "Rock," was followed immediately by rebuking him and even calling him "satan," or "the adversary," as satan can be translated.

Matthew 16:28 – 17:8: The Kingdom of God with Power

Each time we read in the Gospels that some of the apostles will soon see the kingdom of God coming with power, the statement is followed by the story of the mount of transfiguration. This was the preview that the most central apostles received of the the kingdom of God with power.

Matthew 17:9-13: Elijah

Once again we have a taste of a prophecy (Mal. 4:5) that everyone thought they understood in the time of Jesus, and Jesus gives a completely different twist to it. The coming of Elijah was fulfilled by John the Baptist!

This wasn’t because God couldn’t actually send Elijah. Several apostles had just seen Elijah talking with Jesus. God could have sent him, but he chose instead to send John the Baptist in the spirit and power of Elijah.

Despite the fact that all Christians know this, many still await a coming of Elijah as though they’ve forgotten Jesus’ interpretation!

Perhaps there is a literal coming of Elijah before the last day, but it would be good if we held all our thoughts about end time prophecy very lightly, knowing that God is not in the habit of revealing the whole story in advance, but just giving enough to bolster our faith and provide a roadmap as the events happen.

Matthew 17:14-21: The Demoniac (Advanced)

When Jesus and the apostles returned from the mount of transfiguration, they discovered that the other apostles had been unable to cast the demon out of a boy.

Jesus casts the demon out, and when the apostles ask why they could not, Jesus tells them it’s because they don’t have enough faith. If you have a King James Version or New King James Version, you’ll find your Bible adding that this kind of demon only comes out by prayer and fasting.

It’s not in the more modern translations because our study of the texts of the apostles writings that have been saved makes us think that Matthew did not originally write the statement about prayer and fasting.

I believe I have already mentioned to you that historically, God has not gone out of his way to preserve exact sentences and words for us. No inspired texts have come down to us without some confusion in tiny specifics. For example, some texts of Matthew have that sentence, but most don’t.

In this case, Matthew may not have written the part about prayer and fasting, but Mark did (9:29).

There’s something to learn from that. It’s not necessarily true that such power was only possible if prayer and fasting happened first. The apostles themselves, lacking in faith at that time, would have needed prayer and fasting to build their faith. It’s not that prayer and fasting, necessarily, were required for the demon to leave. In the end, the problem was their lack of faith, not their lack of prayer and fasting, but prayer and fasting can be a route to greater faith.

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It’s a weekend, and we’re not doing "Through the Bible in a Year" on the weekend. This post today is probably going to make some people irate, but every word of what follows is true.

Once again, this based on a question that was emailed to me. I’m telling you, these things come up over and over again. I’m not fixated on Roman Catholicism; this issue is brought up to me repeatedly.

I’ve sort of covered this, just recently, but this is perhaps more succinct. I’m also learning that saying things over and over is sometimes necessary.

The question:

I am a lay person from a Protestant background. I have a Roman Catholic person asking me…"Who is right? Who is wrong? If you don’t have someone in charge then you have some 40,000 different churches and each one is open to their own interpretation of the Bible." I need some input on how to respond.

The problem with having someone in charge to tell you what the Bible says is, what if they’re wrong. Yes, there are 40,000 denominations arguing about what the Bible says. Is that a reason to turn to the Roman Catholic Church and let them interpret the Bible for us?

Let me tell you what happens when everyone agrees that the Roman Catholic Church ought to interpret the Bible for us. The first thing the RCC does is take the Bible away from everyone. The next thing they do is burn people to death if they try to give the Bible back to people. They teach people to worship saints, which is not any different than the idols they previously worshipped. All idols of all cultures are basically men or women who were heroes, then exalted to God status after they died. (That’s pretty general, but at its most basic level, that’s true.) The Roman Catholic Church simply used saints for their hero worship.

Holiness becomes lost when the RCC is interpreting the Bible for everyone. Holiness becomes limited to doing the 7 sacraments and attending mass. Superstitions abound, and the RCC faith is easily combined with pagan religions like voodoo.

Why do I say all these things? I say all these things because that is what happened in Europe from around A.D. 600 until the Renaissance and Reformation. Some 600 to 900 years everyone in Europe did what the RCC said, and what I described above is the result.

What about today? In countries where Roman Catholicism has been overthrown, like Europe and the United States, the RCC looks a lot like Protestantism with more rituals, though their members still almost all limit holiness to the 7 sacraments and mass. However, in countries where everyone is Roman Catholic, the picture is much worse. The worship of Mary and other saints continues in Italy and South America to a degree that horrifying, and South American and Central American Catholics regularly have a religion that is an even mixture of Catholic superstition and voodoo or shamanism.

Yes, there’s a problem, but turning over authority to the RCC has proven for 1400 years to be a much worse problem.

