The last generation or two has seen the disparaging of doctrine: Don’t preach doctrine, just preach Christ!; Give us the man, not the plan! and similar catch-calls have sounded out across the land. How can you do that? It is similar to the reaction to the church’s insistence upon baptism for the remission of sins: Don’t preach baptism, just preach Christ! Read Acts 8 and see where Philip preached Jesus to the Ethiopian – and when they came to some water the man said Here is water what stops me from being baptised? So Philip preached Christ and the man wants to be baptised. Why? Did he just pluck the idea of out of thin air? No, in preaching Christ, Philip had to incorporate baptism for the remission of sins as part of that preaching.
Even so, one cannot preach Christ without preaching doctrine (2 Tim. 3:16,17). Doctrine is not a bad word – it just means teaching. Did not Jesus believe in teaching? This aversion to doctrine did not originate with the man on the street or the man in the pew. It originated in the halls of academia, in theological seminaries, beginning principally in Germany in the latter half of the 19th century. But whatever the origin, it is no longer an academic matter confined to discussions in cloistered halls. Today it is found in Sunday School material, in the pulpit, in the religious press and in the pew. We are living in an age of religious pluralism where we are supposed to have horror at strong opinions. We are supposed to want to have a Jesus who is only one disclosure of the divine love available for all.
It is not doctrine per see that is objected to, but rather one set of doctrines sacrificed in the interests of another. (It’s like like those who object to the intolerance of Christians – they’re not against intolerance at all – if they were they wouldn’t be so intolerant of those intolerant Christians!). There are doctrines of modern liberalism that are just as tenaciously and intolerably upheld as any basic doctrine conservatives might hold. In objecting to theology the liberal has his own theology. Usually the objection involves just plan unbelief or scepticism. As Philip Stanton said; When I studied for my first theology degree, I was deeply impressed by the power these men had to make me feel ashamed of the miracles of the Bible. Then one kindly professor spilled the beans. “Why?” he asked, “do you think modern scholars discount the miracles of the Bible?” We were speechless: it had never occurred to us to ask the question. “It is because”, he said in his precise manner, “miracles are assumed to be impossible”. I remember having a great sigh of relief. It was a moment of enlightenment. The great weight of scholarly authority had been pressing so hard upon me, and now it dissipated like the morning mist. It wasn’t their knowledge of expertise, merely their prejudices and unbelief, that made them oppose the Bible. It reminds me of a statement by G.K. Chesterton about modern philosophy – they all start with something monstrously illogical and then proceed fairly logically after that!
To disparage doctrine, it is said that Christianity is a life, not a doctrine. This has the appearance of godliness, and in a sense it is true depending on how the person intends it, but it can be deceptively false. Whatever Christianity is, we shall have to examine its roots to find the answer, since we were not its originators, though we may claim to be Christians. As Paul said to the Corinthians, What do you have that you have not received?
The beginnings of Christianity are a definite historical occurrence. It is not a movement that gradually evolved way back in the mists of time. It did not develop like mythology. We can go back historically to when there were no Christians and no Christianity; in short, we can go back before Jesus Christ, from whom Christianity sprang. One thing stands out at the beginning – it was not some philosophical approach to life, but a way of life founded upon an historical event. (cf. Acts 4:1,2; 5:28; 1 Cor. 15:3ff). It was called “good news”. Something had happened. “Christ died” – that is history: “Christ died for our sins” – that is doctrine.
Paul was so concerned about the doctrinal message that in Phil.1:12-18 we have a situation where some preachers took the supremacy whilst he himself was in prison, and used the preaching of the gospel as a means to an end of personal ambition. With Paul out of the road the obstacle to their goal was dissolved. Others, no doubt, preached out of good motives to try and cover for Paul’s absence. But whether it was out of good or bad motives Paul rejoiced that the gospel was being preached. “Jesus Christ and Him crucified” was the theme of the early preaching (1 Cor. 2:2).So Paul was interested in more than just the ethical principles of Jesus: rather he was interested in the redeeming work of Christ, the doctrine of Christ, rather than some “better- felt- than -told” approach to life.
