So often I here People downplay the importance of the study of God, and of doctrine, and instead insist that what really matters is how we live. Many people demand sermons filled with life application. They want to know how to have a better marriage, better relationships, better work better everything and they want 10 steps to help them get there. The problem I see is a separation between the head, the heart, and the will.
A friend of mine saw this sign outside a cafe. This summarises everything that Jesus hated about the Pharisees. The Pharisees emphasized physical ascendency and religious observance for salvation, and one such law they taught prohibited them from eating with unwashed hands. In Matthew 15:17-20 Jesus rebukes them by saying:
"Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth passes into the stomach and is expelled? But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person. But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile anyone.”
What Jesus is emphasizing is that the heart defines what we live for, our passions, our desires, our motivation. In a sense our heart determines what we worship and our actions and behaviour reflect this. This is why Paul in Ephesians 3 says:
"For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen"
Here we have a magnificent flow chart of how God transforms what we worship. First we see that Paul needs to "bow" and pray. Why? Because God must "grant" something we do not have the capacity for in and of ourselves. He prays that God would grant that we are strengthened and empowered by the Holy Spirit so that Christ would dwell in our hearts through faith. And what does Christ dwelling in the hearts through faith lead to? The overflow of love! And we see that this love is the result of us knowing the love of Christ which leads to the goal of being filled with the fullness of God and being conformed into the image of Christ. And this leads us, like Paul, to overflow in praise and doxology to the God is is at work in us to do this according to his Sovereign purpose. Its the knowedge of Christ, granted by The Holy Spirit, which transforms the heart which in turn transforms our actions. Without which neither salvation or growth in godliness can occur. This is why Paul said to Timothy:
"Watch your life and your doctrine closely. Persevere in them, because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers."
J Greshamachen in his book Christianity and liberalism in the 1920s said:
“But it will be said that Christianity is a life not a doctrine. The assertion is often made and has the appearance of godliness but it is radically false and to detect its falsity one does not even need to be a Christian. The questionings can only be settled by an investigation into the beginnings of Christianity. If any one fact is clear, on the basis of the first century evidence, it is that the Christian movement, at its inception was not just a way of life in the modern sense but a way of life founded upon a message. It was based not upon mere feeling, not upon a mere program of work, but upon an account of facts. In other words it was based on doctrine. Certainly based on Paul himself there can be no debate that Paul certainly was not indifferent to doctrine, on the contrary, doctrine was the very basis of his life. The New Testament gives not one bit of comfort to those who separate faith from knowledge. To those who hold the absurd view that someone can trust a person without knowing who he trusts. What many despise today as doctrine, the New Testament calls the gospel. “
The gospel is not a system of ethics you live, its news about what God did. Its good news, not encouragement, advice, edification, exhortation –all of which you find in the bible, all of which you should preach. Many people get the gospel and the law confused. The law involved commandments, encouragement, advice, exhortation. The gospel is not a system of ethics you live, its news about what God did in Christ to save us from our sin and the punishment we deserve. Its good news that leads the the overflow of praise, doxology and thankfulness in a transformed life. The law without the gospel brings guilt. Only when the law is shown in light of the gospel, as a right response, is it used rightly and becomes a guide for life of gratitude. The two are inseparable. Our minds transform our hearts and this transforms our actions. The doctrine is at its heart the gospel, who God is and what He has done for us to reconcile us to Him Self. To regard doctrine as irrelevant is to regard God and His work as irrelevant, making us and our work the really important stuff. Doctrine humbles us and points us to God, keeping us from the self obsession and self righteousness that our sinful natures desire to enslave us to. As Martin Luther said:
"And this is the reason why our theology is certain: it snatches us away from ourselves and places us outside ourselves, so that we depend not on our own strength, conscience, mind, person, or works but on what is outside us, that is, on the promise and truth of God, which cannot deceive."
People say that the church just needs to live out the gospel however the Church is the very problem that necessitates Jesus’ death in the first place. The church is such a horrible nest of iniquity that Jesus died for it. The gospel is that Jesus has done something for that church that it could not do for itself. When Paul faces either, churches that already know the doctrine, like rome, or churches that are living sinfully and unrepentantly, like Corinth, he never says I know you have good doctrine, but your not living the gospel, he tells them they actually need to keep going back to what the doctrine actually is. In fact in almost all His letters His first two thirds are doctrine of who Christ is, what He has done, and who we are now as a result and the last section is comprises of what a thankful response to this gospel looks like as an exhortion to godly living. Seperating the exhortion from the initial section of doctrine is a section of doxology (praise) and the word "therefore" or something to the effect of.
When we think that people won’t understand the gospel we are underestimating the power of the Holy Spirit to open their minds to understand because Jesus clearly says in John’s gospel that my sheep will hear and know my voice. They will hear his voice when preachers faithfully preach his word. Secondly we really undermine the importance of building God’s people up in the knowledge of doctrine. Unfortunately what happens when you pit doctrine with life, is you pit the head against the heart. The mind being influenced by doctrine is always changed first but it will always drag the heart along with it. Grasping the truths will transform what we do. Paul says in Romans 12:2 “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is-his good, pleasing and perfect will.” How does God want you to respond, think and act? Well we find this out when we learn doctrine.
Obedience means Doing what God says and God says delight yourself in God. Right thinking about God exists for the sake of right feeling for God. Piper says that being satisfied in God will not glorify God if our satisfaction in God is not based on right thinking.Right thinking about God exists for the sake of right affections for God. Logic and reasoning exists for the sake love love and joy and delight and affection. Heads exist for hearts. Knowing the truth is the basis for admiring the truth.Both thinking and feeling are important but not equal in ultimacy. The devil gets many things right. He feels no right affectionshe hates the truth that He knows. Knowing is not ultimate. Admiring, being thankful trusting are the goal and ends. Affections based on wrong thinking don't honor God.
John Piper gives 9 arguments for the indispensible role of right thinking and right knowing in the life of the Christian:
1. It is possible to have strong feelings and be lost if the feelings are not based on knowledge (Romans 10:1-2).
2. God has planned that thinking about the Bible is the means he uses to give understanding (2 Timothy 2:7).
3. Paul is given as an example of reasoning with the Bible (Acts 17:2-3).
4. Jesus assumes and requires that we will use logic in understanding both what is natural and what is spiritual (Luke 12:54-57).
5. Jesus refuses to deal with people who use their reason to conceal truth (Matthew 21:23-27).
6. Thirteen times in Paul’s letters, he asks the question, “Do you not know?” Paul assumes that if his readers knew something, they would see things differently, feel differently, and act differently.
7. The Bible tells us that Christ has given pastors and teachers to the church and tells us that they should be apt to teach—because God intends that the Bible be explained to ordinary folks who don’t have the time or ability to go as deep as God wants them to go. Christ would not have given teachers to the church if he thought they were not needed.
8. The Bible declares that we should proclaim the whole council of God (Acts 20:27). That implies that there is a coherent unified whole, a body of doctrine, that should be given to the church. It is not easy to find this whole council in a book with 1,500 pages! It’s mainly mental labor. Finding the unified biblical theology that the people need to know takes hard thinking.
9. The Bible is a book, which means that it must be read.
Dr James Boys said “Whatever a church uses to get them in, it has to keep using the keep them in.”
Lets bring people in to church through teaching a love and knowledge of Jesus and keep preaching this knowing it is the power to save and to transform.
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