The real solution is to acknowledge the fact that in many nations, Christianity in all its versions is the national religion or is the only acceptable religion. In those nations, most Christians are not real Christians. They are simply following the religion of their nation or the religion of their parents, grandparents, or great grandparents.

Ever since the emperor Constantine, the Christian churches have been institutions that made room for these unconverted Christians. Those unconverted Christians are always going to be used by the devil to create doctrinal controversies and to make sure whatever doctrine is accepted makes allowance for their unholy lives.

Here’s the solution. Wherever real disciples—people who want to obey Jesus Christ—get together and serve Jesus wholeheartedly, they will find that the promise of God is true. They will find that the Holy Spirit—the Anointing of God—really will lead them into everything they need to know, and that leading will be true and not a lie. If they will rely on him, knowing that they must be together in order to grow and live (1 Cor. 12; Eph. 4), then speak the truth in love to one another, the Lord God will guide them through every controversy, teach them what matters, and move them to experience the miraculous power of a holy, united life.

That solution works. It’s not easy, and it’s very messy. Even the apostle Paul had problems with controversy and sin in his churches (e.g., 2 Cor. 12:20-21; Gal. 1:6). Nonetheless, the Scriptures promise that the result of clinging together with the saints–not with pretend saints, who must be ejected (1 Cor. 5)–will produce guidance from God that is trustworthy (1 Jn. 2:27; Eph. 4:13).

In the meantime, counterfeit Christianity will go on and on, and there will always be someone coming along to say, "There are 40,000 different churches nad each one is open to their own interpretation of the Bible, so listen to me."

Don’t. God has given an answer in the Scriptures, and it involves those who want to follow Jesus Christ coming together as one. Then God himself shall be their teacher.

A Response to the Inevitable Questions

Was every middle age Roman Catholic evil? No, of course not, but my general description of the Europe in the Middle Ages is accurate. There were revivals, many of them persecuted by order of the pope, but not all. The Waldensians, whose obedience to the Sermon on the Mount was an offense to corrupt clergy, were driven out of their homes and forced to hide out in the Swiss Alps. The followers of St. Francis of Assissi found acceptance in the Catholic Church.

Does every South American Roman Catholic hold to a mixture of shamanism and Catholicism? No, of course not. However, what I describe abounds. It may not be the rule, but it is certainly not the exception.

Is idolatry, the worship of saints, really practiced in the RCC? Oh, yes. The honor given to Mary and the things said about her in Roman Catholicism are outrageous compared to both Biblical and historical precedent, if we limit ourselves to the pre-Nicene era only.

I was raised Roman Catholic. I personally, along with every student in our Catholic school, bowed down and kissed the feet of a statue of Mary. They can defend that all they want, it is hero worship and idolatry.

And it is not only Mary’s statue that receives such adulation. Statues of St. Christopher and others see good Catholics bowing down in prayer before them, prayer that is directed at the saint and not at God.

This practice began before there was a "Roman" Catholic Church. The emperor Julian ("the Apostate") said that hero worship among the Christian churches in the A.D. 360′s was worse than among the pagans. Surrounding history bears that out.

Am I willing to defend my claim that God will teach and protect every collection of committed Christians that give themselves to him? Yes, I am. No, they won’t necessarily all have exactly the same Bible interpretation on every doctrine, but we are way too focused on such things anyway. The foundation of God, Paul says, is that those who name the name of Christ depart from iniquity (2 Tim. 2:19), and the doctrine that matters is that which "conforms to godliness" (2 Tim. 6:3ff). Straying from that which equips the saints for good works (2 Tim. 3:16-17) produces "fruitless discussion" (1 Tim. 1:5-6).

Over and over, I have seen those who give themselves to each other, to love, to unity, and to obeying Christ come to these same conclusions, being taught of God in deeper doctrines, doctrines which produce further holiness and closeness to God, not further dissension.

I got a question by email today that I think fits perfectly with what I’ve been discussing on this blog. The question reads like this:

Another question that I have had is, after studying early church history what denomination or church today do you think comes closest to what early Christians believed?

Here was my answer:

I think the existence of a denomination completely undoes what the early Christians believed, so I can’t pick a best one.

The church has several purposes. It is the gathering of those Jesus loves, who will eventually become his bride. It is the place where Jesus reigns on the earth, and thus it demonstrates to the world what the eternal kingdom of God will be like. That is why our love for one another and our unity are said to be the way the world will know that both we and Jesus himself are of God (Jn. 13:34-35; 17:20-23).

The church is also the place where we are able to grow together into Jesus’ image and learn the righteousness of God. Most Christians don’t understand the danger of having our own righteousness and how able we are to be deceived in such matters (Heb. 3:13). Our righteousness can easily turn into the Pharisees’ righteousness, and the Pharisees infuriated Jesus (and thus his Father as well). We don’t want to be like them, trying to be holy but infuriating God in the process!

