Heresy involves many temptations, but one that I wish to log into this site is the temptation of intellectual simplicity! Simplicity is a double-edged sword. We need simplicity when referring to the Gospel and its theology but we need this simplicity to be orthodox. This is not “simple.” Really, the simplicity that we need is not so much simple as it is concise. There is a huge difference. When one is simple in theology one overlooks many suppositions in order to arrive at the simplistic plain. This is what heresy does! It paints a picture without prepping the canvas. The paint will not hold up under time or examination and thus peel right off. But being concise means prepping the canvas while painting the picture, a skill reserved for those with experience and calling in a particular spiritual field.

Heresy many times speaks to the undereducated and lower classes - or, simply put, people without proper resources (many times even the “educated” do not have proper resource). Heresy makes a theologian out of just about anyone, giving them quick access to ”theology” through a minimal amount of study. An exception to this rule would be heresies that demand extensive linguistic studies which seem to be primarily designed to replace the Church itself.

Heresy usually involves denying much of the Church’s teachings throughout history in order to show how some type of modern - even in the medieval sense - prophet or teacher has suddenly found the truth. They tend to imply that the Church was hiding for the past thousand or so years and this person or group has suddenly found it in the form of new doctrine and practice. Some will even attempt to prove that this new-founded theology was practiced in the first century - a very bold move considering the fact that the vast majority of First Century documents were destroyed during persecution.

Heresy spreads very fast due to the despondent crowd that is targeted by the master heretic. These hopeless and uninformed people will eat the heresy straight from the palm of their new master’s hand desperately panting for intellectual status.

When the desperate soul is found by the heretic and proselytized to they usually feel very enlightened and enriched, at first, believing that they have finally discovered what God has intended for them. The propositions begin to hit them very fast and hard, leading them to feel overwhelmed yet also joyful due to the nature of what is being pitched. It is overwhelming because of many reasons but it is joyful because it has just the right amount of historical revelation - usually in the form of Bible verses - sprinkled throughout the recipe. It’s laced with “truth.”

This supposed truth that the heresy is laced with is usually very easy to understand and speaks to the flesh in many ways. Instant supposed sanctification through knowledge is many times the culprit. The ancient heresy of Gnosticism was like this. It appealed to people because it stimulated their intellect. It appeased their need for secret knowledge and smarts.

The Gospel does not sanctify like Gnosticism or its contemporary counterparts. The Gospel works through humility, submission, pain, and even turmoil. One must become “childlike” to receive the Gospel. After one receives it one can or may begin to exhaustively study its implications, but for the most part the Gospel involves just a lot of hard work and discipline - hard work in the sense of dying to one’s self!

God said in Matthew that nothing would EVER penetrateHis Church. We all know by looking at history who the Church is, but some insist that there “is more” than what the Church can immediately offer them and thus begin to revert to some sort of reformed model where the Church is being reinvented every couple years - ultimately excommunicating itself - sometimes unknowingly - from the historical Church. The Church is the safe-house for God’s elect. It is the “pillar of truth,” as St. Paul says in 1 Timothy 3:15. The Church will indeed let you down at times but it will never kill your soul. Only your arrogant desire for “truth” will do that.

It comes as no surprise that the majority of Christians in America, according to this recent study, believe that there are multiple ways to eternal life. I agree! There are many ways to “eternal life,” but only elect Christians will be spending it with Christ, and the others will be spending it with Satan.

Heaven is a Christian doctrine. According to the book of Revelation, heaven is an eternal state of worship. If you do not worship the God of Abraham in this life, why in the world would you want to worship him for eternity? You wouldn’t! That is why those that do not worship on this earth will not be going to the place where all of God’s people will be worshiping for eternity. Why people think that, for instance, non-Christians, would want to worship Christ for all eternity is just plain silly.

The question we should ponder is this: What is heaven? What does it consist of? From this we can determine just who will be there and who will not.

I remember watching a Twilight Zone episode once, where a thief was shot by the police and ended up in a place where he was handed riches all day long. He began to hate the situation very quickly. In fact, it was driving him mad. He later found that he was in Hell.

I’m not suggesting that Hell is what the Twilight Zone says it is, but I am suggesting that heaven is not what most people think it is, and that most people really DO NOT WANT TO GO TO THE TRUE HEAVEN.