Some have been so bold as to suggest that Paul perverted the simple religion of the primitive Jerusalem church, even saying that he invented a new religion. But there was no difference between Paul, the one “born out of due season”, and the earlier apostolic companions of Jesus. Acts 15 and Gal. 2 testify to the unity of their beliefs and preaching. The early preachers did not come forth with some twaddle about a Jesus Christ who lived a wonderful life of filial piety, and say, we call upon you our hearers to yield yourselves, as we have done, to the spell of that life. These companions of Jesus were men who had their hopes and dreams crushed by His inglorious and barbaric death on a cross. Memories of the time spent with Him only made their despair greater. At His arrest they disappeared like rats into the night or denied Him. After His death they met in a room behind locked doors because of fear of the Jews. Yet a few days after His death these same men instituted the most important spiritual movement that the world has ever seen. What produced the change in the weak and cowardly disciples? It is evident that it wasn’t some philosophical mood that washed over them that was going to compel them to risk all to encourage others to follow. It was the fact that something had happened – He is risen! But it was more than an isolated historical message. His resurrection was connected to His death and burial and to the life He lived, and the whole thing was understood to be God’s solution to man’s great predicament of sin and death. With the proclamation of the event went the proclamation of the meaning of the event – that is, the doctrine! “He died” – that is a fact; “for the sins of the world” – that is doctrine.
But some might suggest that even the primitive church got it all wrong by incorporating doctrine into the religion against the wishes of even Christ Himself. So men have talked about the “demythologising” of Jesus and getting back beyond the fanciful theories of Paul and the interpretations of the early church to the core values of Christ’s intended religion. How do we do that when all we have is the New Testament? No liberal modern theologian ever hear Christ preach and teach – all we have is the New Testament record. If that is not accurate then we have no way of knowing the truth of Jesus. Those who reject the doctrine of the New Testament and claim to tell us the truth of Jesus Christ and the religion He intended to deliver to the world are mere fabricators, putting their own ideas of some watered down system of ethics into the mouth of Jesus to gain some sort of credibility. Christianity has had at its heart and soul the great redemptive doctrines down through the centuries and are we to think that this was all a blunder? If the first disciples departed so radically from the Master and what they have given us in the New Testament for us to believe and obey, then it would seem they were smarter than Jesus! Why is it men are not keen followers and promoters today of Socrates, or Aristotle, or Plato? We know their names; we know they were philosophers; we also know they have nothing to offer us! Philosophy becomes boring because it just has dead ends and no answers and the only ones who look into it are philosophy students. If Jesus was just a philosopher who taught what modern liberal theology teaches, He’d be as popular as Plato and we certainly wouldn’t gather every Sunday to sing His praises, hang on His every word, and remember Him in the simple feast he appointed.
Jesus was no airy-fairy sage with some ideas about love, mother’s apple pie and the brotherhood of man. He challenged man and called for change with Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near. Again, we see the connection of doctrine (“repent”) with an event (“kingdom of heaven is at hand”). God has acted in history and it has meaning and calls for a response by man. In Mark 10:45 Jesus announced the event – His coming into the world. Then he gave the meaning of the event – to give His life as a ransom for many. This was not the disciples reinventing Jesus’ religion – this was Jesus stating it Himself. So he stepped over the line that separates the undogmatic religion from one rooted in definite historical facts and doctrinal implications. He placed a great gulf between Himself and the modern liberalism that denies the import of fundamental doctrine.
And Jesus did not see Himself as just one in a long line of gurus from Confucius to Buddha who taught some sort of beneficient vagueness for the benefit of mankind. Some have tried to deny that Jesus thought He was the Messiah, but what will we do with such statements as John 14:6, I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man comes unto the Father except by me? And when we look at such things as the Sermon on the Mount we see Jesus’ understanding of His vital role and His authority in the scheme of things. Of course the modern theology is to say that the Sermon on the Mount is in contrast with the rest of the New Testament. So men say, “We will have nothing to do with miracles, with the atonement, with Heaven or Hell: for us the Golden Rule is a sufficient guide in life and in the simple principles of the sermon on the mount we find principles that will soothe the problems of society.”
Why is is that men say that only in one brief section of His recorded words did He say anything worthwhile?! What an insult to Jesus. But if men would look more closely they will find there is more in the Sermon on the Mount than they suppose. They think the Sermon on the Mount contains no theology, no doctrine, just some warm, fuzzy, feel-good principles of life. But note the recurring phrase, “But I say unto you”. He puts His own words on equality with what He regarded as the divine words of Scripture. The prophets of old said, “Thus saith the Lord”, but Jesus said, “I say”. Note also the section in Matt. 7:21-23. Here Jesus puts Himself on the judgement seat of all the earth, separating whomever He will from eternal bliss and consigning him to eternal punishment. This is not the Christ of modern liberalism! And when Jesus had finished the Sermon on the Mount, the people marvelled as He taught as one with authority, and not as the religious teachers of the day.