Thus, I don’t care whether a worship service is liturgical, loud, quiet, or in what order it is. I look at fruit, like Jesus said to do (Matt. 7:15 or around there). Where are Christians loving one another, building one another up, and admonishing one another? There, the truth of God will descend, and if those Christians will continue together, they will grow together.

I join myself to those Christians. I don’t join myself to their meeting. I join myself to them. I become their friend, and I spend as much time as possible with them. Chances are, I will meet with them, too, no matter how good or bad their meetings are.

1900 years ago, it would have been much easier. I could also have had a meeting where the Lord’s Supper was properly understood and happened weekly. I could have found everything I describe above and had such a meeting. Today, it’s not so easy.

In the end, though, the most important thing is the fruit I describe above, and it is hard to say where you will find that. When I go to a new town, which I have done a lot, I ask God to guide me to people that I can have that kind of fellowship with.

I’m realizing from a discussion I’m having with Restless Pilgrim that to many people I seem like I’m against a lot of things rather than for one thing.

Here’s my goal: That Christians would walk together, full of mercy to one another, but also full of zeal for obedience to Jesus Christ; that we would love one another and take care of one another’s needs, and that we would meddle in one another’s lives, admonishing and comforting each other as needed in order to provoke each other to love and good works (Heb. 3:13; 10:24).

There’s something standing in the way. It’s a system that promotes attending services rather than living as family to one another and which treats the pointing out and correcting of real problems as judgment that Jesus forbids.

A former pastor and current Sunday school teacher admitted to me recently that his church never has and never will obey 1 Corinthians 5:

I have written to you not to keep company with anyone who is called a brother who is a fornicator, greedy, an idolator, verbally abusive, a drunkard, or a swinder—no, don’t even eat with such a person. … Put out from among yourselves that wicked person. (1 Cor. 5:11, 13b

There are very few congregations, whether Roman Catholic or Protestant, that are even allowed to find out if a person is a fornicator, greedy, or verbally abusive. Yes, if one of the minority deeply committed Christians confesses such sin, we will provide help. Those with damaged marriages, who struggle with pornography or substance abuse, or who have some other problem that Christians tend to seek professional counsel—or non-professional counsel in a counseling environment (weekly meetings with a person that was a stranger before the counseling)—then we deal with it.

But what we do today is not church life Biblically. Paul didn’t write 1 Corinthians 5 because he had a vendetta against greedy swindlers. I’m not writing this blog because I have a vendetta against denominations.

Paul was building the church, and accommodating the wicked inside the church was in the way. I’m trying to proclaim the church, and our organizational practices are in the way of obedience to that extremely central Biblical teaching!

There’s two problems with leaving the sexually immoral and verbally abusive (if they’re unrepentant) in the church.

1. They’re not going to heaven. Paul says so in the next chapter. Treating them like Christians is lying to them and stealing their opportunity to repent and be saved (cf. Jam. 5:19-20).
2. There is incredible power in the fellowship of the saints. That is the church. When the saints are in fellowship with the sons of the devil, even if they’re sweet children of the devil (Eph. 2:1-3), then they’re not in fellowship with each other, the church doesn’t exist, and the power of the church vanishes.

Jesus gave himself for the church! (Eph. 5:25-27; Tit. 2:13-14). He wants his own special people, zealous for good works. Those people will be led by the Spirit of God (1 Jn. 2:27), protected from deception (Eph. 4:13), and will grow together into everything that Jesus is himself (Eph. 4:14-16).

In the first couple centuries of the church, the devil failed to rip Christians apart by attacking them. But then he switched tactics. Rather than try to terrify these bold Christians into fleeing into the world, he sent the world into the church. As the church forgot 1 Cor. 5 and admitted almost everyone into their fellowship, Christians were crowded apart, and the power and benefit of the church disappeared.

The devil couldn’t pull Christians apart, but he was able to crowd them apart.

He had to. When they were near each other, they were exhorting each other to higher and higher levels of power and holiness, and they were beginning to convert many and influence everyone.

We have come to believe a lie today. We believe that we can listen to the Gospel, read the Bible, pray, and go off to live a Christian life.

That’s not Biblical.

Christians need one another. We need daily exhortation, says the writer of Hebrews (3:13).

Not only that, but when we listen to the Gospel, read the Bible, pray, and go off to live a Christian life, then our invisible, deceptive sins go undealt with. We wind up with our own righteousness, but we miss God’s righteousness, which goes deep down inside and deals with the places even we don’t know about, but which others—if they’re spiritual others—see.

One final note. Yes, there are superstars who do great in the current system.

Most people, though, are not offered the help that was offered in the first century. They have Christ the head, but they don’t really have Christ the body, the family that takes them in, ends their loneliness, and grows with them into the fullness of Christ. And we cannot say that we don’t need the body. Paul was pretty vehement about that (1 Cor. 12).