If you do not want to  worship on Sunday (because this is the worship that we are referring to - not the Gnostic worship that most sectarian people think of), what makes you think that you want to go to an eternity of this sort? Think about it.

Just how did St. Paul evangelize? Did he use evidential means of any sort? Or, did he preach as Christ did; that is, within the context of the elect people - Covenant and Kingdom?

We never see Christ, Paul, or any of the Apostles truly attempt to convince people into the Kingdom with external evidence. When they mentioned miracles to the people, it was done in a psychological manner (Proverbs 26:5). They were throwing the silly doubts and sarcastic questions right back at the people, convincing the people that their current philosophies stemmed from the true God, but with radical inconsistencies and with no authority! They were simply beating the unbelievers at their own game, answering them according to their own inconsistencies, leading them down their own paths.  

One of the most controversial passages regarding the apologetical tactics of St. Paul is in Acts 17. Here we can see that Paul was not trying to convince the Greeks that God is real through God’s creation, but he was trying to convince the Greek philosophers, in a very wise manner, that all true knowledge is in fact from God. St. Paul was throwing their own proclamation back at them, reminding them (in verse 23), that they have an altar “TO THE UNKNOWN GOD.” St. Paul goes on to say that the God they worship is the same God that Paul worships, but they just don’t “know Him,” as Paul puts it in verse 23.

Many teachers say that St. Paul is persuading through evidence by briefly proclaiming God’s attributes of creation, when in fact he is not persuading through evidence at all. According to St. Paul’s teachings in Romans 1:22-26, which make the point of showing how man sinfully defaults to worship creation, he would not preach a creation-based apologetic. In Acts 17, Paul was focusing on the Greeks’ authority. The Greeks had a material authority (statues and such), so Paul throws their own insignia at them. He challenges their authority by answering them according to their own folly - the folly of their insignia on the altar. They said they worshipped an unknown God, so Paul fills in the unknown part for them. He goes on in verses 24-31 to explain some of the attributes of God to which they were profoundly opposed, which included creation and resurrection of the dead. Now, of all things he could have mentioned about God, why did St. Paul mention these, considering that the Greeks were so opposed to them? Well, one thing is for certain, Paul was not appeasing them as many evangelists do today, and he was certainly not hitting their hot buttons for the close of the sale. In fact, he was touching on issues that were very sensitive to them, and in the last verse, Luke writes that some “joined him and believed.”

How did St. Paul lead them to belief? St. Paul, once again, was answering them according to their own folly (Prov. 26:5). Their folly of paralleling with Paul’s philosophy was his open door. They admitted that they did not know the god that they worshiped, and they also admitted in their poems that they are God’s offspring (verse 28). They knew there was a “higher power” but they did not know the basic deity of this higher power, which is crucial for conversion. St. Paul throws this point back at them so that if they were to disagree with him, they would have to recant their poems and altar insignia. Paul had complete control of the debate by showing their philosophy to be in line with Paul’s God rather than their own. He used their own words and folly against them while showing them that they were idolaters. That is what humbled them!

The Argument of the Resurrection as “Evidence”

 It is also argued that Paul was using evidence to persuade when, in verse 32, the people responded to Paul preaching the resurrection. But Paul did not preach the resurrection as proof. The resurrection was a powerful witness to both the Jew and the Gentile because it shows new life within Christ. General suffering on a cross could have been done by any one, but suffering on the cross, taking our sins outside the gate (Hebrews 13:11-12) to Hades (Acts 2:31), and resurrecting to proclaim this “taking off of sins” could only be done by the Messiah as a fulfillment of prophecy. The resurrection was notjust about Christ dying, and it also was not just about him performing a miracle of resurrecting (an evil generation seeks a sign).  The resurrection was about Him taking our sins outside the camp, which was the way the Jews understood atonement.

