Sunday, February 28, 2016

Is it Unloving and Divisive to Call Out Unbiblical Doctrine?

Photo Credit: joequatronejr.com
It is often (wrongly) assumed that if you call out doctrinal error within the body of Christ you are somehow endangering the unity of the Christian Church (per John 17:11-21). "How unloving!" "How uncharitable!" "How unchristian!"

Yet in John 17 Jesus asks the Father to protect his disciples from the world and to keep them from the "evil one." Lenski highlights a very important question in his commentary; "How may this oneness be endangered, how may a disciple drop out of it? (Answer) By any teaching or doctrine contrary to the word. This cuts into the bond that ties the disciples together and may easily cut it all together and thus sever some of the disciples from the oneness, dropping them back into the world. The entire prayer has the one great burden that we may be preserved in oneness by complete adherence to the Word." 

Christian unity and biblical sanctification are tethered to the truth. In actuality unbiblical doctrine and bad theology are what really threaten the spiritual communion and biblical maturation of Christ's church. It is therefore unloving to let doctrinal impurity and/or unrepentant sin go unchecked (see also John 8:31, 17:17; Titus 1:9-10).  God's people must seek to speak the truth in love (Eph. 4:15) as we contend earnestly for the faith (Jude 3-4).