Resolving
Differences Between Brethren
Harry
Pickup, Jr.
Thayer
Street church of Christ
Akron,
OH (May 22, 1997)
Ephesians 4 beginning with verse 1, Wherefore I Paul the prisoner in the Lord Jesus Christ beseech ye to walk worthily of the calling wherewith we were called with all lowliness and meekness with long suffering forbearing one another in love giving all diligence to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. And the particular part of that passage I want us to remember is the one in which he beseeches us to walk worthily of our calling giving all diligence to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.
I would like for you to notice as we look just briefly at that passage two things about it. First of all when he commands us to keep the unity of the spirit...we cannot keep what is not already in existence. It is like trying to have a savings account with no money in it. That's an impossibility. This passage, nor none other tells us to work out a means or a plan whereby we may all be united. That plan and program comes from God and it is already in existence.
Notice also that he identifies it as a unity of the Spirit. I take the prepositional phrase "of the spirit" to be speaking of where this plan of unity comes from. Where or who originates it. Therefore, what he is commanding us is to be worthy persons, of the calling wherewith we have been called and to which we have responded by preserving unity from the spirit which already exists.
Secondly, I want you to notice the state of mind of the person who walks worthily and is giving all diligence to do that. In reference to his attitude toward himself the writer says, We are to walk worthily with lowliness of mind and meekness. Lowliness of mind means that we are not presumptuously egotistical. It is how we feel about ourselves. Meekness says that we have ourselves under good control. The word meek is an adjective which the Greeks used to use when they talked about training a horse to the bridle and to the saddle. The object was to train the horse sufficiently where he could be controlled, but not controlled so well that you broke his spirit. So, in this passage, our worthy walk in preserving the unity of the Spirit is to do it not with egotism or personal pride and having ourselves well under control.
Secondly, there are two participles which say with long suffering and forbearing one another. These have to do with the objects that perhaps hinder the unity. Forbearing has to do with how we treat the individual that we are trying to influence, and long-suffering has to do with the situation in which we find ourselves. I would like for us now to keep that passage, the gist of it, in our minds as we develop our thought.
A second one is the very terse commandment which we have already read before that Paul wrote to the divided Corinthian church when he said, "That I beseech you brethren through the name of the Lord Jesus Christ that you all speak the same thing and that there be no divisions among you and that you be perfected together in the same mind and the same judgment" (1 Cor. 1:10). And, one more in Philippians 1, after having said a number of things about this great church he rather summarizes in verse 27 only concluding beside all else that I said here is the main thing that he said, "only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ that whether I come and see you or be absent I may hear of your state that ye stand fast in one spirit with one soul striving together for the faith of the Gospel of Jesus Christ."
Now obviously, all three of these verses speak in reference to unity, and one raises the specter of division. What I would like to talk to you about for awhile tonight or trying, or learning, or making some contribution toward Scripture for settling doctrinal disagreements and there have always been disagreements among God's people.
Let me say first off that I do not consider that this lesson is an exhaustive treatise on that subject, and, when I finish it that you will know everything that there is in the Bible about settling doctrinal differences. But, I hope in our reasoning together that I may be able to make some contribution, perhaps to the settlement in your mind toward that end. Because it is not infrequent that we find brethren in various places who disagree doctrinally about a variety of passages and sometimes that's true, even within a local church. It would be well, therefore, for us even when we are not in a state of division to be forewarned about what the Bible says toward this end.
Now, as we begin to look at that, I want to raise a question with you and that question has to do, Does the fellowship of Jesus, can it, and should it tolerate some doctrinal disagreement? I repeat the question, "Does the fellowship of Jesus," I am referring of course to those of you who may have been here, many of you were here Tuesday night, to 1 Cor. 1 and verse 9 that speaks about the fellowship of Jesus into which we were called. Does the fellowship of Jesus tolerate any doctrinal disagreements? There are two answers to that. One is yes and the other is no. That is, there are conditions under which the answer is yes on occasions and sometimes when the answer is no. And, we want to look at that answer, or those answers rather, in the light of Scripture.
