Clearly, spiritual ignorance and biblical illiteracy are commonplace among professing Christians. That kind of spiritual shallowness is a direct result of shallow teaching. Solid preaching with deep substance and sound doctrine is essential for Christians to grow. But churches today often teach only the barest basics—and sometimes less than that.
Churches are therefore filled with baby Christians—people who are spiritual infants. That is a fitting description, because the characteristic that is most descriptive of an infant is selfishness. Babies are completely self-centered. They scream if they don’t get what they want when they want it. All they are aware of are their own needs and desires. They never say thanks for anything. They can’t help others; they can’t give anything. They can only receive. And certainly there is nothing wrong with that when it occurs in the natural stage of infancy. But to see a child whose development is arrested so that he never gets beyond that stage of helpless selfishness is a tragedy.
HOW DO WE GROW
SPIRITUALLY? BY “SPEAKING
THE TRUTH IN LOVE” TO
ONE ANOTHER.WE GROW
UNDER THE TRUTH. IT IS
THE SAME TRUTH BY WHICH
WE ARE SANCTIFIED,
CONFORMED TO THE IMAGE
OF CHRIST, MADE TO BE
MATURE SPIRITUALLY
(JOHN 17:17, 19). AS WE
ABSORB THE TRUTH OF
GOD’S WORD, WE GROW UP
AND ARE BUILT UP.
And that is exactly the spiritual state of multitudes in the church today. They are utterly preoccupied with self. They want their own problems solved and their own comfort elevated. Their spiritual development is arrested, and they remain in a perpetual state of selfish helplessness. It is evidence of a tragic abnormality.
Arrested infancy means people do not discern. Just as a baby crawls along the floor, putting anything it finds in its mouth, spiritual babies don’t know what is good for them and what isn’t. Immaturity and lack of discernment go together; they are virtually the same thing.
The tendency to stall in a state of immaturity also existed in New Testament times. Paul appeals to Christians repeatedly to grow up spiritually. In Ephesians 4:14–15, he writes, “We should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ”(emphasis added).
How do we grow spiritually? By “speaking the truth in love” to one another. We grow under the truth. It is the same truth by which we are sanctified, conformed to the image of Christ, made to be mature spiritually (John 17:17, 19). As we absorb the truth of God’s Word, we grow up and are built up. We might say accurately that the process of spiritual growth is a process of training for discernment.
Hebrews 5:12–6:1 underscores all this:
For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God; and you have come to need milk and not solid food. For everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe. But solid food belongs to those who are of full age, that is, those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil. Therefore, leaving the discussion of the elementary principles of Christ, let us go on to [maturity].
The writer of Hebrews is telling his readers, “You’re babies. You’ve been around long enough to be teachers, but instead I have to feed you milk. I have to keep giving you elementary things. You can’t take solid food. You’re not accustomed to the rich things of the Word—and that is tragic.”
Notice that in verse 14 he says that discernment and maturity go hand in hand: “Solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil.” Knowing and understanding the Word of righteousness—taking in solid food—trains your senses to discern good and evil.
The word “senses” in that verse is not a reference to the feelings, emotions, or other subjective sensory mechanisms. The writer of this epistle is explicitly encouraging his readers to exercise their minds. Those who “because of practice have their senses trained to discern” are the wise, the understanding, people who thrive on the solid food of the Word of God. Discernment results from a carefully disciplined mind. It is not a matter of feelings, nor is discernment a mystical gift. Notice from the wisdom literature of the Old Testament how closely discernment is linked with a seasoned, developed, biblically informed mind.
Psalm 119:66: “Teach me good discernment and knowledge, for I believe in Your commandments” (NASB).
Proverbs 2:2–5: “Make your ear attentive to wisdom, incline your heart to understanding; for if you cry for discernment, lift your voice for understanding; if you seek her as silver, and search for her as for hidden treasures; then you will discern the fear of the LORD, and discover the knowledge of God” (NASB).