The only way Christ was able to proclaim this taking out of sins to Hell - as prophesied - was by resurrecting (Acts 2:27; Luke 24:44; John 20:17; 1 Peter 3:19; 4:6). The resurrection was part of Christ’s overall plan to show us that He brought sin out of the covenant AND THEN ascended to heaven. The reformer John Calvin speaks of Christ’s descending into hell as a key factor of Christ’s plan of atonement:

If Christ had died only a bodily death, it would have been ineffectual. No - it was expedient at the same time for him to undergo the severity of God’s vengeance, to appease his wrath and satisfy his just judgment. For this reason, he must also grapple hand to hand with the armies of hell and the dread of everlasting death. A little while ago we referred to the prophet’s statement that “the chastisement of our peace was laid upon him,” “he was wounded for our transgressions” by the Father, “he was bruised for our infirmities” [Isaiah 53:5 p.]. By these words he means that Christ was put in place of evildoers as surety and pledge - submitting himself even as the accused - to bear and suffer all the punishments that they ought to have sustained. All - with this one exception: “He could not be held by the pangs of death” [Acts 2:24 p.]. No wonder, then, if he is said to have descended into hell, for he suffered the death that, God in his wrath had inflicted upon the wicked!…The point is that the [apostles] Creed sets forth what Christ suffered in the sight of men, and then appositely speaks of that invisible and incomprehensible judgment which he underwent in the sight of God in order that we might know not only that Christ’s body was given as the price of our redemption, but that he paid a greater and more excellent price in suffering in his soul the terrible torments of a condemned and forsaken man.   (Institutes 2:16:10) 

The resurrection was not simply a great miracle, but it showed how we have a new life and how we will also, like Christ, have a bodily resurrection (Romans 6:5). This truth had to be preached to the Old Covenant saints as well as the Gentiles because the resurrection is the very hope of the gospel: that after death, we too will rise to eternal life. The Sadducees did not believe in a resurrection of believers (Acts 23:7-8), so Paul did everything in his power to conquer this heresy (Acts 24:21) including risking death (Acts 23:21). Paul never preached the gospel in a manner of evidence; rather, he used the resurrection to proclaim Christ’s promise of atonement and eternal life within an Old/New Covenant context. St. Paul was evangelizing through a kingdom perspective, just as Christ did.

 It is not through intellectual proofs and sophisticated excavations that a person is evangelized into the Kingdom of Christ, even if one is brought into the Church through these means. Granted, something spiritual can happen while the person is in the Church, of course. But this means that the new believer must unlearn, both mentally and spiritually, any heterodox doctrine/evangelization that brought him into the Church in the first place.

On Good Friday of 2005, I went with a friend to a Christian seminar where author and excavator Bob Cornuke spoke and presented his expedition and findings of Mt. Siani and Paul’s shipwreck (see Acts 27). This was a wonderful event that left me very inspired and excited. But there was a very disturbing part of the seminar. Rather than using the law of God for a call to repentance, Bob Cornuke attempted to use his archaeological findings as reason to “receive Christ.”  

We should not be surprised by this style of rhetoric. Within the last two centuries, the Protestant church has intellectualized the gospel to the point of presenting it as a system of belief, rather than a New Covenant (Church and Kingdom). When the gospel is systematized, it becomes a mere rhetoric. But when the gospel is presented as a Covenant, as Christ and the apostles presented it (Luke 22:20; 2 Corinthians 3:6), it becomes an actual movement and spiritual kingdom.

The gospel is a movement of people under the guidance of Christ. It involves a system of doctrine, but the doctrine is not meant to be used on its own, without the authority and nurturing of the Church. The gospel is not a philosophy of culture, but it is a philosophy of Covenant. When doctrine is separated from the authority of the Church, we begin to see this cultural rhetoric arise. This is a very pragmatic way to present Christ. If in fact someone answered a call through a means of evidence, the person would be left in spiritual deprivation with a constant thirst to be quenched from chasing intellectual proofs. If Cornuke’s findings would be presented as a finding of the Church, such findings/teachings would be a great encouragement. But since he refrained from even mentioning what authority he is under, the credit went to himself…but not without the modern retoric at the end, of course.

Has Christ not given the keys of the kingdom to the Church? Did he not say that the gates of hades would not prevail against the Church? And in regards to the actual doctrine the THE CHUCH is to be nurturing and evangelizing people with: Is the gospel a gospel of humility unto power of heart change? Or, is the gospel a gospel of proofs and formulas unto intellect?