Yesterday, Restless Pilgrim suggested (correctly) that my answer left "intimate fellowships" as deciding the correct interpretation of Scripture. I wanted to elevate my response from a comment to a post.

Note that the purpose of the Scriptures is to equip us for every good work (2 Tim. 3:16-17), not to resolve disputes over doubtful doctrines (1 Tim. 1:4ff). The Holy Spirit will not feed our "sick obsessions" (1 Tim. 6:3ff).

Intimate Fellowships and a "Living Authority" to Resolve Scriptural Disputes

If that intimate fellowship is the church, then the Scriptures tell us that "The Anointing will teach you all things, and it is true, and not a lie" (1 Jn. 2:27).

Other authorities have failed us. They have not produced the fruit Jesus spoke of. The promise of the Scriptures, however, is that disciples together, joined in Jesus’ name, will be led into what is true. They will speak the truth in love to one another, and they will be delivered from deceivers and from being tossed around on the waves of doctrine (Eph. 4:11-16).

Eph. 4:11-16 and 1 Jn. 2:27 settle the question of what church it is that is the pillar and authority of the truth (the "magisterium"). It’s the local church, as long as they are following Christ rather than just standing on tradition.

Rev. 2-3 is another great section showing us this. Jesus took responsibility for each of these local churches, speaking to them individually through John the elder.

So, yes, I’m saying that intimate fellowships—of disciples following Christ, committed to being the church—will be led into proper interpretations of Scripture by following Christ. The Holy Spirit resolves questions about what to do, which is the purpose of Scripture (2 Tim. 3:16-17); he will rarely resolve doctrinal disputes unless they have practical application or have some sort of important application to unity.

More responses to the Catholic Encyclopedia’s article, Teaching Authority and Living Magisterium.

Definition of "magisterium" from yesterday’s post:

The magisterium is the self-assigned and self-acknowledged “teaching authority” of the Roman Catholic Church. It’s a reference to whatever authority gets to decide what is true teaching. For Protestants, then, the magisterium is the Bible, though it’s not a very successful teaching authority because Protestants feel free to interpret it any way they want, even if the interpretations are ridiculous and embarrassing. For Roman Catholics, taken to its logical conclusion, the magisterium is the pope or a dogmatic council.

Today’s post will focus almost exclusively on some points on which I believe the Catholic Encyclopedia article is correct.

The Oral Teachings of the Apostles

And as He preached Himself so He sent His Apostles to preach; He did not commission them to write but to teach, and it was by oral teaching and preaching that they instructed the nations and brought them to the Faith. If some of them wrote and did so under Divine inspiration it is manifest that this was as it were incidentally. They did not write for the sake of writing, but to supplement their oral teaching when they could not go themselves to recall or explain it, to solve practical questions, etc. St. Paul, who of all the Apostles wrote the most, did not dream of writing everything nor of replacing his oral teaching by his writings.

I’m not sure how to add to this. You either believe what they say here or you don’t. Personally, I think this is undeniable, quite obviously true.

Paul wrote but 13 letters to seven churches. A lot of those letters didn’t make it to other churches, though some did. Were those letters really Paul’s entire Gospel and all he had to teach the churches? If so, why didn’t he leave writings behind for the church in Ephesus and the churches in Crete rather than leaving Timothy and Titus to train and instruct elders there?

The things that you have heard from me among many witnesses, commit those things to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. (2 Timothy 2:2)

Doesn’t that seem like Paul meant to leave oral teachings, committed to a few leading men chosen by Timothy, rather than leaving writings?

It’s not just the church in Ephesus, where he left Timothy, for whom he left oral teachings:

Therefore, brothers, stand fast and hold onto the traditions which you have been taught, whether by word or by our letter. (2 Thess. 2:15)

That seems to speak for itself. Take a look at Paul’s pleading with the elders in Ephesus, with whom he would never speak again, and see if you don’t agree that he’s leaving them oral teachings to pass on to the church while they take care of the church.

Interestingly enough, he’s doing that despite the fact that he knows that some of them are going to be corrupt.

The Oral Teachings of Roman Catholicism

Back to the Roman Catholic issue for a second. My complaint about the Roman Catholic Church is not that they claim that there is oral teaching handed down by the apostles. My problem with the RCC is that they have corrupted these oral teachings into an unscriptural mess that has produced corruption, tyranny, and a vast host of nominal, unconverted Christians.

The Protestants left Roman Catholicism because of this, but since they inherited the idea that the church could be a hierarchical organization from their RC predecessors, they have the same problem with a vast host of nominal, unconverted Christians, as well as the problems that result from that problem.

We need to find the oral teachings of the apostles from a reliable source. You cannot find any oral teachings of the apostles reliably from the RCC.