One of the first things that I believe that we need to do is exactly what we do when we are gathering information about any other Bible subject and that is that we try to bring together in the right relationship everything that the Bible says on that subject. Let me give you two illustrations. Suppose you were talking to a person about how to become a Christian and you pointed out that the act of obedience that changed the state of relationship of a sinner into salvation and brought him out of darkness into light was the act of baptism, and very quickly if you were talking to a rather knowledgeable denominational person, that person would deny that.
And he might go with you to a passage like John 3:16, that "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth on him should not perish but might have everlasting life." Or Jesus' own words in John 8, "Unless you believe that I am he, ye shall all likewise perish." Or Romans 5 verse 1, "Therefore, we are justified by faith in Jesus Christ." Now, probably what you would reply is "but that isn't all the Bible says on that subject," and you would be imminently correct. When you are talking to a person about how to become a Christian, what we want to do is to get all of the information, bring it together and properly collate it according to its proper relationship.
Now there is nothing brilliant about that. We understand that. But, sometimes we don't do that when we are talking about doctrinal disagreements. We tend to hone in on one particular passage or passages in isolation to many others.
Let me give you another one. Suppose you wanted to understand yourself what qualities that man must possess in order to serve as an elder, bishop or pastor among God's people. If you looked, for example at 1 Timothy chapter 3 you would gain a lot of information in reference to those qualities. But, there would be some things there that were not found in the book of Titus. Or if you read Titus 1 and 1 Timothy 3 desiring to know what is the work that such a man does, you would have overlooked a variety of other passages.
The intelligent way to go about that would be to bring together in their proper relationship every passage that relates on that subject. Now I'm not going to have time tonight to be able to do that. But I do suggest that it has a great bearing upon some of the disagreements that exist among our brethren.
There is the second thing in way of introduction to which now in the application of some of these points that I would direct our attention. First of all, I said a moment ago, in the fellowship of Jesus, is it ever justified in tolerating some doctrinal disagreements? The 14th chapter of Romans teaches that as plainly, to me, as it can possibly be taught. Now we are not going to look at the entirety of Romans 14, but let me ask you at your own leisure to do this. Take the 14th chapter and take the first paragraph of Chapter 15 with it. Because that's the conclusion of what he starts with in verse 1. The essence of the intent of these verses is seen in verse 1 and that is that we are, "ye that are strong in the faith receive him that is weak in the faith and not to scruples of doubt or "not to doubtful disputations." And the passage is telling us that there are some who are "strong" and there are some who are "weak" and what they must do is one must not pass judgment upon the other and the other must not set at ought the opposite. The common way, or before I make that observation let me finish what I intended to start with. One of the best ways that I know of to look at those some 25 or 27 verses is just simply go through them and note them and what I have done for my own education I have written down every commandment that's given to us on that subject in that passage. Then if you will go back and look at the modifiers of that passage, that is in reference that we are not to "destroy the work of God with meat," that is in verse 20. Or that the "kingdom of God is not eating and drinking" but the "kingdom of God is righteousness, joy and peace." If you will simply put on one side of the paper everything that we are told to do in reference to disagreements, put the modifiers on the other side it probably will help us to understand what was in the mind of the Holy Spirit.
Now the common interpretation of this book is that those who are "strong" are correct in their doctrinal positions and the ones who are "weak" are incorrect, but what they are incorrect in is a matter of opinion and by permission. I don't believe that that will square with the teaching of that chapter. Both of those people believed what they believed. The man who believed that he could eat meat, who believed that he could keep feast days, was a man who believed what he believed because it was justified by the teaching of Scripture. The man who felt like it was a violation of conscious to eat meat and, therefore, could not conscientiously do it, or that he could not esteem one day above another was a man who believed the opposite but he believed it for the same reason. He believed it because that"s what the Bible taught.
