Polemics, Ecumenicalism

Alright, how many of you have heard of ecumenicalism? Alright, well that's good. That's more than half the class, or about half the class. That's pretty good. For those of you that haven't, I have an analogy here. That's part of the introduction. This is, imagine a race car with four differently sized wheels, all of them at different levels of inflation, speeding along the track at 200 miles per hour into a corner with five people fighting for control of the car. If you can imagine that, that would be awkward at best. How it got to 200 miles an hour, we'll just use our imaginations and pretend maybe it's jet propelled or something.

There is just extreme tension in ecumenicalism because they want everybody from all different groups and sides and views, usually within Christianity or Christendom, I should say, to come together and unite under the banner of Jesus. And at first it sounds like not a horrible idea.

I mean, we are supposed to be unified and there's all these gosh darn denominations and it would be really nice if we could all get together. But the problem is that often When they come together, it's not doctrinal unity, it's physically being in the same place. It's physically unified in the sense that they're all together in one area, but not necessarily genuine agreement and spiritual unity on truth and doctrine.

In fact, there's a Catholic guy by the name of Peter Kreeft, and we'll talk about one organization he's been involved with who actually wrote a book called Ecumenical Jihad. Everybody familiar with Jihad from the 9-11 scenario? Jihad being a spiritual war, declaring war on somebody for spiritual reasons.

Fortunately this concept hasn't spread throughout the church. That's highly convenient because otherwise we'd all What his concept was, was that everybody who's religious, so Muslims and Jews and Christians and Buddhists and Hindus and whatever, we all get together and be buddy-buddy for a little bit and we go out and turn the rest of the world into religious people as well. So it's not quite warfare in the sense, although that's normally how jihad is used, but the idea is that we'll all come together, unified under the banner of religion, and then make everybody else who's atheist and agnostic religious.

And once we get that taken care of, then we'll deal with actual unity within the religions. Sounds a whole lot like some in time stuff that may go down, etc. I don't think any of the groups are cooperating yet enough for that. The Lord will have to make that work so that the end times could come about. So this is one of the concepts.

It spreads outside of Christianity and Christendom and goes to all the world religions. So ecumenicalism can be either localized to Christendom or more broadly in the context of world religion. Any questions on what ecumenicalism is? I tried to give a general definition, but there... There's not a question, but I'll add something.

The former Pope went and bowed down to Buddha and said, hey, we all worship the same guy. Yeah, the former Pope was definitely an ecumenicalist. In fact, he held several different meetings where people from various world religions came together and tried to have some general sense of unity together, we'll all serve the same God. It's just we call him different things and we believe different things, but it's all the same. Which is completely goofy, but we'll talk about that in a little bit. First of all, we want to take a look at two different forms of ecumenicalism and how they show up in different areas.

The first one I call Just Jesus. If we just focus on Jesus, then we can all be unified in Jesus, which doesn't sound wrong at first. I mean, the truth of the matter is if we all really did focus on Christ and have a Christ-centered life, then unity would be a lot easier to achieve, because Christ is truth and He is the Word, and so if we all focused on truth, there's not variation in truth.

Yes? Could you also, with this statement following that, just the essentials. Just the Essentials. Yeah, you'll hear that, and we'll talk about that when we get to the National Association of Evangelicals, but we're not there yet. The Just Jesus category.

This is what I experienced in my own experience back when I was a teenager and into my early twenties. I was involved with a church that got together with... I was interning at a church and all the pastors would get together once a month and we would all do prayer requests. I wasn't a pastor but they let me come along anyways because I was an intern.

We would all come together and we would have prayer request time and all the pastors would pray for one another because they were all getting burned out because they were probably not doing things in a biblical fashion. So the pastors would get together. Well, the pastors getting together thought, hey, this would be great if we could do this for our whole congregation. So let's get our congregations together, and we'll sing some praise songs.

And then we'll have a really light devotional. And by light, I mean really light. Because basically, we had everybody from a singing no instruments Church of Christ but charismatic or Pentecostal background church, to a Native American oriented church that was into all kinds of blending of Christianity and Native American things, to various other things, and they all came together. And so we would sing songs, which the theology in the songs wasn't great, but most of the group didn't have fantastic theology anyways.

So, when it all came down, it was basically we were all excited to be together because we thought we were going to... I think somebody probably thought they were going to usher in the kingdom and some people thought it was great because we were being unified, because Paul said we should be unified.

And it was just Jesus. If we just focus on Jesus and don't get into the details, it's okay. If you keep things broad and generalized, then nobody gets offended. It's kind of like when you listen to politics and you watch the two politicians debate and they try to get each other zingers and the other one avoids the zinger by never actually addressing the subject because he goes above it. I don't know if you've seen that, but that's what tends to happen.