Finally, the same texts which show us Christ instituting His Church and the Apostles founding Churches and spreading Christ’s doctrine throughout the world show us at the same time the Church instituted as a teaching authority; the Apostles claimed for themselves this authority, sending others as they had been sent by Christ and as Christ had been sent by God, always with power to teach and to impose doctrine as well as to govern the Church and to baptize.

Excuse me? Teach and "impose" doctrine?

That’s exactly the problem. The RCC gives lip service to the fact that all tradition must have an apostolic source (see my Dec. 20 post), but it’s nothing but lip service.

A Reliable Source: The Real Church

The apostles imposed doctrine. The elders were to preserve it, and in a church that is a family made up of Christians—rather than an organization composed primarily of weekly visitors—there is no need to "impose" doctrine. All the members love the doctrine of the apostles and help preserve it.

The loss of that church is why the RCC also lost the oral teaching of the apostles.

Whoever believed them would be saved; whoever refused to believe them would be condemned. It is the living Church and not Scripture that St. Paul indicates as the pillar and the unshakable ground of truth.

This is true, but the living church is not the RCC. That is an organization that can never be the church nor serve as a fit vessel to hold the pure wine of Christ’s teaching, which was preserved first by the apostles and then afterward by the family of God and its elders.

God has given a promise to the family of God that it can be the pillar and unshakable ground of the truth. John explains how that happens in 1 John 2:27. The Anointing will lead the church—not individuals; all the yous in 1 Jn. 2:27 are plural—into all truth, and that Anointing will be reliable.

That Anointing will lead them to understand the Scriptures—which are the writings of the apostles—correctly, and that Anointing will lead them to understand the writings of the early churches—which bear witness to the oral teachings of the apostles.

But understand, the purpose of the Scriptures is not to resolve doctrinal disputes on unimportant matters. The purpose of the Scriptures is for the correction of our behavior so that we may be thoroughly equipped for every good work (1 Tim. 1:5-7; 2 Tim. 3:16-17). Those who don’t know this swerve aside, says the KJV, into "vain jangling."

More responses to the Catholic Encyclopedia’s article, Teaching Authority and Living Magisterium.

Definition of "magisterium" from yesterday’s post:

The magisterium is the self-assigned and self-acknowledged “teaching authority” of the Roman Catholic Church. It’s a reference to whatever authority gets to decide what is true teaching. For Protestants, then, the magisterium is the Bible, though it’s not a very successful teaching authority because Protestants feel free to interpret it any way they want, even if the interpretations are ridiculous and embarrassing. For Roman Catholics, taken to its logical conclusion, the magisterium is the pope or a dogmatic council.

A good portion of that article is an attack on the Protestant’s rejection of the Roman Catholic magisterium. Some of it is good; some bad. It’s the arguments against the Protestant position of Sola Scriptura that I think we need to pay attention to and consider. History establishes that returning to Roman Catholicism is worse than the present situation, but can we not improve on the present situation?

In a similar way they show that they cannot dispense with a teaching authority, a Divinely authorized living magistracy for the solution of controversies arising among themselves and of which the Bible itself was often the occasion. Indeed experience proved that each man found in the Bible his own ideas … The exercise of free inquiry with regard to Biblical texts led to endless disputes, to doctrinal anarchy, and eventually to the denial of all dogma.

We can’t deny that each man interpreting the Bible, the Protestant "magisterium," for himself has led to endless disputes and to doctrinal anarchy.

Protestants have denied all dogma, however. They have simply extended the right to dictate dogma to thousands of competing denominations.

Hence the necessity of a competent authority to solve controversies and interpret the Bible.

The Protestants have either given this authority to their denominations, to some chosen teacher, or to themselves.

The question is, what’s the alternative? As we saw in yesterday’s post, and is amply explained by John Calvin in his letter to Cardinal Sadolet, Protestants found it impossible to leave that authority in the hands of the unspeakably corrupt 16th century Roman Catholic Church. Anything was better than that, including "endless disputes" and "doctrinal anarchy."

[The Roman Catholic] position was amply justified when the Protestants began compromising themselves with the civil power, rejecting the doctrinal authority of the ecclesiastical magisterium only to fall under that of princes.

Wow. If that isn’t the pot calling the kettle black. This doesn’t even have much to do with today’s post, but it was so hypocritical as to be shocking. I don’t even know how to respond! I had to include it while I was quoting.

Moreover it was enough to look at the Bible, to read it without prejudice to see that the economy of the Christian preaching was above all one of oral teaching. Christ preached, He did not write. In His preaching He appealed to the Bible, but He was not satisfied with the mere reading of it, He explained and interpreted it, He made use of it in His teaching, but He did not substitute it for His teaching. There is the example of the mysterious traveller who explained to the disciples of Emmaus what had reference to Him in the Scriptures to convince them that Christ had to suffer and thus enter into His glory.