Jesus said… “I thank you, Father, Lord of Heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and prudent and have revealed them to babes.  Matthew 11:25

Assuredly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the Kingdom of God as a little child will by no means enter it. Luke 18:17

Revelation Made to Humble…Not to Puff Up

The gospel message is an authoritative announcement that completely humbles a person, as Christ exclaimed, through becoming “childlike.” God gives us the gift of faith through a supernatural and Messianic accomplishment, not through a complex thesis of information - something inconceivable to a “child.”

In order for a person to be humbled to the point of surrendering his intellect to a faith in something that he cannot see, touch, or feel, the person must be brought to a surrender of his autonomy (idolatry). He must come to realize that his worldview and laws for living are without any authority but his own: something that he has been building upon for years - his own relativistic set of laws. His autonomy is revealed as we show him God’s authority in hopes of his surrendering to this authority.

We are brought to eternal salvation through the graces of the Church. This supernatural conversion does not come by any sort of natural revelation such as creation, compelling archeological evidence, science, eschatological hope, or the excitement of miracles. These are all attributes of God (those that are not marred by sin), but they cannot bring someone to salvation in and of themselves. Only the Church can - retreating from one’s idolatry to the authority of Christ. 

The teachings of the Church are not always the most intellectually stimulating teachings available. Take a look at 1 Corinthians 1:18-29.

For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.  For it is written: I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.  Where is the wise?  Where is the scribe?  Where is the disputer of this age?  Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?  For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.  For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom ; but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.  Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.  For you see your calling, brethren, that not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called.  But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty;  and the base of things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are,  that no flesh should glory in His presence. 

Notice how this passage explains that the gospel is not about intellect, but about humility! In the next chapter, Paul says that he did not even come to the people with great speech or knowledge, but he came to them preaching Christ crucified. This passage is completely antithetical to the Seeker-sensitive theology. In verse 18, Paul says that the message of the gospel is “foolishness” to those who are perishing. Then in verse 21, he says that it actually pleased God to present a message of foolishness so that the true elect - the true called - would come forward to eventually fulfill prophecy. In verse 24, he supports this by specifically stating that this message is understood by “those who are called.” Then, in verse 27, Paul says God presented this foolish message so that the “weak” men that were changed by it may put the unbelievers to shame.

The shame that St. Paul is speaking of is the shame that takes place when spiritual dominion and sanctification begins to manifest in the believer’s life. On a grand scale, this is done through the very institution of the Church! The Church, as Christ’s living body of believers, is to manifest his glory while here on earth as well as in heaven above.

Turning from one’s sin and becoming born again is not just a matter of psychological change, it is also a matter of existential change. As one is converted, one becomes a part of Christ’s living body - The Church. 

In all the confusion about who is in the Covenant and who is out, who is of God and who is not, we must not be tempted to draw a line based on our sins against man, as if people who practice a lesser kind of sin against man were in and people who practice a greater kind of sin against man were out. Regarding justification, sin is sin; all sin, no matter what the severity, separates us from God’s redemption. To determine who is in need of salvation and who is not, we must determine who or what a person is worshiping. We should not discern the need of salvation by a person’s degree of sin against man but by their degree of sin against God. The sin I’m referring to is idolatry. But is there a litmus test to determine whether or not a person is in a lifestyle of idolatry and not worshiping God?

The answer lies within the Tables of the Law and its ability to show us the importance of the Church and her relation to salvation. The Catechism of the Book of Common Prayer briefly explains that the Decalogue is divided into two parts. It states, ”I learn two things from these Commandments; my duty towards God, and my duty towards my Neighbor.” Why bother dividing the law into these two parts? We do so because that is how God set forth the commandments. He first gives us the foundation upon which all morality lies: His glory - worshiping Him in a corporate context (fourth commandment), speaking of Him properly (third commandment), worshiping him alone (second commandment), and putting Him first above all things (first commandment).

The gospel is not about us; it’s about God! The gospel is about turning from our autonomy to join God and His authority (Matthew 16:24). If through faith in Christ we obey the first four commandments - the commandments that are directly asking us to give up our autonomy, then the last six will follow suit. By looking carefully at the first four commandments, we can see that the first three culminate in the fourth. In other words, living out the moral implications of having no other gods before us, not turning to syncratism, and speaking of Him and His glory is shown and demonstrated by worshiping Him on the Lord’s Day and submitting to the ordinances of the Church. One will say, “But a person can just become a member of a church, attend worship, and then go out and live like hell the rest of the week.” No, they cannot.  Anyone who tries to worship on the Lord’s day in a catholic church, while living a life of carnality, will fall in the hands of church discipline - the weekly communion of the Eucharist. According to St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 11, God disciplines through the partaking of the elements. There is no escape! Where the Eucharist is present, so is the accountability of the Lord.