Would you say that the Jesus that was being spoke of was a biblical Jesus? I would go so far as to say that amongst the group I was involved with, they were referring to the same historical person of Jesus, but as far as understanding things like identification and position, I know that I didn't understand that fully. I don't believe anyone else in that group understood that fully. So the gospel that they may have preached may have been rooted in the same thing that we see in 1 Corinthians 15, 3 and 4, but it was also After that, that was about as far as our agreement went, because then it came down to, you know, are you speaking in tongues?

No. Well, are you singing with instruments? Yes. In fact, it was weird, because the No Instruments Church of Christ group actually came to the instrument-oriented praise and worship time, and they didn't stone us or anything. So that was a breach of their normal practices, that they were coming together, and I was even playing an amplified bass guitar. There were drummers. It was pretty crazy.

But the idea is that if you just focus on Jesus, then you don't have to discuss any of the other doctrine, and everybody's okay. Isn't it wonderful? Except for the fact that we're really still not unified. It just happens to be we're in the same building, focusing on something broad enough that we don't get into a quarrel.

Yes, Tom? Can I remind you of diluted root beer? Diluted root beer, yeah, or warm, flat root beer. You're like, wow, it still qualifies as root beer chemically, but that's not very exciting. I actually had to drink warm, flat root beer for a relay race once, but we won't go there. Now, the other second form of ecumenicalism is, oh, man, they've been split up. Take a seat, buddy. Take a seat. No, no, you're good. You're good. It's all right.

The other form, and this is one that's pushed from a more secular perspective, and I call it dialogue to redefine, but the idea is that when Christians who disagree come together to talk, most often, for example in my own experience, talking to somebody who was charismatic, and I was formerly charismatic, but saying, wow, let's take a look at what scriptures say.

The whole argument is, you're going to come to my side, or I'm going to come to your side, and it's a back and forth. And the whole purpose is to find an absolute doctrinal truth concept, and everybody switches to one side. so that there is intellectual unity on the subject. Everybody's familiar with that concept? Have you ever seen debate? That tends to be the purpose of debate. You know, who wins based on one side or the other.

Well, dialogue is this concept that we'll all just sit and talk about it, and then we'll just understand one another, and if anything, we'll come to a third conclusion that both parties didn't bring in that agrees, and so then you have redefinition. So, dialogue to redefine is what I have this described as. Here's a handout. I've got an example of this here.

You'll see there's a list of two specific statements that disagree would be one, all men are born sinners. That's the Holly Hills position. some more liberal scholars might agree with, all men will eventually sin. So both of them involve all men, and both of them involve sin, right? But there's an issue with the time frame. Are we born sons of Adam who need saving and to be identified with Christ? Or will we eventually sin and fall short of the glory of God?

If you write a vague statement, Now, both parties will be able to agree on it. You might be able to write, all people sin, and just cut out any time frame in there, and then both parties could sign off, probably, yeah, all people sin. I've known, you know, I know that even in my own daughter's life when she was a young toddler, knew how to disobey.

It didn't take long for the sin to kick in. But we're arguing about the time frame here in this context. But the idea is that if you dialogue to redefine, you just keep changing the definition until both parties can agree on it. The thing is that neither party has really actually changed their view. You've just worked down to a statement that is agreeable by both parties.

When we look at some of these groups, you're going to see various examples of that in place. It's easy to to do that over and over again. You know, if you go into the Middle East and you look at political things, again I think politics is a secular outside analogy that we can all identify with seeing discussions go on. If you look at the Middle East and the politics there, they're arguing over land, they're arguing over things. You're not going to be able to get down to a generic statement about the land, you know, because both countries want that land. You can't get a neutral point with that kind of a scenario.

For some reason, there's people because they don't view Christianity or religion in general to be true or have truths in it. They think that they can just, you know, we'll just write something that everybody agrees on because it's not really true anyways. And that's why the secular movement says, hey, let's come together and you all should just agree because it doesn't really matter anyways. And so that's why they make it a thrust for all the world religions to join hands and sing Kumbaya or whatever it is that you sing when nothing's true.

It's a little weird. I don't know. It's like, well, what's the point? And a third idea along this is experience, time, or culture will erase some divisions. For example, and this is probably the classic one, and this is one I saw when I was reading up on this, is one I saw referenced a couple times.

Slavery in the United States, there were people on different sides of the fence with that, speaking from a religious standpoint. You had teachers or pastors or preachers or priests speaking various views on, is slavery okay? They would go and they'd quote Paul in Colossians 3 saying slaves be this way. Look, Paul is saying slavery is okay, so we should have slavery. Well, culturally slavery became unacceptable over time and therefore the issue resolved itself. So where there is disunity, unity will come over time. That's the theory at least.

We'll just wait until everybody has a cultural shift It doesn't really matter what the scriptures say, it's just cultural. It ignores the scriptures, and so that becomes problematic because when it comes down to it, a charismatic and a non-charismatic are not going to agree on the Holy Spirit coming and going, or the Holy Spirit always being and indwelling the believer. They're not going to be reconcilable over time with culture. That's not the issue. It's hermeneutical. It's how do I interpret the Bible and how do I apply it to my life. That's not a cultural issue. So that's one of the problems with this idea of unity over time and with culture. Any questions on that one or any of the other ones? Yeah, Bud.

