Gentle Readers,
A dear friend and colleague wrote this little piece in response to my query on another matter I felt it needed dissemination to the widest readership and so I give you Dr. J. D. Watson:
...Finally, one of the greatest burdens on my heart is the lack of knowledge and Truth in Christianity today. It is deeply tragic that many are caught up in these inadequate sources of Truth when the battle can only be won with the “sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of GOD” (Eph. 6:17). And what’s more, the major fault lies nowhere else than on the heads of preachers. One of the saddest realities in the Church are pastors who stand in the pulpit week after week and preach nothing but salvation messages, or at best, some shallow, syrupy devotional. Yes, salvation is the beginning, but it’s just that—the beginning. From there comes “the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ.” (Eph. 4:11-12). Paul went out of his way to specifically challenge the Ephesian elders to declare “all the counsel of God” and “to feed the church of God” (Acts 20:27-28). It is only by giving God’s people the Truth—predominately by expository preaching—that they can be equipped for living and become discerners of error. But tragically, that is not the norm today.
It is also for this reason that Paul entreated Timothy that the very mission of the Church is to be “the pillar and ground of the truth” (I Tim. 3:15). This was actually an extraordinary statement. Timothy was at that time the pastor of the Ephesian church. Paul had left him there to deal with several problems that had arisen. While we don’t readily understand this statement, Timothy and the Ephesians immediately recognized the imagery Paul uses.
The impressive temple of the goddess Diana (Artemis), one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, was located in the city. William Barclay gives the following description of it:
One of its features was its pillars. It contained 127 pillars, every one of them the gift of a king. All were made of marble, and some were studded with jewels and overlaid with gold.[i]
Each pillar acted as a tribute to the king who donated it. The honorary significance of the pillars, however, was secondary to their obvious function of holding up the immense structure of the roof. Here, then, Paul says that the church’s mission is to hold up the Truth.
But Paul adds something else—that the church is also the ground of the Truth. Ground translates the Greek hedraiōma, which appears only here in the New Testament and refers to “a stay, a prop, or a support.” Some commentators maintain that the idea here is “foundation.” The NIV even translates it as “foundation.” But that is a very serious error. Gordon Clark points out by writing:
Were this word translated foundation, so the church would be the foundation of the truth, the connotation would be seriously in error. The Church does not invent the truth; the truth produces the church . . . The church is the pillar and seat, the mainstay, the bulwark, the support of the truth. In less metaphorical language this means the church proclaims, defends, and propagates the Gospel.[ii]
Greek scholar Kenneth Wuest gives the true comparison of pillar and ground by writing:
The word “ground” is hedraiōma, “a stay, a prop.” The kindred adjective is hedraios, “firm, stable.” The words, “pillar” and “ground,” are in apposition to [i.e., supplement] the word “church.” The idea is that the church is the pillar, and as such, the prop or support of the truth.
So, in Paul’s metaphor the church is not the foundation of the Truth—the Truth is the foundation. Rather, the Church is the pillar, the mainstay, the chief support that holds up the Truth and proclaims it as the only Truth. As the pillars of the Temple of Diana were a testimony to the error of pagan false religion, so the Church is to be a testimony to God’s Truth. That is its mission, its very reason for existence.
In direct contradiction of Paul’s imagery, the mission of today’s churches is to be “user friendly,” “purpose driven,” and “seeker sensitive,” but God said to just preach the Truth. It is the solemn responsibility of every church to solidly, immovably, unshakably, uncompromisingly uphold the Truth of God’s Word. Again, the Church is not to invent the Truth, as is being done today by everything from redefining the Gospel to reinventing Church ministry. Such people are treading on dangerous ground. As Revelation 22:18-19 declare, judgment awaits those who alter God’s Word:
For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.
