Now lest I be misunderstood and so succeed only in confusing things still further, let me assure my readers that I am and have always been a staunch advocate of theology, and regularly teach doctrine systematically in pursuance of my pastoral calling.
I joyfully recognize that there is an outline of divine truth fitted to the human mind and intended by its Author to be received by it.
I think no one can become a strong Christian who is not a theologian of some sort, but it is altogether possible to be a theologian and not be a Christian at all.
Bible doctrine without love is but a shadow of truth; doctrine held in love is very truth indeed, and we dare not allow ourselves to be satisfied with anything less.
Another source of religious confusion is unbelief. The writer to the Hebrews attributed Israel's failure to benefit by the truth to a breakdown in their faith. "But the message they heard was of no value to them, because those who heard did not combine it with faith" (Hebrews 4:2).
The thought of holding holy truth in unbelief is a frightening thing.
For the unbelieving mind to tinker with the truth of God is as terrible as was the unauthorized act of Saul when in fear and unbelief he offered a burnt offering at Gilgal. "I thought, `Now the Philistines will come down against me at Gilgal, and I have not sought the LORD's favor.' So I felt compelled to offer the burnt offering" (1 Samuel 13:12).
So the king explained his act, but there is something spine-chilling about it all.
An unholy man tried to do a holy act and tragedy followed.
From that hour Saul's life degenerated till at last, deserted and terrified, he died by his own hand.
verse
For we also have had the gospel preached to us, just as they did; but the message they heard was of no value to them, because those who heard did not combine it with faith.
— Hebrews 4:2
thought
There is truth we hold at arm's length. We believe it intellectually but are not living it. There is truth we embrace and lovingly practice. There also may be truth we are rejecting altogether.
prayer
Father, may I receive Your truth in faith and lovingly live it!
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.
— First Corinthains 2:14
I said that the causes of religious confusion were four, and I named misunderstanding of the nature of truth as one of them. The others are lack of love, unbelief and nonobedience. "Wisdom is a loving spirit," says the Wisdom of Solomon. "He guides the humble in what is right and teaches them his way" (Psalm 25:9), says David, the father of Solomon, and these set forth a truth which the whole Bible joins to celebrate; namely, that love and wisdom are forever joined and that soundness of moral judgment is for the meek alone. The humble, loving heart intuits truth as the Scriptures reveal it and the Holy Spirit illuminates it.
The Spirit will not enlighten an unloving mind; and without His enlightenment the mysteries of Christian truth must forever remain a stranger to us. To the loving mind God gives the power of immediate apprehension, and to none other. The theologian who is only a theologian must work out the teachings of the Scriptures as a child works out a jigsaw puzzle, fitting piece to piece with painstaking labor till at last he has a body of doctrine bearing some resemblance to the Biblical revelation. The difficulty (and the source of confusion) is that certain pieces will fit anywhere and others nowhere, so they may be forced into place or tossed back in the box at the whim of the student. But where love and illumination are, the picture always comes out right. The Spirit says one thing to all loving hearts.
thought
Divine illumination is necessary to savingly understand God's self-disclosure because Satan is active in blinding the minds of humankind (2 Cor. 4:3-4). The Holy Spirit opens minds to understand spiritual truth (Acts 16:14).
prayer
"Open my eyes that I may see glimpses of truth thou hast for me . . . Open my eyes, illumine me, Spirit divine." That's my prayer, Lord!
Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly.
— James 3:1
. . . Invariably the newly learned, like the newly rich, overdo everything, and that is just what the evangelical-rationalists are doing. They forget that Moses, David, our blessed Lord Himself, John, Luther, Wesley, Bunyan, Schopenhauer, William James (to bring together a few very different but very effective teachers), could state their doctrines in language as simple as childhood talk and as clear as distilled water. These modern teachers aren't so easy to comprehend. They write in an academic jargon that only another of them can understand. At the rate they are going it will take at least one generation for their teaching to filter down to the man on the street and the worshiper in the pew. And maybe that is good after all.
thought
A major task of the teacher and preacher of the Word is to translate theological terminology into the language of the pew. It is the Spirit who must enlighten us but may our teachers not confuse us!
prayer
Father, remind me to pray for my pastor and teacher that they may be used of the Spirit to explain Your truth, not to obscure it.