For any of my early Enlightenment such as it was, I heard that ecumenism primarily throughout the Christian, so-called, professing churches, not a worldwide event, we were to go ahead and unify under a certain doctrine of Christianity and the world would, by our testimony, we could tolerate their beliefs, tolerate this sort of thing, but they would be ultimately converted in our way of looking at it. I've jumped the track somewhere back here.

Okay, well that is actually kind of a blend of of experience, time, or culture will erase some divisions, and the dialogue to redefine. Basically the idea is that we'll all, well not even that, it's a mix of all three, do the just Jesus thing as well, because what you have is you've got this idea, we'll all be unified as Christians, And then, once that happens, then we'll reach the world, and we're basically going to usher in the millennium, is the concept. It's a post-millennial concept that I don't really find to be biblical, but it sounds good. It's encouraging. Christians are usually fond of the idea of everybody becoming a Christian. I mean, we all know somebody, I think we all know somebody, who's not a believer, that we wish would come to know the Lord. So it sounds like an encouraging idea. You may have heard of the idea that within 20 years, if everybody brought a new believer into the faith, every six months within 20 years, the whole world would be Christian. Have you heard that before? I can't remember which evangelistic organization put that together, but there's a chart. Is it Navigators? Evangelism Explosion, I think. I've heard it from different places. I can't remember who originated it.

But the idea is that if everybody becomes Christian, then Jesus will have to come back. I mean, what's he going to do? There's going to be less to save. So, Jesus comes back and we're all happy and we'll sing Kumbaya again. But the idea, when it comes down to it, is that the unity is not, again, based on real doctrinal unity. It's if we keep it on the highest levels, then we'll all be okay. And that's really sad.

We'll take a look later on on what actually what does the Bible say unity should come from. Let's take a look at a couple ecumenical movements. I've got four on this list. The first one we'll take a look at, and this is one that in seminary this had all the conservative professors hackles up. Evangelicals and Catholics together. The ECT was formed to bring unity to the Catholics and the evangelical Protestants. Well-known Protestant signers of the ECT doctrinal statement include Dr. Oz Guinness. We used to sell lots of books of his when I worked at the Christian bookstore. J.I. Packer. We sold a lot of his books. And of course, the ever-prophetic Pat Robertson. You've seen him.

He's one of my favorite brothers in Christ. I hope the Lord reveals his word to him someday so that he will understand that he shouldn't say some of the things he says. The ECT doctrinal statement includes statements like, All who accept Christ as Lord and Savior are brothers and sisters in Christ. Evangelicals and Catholics are brothers and sisters in Christ.

Does everybody remember in the apologetics class we talked about logic? This is a syllogism, or this is a syllogism almost. It's missing a statement. It doesn't state what the gospel is. It makes a first statement And then it makes a logical conclusion statement, but without bridging where the logic is. Okay, so let's take a look at the first statement briefly.

All who accept Christ as Lord and Savior are brothers and sisters in Christ. Can we disagree with that statement? I don't believe that we can. I think there's a really good biblical reason for that to be a true statement. But then it jumps to Evangelicals and Catholics are brothers and sisters in Christ.

What is the gospel message that makes somebody a Christian so that they can be brothers and sisters in Christ? So again, we might quote 1 Corinthians 15, 3 and 4, where it says that we believe that Jesus Christ died for your sins, so there's a belief that we're sinners, that Christ died for them, that he was buried and he was resurrected. So those four things are part of what you believe as a core for the gospel to be a believer. Now, what does the Catholic Church believe for salvation? We had a class on Orthodox and Catholic Church doctrine. Does anybody remember some of the ideas? There's a whole long list. There's a whole long flowchart. Yeah, there's a flowchart involved.

What do you have to do for sanctification. Does anybody remember what you have to do for sanctification in a Catholic scenario? Play Mass and go through the seven sacraments or as many as you can get. Yeah, go through all the sacraments and do Mass. You've got to take communion, confession of sins, There's a whole long list. There's different types of sins. Eucharist or taking the communion. If you do a venial sin, then you're really hosed. If you do a menial sin, then well, you just gotta do your Hail Marys and whatnots.

The thing is that salvation is in many ways linked to works within the Catholic Church. It's not just believing. The Christian or the Protestant and what I would consider Christian doctrine of salvation in the gospel is simply believing and God does all the work. We do the believing, He does the work, and we're saved. That's it. It's a really simple concept.