When John, the last of the apostles (and therefore the last person able to write Scripture), wrote those words, the Gnostics were already adding to and subtracting from the Word of God. The Roman Catholic Church has since added its traditions and the ex cathedra (“from the chair”) pronouncements of its popes to the Word of God. The Mormons have added the nonsense concocted by Joseph Smith in The Book of Mormon. The so‑called Christian Scientists have added the ramblings of Mary Baker Eddy. The Spiritists have added pronouncements derived from demons. In contrast to such additions, liberal textual critics have specialized in deleting great portions of Scripture. And the tampering goes on, in spite of God’s warning. In the end God will settle His own accounts with those He bluntly labels “liars” in Proverbs 30:5-6: “Every word of God is pure: he is a shield unto them that put their trust in him. Add thou not unto his words, lest he reprove thee, and thou be found a liar.”
If we may say it one more time—the Church’s mandate is not to invent the Truth, but to support and safeguard the Truth. It is to the Church that God has given the stewardship of Scripture. The Scripture is the most precious possession on earth, and it is the Church’s duty to guard It. Churches that tamper with Biblical Truth, misrepresent it, depreciate it, relegate it to a secondary place, or abandon it altogether destroy their only reason for existing and will experience impotence and judgment. I grieve every day over the fact that many (if not most) evangelical churches are not preaching the unadulterated, uncompromised Truth of God’s Word.
The most important gauge by which a church can be measured is not how large it is, how good its fellowship is, how interesting the pastor is, how good the music is, how well the grounds are kept up, or even how respected it is in the community. The measure of any church is how it handles the Word of God. Two questions should be our benchmark: First, does it teach the Truth? Second, does it live the Truth?
Let us emphasize once again that Truth is not relative. Unlike the world, Liberal Christianity, and even much of the Evangelical Church, the Scripture could not be clearer on this point. In Luke 9:50, the Lord Jesus said to His disciples, “He that is not against us is for us.” Two chapters later (11:23) He said it in the reverse: “He that is not with me is against me: and he that gathereth not with me scattereth.” A person is either for Christ or against Christ. There is no middle ground between right and wrong, Truth and error, sound doctrine and heretical doctrine, true Gospel and false Gospel. Something is either true or it is a lie. In contrast to the prevalent and predominate attitude of our day, there is nothing in the middle. There is no “gray area.”
Oh, Dear Christian Friend, no matter what the question, no matter what the issue, would that our motto be, “What saith the Scripture?” (Rom. 4:3; Gal. 4:30). Why? Because only It is Truth.
What a contrast there is between our day and the early days of Christianity! As Francis Schaeffer points out,[iii] the Romans threw those Christians to the lions for two reasons. First, they refused to worship Caesar. It didn’t matter who else you worshipped, as long as that did not interfere with the formal worship of Caesar. The early Christians, however, committed treason by worshipping only one God, which became a direct threat to state unity.
Second, and perhaps even more profound, is that they were persecuted because they looked to one source alone for their authority—God’s revelation. They were enemies of the state because they judged all things—including the state—by that single authority, and that simply could not be tolerated. In the eyes of Rome, in fact, they were no less than “rebels” who had to be destroyed.
How many Christians today are of the same stock as those who stood so uncompromisingly? How many are willing to be called “rebels,” not because of political activism or “social awareness,” but solely because God’s Word is their only authority?
Let us close with two other wonderful verses:
Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free (Jn. 8:32-33).
Will science make us free? No, we’re ever learning but never discovering. Will philosophy make us free? No, it drove Nietzsche mad. Will even religion make us free? No, the Law keeps us in bondage. It is only the Gospel of Christ that makes us free, and it is only in His Word that we find Truth.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[i] The Letters to Timothy, Titus, and Philemon (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1975), p. 89.
[ii] Gordon Clark, The Pastoral Epistles.
[iii] Francis A. Schaefer, How Should We Then Live? (New Jersey: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1976), pp. 24-25.
Dr. J. D. "Doc" Watson
Pastor-Teacher, Grace Bible Church
Sola Scriptura Ministries
PO Box 235 - 1350 Sage Ridge Rd.
Meeker, CO 81641
970-878-3228
docwatson3228@qwest.net
www.TheScriptureAlone.com
No comments:
Post a Comment