Proverbs 10:13: “On the lips of the discerning, wisdom is found” (NASB).
Proverbs 16:21: “The wise in heart will be called understanding” (NASB).
The path to discernment is the way of spiritual maturity. And the only means to spiritual maturity is mastery of the Word of God.
Most people are discerning about things that are important to them. People who regard a healthy diet as crucial watch carefully what they eat. They read the fine print on the package to see how many grams of fat the food has and what percentage of the daily required nutrients it offers. People who work with pesticides or dangerous chemicals must be very discerning. They study the procedures and the precautions very carefully to avoid any potentially lethal exposure. People who make investments in the stock market usually practice discernment. They study the cryptic listings in the newspaper on the stock market and watch the ticker tape. Lawyers are very discerning with contracts. They have to figure out the legal jargon and make sure they understand what they are signing. People who undergo delicate surgery are usually very discerning. They try to find the doctor with the finest skills—or at least verify that he has plenty of experience in whatever procedure he will be doing. I know a lot of people who are very discerning sports enthusiasts. They watch a football game and can assess any offense, any defense, any play. They often feel they are more discerning than whoever is calling the actual plays. They study statistics and averages and take it all very seriously.
Did you realize those are essentially the same skills that are required in spiritual discernment? Careful thought, keen interest, thorough analysis, close observation—together with alertness, attentiveness, thoughtfulness, and above all, a love of truth. All of us have those skills to some degree, and we use them in whatever field of endeavor is important to us. Yet what could be more important than spiritual discernment?
No valid explanation is readily available for why contemporary Christians are so undiscerning, but their lack of discernment reveals a spiritual apathy that is deadly evil.
Can we as the church regain our ability to be discerning? Only by growing up spiritually. That means confronting the spirit of a relativistic age and diligently applying ourselves to the unfailing Word of God. We cannot gain discernment overnight or through a mystical experience. Discernment will come only as we train our minds to be understanding in the truth of God’s Word and learn to apply that truth skillfully to our lives.
Notes
1. Spurgeon, Charles, The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, vol. 5 (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1879), 41.
INTRODUCTION: WHY TRUTH IS WORTH FIGHTING FOR
1. Andy Crouch, “The Emergent Mystique,” Christianity Today, November 2004, 37-38, emphasis added.
2. Ibid.
3. Brian McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004), 293.
4. Ibid., 286.
5. John Foxe, “The Fourth Persecution, Under Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, A.D. 162,” Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. Foxe’s famous martyrology is a mon
umental testimony to the honor and courage of reformers who gave their lives for the truth. The accents are powerful and needed in our comfortable, convictionless day.
6. See also John MacArthur, Hard to Believe (Nashville: Nelson, 2003).
7. Data from a survey taken after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and released in November 2001 by the Barna Group indicated that two-thirds of adults who attend a conservative, Protestant churches question whether absolute moral truth exists. “How America’s Faith Has Change Since 9/11.”http://barna.org/FlexPage.aspx? Page-BarnaUpdate&BarnaUpdateID-102
8. John MacArthur, The MacArthur New Testament Commentary: 2 Peter and Jude (Chicago: Moody, 2005).
CHAPTER 1
CAN TRUTH SURVIVE IN A POSTMODERN SOCIETY?
1. Brian McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004), 293.
2. Ibid., 23.
3. Cited in Greg Warner, “Brian McLaren: The Story We Find Ourselves In,” a positive review at Rick Warren’s pastors.com Website, http://www.pastors.com/article.asp?ArtID=4150.
4. Stanley J. Grenz and John R. Franke, Beyond Foundationalism: Shaping Theology in a Postmodern Context (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001), 3.
5. Ibid., 30.
6. “A hope-filled theology loses its way when it trots after the illusive foundationalist dream, seeking to secure its own certitude by appeal to a supposedly unassailable anthropological foundation” (Ibid., 248).