If we skip the fourth commandment of worshiping on the Lord’s Day, proclaiming that obeying the last six commandments shows that we are His, we display arrogance and self-righteousness. In doing this, we are proclaiming that our efforts to obey God are in no need of the teaching and hearing of the Word, the prayers of the saints, the sacraments, and singing: all the things that God has given the priests and deacons to institute during the worship service. This also coincides with Christ’s command to “love thy neighbor as thyself,” because when we submit ourselves to the authority of the worship service, we are indeed “loving our neighbor.” It surely is not love to reject the general calling of the minister and the unification of God’s Covenant community.

With no Church there is no gospel, and with no gospel there is no Church. Christ said that the enemy would never overcome His Church (Matthew 16:18). When one completely rejects the universal Church, one rejects the gospel itself!

Many Christians recognize John the Baptist as the prophet that once initiated the systematic call to salvation - where a person must be able to recite a prayer, then be baptized…and behold…the person is saved for eternity. John was not giving a systematic, magic formula, which required a person to jump through certain intellectual hoops to be saved.  Like Christ in much of His preaching, John was giving a rebuke to God’s Covenant people (Matthew 3:5-9). Remember, the gospel was to “the Jew first.”

We should not be systematizing the rebuke that was given to God’s people in order to form a contemporary and phony ceremony (new Sacrament). Take a serious look at the New Testament and see that much of what we think to be God giving us a system to be saved was in fact God’s chosen Covenant people in need of rebuke. Salvation was not a new thing (Romans 4:3), but the New Covenant was and so John preached the New Covenant symbol of baptism to replace circumcision.  He also rebuked the Jews and commanded them to repent, because they were not accepting their own Messiah and His new covenant. He was not giving a new system, but rather, he was simply rebuking as a teacher would rebuke today.

As a people (Americans) that are very unfamiliar with custom, ritual, ceremony, and even culture, we can easily fall into the error of systematizing. When Paul and Christ said to believe, they were not giving an intellectual and systematic approach to salvation, they were rebuking and exhorting. They were rebuking the Jews so that they would stay committed to the Covenant of Abraham - and they were exhorting the Gentiles to believe through Christ to enter the Covenant. But entering the Covenant through baptism did not mean that one had to recite a prayer or make a public profession. Those who use Romans 10:10, where Paul says to “confess with the mouth,” forget that Paul was speaking about the Jews who were already covenant people and simply needed to repent of following false teachings. He was not necesarilly giving a prerequisite for baptism. He was rebuking and stating that all must believe through faith, and that it must actually manifest through their very speech; but not just once, as a new ceremony of coming forward to a stage to recite a prayer (what is made up to be the “altar call”). He was simply stating that a true belief involves a life of manifestation - as the rest of the Scriptures clearly proclaim - into the life of a kingdom.

There is no other way to enter into life but that this mother [the church] should conceive us in her womb, give us birth, feed us at her breast, and lastly keep us under her care and guidance until, putting off mortal flesh, we become like angels.   -John Calvin

The gospel is primarily about the unification and drawing of God’s people - through redemption, of course - to share the Covenant blessings of a regained paradise (Ezekiel 36:35). In other words, life itself and the pursuit of the gospel is not just a personal journey, it is a corporate journey. This is why we worship God in an ecclesiastical context on Sunday mornings. We gather together on Sundays not necessarily to fellowship with other believers; we can do that anytime. We gather together on Sundays not necessarily to serve; we can serve Christ and His kingdom anywhere. We gather together on Sundays to demonstrate to God that we are His people, united in faith (Ephesians 4:5) and built up as a holy temple (Ephesians 2:21) within the context of the sacraments, praise, and the Word.

When we become “born again” (John 3:3), we are born into the Church and her kingdom. Our new birth is not a birth into a mere personal relationship as many Evangelicals say. We are birthed into a relationship with Christ through the covenant community, into the church, into a community of life and peace with the saints.