This is all true, but what they’re forgetting here is that the Roman Catholic Church hasn’t preserved any of the apostles’ oral teaching! Or if they have, it’s so mixed up in the midst of invented nonsense that it can’t be found. Things like bowing to statues, Mary being the queen of heaven (see yesterday’s post for the dogmatic pronouncement of the RCC that this is so), the worship of the bread of the Lord’s Supper rather than the true oral teaching of the real presence, and the creation of an ecclesiastical organization with powers so far beyond any thing apostolic that they can rightly be described as bizarre, superstitious, and despotic.

Having stated that I don’t believe the RCC has any oral apostolic teaching to pass on to us, the question remains as to whether we need it and where we would find it if we did.

The Catholic Encyclopedia has rightly pointed out the confusion and disputes in Protestant Churches. This blog is often devoted to pointing out how badly Protestant Churches are misinterpreting Scripture; so badly, in fact, that most can be accused of not believing it at all, preferring their tradition even when Scripture clearly refutes it.

I think we have to do something, and finding the oral teaching of the apostles to the churches they formed seems like an excellent solution if that oral teaching can be found.

Many people agree with me, which is why there is such a revival of reading the early Christian writings among Protestants today.

The problem is, listening to those writings and to their teachings would rip apart the entire fabric of Protestant Christianity (just as it would rip apart the entire fabric of Roman Catholic Christianity).

To me, the primary problematic issue is that the oral teaching of the apostles highlights the clearly Biblical teaching that the church is supposed to consist of committed Christians who know each other intimately. Such a church can cleanse itself of leaven, as commanded in 1 Cor. 5, by putting out not only the adulterers and immoral, but even the greedy.

The problem is, if we did that, we’d lose at least half our Protestant members and probably more like 80 to 90% of them, thus depriving most pastors and church staff of a job.

If course if the 10% to 20% left, became part of one another’s lives, and formed Biblical churches, then the pastors and church staff could keep their jobs by either evangelizing or tickling the ears of the 80 to 90% that are left.

That sounds shocking, but at this point millions of people agree with me. George Barna, in his book Revolution, argues that up to 20 million Christians have left organized churches to seek the very sort of fellowship I’m talking about.

The bad news is that even most of those don’t really want God intervening in their personal lives, and working out unity by the power of the Holy Spirit is an undertaking that requires immense self-denial that most people are not willing to give. (Think of it like marriage. It sounds great when you’re courting, but give it some time, and those that are not willing to make significant sacrifices will fail.)

Enough for today. More tomorrow.

All of us have run across people who say they are saved but are not. In fact, for most "Christians," the teachings of Christ and the apostles play little to no role in their lives. Polls by George Barna confirm this regularly, from the mouths of church attenders themselves.

So those of us who are serious about the Gospel have looked for ways to see people really saved. We’ve told those who pray the sinner’s prayer to really mean it. We’ve emphasized follow-up. We’ve made our doctrines better. We’ve increased church activities, and we’ve even tried getting a little more worldly ourselves so that these Christians in name only might get a little more committed.

All to no avail.

I was reading a Christian drug rehab site today, and I realized that one problem is that nominal Christians don’t see that there is anything they need to be really saved from.

At a drug rehab center, there’s something to be saved from. You’ve either stopped brewing meth, or you’re still using it. You’ve either stopped smoking crack, or you’re still smoking crack.

If the drug rehab’s "Gospel" isn’t working, there’s no denying it isn’t working. We don’t usually use the word "saved" in reference to their work, but at a Christian rehab center, that’s exactly what’s going on. Either they’re being saved, or they’re not.

Since I don’t know all the details of what a drug rehab center does, nor how successful they are, nor how much follow-up they do, let’s switch to something I know more about.

U.S. prisons have very high "recidivism" rates. A recidivism rate is the percentage of criminals released from prison who wind up behind bars again. Standard statistics vary depending on how they’re calculated, but a 45% recidivism rate after three years is acknowledged by all. A Free Republic article says that if you track all prisoners for 20 years, then it’s 82% of inmates who return to prison.

The article describes a program that successfully reduced that recidivism rate to 61%, a minor but significant success. It involved counseling.

I have now met two men involved in major prisoner reform programs. Both programs take a prisoner from the prison to a counseling program, help them find a job, and follow up with them for at least two years. Both programs successfully cut the recidivism rate in half.

Now that’s salvation! It is at least for the men who never return to prison.

We have no such standard of measure for Christianity today. Anyone who can attend a meeting can be a Christian.

It was not that way in the beginning. To join the Christians was to join a new family. They shared their meals and even their possessions. They met every day in the temple, and they ate together in their homes. Their leaders taught them "night and day, both publicly and from house to house."

The "every day in the temple" part happened only in Jerusalem, but the rest happened everywhere for around 200 years.