But in their statement here, it just jumps to evangelicals and Catholics are brothers and sisters in Christ. Now, I believe that there are believers that are somehow sucked into the Catholic Church because they don't know better, they become a believer and then they go to their nearest church, which happens to be a Catholic church, and they get sucked in and they go through the routine, but they truly believe the true gospel. But that doesn't mean that I can make the global statement that all Protestant and Catholic believers are unified in Christ. You can believe in the Catholic Church, but the Pope doesn't know if he's going to heaven or purgatory first. This second statement assumes that all evangelicals and all Catholics believe in Jesus Christ. Yes. And I think I can personally say from my experience that not all evangelical churches contain only believers. Yeah, so it's a problem there. Let's take a look at a further statement.

This is one of my favorite parts of the whole Catholic Catechism. Article 841 says, and this is a direct quote from the English translation, because they of course wrote it in Italian, The plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator.

In the first place, among whom are the Christians, the Protestants, and the Muslims. Lucky Muslims. Those darn Jews got kicked out because the Roman Catholic Church replaced Israel. But the Muslims got lucky because they were on a different branch from believing people. These profess to hold the faith of Abraham and together with us they adore the one merciful God, mankind's judge, on the last day." I don't think the Muslims are keen on... I mean the fundamentalist Muslim would be pretty ticked off if he said he believed the same thing that the Roman Catholic did.

But later on, just a few articles later, it says the Roman Catholic Church is necessary for salvation. So how the Muslims are grafted in and being happy believers in Allah and the Jews are kicked out and the Protestants really don't count according to official Catholic doctrine.

I don't know how the Catholics could even sign this without rejecting the catechism that they've been raised on and taught and are teaching others. I wish I could explain it, you know, as saying there's a really good logical reason for it, but they're abandoning traditional Catholic Church teaching and going straight for... Was there some difference between the plan of salvation and actual salvation?

What's funny is that they use specific direct statements. You have to be part of the Roman Catholic Church. It's necessary for salvation. And yet, earlier, the Muslims believe and are going to heaven because they believe in the same God that the Roman Catholic Church believes in. How you have a plan of salvation or a way to salvation that is so weirdly routed, I don't know. There's no salvation in an unknown God, is there? Well, no. That's an important point. Yeah, there's no salvation in an unknown God.

And how the Protestants can be accepted by Roman Catholic salvation is just a major question. how the Protestants can embrace the idea of everybody having to take communion every week and everybody having to monitor the types of sins they commit so that they can know what kind of prayers they have to pray or if they have to be re-saved or whatever else.

I don't know. It doesn't flow logically. But their statement is full of things that as a Protestant I would actually agree with most of what was written in there, but the Catholic Church would reject. It's very strange. Now I shouldn't say most. Many things I would agree with that are in there. Yes?

You know, you wonder who's pushing this ecumenical thing, because the Catholics don't kind of... I know in the Colorado Springs, in little Jerusalem down there, the Catholics certainly don't come together with the Well, most of the people involved with this were actually, and strangely enough, I saw lots of names from Canada and lots of names from New England. Not really anybody from... and San Francisco. So some more of the more liberal, political and cultural places, also spiritually more liberal. When I was as first president in Colorado Springs, uh... okay okay It's going to vary. Basically, this was a bunch of theologians coming together and not so much the mainline bodies.

In fact, this week I found a picture online as I was doing my preparations of a Catholic woman holding a sign that says, you cannot go to heaven without the Catholic Church. Standing on a street corner, just like, here you go. She was very certain that the Catholic Church was the way to get to heaven. and Protestants were going to go to hell, the Muslims were going to go to hell, the Jews were going to go to hell, everybody, the Baha'is, everybody. So, it doesn't reflect everybody.

And even still, if you compare American or North American Catholicism, it varies between Latin America, where they're very staunch Catholics, and I talk to people who say they're Catholic here in the United States, When was the last time you went to Mass? And they're like, well, I went at Christmas. Or I went at Easter. And I was like, well, OK, obviously you didn't understand catechism.

So let's jump to the next group, because our time is limited here. Now, this is an interesting group. They're actually based out of Colorado Springs. Or I'm sorry, the president of the group is based out of Colorado Springs. The National Association of Evangelicals. It was formed to bring ecumenical unity to the Evangelical Church in 1942. Below is their statement of faith, which is required for the faculty and students at Denver Seminary to agree with.

Let's take a look at these points here. They just moved. They just relocated. But let's take a look at these points. I don't think you're going to find them disagreeable points. But I think when we look at them closely, you're going to see some things are missing.

We believe the Bible to be the inspired, the only infallible, authoritative word of God. There's nothing about that that's particularly offensive to the senses. Definitely, we believe that the Bible is the infallible word of God. Infallible is an important nature of scripture. Why study it if it's not infallible? And it's authoritative, that's important too. We believe that there is one God, eternally existent, in three persons, Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.

See, that's a trinity. A little vague. They could say triune and be a bit more specific. But because it's so broad and general, we'll give them the benefit of the doubt, okay? You can see where I'm going with this. The broad generalizations make it a lot easier for everybody to smile and sign off on these things.

