Some of the
church members of the amous 19th century London preacher, Charles Haddon
Spurgeon, one day came to him asking the question: "Mr. Spurgeon, how can
we know that the gospel you are preaching is the true Word of God? After all,
there are so many preachers in this city who preach a different gospel?"
If this was a burning question in
those days, how much more today - with so many voices preaching - each
one insisting that his message is exactly what the Bible teaches. It is no
wonder so many Christians in our time are totally confused and uncertain as to
what they believe.
For example, just the other day most
church members here in our country considered it unbiblical for women to be
elders in the church, and that children are not to partake of the Lord's
Supper. But in many circles today you will be frowned upon if you question
these common practises of our time. And many modern-day theologians are not
disciplined by their denominations or seminaries when they question the
Biblical revelation about Christ's virgin birth, His miracles, His
resurrection, and even His historicity. It has apparently become fashion to
move every faith beacon of earlier generations.
In Spurgeon's later years Biblical
criticism was also prevalent in England. In reaction to that, this was his wise
answer: "If I walk back through the passages of time, many men and women
of God stand up to shake my hand." And then he would mention a number of
names of well-known Christians of the past
- people of whom the fruit of
their labours withstood the onslaught of many generations. What are we to learn
from this? Spurgeon appealed to the consensus of truth which the church of
almost all denominations confessed through the ages - the
historic Christian faith!
Essentially Spurgeon said:
"Measure me with the measuring rod of history! See whether I preach
something new. He was not an arrogant man, trying to develop his own
theological wheel. He was totally happy to preach exactly the same gospel as
the puritans and the reformers, as the church fathers, the apostles and the
Lord Jesus Himself.
This is why Spurgeon had another
saying: "If it is true, it is not new; if it is new, it is not true!"
What he understood we all must understand: Even if we live in a world which
changes all the time, there are certain things which never change. This is a
truism as unmoveable as the mountains. God never changes, nor His truth.
Morally and essentially man has not developed since the fall. Has not the last
century seen the most bloody wars of all time? It is because human sin and
depravity has not changed. And surely that means that God's plan of redemption
and the gospel never change. And exactly this is the reason why the church's
calling and message of salvation never change!
A few important perspectives
• Freedom is one of the fundamental
characteristics of the Christian life. However, there are certain non-negotiable
absolutes without which the true faith, preaching and the essential nature of
the church are unthinkable. While there are a thousand things in this life
about which a Christian enjoys complete freedom to believe and act as he likes,
there are however certain truths and norms which he has to hold
uncompromisingly for dear life.
• Within the big spectrum of Biblical
truths, there are certain things more important than the rest. The Word is not
equally clear about everything. But there are also other principles and
commands concerning which it insists very emphatically on faith in it and
obedience to it. It stands to reason that holding to these things is absolutely
essential for being a true Christian and a true church. For example, the
Scriptures are not absolutely clear on the way we have to order an rule the
church. But concerning God's plan of salvation and how we are saved, there can
be no doubt whatsoever. Fundamentally it happens in one way, and only in one
way -
and it never changes. Depart from it, and you fall into the dark depths
of eternal damnation!
For many centuries already there has
been a wonderful saying in the church: In necessariis unitas, in
nonnecessariis (dubiis) libertas, in omnibus caritas. We can translate the
Latin like this: In those things necessary, unity; in those things not
necessary or uncertain, freedom; and in everything love.
• One of the most remarkable
characteristics of the gospel is its universal adaptability and relevance. It
does not matter in which culture or century you live - the
gospel is for you. In the soil of rich and poor, learned and uneducated, old
and young, the church germinates equally well. It is because the absolutes, the
necessariis of the faith, are universal and timeless. It addresses the
questions and needs of all people.
• As is true of all foundations, the
absolutes of the faith lie beneath the surface. They therefore are not obvious.
Especially immature Christians struggle to grasp them. In fact, to really
apprehend them clearly, is one of the marks of spiritual maturity.
Birds of a feather flock together in
this world. But the church of Christ is being built by Him. And often He
glorifies Himself by putting a crowd of very different people together in a
church. For such wide variety of humans to live and work harmoniously together,
they need to be able to distinguish between those things which are necessary
and those things which are optional. But if they start emphasising issues of
secondary importance, the end of that church is not far.
It is
necessary to precisely cast the corner pegs of our faith in concrete. Without
firm benchmarks we simply do not know how to judge contemporary teachings and
practises. Without the unmoving anchors of universal, absolute and objective
truth, we are like pieces of cork drifting on the sea of a thousand human
opinions
• Decades of rice water preaching has
hardly equipped the church in South Africa to know the absolutes of our faith,
to reason from first principles, and therefore to discern between good and bad.
Too often church people are not able to digest solid Biblical food. People tend
to be suspicious, even aggressive, about dogma
- because they are unsure as to what
to believe and what not. In their desperate search for solid Biblical rock
beneath their feet, they read everything they can lay their hands on - and
in the process they just get mixed up more. Alas, the typical Christian of our
day is hardly equipped to face up to the relativism of today's postmodernism.
It is tragic to see how hundreds of churches and thousands of Christians are
ready to try out every recipe which can possibly be the answer to their
insecurities. If you stand for nothing, you can be sure that you'll fall for
everything.
• While the need is acute today, there
has always been a desire to clearly understand the corner pegs of our faith.
From the earliest times therefore there have been attempts to formulate the
fundamentals of the faith. Among other things, it was necessary to discern
between heresy and orthodoxy.
The precipitate of the above efforts
we find in the numerous confessions of faith which were written through the
centuries. If you study these confessions it strikes you to what extent they
were formulated with insight and care. It is clear that it was the writers'
purpose to formulate the essentials as accurately as possible, and to
distinguish it from the non-essentials.
It stands to reason that we must
remember that these confessions are human work. It therefore remains
fallible - and must always remain subordinate to the
Word of God as only norm. However, these confessions remain very valuable in
helping us to have the essentials and first principles well-formulated before
us.
• But exactly this is our problem, is
it not, someone will complain. Do these confessions not vary so much, that
they, more than anything else, are the cause of the divisions in the church?
This common perception is the result of ignorance. The Protestant confessions
agree probably as far as 95% of their content is concerned. This is true of all
of them - from the Anglicans' 39 Articles, to
the Baptists' 1689 Confession. Actually, the only differences have to do
with the view of the church, and baptism.
I hear someone asking: "What
about eschatology, our views about the return of the Lord?" It truly is
meaningful - and this illustrates the fathers' wisdom - that
they considered eschatological detail as intra-confessional. This means
that, while they all confessed the fact of Christ's return, they understood
that the details of it in the Bible can be interpreted in more than one way.
And exactly this kept them from casting in concrete their specific
understanding of our blessed hope's details. This they considered therefore to
be part of the Bible's nonnecessariis.
Three principles in a nutshell
As has been
pointed out, the final authority for our faith are not the confessions
(important as they are). The Bible itself is this authority. As we study the
Bible, at least three formulas, so to speak, become clear as we go along. As
for myself, I have found them very helpful to understand, remember, and explain
the essential contents of the Bible.
• Most important of these formulations
is the so-called clarion call of the Reformation. This is what true salvation
is all about:
Sola et tota
Scriptura (only Scripture, but all of Scripture); Sola gratia (only grace);
Solus Christus (only Christ); Sola fide (only faith); Soli Deo gloria (only the
honour or glory of God).
• Another formula focusses also on our
salvation and its results:
We
are saved by grace alone, on the basis of Christ's merits alone,
through faith alone, for good works, and therefore according to
good works.
• Thirdly there is the following:
Our
faith must be Word-based, God-centred, and Christ-focussed.
Some final thoughts
• One of the most precious lessons we
can learn in our faith - even churches corporately - is
to live according to this simple saying:
Major
in God's majors, not in His minors!
To the extent
that we keep ourselves busy with secondary matters, to that extent is our faith
less than it should be. To that extent also we are wasting time and energy and
money on that which is not really central in God's will for His children. This
is one of the main reasons why so many Christian's service for the Lord, does
not withstand the onslaughts of time (1Cor 3:11-15). And very often this is the
reason why even zealous Christians start fighting with one another.
• Especially preachers need to learn
this lesson. If their sermons are not Word-based, God-centred, and
Christ-focussed, how can they expect the Lord's blessing, and that their people
would be built up in the most holy faith? Stories may be enjoyable for the
people, man-centred sentimentalities may cause tears in people's eyes,
sjambok-preaching may frighten them
- but nothing of this really
converts people, because it is not Christ-honouring preaching. And surely we
know that nothing or nobody is more central in God's Word than the Lord Jesus
Christ.
I think it is true to say that most
people associate the word "to preach" with do's and don't's
(do you also often hear people say: "don't preach at me!"). People
tend to think of preaching in moral terms. Why? There can only be one reason -
this is how the Word is often preached. Not only preachers are guilty of this,
but also parents and teachers.
This is however not at all what the
Bible teaches! Preaching according to the Bible is proclaiming the mighty
deeds of God - especially His wonderful works of salvation
in Christ! Listen to the apostle Paul in 1Cor 2:2: "For I decided to
know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified." And the
apostle reminds the Galatians: "O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched
you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as
crucified" (Gl 3:1) (ESV).
Spurgeon's Christ-centeredness is
clear in the first words he spoke in the newly built Metropolitan Tabernacle - the
church building which had to accommodate the crowds of people who came to
listen to his preaching: "May the theme of the preaching in this building
always be the person of Jesus Christ .... if somebody asks me about my deepest
convictions of faith, I can give only one answer: Jesus Christ, and Him
alone!"
• In his book, The Great Evangelical
Disaster, Francis Schaeffer writes about a rocky ridge high up in the
mountains above his home in Switzerland. When it snows heavily, he writes, this
ridge is covered completely, so that you cannot see it. But when the snow
melts,
and because
this rocky outcrop is a water divide, the water flows to different sides of the
ridge -
down into the catchment areas of the Rhine River and the Rhone River.
The Rhine flows into the icy waters of the North Sea, and the Rhone into the
warm waters of the Mediterranean - more than a thousand kilometres to the south.
This is what a water divide does,
Schaeffer points out - it cuts, it divides. Water divides determine
destinies.
Then he goes on to point out that a
church's view of Scripture is such a water divide - it
determines destinies. But, of course, this is also true of other Biblical
absolutes. What we need to understand, is that God's truth is a truth in
equilibrium. Move the bench marks just a half a little bit - and
a tilting takes place which determines peoples' fate.
Let
us never forget, the church which must lead our children and grandchildren in
the ways of eternity, are being formed today. What an enormous calling rests on
us!
A few questions for discussion
1. For which values and truths are you
prepared to die? Where do you draw the line?
2. The concept of fundamentalism
has its origin in the beginning of the 20th century, when a number of
evangelical leaders and theologians explained the fundamental truths of the
Christian faith in a series of books. Since then this word has taken on a very
negative meaning. How do you understand this word today? Is the preaching in
your church fundamentalist, or not? What do you think about this issue?
3. If you look at the church of our day (I
mean in general), what do you think of it? What are you doing about it?
4. With some people who call themselves
Christians, it is very difficult to enjoy fellowship. Why? What do you consider
to be the minimum conditions for true fellowship?
5. What do you know about the concept of Post-modernism - the
world view which dominates the thinking of our society -
especially the minds of our young people?
6. What are you doing to equip your
children and your church for the philosophical and theological challenges of
tomorrow? How do you teach them the fundamental truths of the Word of God - and
to think from first principles?
7. If we must be careful not to make our
children little Pharisees by simply giving them a mere moralistic education,
what then must we teach them?
-o0o-
Postnet
Suite No. 148 Tel.
011 476 2907 (home)
Private
Bag X1 Cell.
082 848 9396
Northcliff E-mail:
nico.vanderwalt@reformed.org.za
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