An early Christian tract is still extant that made it into two early Christian writings, one the earliest church manual ever written. That tract urges Christians to "seek out the faces of the saints ever day." It tells them that if they share in eternal things, how much more should they share the things that are merely temporary.

As late as A.D. 200, we read about the Christians that "the family possessions, which generally destroy brotherhood among you [Romans], create brotherly bonds among us. One in mind and soul, we do not hesitate to share our earthly goods with one another. All things are common among us except our wives" (Tertullian, Apology 39).

A counselor who takes an inmate fresh from prison and guides him to a new life can tell you whether that inmate was successfully "saved." If the inmate went back to prison, the counselor knows that, at least for now, he’s failed. If the inmate is surrounded by wholesome friends, employed, and has a new life in front of him, then he’s succeeded.

When Christianity is again a family, rather than a set of weekly meetings; when we are again seeking out the faces of the saints every day; when our teachers are again teaching day and night and from house to house as well as publicly; when each saint is expected to stretch out his hand to give as well as stretching it out to take … when these things are happening, we may again be able to tell the difference between the saved and those who merely attend our meetings.

That would require a pretty radical overhaul, but don’t you agree we need it?

One happy note: I have run across a number of churches attempting to make exactly those kind of changes. Some are failing, but some appear to be succeeding.

If you’re in Sacramento or Atlanta, I can already put you in contact with people. Unfortunately, I didn’t get contact information from the elder of one church like this I met, but there are a couple others in the middle of these changes that I know about, too.

David Platt has a rather famous church doing these sorts of things in Birmingham, and if you’re in San Francisco, you ought to look up what Francis Chan is doing. Simple and brilliant.

I got carried away and wrote a long email to a young man who wrote me. It covers evolution, church history, the apostles, the Word of God, the Scriptures, the Gospel, and what is central to Christianity.

I hate to see it simply languish in my sent folder, so here goes:

All Bible quotes in this post are from the NASB.

You wrote:>>Either you believe everything in the Bible is the inspired Word of God, being completely true, and that it is the standard for which Christians should live their lives, or you don’t.<<

To me you just made two statements, not one. The first, if I'm understanding your meaning correctly, is that the Bible is completely accurate historically and scientifically. That's a bit more narrow of a definition than "completely true."

Is the Bible “Completely True”?

There is no denying that I don’t believe the Bible is completely accurate historically or scientifically. I don’t believe the world is set on pillars (1 Sam. 2:8). I don’t believe that the sky is as hard as a metal mirror (Job 37:18). I believe that the earth moves, even though Psalm 93:1 says it doesn’t.

Of course, everyone–including you, your pastor, and everyone else you know–agrees with me on the three things I just listed. Oh, they have their excuses as to why that’s different than doubting the exact scientific accuracy of Genesis 1, but it all looks the same to me.

Do we really believe that God made plants before there was a sun? Do we really believe that there is a tree that if you eat from it, you’ll have eternal life whether God wants you to have it or not? That’s certainly what the story of the Garden of Eden suggests. God had to ban Adam … No, let’s not call him Adam. His name is Man. The Hebrew word Adam is used over 500 times in the Old Testament, and it is only translated Adam in the first few chapters of Genesis.

So, God had to ban Man and Life (Life was the name of Man’s wife) from the garden because if he didn’t, then Man would eat from the tree of life and live forever; apparently even if God didn’t want him to live forever!

Maybe that was meant to be an accurate description of the very first days of mankind, but I don’t believe that. And everyone I’ve read on the subject of how the Hebrews told stories agrees with me. To the Hebrews, “true” was not a matter of historically accurate. “True” had to do with whether it communicated truth.

I believe that the story of Man and Life not only communicates truth, but it communicates God’s truth. It’s not just a saying or a bit of human wisdom. It’s a message from God.

In that sense, I do believe that the Scriptures are completely true.

Is “scientifically and historically accurate” the correct definition of true? Well, that’s for you to decide, but I believe that is a modern, western definition that doesn’t apply very well to the Hebrew Scriptures. It was certainly not their mindset, according to every Hebrew scholar I’ve read.

Is the Bible our Standard

The other part of your statement was whether the Bible is “the standard for which Christians should live their lives.”

First, let me say that I definitely believe that the Bible is the standard for which Christians should test, though not necessarily live, their lives. If our lives disagree with the Scriptures, then we are in error. With that I completely agree, but the Scriptures teach us that we are to be led by the Spirit, not led by the Scriptures. The Scriptures can provide guidance, but we are to walk in the Spirit.

Today, we think the Bible is the center of the Christian faith.

I’m pretty certain that the apostles thought that Jesus Christ is the center of the Christian faith. I think they believed that the ultimate testimony of Christianity was that the Gospel they received from Jesus was “the power of God to salvation,” and that those who believed the Gospel received a real and powerful justification, becoming new creations.