7. John Armstrong, “How I Changed My Mind: Theological Method,” Viewpoint (September–October 2003), 1.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid., 4.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid., 1.
13. Ibid. In a follow-up on this subject at his weblog, Armstrong likens Christians who have “a high level of certitude” to dictators and tyrants. That article is titled “Certitude Can Be Idolatrous,” June 30, 2005, http://johnharmstrong.com.
14. Ibid., 4.
15. Martin Luther, D. Martin Luthers Werke, Kritische Gesamtausgabe. Briefwechsel, 18 vols. (Weimar: Verlag Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1930–85), 3:81.
CHAPTER 2
SPIRITUAL WARFARE: DUTY, DANGER, AND GUARANTEED TRIUMPH
1. Sir Basil Liddell Hart, Sherman: Soldier, Realist, American (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1929), 402.
2. Charles Spurgeon, The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, vol. 25 (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1879), 265.
3. Brian McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004), 260.
4. Ibid., 264.
5. Ibid., 32.
6. Ibid., 28.
7. Ibid., 191.
8. Ibid., 192.
9. Ibid., 30.
10. Ibid.
11. John MacArthur, Reckless Faith: When the Church Loses Its Will to Discern (Wheaton: Crossway, 1994).
12. McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy, 32.
CHAPTER 3
CONSTRAINED INTO CONFLICT:
WHYWE MUST FIGHT FOR THE FAITH
1. In the King James Version of Acts 1:13 and Luke 6:16, the lesser-known apostle Judas (the one also known as Lebbaeus and Thaddaeus) is called “the brother of James,” but the operative words (“the brother”) are in italics in both texts, indicating that they have been added by translators. The original manuscript literally says “Judas of James,” which actually suggests that the apostle’s father (not his brother) was named James. (That is exactly what most translations of Luke 6:16 and Acts 1:13 now say: “Judas the son of James.”)
CHAPTER 4
CREEPING APOSTASY: HOW FALSE TEACHERS SNEAK IN
1. J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism (New York: Macmillan), 24.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. “Others again declare that Cain derived his being from the Power above, and acknowledge that Esau, Korah, the Sodomites, and all such persons, are related to themselves. On this account, they add, they have been assailed by the Creator, yet no one of them has suffered injury. For Sophia was in the habit of carrying off that which belonged to her from them to herself. They declare that Judas the traitor was thoroughly acquainted with these things, and that he alone, knowing the truth as no others did, accomplished the mystery of the betrayal; by him all things, both earthly and heavenly, were thus thrown into confusion. They produce a fictitious history of this kind, which they style the Gospel of Judas” (Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 1:31:1).
CHAPTER 5
HERESY’S SUBTLETY: WHYWE MUST REMAIN VIGILANT
1. Ironically, this title was bestowed on the king by Pope Leo X in 1521 while Henry was still loyal to the Roman Catholic Church. Just five years before, Luther had nailed his Ninety-five Theses to the door of the castle church in Wittenberg. Henry earned the title by writing a lengthy denunciation of Luther’s theses. Henry later broke with Rome over the pope’s refusal to annul Henry’s marriage to his first wife, Catherine. Far from being a true defender of the faith, Henry was a political opportunist and an ungodly man. Although his break with Rome enabled the Protestant Reformation to sweep over England, Henry himself was no more a friend to Protestantism than he turned out to be to the pope. It would be hard to think of a major figure in church history who was less deserving of such a title than he. Nonetheless, the title has remained with the British throne ever since.
2. The statement appears on Prince Charles’s own Web site, in an article titled “The Prince’s Work: Religion” at http://www.prince-ofwales. gov.uk/about/wrk_religion.html.
3. Sabellianism is also sometimes referred to as patripassianism (from the combination of two Latin words meaning “father” and “suffering”) because, if Father and Son are merely distinct modes or manifestations of one divine Person, then the Father suffered on the cross. The same view is sometimes labeled monarchianism. Sabellian opinions have faded and revived repeatedly throughout church history. Sabellian modalism is essentially the same view held by “Oneness Pentecostals” today, of whom T. D. Jakes is the dominant media figure.