We believe in the deity of our Lord Jesus Christ, in his virgin birth, in his sinless life, in his miracles, in his vicarious and atoning death through his shed blood, in his bodily resurrection, in his ascension to the right hand of the Father, and in his personal return in power and glory. Now, that's an interesting statement there.

That's going to actually push away some eschatological viewpoints. The physical, personal return in power and glory, there are some people that believe that Christ is never going to actually return. So that's actually pushed away some. Of course, that eschatological viewpoint wasn't prominent historically. So in 1942, that was not a big deal to say that statement.

We believe for the salvation of lost and sinful people, regeneration by the Holy Spirit is absolutely essential. And before I... I'm going to jump down to my first questions. How is someone to be saved? Does this bullet point cover how you're saved? No, it doesn't. It just says, hey, if you're going to be saved, you'll need to be regenerated by the Holy Spirit. That's it. Absolutely essential. How that happens? I don't know. That's an important thing.

Is this salvation by belief or by works? Is it faith or works? Holly Hills, and I think all of us in this room, would probably agree that it's by faith, not by works. You don't do anything to get saved other than believe. Well, this is a broad, generalized statement, so you don't have to disagree with how you're saved. you can believe that it's by signing off, you know, on this, you just, oh, well, I'm saved by works and by faith and by baptism. Doesn't matter. It's broad in general. So this National Association of Evangelicals, their statement is broad enough in all of these things that most people will be able to sign off on it.

But it's not specific enough to bring out areas where there may be actual problems in their theology. And that's a really critical issue because, I mean, when it comes down to it, we're supposed to be unified in our doctrine and in the truth, and we'll take a look at that in just a bit. And you can't really establish that unity with this doctrinal statement.

If you look at Holly Hill's doctrinal statement, by the way, if you don't have one, I believe it's in the directory, and I believe we have printouts of it in the, oh, it's in the red room now. I keep pointing out to the main foyer and it's just not there anymore. But it's in the red carpet room, so check it out, read through it.

Seriously, as homework, if you like that sort of thing, read this and then read the Holly Hills Doctrinal Statement. It's also available on the Holly Hills website. read through it. You'll be surprised how detailed ours is compared to this one. Well, actually, you wouldn't be surprised, but it is significantly more detailed than this. You're going to find fewer people are able to sign off on the Holly Hills one because of theological division than you can with this. A lot of people would sign off on this. The next one, and this one I hope doesn't offend anybody, but I had to put him in here.

The Billy Graham Crusades. Everybody familiar with Billy Graham? If you're not, then I think you've not been alive for the last 50 years. Billy Graham is an evangelist. Is evangelism wrong? Certainly not. But Billy Graham has involved the Catholics more recently in his list of denominations that they invite to come into these crusades. And the Catholic Church requires for salvation a whole long list of things that are way outside the biblical requirements that are there and so what happens and I had a long argument with my grandma about this and she's just like but so many people are getting saved I'm like yes that's fantastic but then they're going to the Catholic Church and getting into the bondage of law and routine and got to do the religious ceremony just to be saved still they learn That's not what they believed in the original gospel, but unfortunately they get bombarded with this idea of legalism. And even still, when it comes down to it, a lot of people still go to a church somewhere after they become believers because they don't understand grace, and they get nailed with this concept of, well, you need to make sure you're living out this righteous life that's perfect and spotless, and make sure you have your checklist of things that you're doing right and wrong. The Billy Graham crusade isn't evil, but they're lacking discernment when it comes to involving the Catholics in the organization so freely. It becomes problematic because the doctrines are so different.

And we looked at that with the evangelicals and Catholics together. Are you saying that the Catholics probably would be willing to sign this statement? Where? Oh, I don't believe... well, the same group that signed the ECT document would probably be able to. Anyone who is familiar with the Catholic Catechism would have a very difficult time signing the NAE doctrinal statement. If you're not familiar, you know, if you missed the Catholic class that we did in the polemic series earlier, I recommend getting the tape or listening to the MP3 online. get familiar with the ideas because that's probably the biggest difference in this ecumenical movement that's problematic. You may find Protestant groups that can get together and be relatively okay in the same room. But the doctrinal differences between Catholicism and Evangelical beliefs are so radically different that it's just hard for my brain to comprehend how they could come together and hold hands and sing Kumbaya together. It just doesn't work.

Sure. Oh, if you believe in the gospel, you're saved. That's not in question. I wanted to make sure that I'm clear on that. If you believe the gospel as presented in 1 Corinthians 15, 3 and 4, you're saved. The problem is that Billy Graham's organization invites Christian groups or church groups, I should say, more generically, from within the community to come and be counselor people, to pray with people when they become Christians at the altar call thing they do. That's when they sing Just As I Am like three million times.