My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power, so that your faith might not rest on men's wisdom, but on God's power.
— 1 Corinthians 2:4-5
There has emerged lately in American Christianity a school of religious thought conceived in intellectual pride and dedicated to the proposition that everything of value in the Christian faith can be reduced to philosophical terms and understood by the human mind. The notion seems to be that anything God can utter we can comprehend, allowing possibly for the need of a little divine aid with the heavier stuff. The brethren who are promoting this movement seem to feel that the trouble with evangelicalism is that it is not scholarly enough, that it cannot state itself in scientific terms. They appear to be chagrined by the chuckles of the learned liberals at the allegedly ignorant fundamentalists and have been needled into an attempt to prove that we evangelicals are not so dumb after all.
They hope to make their point by equating Christian theology with Greek philosophy and the findings of modern science, and demonstrating that if the truth were known the Christian revelation is just good clean reason, nothing more. I pass over the pretty obvious fact that there is in all this more than a trace of the taint of mind-worship. And am I just seeing things or do I detect a deep and painful inferiority complex on the part of these apostles of evangelical-rationalism? But I won't call attention to it. I know how they feel. Well, I believe these brethren are wrong. I believe they are as badly mixed up and confused as the peddlers of old wives' tales in Paul's day or the snake handlers of our own Ozark Mountains ? only, of course, in a different and more respectable way. If they succeed in reducing Christianity to a philosophical proposition, they will do more damage to the true faith of Christ than liberalism, Catholicism and Communism combined.
thought
Between eloquence and superior wisdom that impress the listener and the demonstration of the Spirit's power that changes people, there is a tremendous difference. It is the latter that is overwhelmingly convincing.
prayer
Lord, I can prayerfully study and trustingly proclaim Your Word but only You can demonstrate Your power among Your people.
This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words.
— First Corinthians 2:13
Having as the High Priest of our profession the incarnation of all divine wisdom and having as our source book of religious knowledge the holy Scriptures, the soundest and saltiest work ever written, why do we tend so easily to become confused about things spiritual? I believe the causes are four, and I propose to state them in this and the next chapters. The first cause of religious confusion is our failure to understand that the truth as it is in Christ Jesus is a moral and spiritual thing and not something intellectual merely. Let a man approach the burning bush of divine truth with the desire to grasp it in his hand and the intensity of the fire will blind his eyes and cauterize his hands and face to the point of insensibility. Before the awesome vision of revealed truth, the human intellect should kneel and hide its face in trembling adoration.
Because Moses was afraid to look upon God, the Lord could speak to him face to face as a man speaks to his friend; but God hides His face from the man who does not instinctively hide his own. Intellectual pride, then, with its corollary, irreverence, is one cause of religious confusion. Satan's original doctrine, "You will be like God, knowing . . ." (Genesis 3:5) has been accepted by millions of religious persons through the centuries and commands a big following today even among professedly orthodox Christians. In spite of all Christ said while among men and all His inspired apostles wrote after His ascension, we seem never to learn that the inner essence of truth cannot be apprehended by the mental faculties. We still come at the awesome supernatural reality headfirst.
thought
Indispensable in uderstanding divine revelation is the ministry of the Holy Spirit. There is truth our minds cannot grasp but our hearts can fully embrace. The things of the Spirit are spiritually, not intellectually, discerned.
prayer
O Holy Spirit teach me. Not that I may merely understand with my mind but will obey from my heart.
There has never been the slightest doubt in my mind that the God who started this great work in you would keep at it and bring it to a flourishing finish on the very day Christ Jesus appears.
— Philippians 1:6 (The Message)
There comes a time when the true believer must take his stand on the oath and covenant of God and refuse to be shaken. He must lift high his happy affirmation, not in arrogance, but in faith and in deep humility. Perhaps his declaration of independence will go something like this: I am not yet perfect, but I thank God and my Lord Jesus Christ that I am done with the past and I do now trust in my Savior for full deliverance from all my sins.