Now there is a passage which suggests that there can be a state of tolerance between brethren who differ on some doctrinal point. But that isn't true on every point. We look for an example in Romans 16, just two chapters later, one from 15, in which we are told to, "Mark those which are causing division contrary to the doctrine whereby ye were taught and avoid them." That has to do with what men are teaching. If you go to 1 John, one of the reasons in chapter 2 and verse 26 that John said he wrote that book was concerning those teachers who lead you astray. He identifies them as the anti-Christ. Those anti-Christ in verses 18 and forward were those who had left someone. They have gone "out from us," John wrote. They were not of us and their going out from us made it evident that they never had been of us. Then in chapter 4 he tells us how to treat them. In chapter 4 he says, "Try the spirits whether or not they are of God. For there are many false prophets gone out into the world. Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God. Every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God." He is the anti-Christ. He concludes in verse 6 and says, "He that hears us knoweth God. He that hears us not, knoweth not God. By this we know the spirit of truth from the spirit of error." Now there are some doctrinal disagreements that can be tolerated within the fellowship of Jesus Christ. That is not only Scripture but that is practice and has been engaged in by a number of years. All of my lifetime I have observed that people have differing views about a variety of doctrinal practices.
Now I recognize that our practice doesn't authorize it. If it isn't authorized in scripture, it doesn't make any difference what we do. But, secondly, lest that should seem alarming, that isn't true about every doctrinal position. Now we are brought to the point in our thinking, "How do we determine that something is of such a that the fellowship of Jesus cannot tolerate differing doctrinal views?" I want to lay down now for you three propositions, three factors I believe which will have a bearing upon this. One of the negative ways that it cannot be done is for some individual or individuals to decide what matters we must agree on and what we don't have to agree on and make it up as a list for the rest of us. God never gave that prerogative to anybody.
There must be some Bible teaching to that, and I believe that there is. I remind you now, again, of a point or two that I made Tuesday night concerning the fellowship of Jesus, let's read the verse first. Verse 9 of chapter 1 says, "God is faithful through whom you were called into the fellowship of his son Jesus Christ our Lord." First of all there are at least three personalities identified by name in that passage. There is God, who does the calling. There is Christ, with whom the fellowship is most intimately identified. And there are the persons who are called into it. A second thing we want to know is there is a change of state in that verse. There was a time when these people weren't in the fellowship, then they were in the fellowship. And when it is described that what they were not, but now were, the word which the Holy Spirit uses is the preposition "into," you were called into that. Well, the fellowship of our Lord is talked about throughout the New Testament. And, whether you are using the word fellowship, or communion as in 1 Cor. 10:16 and 17, whether you are using the word share, as Heb. 3:1, or partake, as in Heb. 3:14, or 1 Tim 5:22, where we are told not to partake of the other individual or the other man's sins, whatever the English word that is used to describe the fellowship of Jesus and those in it there is always common ground involved, fellowship. It sets down as a principle that among his fellows there are certain things that are common to all persons in the fellowship.
And the other night I suggested five of them. (1) The New Testaments speaks of a common salvation, Jude the only chapter and verse 3. (2) Titus chapter 1:4 speaks about a common faith. Jude 3, a more familiar passage speaks about a faith "once for all delivered to the saints." (3) Third, there is a common nature, 2 Pet. 1:4, "Whereby are given unto us these exceeding great and precious promises that through these ye might be made partakers fellowshippers of the divine nature having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust." Now that is something that all fellows have in common. (4) Four, there is a commonality of blessings. In Eph. Chapter 3, Paul again identifying himself as a prisoner of Jesus Christ and speaking about a mystery which was made known unto him whereby if ye would perceive my knowledge in the mystery then read what I have written unto you. In addition to which he says, "This mystery was not before revealed unto the sons of men as it hath now been revealed unto his Holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit." To wit . . . now he said, I'm going to tell you what the mystery consists of. The mystery says that we are fellow heirs, fellow members of the body of Christ and fellow partakers (there's the word for fellowship), fellow partakers of the promise in Christ, by the Gospel. Well there is a commonality of promise in this passage. Paul says there are some (I take it to be Jew and Gentiles), Jews and Gentiles are fellowshippers, sharers, partakers in the promise of Christ by the Gospel. And that promise and blessing is common to all men. (5) There is a fifth one, and that is a commonality of responsibility. In Ephesians 3 Paul speaks about a grace of God that was given unto him to "preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, to make all men see what is the dispensation of the mystery which from ages past hath been hidden in God who created all things that now unto principalities and powers that be in heavenly places might be made known through the church the manifold wisdom of God." Now I recognize that this last verse, verse 10 is not a verse that is identifying the active work of the church, it is saying it passively, but is says what the church does in its passive demonstration that when the church acts as the church it is a living demonstration of God's wisdom. It is like a great building or an engineering feat demonstrating the capacity and skill of the mind of an architect or an engineer. It means the same thing as a marvelous painting demonstrates the skill of an artist. It speaks to the responsibility of the church. Then in Phil. 1 and verse 5 Paul said that whenever I pray for you, "I thank God for your fellowship," your mutual sharing together in seeing that the Gospel is furthered. Now all five of these things are common to every one in the fellowship of Jesus and they all rest upon a common base.