4. Philip Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom, 3 vols. (New York: Harper & Row, 1931), 1:29.
5. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, eds. The Principal Works of St. Jerome in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series II (14 vols.) Jerome’s Dialogue Against the Luciferians, 19 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1954), 6:329.
6. The excerpts cited here have been slightly adapted from chapter 13: “Extract from the letter of Athanasius on the death of Arius” in Philip Schaff, Early Church Fathers: Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers (ser. 2, vol. 3). The language has been modernized, but these are otherwise exact quotations from Schaff’s translation of Athanasius’s letter.
7. Herbert W. Armstrong and the original Worldwide Church of God were likewise Arian in their Christology. Although the main group of Armstrong’s followers have abandoned Arianism and formally adopted a more classically Trinitarian view, several offshoots of that group remain fiercely loyal to their founder’s Arian opinions.
8. For more detail on the Arian controversy with particular stress on Athanasius’s role as a contender for the true faith, see the excellent account of Athanasius by John Piper, Contending for Our All (Wheaton: Crossway, 2006), 40–75.
CHAPTER 6
THE EVIL OF FALSE TEACHING: HOW ERROR TURNS GRACE INTO LICENTIOUSNESS
1. Jonathan Edwards, “God’s Sovereignty in the Salvation of Men,” in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1995 reprint), 2:849–54.
2. Laura Sheahan, “‘Evangelical Christianity Has Been Hijacked’: An Interview with Tony Campolo,” Beliefnet.com Website (July 2004), http:beliefnet.com/story/150/story_15052_ 1.html.
3. Brian McLaren, “Brian McLaren on the Homosexual Question: Finding a Pastoral Response,” January 23, 2006. This was a post made at the “Out of Ur” blog hosted by Christianity Today, http://blog.christianitytoday.com/outofur/archives/2006/01 /brian_mclaren_o.html.
4. Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz (Nashville: Nelson, 2003), 133–34.
5. Lori Leibovi
ch, “Generation: A Look Inside Fundamentalism’s Answer to MTV: The Postmodern Church,” Mother Jones (July–August 1998), 77.
6. Ruth Gledhill, “Church Told to Rethink Bar on Sex Before Marriage,” Times of London (March 31, 2003).
CHAPTER 7
THE ASSAULT ON DIVINE AUTHORITY:
CHRIST’S LORDSHIP DENIED
1. Rick Warren, The Purpose-Driven Church (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995), 189.
2. John MacArthur, The Gospel According to Jesus (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1988); The Gospel According to the Apostles (Nashville: W Publishing Group, 1993); Hard to Believe (Nashville: Nelson, 2003).
3. Brian McLaren, A New Kind of Christian (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2003), 14.
4. Brian McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004), 30.
5. “We have never been able to find any text in ancient Greek literature that gives support to [the egalitarian] interpretation. Wherever one person is said to be the ‘head’ of another person (or persons), the person who is called the ‘head’ is always the one in authority (such as the general of an army, the Roman emperor, Christ, the heads of the tribes of Israel, David as head of the nations, etc.) Specifically, we cannot find any text where person A is called the ‘head’ of person or persons B, and is not in a position of authority over that person or persons. So we find no evidence for your claim that ‘head’ can mean ‘source without authority.’” Wayne Grudem, “An Open Letter to Egalitarians: Six Questions That Have Never Been Answered” (1998, revised 2003), http://www.the-highway.com/Openletter.html.
6. John Calvin, Calvin’s Commentaries, 22 vols. (Grand Rapids: Baker, n.d.), 21:198.
CHAPTER 8
HOW TO SURVIVE IN AN AGE OF APOSTASY: LEARNING FROM THE LESSONS OF HISTORY
The Truth War Page 23