The Blog of Hobbes

What role does Scripture play in determining what is to be believed and what is to be done?

Do we see Scripture as defining what is legitimate doctrine and practice and, by implication, determining what is illegitimate? Or do we see it as the starting point of a voyage of doctrinal discovery and exploration, which regards any destination as legitimate so long as we can trace our journey back to the bible?

The fact that we employ Scripture in our decision making is not necessarily a good sign. How we employ Scripture is far more significant.

To finish what Christ has given us to do will require martyrdom. There are about 3,000 peoples where the church is not self-sustainingly planted. Most of these do not want us to come. Since even so-called evangelicals today have lost their nerve, it will be a work of white hot allegiance to Jesus, not public opinion, that listens to love and takes the gospel where it is not wanted.

http://www.desiringgod.org/Blog/1236/

Hands-up all those who are prepared to be killed for the sake of the gospel.

Jesus must be my saviour, delight, strength, propitiation, joy, hope, treasure, light, redeemer, guide, among many other things. If Jesus is not these things to me, then my life will display a perversion of Christianity. The Christian life is necessarily and radically Christ-centered.

Every church must avoid the danger of putting eccesiastical practices and forms at the center of the Christian life, with Christ at the side, merely providing the impetus and direction for the practice of church life. I delight in sound, biblical teaching and preaching. But, I must never delight in preaching about Christ more than in Christ himself. Does fellowship with the saints bring joy? Of course! Yet, beware if the joy of fellowship eclipses your joy in your saviour.

The church must never be church-centered. If she is to be the radiant bride Christ intends, she must be obsessively groom-centered.

Living obediently, resolutely, diligently and faithfully according the teachings of Scripture can never quench the Holy Spirit. It’s impossible. Therefore, to insist that a particular charismatic practice or method is unbiblical (assuming that it is indeed unbiblical) will actually encourage the Spirit, and will not drive Him away in any way. We have nothing to fear by holding tightly to the Word of God. We have nothing to fear by turning our backs on unbiblical teaching and practices - even if they are accompanied by all sorts of powerful manifestations in other places.

If anyone, even an angel from heaven, tells you that you must do something that is not commanded in Scripture in order to receive an outpouring of the Spirit, then let him be… wrong.

There is nothing better than to walk in the plans and purposes of God, and to know his dynamic presence in and through it all.

If the cost of such a life is to lose it, then it would be well worth it.

Hopeful: How will you describe right fear?
Christian: True or right fear is discovered by three things: 1. By its rise: it is caused by saving convictions for sin. 2. It driveth the soul to lay fast hold of Christ for salvation. 3. It begetteth and continueth in the soul a great reverence of God, His word, and ways; keeping it tender, and making it afraid to turn from them, to the right hand or to the left, to any thing that may dishonour God, break its peace, grieve the Spirit, or cause the enemy to speak reproachfully.

Christian: Now the ignorant know not that such convictions that tend to put them in fear, are for their good, and therefore they seek to stifle them.
Hopeful: How do they seek to stifle them?
Christian: 1. They think that those fears are wrought by the devil (though indeed they are wrought of God), and, thinking so, they resist them, as things that directly tend to their overthrow. 2. They also think that these fears tend to the spoiling of their faith; when, alas, for them, poor men that they are, they have none at all! and therefore they harden their hearts against them. 3. They presume they ought not to fear, and therefore in despite of them, wax presumptuously confident. 4. They see that those fears tend to take away from them their pitiful old self-holiness, and therefore they resist them with all their might.

John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress (London:The Religious Tract Society), p157-8

That the leaders took the lead in Israel,
that the people offered themselves willingly,
bless the Lord!

Judges 5:2 (ESV)

O, how our churches could be more like this: Leaders who possess the courage and wisdom to lead, not in any direction, but in the direction specified by Scripture; and congregations who recognize godly leadership when they see it, and joyfully submit.

If your church matches this description, then bless the Lord!