Let me repeat that now. There is the common state of salvation and it is based upon an acceptance and belief of the word of the truth, the Gospel of your salvation. See Ephesians 1:13, or Colossians 1:5 or 1 Peter 1:21. The common belief is based upon hearing the word of God, Romans 10:16. The partaking of the fellowship of the divine nature is based upon an acceptance or a receipt of the great and precious promises which have been given or preached to them. Thirdly, the blessings are the result or they rest upon the Gospel. We are fellow heirs, Ephesians 3:6. We are fellow heirs of the promise in Christ by the Gospel. How is the promise common to all fellows of Jesus? It is based upon the Gospel. Then the responsibility is based upon the same. The church is the living demonstration of God's wisdom. And the church comes into existence, Paul said, "By the preaching of the unsearchable riches."
Now I have gone through that point to draw this point, which is b"sic to this lesson of how we can help solve doctrinal difficulties. Any doctrinal error which seeks to destroy or is destructive to the common five states that we have just mentioned, cannot be tolerated. Any error in reference to that cannot be tolerated, or any error which is destructive of the basis upon which these common things are enjoyed is a difference that the fellowship of Jesus cannot tolerate. I want to apply that for you now and show you what is meant in that. Let's take an issue that strikes hard at the conclusion of the common state of salvation. Going again to 1 John. 1 John chapter 4 tells us that John tells us that there is the way that you can "try the spirits" and here is the way you can "test a prophet." By the way let's learn this or let's think about this. The only way that a corporal being can test a spirit is to try the spokesman of the prophet that is moved by that spirit. Human beings can't test spirits. They can test preachers or prophets who speak by a spirit, but they can't test the spirit. That's a physical impossibility. Now John says, "Try the spirits," by trying the spirit's spokesman that is the prophets. And since we told you that Jesus came in the flesh, any spirit that denies that Jesus has come in the flesh is the anti-Christ and he is against truth. Now if there is a view that denies that Jesus has come in the flesh, it antagonizes, seeks to supplant and undermine salvation, and that cannot be tolerated.
Let me give you a more modern illustration of that. The Bible affirms that the power of salvation rests with God and affirms that Jesus is God. John 1 affirms it of the spirit, Christ claimed it many times himself, and I'll not go through that point, as we have made it before. You believe it, I'm satisfied, and are aware of it. But, John 1 says, "In the beginning was the word, the word was with God, the word was God." About him the writer of Hebrews says that he is the effulgence of God's glory and the express image of his person. To deny that Jesus is God is to undermine salvation. And that kind of a difference cannot be tolerated. On the other hand, the Bible not only affirms that he is God, but that he is man. And if he had not become man, he could not have tasted of death for every man. He could not have been glorified as a man or be the propitiation for our means to remission of sins unto our glory. If an individual denies the fact that Jesus is man, he undermines salvation and we can't tolerate differences, the fellowship cannot do that. It strikes at the constitution and foundation of faith.