Everybody comes forward. And that's when you've got a Catholic guy coming up and, you know, drift up to this person who says, oh boy, I've just accepted Christ as my Savior, and he's saying, oh, alright. Well, they're going to be friendly and nice, and what's going to prevent the friendly Catholic guy hooking on with the friendly person who just believed the gospel of Jesus Christ, and then inviting them to their Catholic church to go through all the rites and the rituals to make sure they maintain their salvation, instead of going to a biblical church? Yes, Tom.

Wouldn't be surprised if in the private counseling rooms of these Billy Graham crusades some Catholic counselor will sneak out a quick confitier on him and say, okay, do this and we'll know you're really, really, really saved right now and then we'll get on with you later.

Well, that's the thing is that there's nothing preventing that kind of thing from happening. The doctrinal checks are just lacking. That's the biggest problem, is you have no doctrinal check to say, wow, the Catholic doctrine here on salvation is really screwed up, or the Catholics thinking that the Muslims are going to go to heaven is really screwed up. It's just a problem. Yes?

I heard just this last week, someone did a survey of Billy Graham, the people that claim salvation or come forward. A great many of those people after a number of years fall away so that there's concern there. Yeah, I don't concern myself with a falling away thing with Billy Graham. I don't link it to him. I link it to the health of the church in the United States. The problem is that in the United States here in our churches, we beat people up with legalism.

Or we don't give them any doctrine whatsoever, we just every week you come to church and hear either the gospel message again or just let's love one another again. And so they're not being fed and growing, they're not being discipled. What did Christ say at the end of Matthew, what's the great commission? To go and make disciples? Well disciples isn't just, you know, mark another notch in your Bible, somebody saved, yippee skippee. It's actually to train somebody up.

You know, and so part of the problem is that somebody becomes a believer and they get brought in and they stay a babe. It's like we stick them in the nursery over here and they're 23 years old as believers, not physically, but in Christ, 23 years old and they're still wearing diapers in there and we don't sit around and go, hmm, that's kind of odd. We wouldn't expect that physically of a human being. You'd think, oh, this person may be handicapped, or this person has medical issues, or something. They're wearing diapers at 23. But spiritually, in the church in the United States, there's not been discipling. There's not been maturing and growth going on. So why do they walk away? Well, I've heard this before. I've heard this for three years. Is there anything more to it?

Apparently not, because I'm not getting anything else besides John 3.16 every Sunday morning.

And I don't say that to make fun of John 3.16. It's just that there's more to spiritual growth than the gospel.

In fact, I was talking to Mike Doyle one time, and he said that there are four things that we need to believe to be saved. We're sinners. Christ died, he was buried, and he was resurrected. The four things we need to believe to be saved. But those things aren't growth truths. Those are things for the gospel. After that, what do you grow with? You have to understand Romans 6, Romans 8. You have to understand the context of scripture. Who are we in Christ? What's going on? Oh, then you can grow. But if every week you come and Sunday morning you're just getting, this is what you need to believe to be saved, then you're not going to have.

So when people walk away, I think that's probably the biggest critical issue there. It has nothing to do with the Billy Graham organization in that context. It has to do with the church bodies that the people get plugged into. And maybe there is some connection with Billy Graham.

Maybe they should be focusing more on delivering solid churches that people could go to. Hey, there's only five churches in your community that we recommend you go to because these five teach these core doctrines. Why do we know? Because they have a doctrinal statement that they've published that you can read and study and learn what the Bible teaches from.

Okay, before I get too distracted by the Billy Graham organization, let's keep going through here. We already talked about the dialogue to redefine religion. Religious tolerance is a secular movement. That's the one where everybody's going to come together and we're going to ignore the fact that this person is Muslim and this person is Christian and this person is Jewish and we're all just going to come together and ignore the differences of our religions and we'll just come together. You just make the mental decision to ignore doctrine and just come together and say we all worship the same or a different God, but we're all going to come together and worship that same God or different God together in the same facility. We're going to ignore our differences. I can't see the fundamentalist Muslims from the Middle East getting together in a room of fundamentalist Christians and that going too well. And frankly, religious tolerances usually will tolerate everything except Christianity. Here's a big question to think about.

Does the Bible teach tolerance? No. What does the Bible teach that is the God-sourced thing that's sort of like tolerance? Love. Exactly. Is love like tolerance? No, because you have to speak the truth in love. Yeah, well there's truth involved with love, but love is tolerance. You tolerate something for so long. Like when my three-year-old does little things that irritate me, I can tolerate it so long until finally daddy has to say, you've got to stop. I can't tolerate that anymore. Tolerance has an end point. How much does love forgive? God's love forgives everything. Okay, so religious tolerance is really faulty in a lot of ways.

How about community Bible studies? Has anybody ever been involved with a community Bible study? Usually they're more gal-oriented, but sometimes they have guy-oriented community Bible studies. And the idea is we're all going to come together, and we're going to do the Just Jesus thing, and we'll all just study a book or a passage or something that's really generic and safe, one we can all agree on.