But can’t we just get rid of the doctrinal elements that have been put into the Sermon on the Mount and satisfy ourselves with the ethical content, which, if people incorporated into their life, would lead to a better, more peaceful world? But even the ethics of the Sermon on the Mount will not work by themselves. For example, the Golden Rule, which for many is the sum total of everything worthwhile that Jesus taught, will not work if divorced form theology and doctrine. For example, try to help a drunkard get rid of his evil habit and you will see. The drunkard’s companions apply the rule too, and they do exactly to him as they would have him do to them – buy him a drink. So the Golden Rule becomes a powerful obstacle in the way of moral advance. The error doesn’t lie in the rule itself, but it lies in isolating the Golden Rule from the rest of Biblical doctrine. Besides, if the law of Moses was too high for us, then what can we say about those who think they can attain to the high ethical principles of Jesus Christ. The Sermon on the Mount, like the Old testament, leads us to the foot of the cross.
But the modern liberal might say, “Can’t we return to the simple trust of the disciples? May we cease to ask HOW Jesus saves and rather leave the way to Him? What need is there for talking about justification, adoption, sanctification and other doctrines – shouldn’t we just trust in the person and not the theology; in Jesus rather than what He did; in Jesus’ character rather than Jesus’ death?” These words might seem plausible, but they are in vain. We are not in Galilee in His presence to hear Him say “Take up your bed and walk – your sins are forgiven you”. For those in Galilee at that time life’s problems were to be solved by pushing through the crowd to get to Jesus, or to get up in a sycamore tree to get to see Him, or to lift up a roof and lower the sick man down in front of Jesus. We are separated by twenty centuries and thousands of kilometres. How can we bridge the gulf? Some would suggest “historical imagination”. That is, Jesus is not dead but lives on in His recorded words and deeds – we do not have to believe it all, just the odd glimpse here or there which allows the wonderful personality of Jesus to shine through into our life. It is true in a sense that Jesus lives in the Gospel record just as any character lives in his biography. But how do we come into a vital and saving relationship with Him in the 21st century? He died 2000 years ago. The life He now lives in the gospels is just that same life loved over and over again, and in that life we have no place – we are only spectators. It’s true that in reading the life of Christ leads us to see Him in all His glory and graciousness intertwined in the lives of Peter, James, John and others. Then we close the book and return to the reality of our own life – we find ourselves still seeking our own Saviour if Christianity is merely living in the memory of Jesus.
The life that the disciples lived in the presence of Jesus was different from the life they lived in the memory of Him in the three days between the crucifixion and resurrection. They said, “We trusted that it was He that should have redeemed Israel”. Now their trust was gone. But something happened that restored that trust with joy. What was it that transformed them? A pep-talk by Peter to the others telling them to pull themselves together, stiffen the upper lip, and take heart in the fact that though Jesus had been killed, they had been privileged to live for a brief time in the presence of the One who had given them a wonderful vision of the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man?! I think not. It was the resurrection. Modern liberalism with its denial of the resurrection has nothing to offer. We would be no better off than the disciples thought they were, come Friday night of the crucifixion if we try to live off the character of Jesus and neglect the things He has done with their attending doctrinal meaning. It is the doctrinal message that makes Christ our own.
The Christian message contains more than the fact of the resurrection. It is not enough to know that Jesus is alive; it is not enough to know that a wonderful person lived in the first century and still lives somewhere and somehow in some unseen region. So Jesus lives, what good is that to us? If Christianity is to know that Jesus lives then we would be no better off than the inhabitants of Syria or Greece or Rome in the days of His flesh. They hear stories of this Great One who can heal body, soul and spirit in far off Galilee, but alas, they are not where He is. I want to know what Jesus can do for me, not what he did for others. What he did for others lets me know what he is like and that he is worthy of trust. But is it not enough to know that he saved others, we need to know what we must do in order that He can save us.
That knowledge is found in the doctrine of the New Testament. There is the doctrine of the atonement – He died for you and me. And that begins with an understanding of the reality of sin, of its guilt and its penalty: an understanding of Heaven and Hell. Then there is the doctrine of the life that is in Christ – 2 Pet. 1:2-4. It is pointless to talk about the life in Christ without listening to how one is to live life and how to enter into that life.
To enter into that life in Christ, that is to be saved, one must first hear the gospel (or read it) to develop faith in Christ. One must then repent of one’s sins, confess Christ with the mouth, and then be immersed in water for the remission of sins. Then one must continue faithful unto death.