But look at another illustration about the faith itself. In the 2nd chapter of Galatians we have a certain thing said that a certain individual or individuals were guilty of hypocrisy and the writer says, "When I saw that hypocrisy I withstood Cephas to the face before them all because he was to be blamed when I saw that he walked not uprightly according to the truth of the Gospel." Now what was the great sin? He withdrew from Gentile society when certain came down from James and the brethren in Jerusalem. He refused any longer to associate socially with the Gentiles and he separated himself. What did he do? He just quit eating Gentile cooking. Now if he had been so rude as to say, "I am sick to death of this bland Gentile cooking and now that the Jews have come I want some gefilte fish and matzo balls" or whatever Jews ate in those days, he would have been thought rude and the ladies would not have liked him but I doubt if Paul had said, "You're a hypocrite and you're walking contrary to the truth of the Gospel." By his act of separation he implied, necessarily, that justification from sins is by Old Testament work of law and when he did that Paul said, you are undermining the faith of Jesus. And he couldn't tolerate a practice like that or even a view.
But, now let me show you another illustration about a partaker of the divine nature. Immoral and illicit marriages cannot be tolerated in the fellowship of Jesus Christ. It is not merely because they are wrong in their teaching, they strike at the foundation of all morality and spirituality. 2 Peter chapter 1 says "that because we have received the great and precious promises by them we may be fellowshippers in the divine nature." What does that mean? What that means is, we have escaped the corruption that is in the world through lusts. But, suppose that someone comes along and teaches us that what God taught from the very beginning, what He joined do not let man put asunder. Or, if there is an asunder, or a division, it must be done by God, on God's terms for sexual infidelity, which principle is not first originated in the Old Testament nor in the New Testament, it grows out of the nature and character of God's moral being. It is a reflection upon God and that view simply cannot be tolerated in the fellowship of Jesus Christ.
With reference to now, there are many good brethren who have taken views other than that, and if you remember some of the things we have said before on this point, it is my responsibility as a Christian who preaches to preach the truth as broadly as the opportunity exists. But it is not my part to determine fellowship for every single individual. That needs to be learned. I am responsible for fellowship in what I participate in, and so are you.
Fellowship is limited locally, but teaching is as broad as the opportunity. It would be unthinkable for a Christian or a preacher to go somewhere where a view was destructive of the fundamentals of faith, and not address that issue. But, at the same time there are circumstances to which he is not privy which involve fellowship. Not only is that a Bible principle, I don't know of a single church that I have ever been in that didn't handle it exactly that same way. The fellowship is local and is determined to a great extent on the basis of what individuals know in terms of the experience.
Let me, I want to make that point very clear. I'm going to give you an illustration. I am going to disguise it because I don't want you to know who it is but, oh, I don't know, 10 years or so ago, a very close friend of mine who is an outstanding preacher and is exceedingly conservative on all issues including marriage and divorce happened to tell me, because I knew somewhat of it, about a situation and circumstance in that congregation where they tolerated a marriage and he told me the circumstances and asked me what I thought. And I said to him, "If your opponents on divorce knew that you agreed to that they'd crucify you." And he smiled at me and said, "Well, don't tell them." And I haven't told them, because I've not identified his name. Here's what he meant. He meant the elders looked at that case in the light of what the Bible teaches and made a judgment and I don't know how else you would ever make anything, how else you would ever decide anything else except on that basis in reference to fellowship. It's not the prerogative of a preacher to parade himself over the country and make judgments about the actions of fellowship that everybody has done. Now don't go away and say that I said you're not supposed to teach on what the issues are. You can't be a faithful evangelist and not teach. Would it really be thinkable if a preacher came to a church where he surmised that an elder was really not qualified that he gather the church together and insist that they withdraw their support of an elder because he thought they weren't qualified. Is that really his work? But he is obligated to teach on qualifications. I hope that point is clear to you. Because I think that it is a point that comes from the Bible that will have a bearing upon helping us to settle difficulties.
Now that same point could be made about the blessings and the responsibility but the time is quickly going and is nearly over and I am only about 1/3 into the lesson so I need to hasten as quickly as I can. The same thing is true about the basis on which it stands. I don't know whether you've really looked at it and noticed or not, but the real issue in 1 John, 2 and 3 John, was not limited to the erroneous conclusion about Christ's humanity. The real harm was a denial about what the apostolic witness taught. When we throw out what the witnesses or the teachers who are inspired taught, we have undermined the constitution of faith. It is not always the conclusion. I have said in a public lesson before, it's written in a little booklet, I will repeat it. When we are arguing about 1 Cor. 11, as to whether or not that chapter teaches an obligation of a woman to have her head covered as a sign that she is subject to man, as man being uncovered is subject to Christ. When we argue that if that's what that passage teaches you are not going to get modern woman in our culture to do it, we make the same mistake as the anti-Christ people did in 1 John. The issue is, are we going to listen to the witnesses? Now at what point individuals quit listening is somewhat subjective. But I hope that this point is made clear to you.