I don't know how many of those there are, but it's like, well let's read through the Psalms and we'll all come together and talk about how they make us feel. And nobody has an invalid opinion, so we'll all just come together and it will be edifying for us all because we'll all get to understand our differences. Truth, much less of an issue. Unity for the sake of unity, that's the good idea. Those are common. I know there was one of those going on in Carson City. I'm sure there's one here in Denver, although I'm not familiar with it.

The thing that bothers me the most, if I get in a setting where the truth of God isn't taught, is that people say, well, what do you think about this? Well, what do you think it means? The point is not what somebody thinks. The point is what God said. Yeah, what did God say? Did the author have an intended meaning? When God inspired the word, we saw that in that one statement. It's the infallible word of God. What was he trying to say? I don't know. What do you think? What do you think? What do you think? And it doesn't matter really in the end because nobody is right or wrong.

And yeah, Carol, that just drives me bonkers. That's the kind of Bible studies I used to get involved with when I was a teenager. We'd have every week at school on Tuesdays, I think it was at lunch break, in junior high we had a little Bible study time together and we get together and we're like, well, what do you think it means? What do you think it means? And finally it came out, here we're all little punky junior high kids with attitude, that there was disagreement on some of our theology and we would just go around and around and around and it was like, wow. Even the youth can't do this. And we're being indoctrinated with it in schools. Now let's get down to the final section in this study.

What is the biblical view of unity? And instead of going over 20 different verses that talk about it, because the scripture is full of passages talking about unity, I thought we'd take a look at one passage in a little bit more depth and try to glean some of the intentions of scripture when it talks about unity. So we'll take a look at Colossians 3, 12 through 17, and I'll go ahead and read it out loud here and then we'll discuss it. And we'll see what you think it means.

So, as those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved, put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving each other, whoever has a complaint against anyone, just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you. Beyond all these things put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity, Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body, and be thankful. Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you with all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your heart to God. Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father. So there is a concept of unity, a concept of character, and a concept of thankfulness all intertwined together in this passage. Let's take a look first of all at verses 12-13. Unity by God's choice. What does he start out with?

You are chosen by God. That means that as believers, whether the person that I'm coming in contact with, that's a Christian that doesn't go to Holly Hills, goes to a Presbyterian or a Methodist or whatever kind of church it is, if they believe the gospel of Jesus Christ, it is clear through scripture that God has chosen those people. That means that when I come to that person, I can embrace them as a brother and sister in Christ because they are chosen like me. Unity comes because of being chosen. It's God has ordained that person to be a believer so I can have unity with them. But it doesn't just stop with, yay, we're all chosen together, right? He doesn't just stay on the high level, he moves in. And the next thing is he looks at, as a result, as a logical result of our being chosen, our natural response in the new man, okay, in Christ, should be this list of things.

We should have a heart of compassion. How hard is it to really disagree with somebody and be angry at them for having different theology if there's compassion involved? Especially if, let's say that this is a new believer who's been indoctrinated with some kind of different doctrine and you're discussing it with them. If you're compassionate, is there a lot of anxiety and tension? It's a little harder to have that, isn't it?

How about kindness? Again, kindness doesn't throw fists. You know, you crazy charismatic, I'm going to take you out. It doesn't happen, okay, because kindness doesn't fit in there. Humility. How about that? That's one I've talked to people and I've misstated something and they've called me on the carpet for it and I had to humbly apologize for it. Oh, not humility. That's a crazy one. Jessica will tell you that I wrestle with that one. How about gentleness? gently correcting someone, kindly and gently coming alongside and saying, hey, let's study this passage a little deeper. Let's look at what this says.

Hey, we disagree on tongues, but what does scripture say? What can we go back? How can we study the culture and the history and the language to come to a consensus together on what is true? Okay, how about patience? That's one that we're going to have to go study this passage for three months before we find that we're unified, and we're going to be patient about it, rather than zipping in, having disagreement, and running away.

I've got better things to do with my time than argue with you. See you later. How about bearing with one another? That's one of those things along the lines of patience and long-suffering, bearing with it. Oh, we're going to disagree with this about again. Let's go back and go over this a 700th time and bear with one another on this. Forgiving each other. That's a big one.

If you have to correct somebody and that person has to be humble, then you should be able to forgive. You should be able to forgive anyways. But what is Paul's reason that we should forgive? What is his logical reason for why we should forgive? We've been forgiven.

That's pretty critical. I know that in my own heart and mind, there have been lots of times when I've been feeling arrogant and I've not been humble, not having that humility. And the Lord's like, whoa, look at all that you have been blessed with in your physical world, as well as being given every spiritual blessing. I've forgiven you everything. Why don't you back off, Mr. Hot Pants, you know, and just calm down. All right.

