One of the most influential sermons I ever heard, was one given by one of my fellow college students. He spoke on the disciples calling on Jesus to tell the man who was casting out demons in Jesus’ name to stop. Jesus responded with, “Do not stop him, for no one who does a mighty work in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. 40 For the one who is not against us is for us (Mark 9:39b-40).”
This past week I received two emails and a phone call concerning an upcoming event. All I know is the person’s first name, and if they attend this congregation, I cannot place the name with a face, nor have they talked with me in person. I have responded, to the email, but the response I received showed me that it would not be a fruitful exchange.
This issue about the event is who was to be leading the said event. As I spent time in prayer before responding, and time after the person’s response to me, I was led by the Holy Spirit to share with you today’s topic.
See, I have said it in the past that the unity of the Church is the highest call on the Christian’s life. In Jesus’ last public prayer before the crucifixion, which is called his high priestly prayer, Jesus says these words in John 17:20-21, “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, 21 that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” The unity of the Church is a testimony to the truth of the Gospel, because it’s one way in which the world may know that Jesus was sent from the Father.
This unity was challenged in the early Church in Acts 15, when Jewish-Christians were trying to put the Gentile-Christians under the law. The unity of the Church was challenged again in 325 AD, when the council of Nicaea had to wrestle with the heresy of Arianism that put forth that Jesus wasn’t the same divine nature as the Father, but rather a lesser created divine being.
With the conclusion of Nicaea, it was thought that the Church was reunified around the Nicene Creed. Yet, as the Church became more accepted by the Roman government, it’s unity suffered. By about 450 AD, two groups had splintered off from the Church, the Church of the East and the Oriental Church. By 1095, the unity of the Church saw it’s biggest hit when the Roman Catholic in the west and the Orthodox in the east split from each other in the Great Schism. Following our heritage in the west, the Roman Catholic Church would then see another great schism in 1517 with the Reformation and the Protestant movement. Today there are thousands of denominations of various sizes, holding to various beliefs.
These fractures of unity, began to see a different movement of God happening in the the 1700s and into the 1800s. The Great Awaking evangelistic movements were a call to Gospel transformation, and made inroads into these fractures. Then in the late 1800s we began to see some of these fractures begin to heal, with groups like the Alliance. This healing happened with a great focus on the Gospel, and less on what would eventually be referred to as secondary doctrine.
In 1908, a modern movement of unity was began, a movement that would be called the Ecumenical Movement, or Ecumenism. This modern movement saw 32 smaller groups come together to from the Federal Council of Churches in the U.S., which is now called the National Council of Churches.
In western Europe, four conferences were held from 1910 to 1927, which led to the formation of the World Council of Churches in 1937.
In 1943, as a response to the National Council of Churches, the National Association of Evangelicals was formed.
Finally in 1962, the Roman Catholic Church created it’s Secretariat to begin to heal the rifts between itself and the Eastern Orthodox Church from the Great Schism. With this, the Orthodox Church created their own Pan-Orthodox Conference to bring unity to the Orthodox sects.
This brings us to where we are now in 2024. The question we should ask now is, is Ecumenical Movement a good or a bad thing? Well, it’s a good thing in the sense that Jesus has called us to be unified as he and the Father are united. The bad thing comes in what we’re unifying over. In Matthew 7:13-14 Jesus said, “13 Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. 14 For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.”
The way of Jesus is a hard narrow one. It’s not hard in the sense of work, because we are justified by faith and not of works (Galatians 2:16); it’s hard in the sense that the narrowness of it makes it hard to follow. If it were the wide path, everyone could do it. The Hindu who believes in his 300,000+ gods would be on the same path as the Muslim who believes in only one god. But Jesus states that his path is narrow, so narrow in fact that in John 14:6b, Jesus said to Thomas, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” Jesus makes his path narrow and therefore hard. And it’s this narrowness that both unites and divides us.
Jesus’ narrow path starts with the question, how much theology does it take to gain salvation? In his book, “Don't Stop Believing,” Micheal E. Wittmer gives a three tier ring to answer this question. At the heart of these three rings, is what he says we “Must Believe.” This is all the theology a person must have at the time they are justified. They must realize they’re a sinner and call on the Lord Jesus to save them. It doesn’t take much to move from eternal death to eternal life, just a life that accepts their need and the Savior’s gift.
But from there on out we need to grow in our knowledge and understanding of God. Wittmer says we “Must Not Reject” that God is Trinity, that Jesus is fully God and fully man, and the “historical truth and significance of Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, and return.” Moving on from there, Wittmer comments that we should believe, that God is perfect, that humans are made in the image of God, that the Bible is God’s word, that the Church is Jesus’ body, and that biblical story of creation, the fall, redemption, and consummation of all things.
It’s these second and third rings that we begin to get into what people call the tiers of theology. If all it takes to enter into salvation is, “I’m a sinner, Jesus save me,” what does it mean then to be Christian? This is where the tiers of theology help us. It’s here that we begin to see what we are to unify and divide on, and what makes the narrow road, narrow.
There are usually about three tiers of theology that are talked about. One scholarly group says of the first one, that “First-level issues are most central and essential to Christianity. You can’t deny these teachings and still be a Christian in any meaningful sense (https://www.logos.com/grow/3-categories-every-christian-should-know-to-understand-theological-issues/).” This congregation is a part of the Christian and Missionary Alliance, which is a part of the National Association of Evangelicals, which is a group of about thirty-eight different denominations in the U.S. The Statement of Faith that the NAE states that they unify on is:
We believe the Bible to be the inspired, the only infallible, authoritative Word of God.
We believe that there is one God, eternally existent in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
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.
We believe that for the salvation of lost and sinful people, regeneration by the Holy Spirit is absolutely essential.