What I want to go and just suggest to you in high points now is a case in point Acts 15. And, I'll just have to hit the high points to Acts 15. You remember what the issue was, Paul and Barnabas for years, as well as Simon Peter, he originally preached it in Acts 2:39, had preached that Jesus accepts and blesses, receives and blesses Gentiles on the same basis that he does the Jews and there came some down from Jerusalem who defended themselves apparently as having come from the apostles in Jerusalem and said, "Except a man is circumcised," when he is circumcised according to the law of Moses, "he cannot be saved." And what that did is that got, that caused a great deal of disturbance and questioning and the brethren were considerably up in the air about it. Then somebody had a wise judgment and said, "Let's go to the source who can settle the issue." They decided to go to Jerusalem where the apostles and elders were assembled with the church to consider this matter.
I want to be careful with that. The apostles were not authorities in the kingdom, they didn't have any authority, had no right to make laws. The king makes the laws, but they were his representative spokesmen and they tell us what the king says. Elders do not have any authority. Elders are like everybody else. They are authorized to perform certain functions. They can be called to question as to why they do what they do. They must respond as preachers do on the basis of what the Bible teaches. But the only person in the position of making laws, executing laws, and rendering judgment in God's kingdom is God, there isn't anybody else. The apostles were not authorities. But, they spoke the will of the one who is the authority and some of the people in Antioch had the good judgment to say, let's go and see what these men tell us from God.
They went, verses 12 and 13. After a speech was made by Peter, in which he appealed as an authority that Gentiles should be saved or receive the grace of God, be justified by faith, even as we having received the grace of God. After he had made that speech, the Holy Spirit speaks about the attitude of the crowd. The Holy Spirit says they all kept silence. They all harkened unto the words of Peter. They all held their peace. You can't reason with people where everybody's talking at once.
For a long time in our familial arguments with my wife, I thought the one who was to win was the one that hollered the loudest. Until finally she pointed out to me, "Logic and loudness don't mean the same thing, Harry." And, generally speaking, if we are trying to resolve difficulties where there are differences, folks have to be quiet and they have to pay attention to somebody who is speaking who is giving us information and they've got to continue to hold their peace. Now that's what that crowd did.
And there were three different speakers. The groups assembled were the apostles and the elders with the church. They all three rendered judgment. They all three were involved in writing of the letter. They all three were involved in the decision process. Peter got up and said, "You remember what God did by my mouth." That's a precedent. We might call it an example. Sometimes brethren say you know examples aren't binding. There's a perfect case of one. That's the word that he used. Paul and Barnabas got up and they appealed to a precept. They said, "We've been preaching this for a long time and God has worked wonders through us. Would God work miracles in reference to validating a speech or a preaching that we made if what we were saying is not the truth? And that crowd is sitting there and ingesting that information. Finally, James got up and appealed to a direct principle from the Scripture and that settled the matter. When the letter was written, the people who were involved in the deciding process, the letter was written like this, having come to one accord everybody came to the same meeting of minds, got quiet, they harkened, and they were at peace, and they listened to the example, they listened to the precedent, they listened to the principle from Scripture and it seemed good unto us and to the Holy Spirit that we should charge men, and then they gave them the writing of that epistle. Now what you have in that case, you have serious doctrinal differences. And what they did is they went about that in a way that I am suggesting to you is good to go about, but I can't spend any more time there, I would like to.
I want to finish with a passage which . . . I don't know whether you've overlooked it, you may be more biblically oriented than I am. But, it is a passage that I have thought about for some 25 years, but I really have not really tried to preach it as I have in the last year or two which has a bearing on this case. And I want to give it to you and I want you to think about it. Naturally, that's what we say in our prayers we are going to do, we always. I don't know whether Brother Willey prayed tonight specifically that everybody would listen to what I say and test it with the Bible. But, if he didn't say it, he thinks it, he believes it and we all do. That's what I'm me, that's what you want to do with this passage. It's found in the book of Jude. Now the book of Jude is about false teaching. I'm not going to describe the false teaching or read you the description of the false teachers, but you do want to be aware of this. That the false teachers in the Bible are not only men who taught something that was false but they had a certain character that identified them as false. We don't want to overlook that, that they said in the last days mockers would come walking in their own ungodliness. These are they who make separations. They are sensual and they have not the Holy Spirit. "But ye beloved brethren building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the spirit, keeping yourselves in the love of God, looking unto Jesus Christ looking for the return of Jesus Christ unto eternal life. And on some have mercy with fear, some save Snatching them out of the fire, and on some have mercy hating even garments which defile the flesh." Now look at the prediction there. There are some mockers. What do these men do? They mock. They mock truth apparently, and they walk in their own ungodliness. What kind of character are they? They make separations, they make divisions among brethren. They are sensual, if you look at your footnote or margin that says, "animalist, sensual, natural." It's the word that James uses in Chapter 4 when he describes the wisdom that is not from above that is animalistic, natural he calls it and which is devilish and so forth. These mockers are men who make separations and they act like animals and they do not have the Holy Spirit. They are not moved by the Holy Spirit. But now in reference to them, ye brethren, "you build yourself up on your most holy faith." Your faith is holy, the thing that makes it holy, separate and apart and consecrated comes from God. You build yourselves upon your most holy faith, praying in the spirit. My judgment is the word spirit there refers to the new spirit in every Christian because he has obeyed the Gospel. It is not the personality of the Holy Spirit. It is the new spirit of the new man. Being renewed the spirit of his mind and Paul says you pray in that manner. You pray as spiritual men. You build yourselves up on your most holy faith. You pray in the Holy Spirit. You keep yourselves in the love of God. The phrase "love of God" could mean God's for them, my judgment is it means theirs for God. You see that you maintain your love for God and you keep yourselves together by looking for eternal life in Jesus Christ.
Then there is a third group mentioned. They are called some. They are others. They are others than the mockers. They are others than the ones just described as spiritual. And there are three kinds of them. There are some of them on whom we are to have mercy while they are in doubt. Look at the margins of your Bible, footnote. Mine says while they dispute with you. There are some things of which they are unsure. Have they left the faith? No, they are still trying to be a part of the fellowship of Jesus. They are in a position of being in doubt. They don't know. They may be immature, they may be unskilled, but old. But for some reason they are not sure about certain doctrine. What are we to do with them. On some have mercy. I can think of some model illustrations. The first time this church, or Brown Street either, or Southeast, or anybody else ever heard of the Herald of Truth did you all have your minds made up on it? Did you decide right there at that minute that that's unscriptural? I doubt it. The truth of the matter is very probably all of us to some extent have engaged in practices that we look back now and say why didn't we see that years ago. It's the nature of maturity.
Somebody says what you're trying to do is to make an agenda for allowing men who teach false doctrines on marriage and divorce to enter in. If I'm doing it, I'm doing it contrary to what I think I'm intending to do. I'm not intending to do that. But there are some minds that simply do not know. It is a practical reality. But somebody says how do you ever determine when a person ever comes to that point? The same way that you determine whether or not a person's baptism is scriptural or not. You don't know whether a person has been baptized from the heart, do you? You see the evidence to prove that. We sometimes make up our minds on subjects for which we are totally intolerant [ab out] things. Certainly the application of truth involves an act of subjectivity. When you select elders you make subjective judgments about them. When you select preachers you do that. We know among ourselves, I do not know of how long it has been, it doesn't really make any difference, but, I've been preaching and worshiping in churches and to my great surprise heard somebody say, "Well I've never really been sure about instrumental music." What do you do immediately with that person. Well what Jude said you do is you argue, you discuss, you reason with him. How long do you do that. I can't answer that. I know some judgments that I've made on some things. I've made some judgments a lot quicker on some than I have others.