When the author of Hebrews gives examples of true faith (chapter11), he specifically mentions the patriarchs’ commitment to the Covenant. He does not say that Abraham repented from his sins against Sarah and is now a godly husband after his encounter with God. The author says that Abraham took a step of faith to build God’s people in a land with which he was unfamiliar (verse 12), and that he was ready to offer a faithful sacrifice to the Lord (verse 17). The writer then goes on to speak about Moses and how his step of faith was a step into the Covenant people. He does not say that Moses made the step of becoming a better, less angry man but that he made a step of commitment to the Covenant community (verse 25) despite the hardship to which it was destined as well as the tempting, luxurious life of Egypt that Moses could have had. These were examples of a demonstrated faith of Covenant community, not a demonstrated faith of personal relationship.

The gospel involves a movement of people here in our time and space known as the church. The gospel is both ecclesiastical and eschatological.

I recently heard a very popular Evangelical pastor preach a very common message on the radio. He said (and I have heard Reformed say this) that we should be always ready to give our testimony to others. What is a “testimony?” Ever since the days of the Enlightenment, and likely even before then, Christians have equated the Gospel with some sort of ethical conversion, “I was once that and now I am this.” Now, I am all for giving glory to God in what he does, and what he has done in the saints, this is why I like to celebrate the feast days. But to equate the Gospel to ethical conversion is a serious mistake.

Any self-help group can take a drug-addicted or other socially oppressed person off the streets and “clean up their life.” In fact, the world has a better track record, in these modern days, of doing such a thing. As a former minister to homeless and incarcerated, I witnessed much of this sort of secular rehabilitation: Many people could not decide between the rehabilitation of the Church or the rehabilitation of the cult of the state (the state issues them license to minister), because they are both able to help.

Change in social and civil ethic is certainly a result of the Gospel taking root in a person, but it is not the essence of the Gospel. The essence of the Gospel, in regards to the change in the elect, is the change in which what the new Christian worships. The new Christian is now no longer an idolater! Now, the new Christian worships the living God! But, this worship is not primarily ethical in the social and even personal sense. This worship that the new Christian begins to give themselves to is corporate and ceremonial. The new Christian is now identified with what Christ spoke about: The Eucharist, Baptism, and the Church in its entirety.

The temptation within the Church has been to begin to act like God, proclaiming who is and is not elect on the basis of one’s inner morality and, as we have discussed, their outward ethics. But we do not know the heart like God knows that heart. We only know what we have been given; the outward workings of Christ: The Eucharist, Baptism, and the Church as a whole. We have not been given jurisdiction of the heart, as judge.

By teaching the testimony doctrine, Evangelical theology has been teaching, not that we are idolaters, but that we are simply breaching modern ethics. With this doctrine anyone can be a Christian that lives a moral life and inserts the name of Jesus in their life. Proper and submissive worship is not vital in this doctrine.

The drastic change in the Christian life can be seen IN THE VERY WAY AND FREQUENCY THAT THEY WORSHIP! Is the Christian in submission to Godly forms of worship, or is the Christian desiring “worship” that appeases their flesh through modern worldliness? Worship involves the “evolving” manner of the liturgical actions as first portrayed by Christ and his Apostles. You will be judged in the end by this Christological standard. So my question is: Why would one risk all of this by worshiping within the context of modern paradigms, presuppositions, and culture? My other question is: Could many be deceived into thinking they are “saved” because they have reached a higher level of morality but not a higher level of worship?

Why would one want to leave a life of fleshly entertainment just to enter a ceremony of fleshly entertainment, such as found in most Evangelical churches? How much has really happened in our hearts if we cannot leave the worlds liturgy to the world?

I have found over the last few years I almost stop even talking about Calvinism.  Yeah, I believe it but I started thinking about the role of the church and the role of people in salvation.  I guess, in seed form I was becoming more catholic in my understanding of salvation.  More of a corporate aspect than the individual aspect.  More of the BODY and less of the middle toe aspect of things.”

This quote was from a recent dialog I had with a friend. It sums up the typical mind of a Christian that is outgrowing the Evangelical and even the Reformed faith.  