So unity by God's choice results in our needing to have character so that we may work together in Christ and with Christ as our focus. It's not just Jesus, by the way, when I say Christ as our focus. It's obviously deeper than that. Let's take a look at verse 14, the result, as a result of love. As if all those things were not enough, we should be acting in love, which is the perfect binding agent for unity." The perfect bond of love should bring unity there. Interestingly enough, that word bond there actually has the context of a ligament between bones.

If we look at Colossians 2.19, it actually uses the word ligament, but it's the same Greek word there.

And the concept, even in Colossians 2.19, is that Christ is the head and we are growing through him and he is the ligament between the bones. That bond is a very connecting word. Love is this ligament between the bones.

How many of you have ever had various issues with joints and ligaments. I know, as I get older, I have greater numbers of those. But those ligaments are in there and they work and they hold things together. So that if we were to take a look at 1 Corinthians 12, Paul talks about the body. Hey, this person's an ear, this person's an eye, this person's a whatever. Well, love is the ligament that lets the body function and operate. Colossians has several different references to that same concept. But love brings unity and it joins us together.

What happens if a ligament gets snapped? You can have some severe pain, for example, like if you're the Achilles tendon that joins the muscle to our heel. If that snaps, that's like half a year of recovery time. I've never had that break on me, praise the Lord, but I've had several people that I have either known or heard about in my life where they had that snap or break and the pain is amazingly excruciating and they have to do some severe surgery to re-stretch that tendon out and re-surgically attach it. It's never as strong as it was originally back to your heel and it's severe.

So when Paul's talking about this bond of love, He's talking about God made your body with tendons and ligaments and various body parts all together, holding it together. That's how he made the body of Christ. If we're not recognizing that in love, then we're not recognizing the way that God made it. That's an interesting attitude to have, because it's easy, after talking about division in Christendom throughout the polemics class, the first 14 classes so far, We need to talk about where we can have unity and how we should have unity and how we should have attitudes of unity with our brothers and sisters in Christ. But that unity of love is there. The focus on Christ is there, but it doesn't just stop on the shallow surface areas. It goes deeper than that.

Yes? What's your definition of love? Let's see here. Do you want the 1 Corinthians 13 answer? No. I know what that is. Okay, the agape love is the love that God gives us, that is a giving and generous love, and it's the kind of love that, when the Holy Spirit works through us, it comes out perfectly.

Fleshly love. Have you ever... If you look at love that is fleshly, that's based on selfishness or physical things, it can't tolerate, it becomes a tolerant type of love. And I have experienced that in my own life. Whereas in the Holy Spirit, working in our life, gives us the agape God-given love that allows us to embrace people that we would never embrace otherwise in the flesh. Whether that's somebody that we really disagree with, whether that's somebody that we would rather have get hit by a train or whatever else it is that in the flesh, we couldn't love that person.

I would define love in the biblical context here as a love that is induced by the Holy Spirit working in our lives. I don't know if that... I didn't give you the definition of love-love, but I would tell you of the four Greek loves, which one I would use in that context. Isn't it the contrast between the love of God and the love of man? Yes, and that's what I think is the statement here is that the love that is here is a love that is Christ working in our lives and not us doing in ourselves.

The ecumenical movement from the secular perspective says you guys just tolerate one another. Love one another because we tell you to love one another. Whereas in the biblical statement of love is love one another because I loved you. Love one another because I'm empowering you to love one another. It's the Holy Spirit working in bringing unity and not ourselves in the flesh. But Randy, the point is that it is everlasting and it is unconditional. Yes, I would agree with that. And none of those others are. Correct. None of the other fleshly love is not unconditional. And none of them will work that way.

Correct. That's what I was trying to say. Did I say that? Let's keep going here because our time is running out. Unity by Doctrine and Thankfulness, verses 15 and 16. Is it already? Oh, did it ring? Man, I always go long. Okay, I'll be quick. Verses 15 and 16 clearly point out that our being chosen by God was to call us to have a Christ-ruled heart. Christ ruling in our heart happens to the entire body. Christ is our source of truth. Furthermore, by meditating on the Word of God, letting the Word of Christ dwell within us, we will be able to, with wisdom, teach and admonish one another. Teaching and admonishing one another, that's doctrine.

Isn't it? That's not just singing kumbaya together and having a light, fluffy meeting. That is depth. And how does he say to do it? With psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. I think that's kind of a special thing. Songs are ways for us to memorize things. We memorize doctrine and truth. When we sing the hymns out there, or the praise songs, we're not just singing any old words. the songs that are spoken or chosen have specific doctrinal content and context that we start to memorize. So that when we walk through our days, if those songs come to mind, we are recalling and reciting doctrinal truth that we're being taught and learning through those songs. I'm just going to have to cut this short. Verse 17 finishes off by saying that the life of Christ walking out in our lives is unity and brings unity. Because I'm out of time, I'm just going to have to stop there and we're going to have to pray. But if there's any other questions, I'll turn off this recording and we can keep talking about it.