Paul describes that concerning the Thessalonians:

“You became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia. For the Word of the Lord has sounded forth from you, not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but also in every place your faith toward God has gone forth, so that we have no need to say anything” (1 Thess. 1:7-8).

The Scriptures talk about the Word of God growing three different times in Acts (6:7; 12:24; 19:20). We tend to equate the Scriptures and the Word of God, but the apostles didn’t. They believed the Word of God is either Jesus or the entire message of God, in whatever form it came. One major form is that the Word of God lives in us, planted like a seed. It can grow because as the number of disciples multiply, the Word of God grows.

We can say that the Scriptures are the standard by which we must live our lives, but could the apostles’ churches say that? I’ve read all the writings of the second century church, and I can tell you–along with the agreement of pretty much every Christian scholar you want to check–that the New Testament writings were not gathered together until about a hundred years after Jesus died.

And do you know how they gathered the New Testament writings?

They were not gathering “inspired” writings. They were not gathering “New Testament” writings. They were gathering the writings of apostles and men who accompanied the apostles. They wanted all and any they could find.

It was the apostles who were inspired, not just their writings. (For example, see 2 Thess. 2:15 and verses like 1 Cor. 11:2 and 14:37.) The New Covenant has never been about a book. It has been about God pouring out his Spirit on all flesh, bringing them into the church, and making of them a family that would glorify his name by their love for God, their love for each other, and their disdain for the things of the world.

Boxing up God, the Scriptures, and the Gospel

I’m so sorry, dear reader, that writing like this is so limited. Today we’ve boxed everything up and made everything nice and tidy.

God’s never been that way. He’s always left questions and things we don’t understand. He doesn’t care about our fitting his grand plan into our limited human minds. He cares about our trust and obedience. He wants us to know him, for eternal life is to know him, not to pass a test on his plan of salvation (Jn. 17:3).

The Original Faith

My goal is not to convince you of things, but to let you look at the faith that’s been handed to us. The original faith consisted of a firm trust that God sent Jesus, Jesus sent the apostles, and the apostles raised up churches to preserve the truth. Those churches all had a basic “rule of faith” to keep them on the straight and narrow. The Apostles Creed is a 4th century “rule of faith.”

When you read the writings of the 2nd century church, it’s such a glorious thing to see the purity of original Christianity. They held firm to the foundation that “The Lord knows those who are his, and let those who name the name of Christ depart from iniquity” (2 Tim. 2:19). They demanded that Christians accept the basic truths, the sort of things outlined in the Nicene Creed, but after that, “sound doctrine” was much more like what is described in Titus 2 than the sort of things we argue about today.

They honored those who lived holy lives. In fact, one early Christian said, “We don’t speak great things; we live them.”

When they defended Christianity, they spoke of the divinity of Christ’s teachings and how the Spirit of God empowered them to be delivered from greed and lust and to live lives of good conscience. Further, they stood gallantly during persecution, arguing that the bravery of the martyrs was proof of the power of the Spirit of God in the lives of Christians.

Misusing the Scriptures

I love the Scriptures. I hope, as you can see, that I study them thoroughly. I pattern my life after them, and I quote them in defense of all I say. If what I say can’t be found in the Scriptures, then what I say can be rightly rejected.

But we’ve done something awful with the Scriptures in the modern era. As I read today in a George MacDonald book, there are too many people who are “more desirous of understanding what they are supposed to understand than of doing what they are supposed to do.”

We argue and fight over doubtful matters. We make our determinations of what is true based on our intellectual interpretations of Scripture, when in fact Jesus (in Scripture) taught us to judge our teachers by their fruit and not by their confident interpretations (Matt. 7).

The Doctrine According to Godliness

We need to relearn the “doctrine according to godliness” as mentioned by Paul in 1 Tim. 6:3. Because our doctrine is according to intellect and argument, rather than according to godliness, we are what Paul describes in 1 Tim. 6:4-5:

He has a morbid interest in controversial questions and disputes about words, out of which arise envy, strife, abusive language, evil suspicions, and constant friction between men of depraved minds and deprived of the truth.

Let us set ourselves to obeying Jesus Christ and honoring him by our lives.

Evolution and Doubtful Disputes

I have a web site on evolution. That is not because I think that Christians need to take a position on evolution, nor because I want anyone at all to agree it’s true. What I want is that men who have boxed up the Word of God and wrapped a book cover around him do not splinter the church of God into fighting factions over doubtful subjects.

The mark of a Christian is not that he agrees that Genesis one is literal … nor that it’s not literal. The mark of a Christian is that by the power of the Spirit of God he obeys Jesus Christ, living a life marked by the love of God.

We have enough work achieving that goal, but modern Christians have forgotten that it is a goal. They have become confused into thinking that Christianity is a mere understanding of and assent to the atonement.

Salvation is not a plan; it’s a Man, the Lord Jesus Christ.