Salvation has everything to do with the Church and how God uses the Church to bring us to Him and His eternity. Salvation does not come from nature, although God uses nature for His purpose. Salvation does not come from invisibleness of some sort, even in doctrinal format. “Salvation” comes from God transcending to His people in way of Covenant!

Some may say that that is “covenantal doctrine.” It is, but it is not the doctrine in and of itself that saves us.  Yes, Paul says that faith comes by “hearing” the Word of God: God’s covenantal faithfulness and how we become a part of His plan, despite us being law-breakers. That is a humbling thing, but it is not our humility that saves us. Our humility is a result of our salvation rather than a cause. The real cause of our salvation is Christ’s willingness to die for His people!

Doctrine verifies what God is doing in our lives! Yes, in OUR lives, in the world He gave US. This great people that God has put together under the reign of His son gives us faith, which is necessary to be a part of this salvific plan. But it is God’s grace that brings us to this point; His mercy in action; His eschatological placement of us in an eternal plan, as opposed to the temporal plan of life on earth that results in death.

The preaching of the word, evangelistically speaking, verifies what God has already begun in the heart of the recipient. Our doctrine only points to a greater reality, a reality that cannot be summed up in “Five Points” or one or two sentences, or even sermons. Our doctrine is merely a tug on the garment to turn around and look at the bigger picture of what God has already been doing. This is something that I have been convicted of through the past couple years. I came to a point in my studies, as a Presbyterian, to where I could really go no further, doctrinally speaking. Certainly there was a point of arrogance there,  too: that I had arrived. Then the catholic reality hit me! I could study doctrine my whole life but miss the main point of God and His people. After all, didn’t Christ say that the real summary of His entire Law was to “love thy neighbor?” My Christian brother is my neighbor, in the fullest sense.

Doctrine is necessary to protect God’s people from heresy and to free their minds to be “lead by the Spirit,” as Paul says in Galatians 5:25. Doctrine gives us the ability to crucify the flesh so that we can walk in the Spirit. It does not give us a mental library so that we can show God at the end of our days all the knowledge we have stored. In fact, St. Paul says that knowledge puffs up (1 Cor. 8:1). This does not mean that we learn doctrine and then purposefully forget about it. This means that we learn doctrine and then purposefully move on to love our neighbor.

If, for instance, you are not a part of Christ Church then you do not love your neighbor. In fact, you hate them! Jesus says that a there is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for his friend (John 15:13). If you have been in a scuffle with a person at church and you have fallen away from Christ’s Church because of that, then you hate that person (not to mention Christ). You should “lay down your life” for that person by doing everything possible to help them, even if it means dying.

This type of Anglican theology reminds me of the movie The Mission. The first part of the movie shows a priest floating down a river to his death because he chose to love those that were called to the kingdom. This is the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ! You can take your Bible and worship it all you want, and you can hang your theological degrees on your front porch, but you are nothing if you are not laying your life down for your neighbor (Church - visible or invisible).

I have often wondered just why we, as Christians, are constantly attempting to create a legalistic America. You will often find arguments as to why certain laws are so wrong and how public schools are so corrupt etc.,  but you will seldom hear of the true Gospel remedy; that is, that the State needs to submit to the Gospel and those that God has given the Gospel to: The Church!

Ethics without Christ is legalism, plain and simple! We have no right telling the State (the State that we do not want to run) to live by our ethics, it’s ludicrous.  Our State and educational system was given over, piece by piece, ever since the Revolutionary War. There are no longer any laws directly requiring the State and all her entities to submit to Christian ethics. If, for instance, the State wants to abort children, we certainly have the right to voice our opinion, but we really do not have the right to use the authority of the Scriptures until we make it clear that the Scriptures and the Church (the Church is the only body that can teach the Scriptures) have authority over the State in spiritual/ethical matters.

So next time you get excited over what Hilary Clinton is saying or what Bush did not do right, think of whether or not we have even earned the right to be angry. It’s almost as if we want both to eat and keep our cake. All throughout history, families have been martyred for the sake of evangelizing their State, but today we would like to skip the persecution and get right to the prize.  How arrogant is this, to claim we deserve such a prize? It is likely, at this point, after opening our borders wide to other religions and cultures (we did this not only in the early days of the Revolution, but also in 1965 through Pres. Johnson), that we are going to have to suffer in order to evangelize the State. May we prepare our children!