I cannot pray like Daniel, but I shall never cease to praise God that He inclines His ear to me. I am not as wise as Solomon, but I glory in this, that "I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him for that day" (2 Timothy 1:12). I have not the gifts of Moses or Isaiah or John, but I'll be everlastingly grateful that I have been given the moral perception to understand and appreciate such men as these. I am not what I want to be, but thanks be to God that I do want to be better than I am; and I am sure that "He who began a good work in [me] will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus" (Philippians 1:6). Here I stand. I can do nothing else, so help me God.
thought
We can't grow by our own effort and determination. But we can fully commit ourselves to God, trusting Him for empowerment. As we submit to His control, the Spirit will grow us!
prayer
Father, complete in me the transformation You have begun. For Jesus' sake
Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
— Philippians 3:13-14
Once while listening to a man reproach, disparage and scold an assembly of Christians with whom he was only slightly acquainted and whose personal lives he had no way of appraising, I asked myself some questions, the answers to which up to this point I have not received. Since they bear directly on the matter here being discussed I want to list them. Perhaps some reader can answer them for me. Here they are: Why do some preachers ? 1. To take us on in the Christian life, begin by trying to prove that we have not started yet? 2. To emphasize a truth, assume or assert that everyone but them is ignorant of it?
3. To stir us to more praying, assume that we never pray at all? 4. To make us feel penitent, imply that we had a fierce family quarrel just before we left for church? 5. To bring conviction of sin on an audience, act wise and mysterious and subtly suggest that there is deep and grave hidden evil present somewhere? 6. Create invidious comparisons, as for example: "You can preach about the deeper life all you will; I believe in foreign missions"; or "You may run to and fro over the earth engaged in foreign missions; I believe in love as the only way to please God." This is dishonest and confusing, but it does disturb the tenderhearted saints and bring them to the altar. I wonder if that is not the real purpose of it after all.
thought
None of us is born fully mature. There is a great deal of growing to be done. Rather than concentrating on weaknesses and failures in learning to walk, let's encourage one another to keep pressing on.
prayer
Thank You, Lord, I can grow. I don't have to remain what and where I am today. I can grow because of Your grace and enablement.
'Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.'
— Luke 22:31-32
This concept of the Christian life as a journey to be taken, a growth to be attained, is being lost to us through two widely separated modern errors. . . . The second error is found among us evangelicals. This error is the exact opposite of the liberal's, which assumes spiritual life to be present when it is not; this one assumes that life is not there when it is. Unless every Christian virtue is in the soul, it flatly denies that any virtue is there at all. It requires all babies to be born full grown, and all pilgrims to reach their destination the same moment they set out on their journey. Those who hold this error seem possessed by a desperate hope that if they can shatter all faith and shake every Christian loose from his confidence they can bring about a revival. As they see it, no one is where he should be and will never arrive there until he admits that he has been deceived about himself up to now and has only just this minute seen the true light.
thought
Consider Peter. Terrible failures in his life there were but mark the growth. At various points in his life we might have written him off. But Christ didn't. Let's give our brothers and sisters room to grow.
prayer
Awesome is Your patience with me in my walk with You. I trip and fall. You pick me up. You intercede for me. Thank You, Lord, thank You.
For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.
— First Peter 1:23
In the Hebrew epistle a great deal is said about the need for persistence in the Christian life. The converts were losing heart and the man of God sought to encourage them to "hold firmly till the end the confidence we had at first" (3:14). "So do not throw away your confidence," he exhorts them, "it will be richly rewarded" (10:35). This concept of the Christian life as a journey to be taken, a growth to be attained, is being lost to us through two widely separated modern errors. The first is that of the liberal, who cheerfully advises the unrenewed sinner to continue in the Christian life, overlooking the important fact that he has no life in which to continue. Where there has been no impartation of life to the soul of the man, growth and development are impossible. To assume that a saving act of God has been done in a man's heart when in reality no such act has been done is to set the soul of the man in mortal jeopardy and all but guarantee his final ruin.
thought
You cannot progress in the Christian life if you have never begun. It is spiritual birth through faith in Christ that gives us life, equipped with the Holy Spirit within and the spiritual dynamic of God. But we can't grow if we have never been born.
prayer
Father, thank You I am Your child.