A third group in that category, second group rather in that category of "some" is, some save snatching them out of the fire. Do you really believe that if you had a child or grandchild that was about to stumble into a roaring fire in the wintertime that in place of reaching over and getting that child or running the risk of hurting the child's arm or tearing it's clothes would you just calmly try to say, "now little person don't do that. Let's reason about what you're about to do now. You're apt to fall in the fire and granddaddy . . ." while the child would be burned up before you would get through with that.
There are certain critical times and times of crises when you must act. You don't have any choice. You must act immediately. I recall working with a church at one time where a man preached for, oh some several months. The elders had talked to him, I had visited with him, he had become a close friend of mine in our home. The truth of the matter was, he had the mentality of a member of the Christian church about the Bible and when he finally left us he took a number of members and went down and started a group that was entirely different to what we had been. He came in unawares. Now if we had known that at the time we would have done differently. You might have handled it better if you had been there, I don't know about that. We could have used your help if you could have done it better. It is a fact of life. These young people who wrestle with these issues like this, when they reach the age of your good elders here and probably elders and faithful Christians from these other churches who are here, you can't write a list long enough or exhaustive, that they can look at and go by telling them how to act when they face issues like this. The truth about it is, if you did, you would be writing yourself a creed. You would make exactly the same mistake that's been made for 2000 years. You cannot maintain the fellowship on that basis, it must be on the basis of each individual taking the Bible and doing the best he can to please God Almighty. Now there comes times of crises. If a man stands in the pulpit and he denies that Jesus sits as Lord and Christ and there are people affected by that to lose the benefit of the promise of Christ as king of his kingdom, something critically has to be done at the time. But that's entirely different from somebody coming out of the Adventist faith and not understanding that all the promises of Daniel which relate to the coming kingdom of Jesus Christ have already been fulfilled. You can try to teach him.
There is a third group. And that third group of people who are so filthy that if you have any kind of contact with them you are going to be destroyed. There is no mercy for them. Oh, there's mercy, mercy in the sense of your mind and heart that hoping they will come out of it. But on those whose garments are filthy, if you extend your mercy to fellowship, you will contaminate the one whose talked about and you simply cannot. Now there are differences among us. We differ on interpretations of passages upon occasion. The interpretation which I might make on Rom. 14 is not destructive to the faith of Jesus Christ. And some of the reasons that I mentioned to you tonight. Some of the arguments that are made in the book of Hebrews that several of the preachers, or some of the preachers have talked to me about this week have suggested another thought than something than I have said already in the class. Their views, if they are right, doesn't make my view destructive to the view of Hebrews. It may be wrong, it may be incorrect, or I could be right and the man who suggested another thought may be right.
This is not a lesson that says that we must have peace at all cost. The Bible never teaches that or else there would not be a line in the Bible in reference to fight the good fight of faith, put on the whole armor of God. But while we are thinking about those thoughts, let's not forget that it is the Spirit's unity we are urged to maintain, not ours. God didn't say get half a dozen of the best preachers together and put them in a room and lock them up until they figure out how to settle all issues. If somebody came up with that idea, as an editor did of a Texas paper some 30 years ago or more. When he came up with that idea, I knew at the time that he was creating more havoc than he was trying to solve, problems that he was trying to solve, how on earth would you pick out the six best preachers. I knew I wouldn't be one of them and my grandmother was alive at the time and if I wasn't one of the six she wouldn't have cared what the others did. You can't solve it like that.
Take the Bible. Look at the Bible. Preach the Bible. Argue about the Bible. And listen, pay attention, sit quietly and think and then do what you have to do and act.
When Brother _________ prayed in his prayer, so well covered tonight and he turned to the story of the Gospel that there might be someone here who has not been obedient from the heart to that form of teaching and he reminded us in that prayer what one is obedient to, believing, repenting, confessing and being baptized. That's the invitation of Jesus. It matters. The main thing that matters is we must be sharers of Jesus Christ. And you can't share with him if you have never been obedient from the heart to that form of teaching. If you're here tonight and you are subject to God's call into the fellowship, respond now as we stand and sing.
Tape transcribed by Tom Roberts