We believe in the present ministry of the Holy Spirit by whose indwelling the Christian is enabled to live a godly life.
We believe in the resurrection of both the saved and the lost; they that are saved unto the resurrection of life and they that are lost unto the resurrection of damnation.
We believe in the spiritual unity of believers in our Lord Jesus Christ.
I would agree with these as a way to express the core of what it means to be Christian. As we grow in our understanding of who God is, these are what historical Christianity has taught across the whole history of the Church.
This is the core that every professing Christian should say “Amen” to. If calling out to Jesus alone as Savior begins one’s path on the narrow road, it’s this tier that defines what God teaches on that path.
Therefore if we deny that Bible is the inspired, infallible, and authoritative word of God, we cannot rightly call ourselves Christians. If we deny the oneness of God eternally existing in three persons, Father, Son and Spirit, we cannot rightly call ourselves Christians. If we deny the deity of Jesus, his virgin birth, his sinless life, his miracles, his atoning death, his bodily resurrection, his ascension and his personal return, we cannot rightly call ourselves Christians. If we deny the need for salvation due to humanity being in sin, and it’s need to be regenerated by the Holy Spirit, we cannot rightly call ourselves Christians. If we deny the indwelling of the Holy Spirit’s work, we cannot rightly call ourselves Christians. If we deny the resurrection of both the saved to eternal life and the unsaved to eternal death, we cannot rightly call ourselves Christians. And if we deny the spiritual unity of believers in Jesus, we cannot rightly call ourselves Christians.
This is what we unite and divide on. And there are groups who call themselves Christians who deny one or more of these, and to them we have to say, I cannot fellowship with you. I cannot have Christian fellowship with those who would teach that the Bible is in error. I cannot have Christian fellowship with those who would teach that Jesus isn’t the only way. I cannot have Christian fellowship with those that teach Jesus sinned. I cannot have Christian fellowship with those who would teach that we are not sinners in need of a Savior. And I do not say this as if I’m saying it in a self-righteous way, but rather with a heart that is broken because Jesus sets the standard of the narrow way, and it cannot be unified with the wide path.
But if you say “Amen” to the core of the Christian faith, I embrace you as my brother and sister in Christ. These are the things I teach on, they’re the things that I focus on, because I desire God’s heart and that’s his Church to be unified around what he has called us to be unified on.
Tier Two then is defined as, “Second-level issues create reasonable boundaries between Christians, such as different denominations and local churches. These issues will have a bearing on what sort of church you are part of.” It’s what makes Christ’s expression of his people different depending on the congregation and denomination. We have open communion, but another might have closed. One is Armenian another is Calvinistic. One is liturgical and another isn’t. These matter in a sense of personal conviction, and preference, but not in the eternal scope of things. If you hold to tier one, and we differ on tier two, we are still family in Christ. It’s these tier two issues that you might encounter in this congregation, but they’re not something we focus on, and rarely teach on from the pulpit.
Tier Three is defined as, “Third-level issues are disputable matters (also called matters of indifference or matters of conscience). They might involve how you interpret particular passages of the Bible.” This is where we struggle together, we debate, and grow as Christ’s body, as we work through harder passages that have been wrestled with since they were first penned by the work of the Holy Spirit. These can be debated on the larger scale of the Church, or in small congregations. When is the rapture, what will our bodies look like, will our pets be in heaven. We can discuss and debate, all while knowing we won’t know until we’re on the side of eternity, and all the while in Christian fellowship.
In our town, we fellowship with the Assemblies of God, Community Bible, First Baptist, Isaiah 58 and the Southern Baptist regularly, because, though we express our faith in different ways, we are Christians who hold to first tier issues. Therefore any proclaiming Christians that hold to first their issues, I stand in front of you today, and tell you I will have Christian Fellowship with them. And those that don’t hold to tier one issues, I will seek to share the Gospel with.
What I won’t do, is seek to create a non-biblical litmus test for people, where second and third tier issues are used to divide. I want the world to know that Jesus was sent by the Father for the salvation of sinners, and so I will work within the parameters that Jesus himself gave me to accomplish his will in this area. To all others, it is the Gospel on my lips that I will share, that those on the wide path, even those who say they are Christian, will hear the message of Jesus and will not have an excuse.
My challenge for you this week is twofold: First, seek to understand the core of the Christian faith. On our, “Who We Are” and in our “Bylaws,” both of which are on our information table, it gives you a summary and a detailed Statement of Faith, that you can use to understand first tier theology. Secondly, seek to be unified with believers on these first tier issues and give grace to everything else. The way I have done this, is by not testing people to by a litmus test. If they say I’m a Christian, I believe them until they reject a first tier issue.
As an example of this, which I have shared before, a few years back I had a gentleman come to my office, wanting to use our facilities for an Al-Anon group. This man had been attending this congregation for several months and I wanted to get to know him. As we were talking, some of things he said were not lining up with first tier theology, so I asked him straightly, “Do you believe Jesus is the only way of salvation.” The reason I asked is because it’s my job as the lead elder and pastor of this congregation to make sure what is being taught lines up with the core of Christianity. If you don’t teach theology that’s one thing, but once you cross into the theological realm, this facility is for the Lord’s work and will be utilized in that way. For the next half hour, we went around in circles, with him avoiding answering the question. I finally got frustrated after our two hour long talk and told him, that he could not use the facility and that he needed to leave, because I had other matters to attend to.
I still think about that man and pray for him to come to a point where his claim of being saved by Jesus, is matched with Jesus’ narrow way of salvation. Let each of us be people who are not out to define the narrow road of Jesus through our own understanding, but seek to fellowship with those who are walking by our side as we moved closer to Jesus and his return. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment