A Facebook friend of mine who’s a pastor recently shared a quote from someone he looks up to. It went something like this: “If I have all my doctrine right but have not love, I am nothing”.
This statement is an extrapolation from a famous passage of Scripture written by Paul, known as “the love chapter” (1 Corinthians chapter 13). I have to admit to being a little irritated by the liberty the author and my friend had taken to make this quote a feature. Why? On the face of it, the statement is true, and perhaps a fair and poignant comment. But as I pointed out to my friend, the subject of Paul’s discussion is love. Therefore, love is the doctrine. Love is what Paul is preaching at this point in his letter to the Corinthians. Without doctrine, we would not have a “love chapter”, or for that matter, any other chapter.
The quote irritated me because I see all around an intentional movement away from Scripture within the professing Church. It “isn’t relevant”; it’s “out-dated”; it’s “not up to date with current social dynamics”. And here’s the most insidious excuse of all: “God is doing something new”.
More than that, the statement, “If I have all my doctrine right but have not love I am nothing”, is not found in the chapter-it isn’t there. This man was putting words into Paul’s mouth, or worse, inserting his own views into the passage. This is one of the excesses of eisegesis, and to me it betrays a distaste for rightly examining the words of Scripture.
Not only is love the doctrine Paul is teaching, but to Paul, correct doctrine is essential to the Christian: get your doctrine wrong and you’re off course. You aren’t learning or living what you should be, and you may be heading into error and even heresy. You’re misleading yourself and other people, just as surely as if you were driving a busload of people in the wrong direction from their destination, despite what the maps and the talking software are telling you.
For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear (2 Timothy 4:3).
Our God is eternal, and does not change, and as our Charismatic friends like to quote, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever”. God’s Word, as found in Scripture-that is, the Bible-is always relevant, and to say it isn’t is an attempt to drift away from the truths contained therein. Isn’t that what Satan was attempting in Eden and in his temptation of Christ? It’s doing the work of the devil for him. It’s saying, “We know better now, God”. It’s saying, “God has changed his mind”.
Well, if God has changed his mind, we’re all in very deep trouble. How do we then know that He will keep his promises to us? How do we know, given the state of our current world, that He will not decide to give up on us all and go away completely, or judge every one of us severely? How do we know what right and wrong is? Do we begin to ask the self-appointed “experts”, within and without the Church who never did want us to accept the Word of God as written in the Bible?
Wise up, brothers and sisters in Christ, because there is a movement-of dark origins- to separate us from the truths of Scripture, from the Word of God, and from the testimony of those who were with our Lord and appointed by him. Self-proclaimed appointees in our time should be thoroughly tested. If they want to depart from the Word, even and especially subtly, and if they show a distaste for sound and original doctrine, mark them and do not listen to them.
Fuel for Faith 