When I was young in the faith, I viewed spiritual error as drifting from the correct side of the road to the other side. As I have grown older in the faith, I have realized that a ditch exists on both sides of the road. Satan can damage the body of Christ and individuals in his body with either ditch. God’s truth is in the center of the road and wandering too far left or right can put us into mud and weeds up to our bumpers.
I think one of the most subversive and diabolical strategies against the church today is the “tolerance card.” The world rails against biblical values and biblical stances and always polishes off its arguments with the accusation against the church of “intolerance. ” Whoever is representing the world then smugly quotes Jesus when he said, “Judge not, lest ye be judged (Mt.7:1).
As the 21st century presses on, fewer and fewer things are considered wrong. By today’s standards, God should have issued only two or three commandments on Sinai instead of the “pesky ten”. Today, very few people are held responsible for their failures, shortcomings, crimes, or moral choices. Science is being “used” as the ultimate authority to declare that hardly anyone is capable of restraint because of hormones, genetics, or brain chemistry. Since no one can “help themselves” or because they were “born that way,” these poor people should not be held responsible for their actions. Of course, Christians are exempt from that free pass. They are mean, intolerant and bigoted by choice, not because they were born that way.
The greater problem is that Satan has sown that type of thinking in the church so that sincere Christians have begun to question biblical standards or, at least, their understanding of biblical standards. Many followers of Jesus now wonder if we are being unloving and intolerant when we stand on the word of God. Too many of us give “science” more authority than the Word and begin to reason that if choices and behaviors are determined by genetics and brain chemistry, then surely God would not hold these individuals responsible and, therefore, neither should the church. The “Christian thing to do” then becomes watering down God’s word so that it rarely means what it says or understanding morality differently now that we have been enlightened by culture and science.
In that climate, sin starts to sound old fashion and begins to be dropped from our vocabulary. The cultural norms begin to define what is acceptable in the church and in our lives and anything that pushes back against cultural norms is unloving, intolerant, and bigoted. Holiness loses all meaning and the church opens the door for the enemy to come in and camp out. No wonder the church manifests no power. The next step becomes questioning biblical inspiration, biblical interpretation, and whether Jesus is really the only way to heaven. After all, that seems so intolerant and unloving. But “unloving” is letting someone speed toward a ditch that is five hundred feet deep and certain death because we didn’t want to judge their driving practices.
The other ditch, however, can be just as devastating. That ditch is a rigid legalism or dogmatism in the church that divides the body of Christ over all kinds of issues that Paul says are “disputable matters.” He uses that language in Romans 14 about dietary laws, holy days, eating foods sacrificed to idols, and circumcision. Amazingly, he said the only absolute on those issues was that we could not insist that other believers understood those issues in the same way that we did. He instructed us not to be dogmatic about those issues or demand our way since either might cause another brother to stumble.
I have always been amazed at the outcomes of the Jerusalem Conference in Act 15 regarding Gentile believers. There was such a huge gulf between Jewish lifestyles and Gentile that I would have expected a long list of demands for changes in the life and ways of these former pagans. Yet, at the end, these new believers were asked only to change a few dietary laws, avoid sexual immorality, and to remember the poor.
We are not saying that they were not being called to biblical standards of holiness. It’s just that sometimes we believe we must all understand all of God’s word just alike or we can’t fellowship one another. If you want to know what the “big rocks” are, a quick study in “causes for withdrawal of fellowship” in the N.T. is enlightening. I can tell you, no one got excommunicated for new expressions of worship, translations of the Bible, forms of church government, or the color of the carpet in the sanctuary.
In the New Testament, only a few things justify withholding fellowship from another believer. The first is teaching false doctrines about Christ – his deity, his Messiahship, his incarnation, his death and resurrection, and his return (2 Jn.7-11). Another is teaching that salvation is based on works rather than grace (Gal.1:8). The third is open and unrepentant immorality (1 Cor. 5:1-5). Another is causing division and disunity in the church (Rom.16:17) and, finally, we are told to have nothing to do with brothers in the Lord who refuse to work. (2 Thess.3:6).
I have served in fellowships where lines of fellowship were drawn about all kinds of things that seem to be disputable matters. Godly, biblically knowledgeable people who had every evidence of the Spirit of God living in them didn’t always agree on everything. They often disagreed on issues related to spiritual gifts, end-times, the ministry of angels and demons, baptism of the Spirit, predestination, social issues, etc.
And yet they agreed on who Christ is and that we are saved by grace. They worked hard, loved their families, and lived righteous lives. They worked to maintain unity in the body of Christ and yet these individuals were marked as unworthy of fellowship because they held different positions on some disputable matter. Those who insisted on “doctrinal purity” in all doctrines, then became the ones who were actually causing divisions in the church.
Rigid doctrines about non-essentials or non-salvation issues are another huge ditch the enemy wants to plunge us into. In today’s culture wars, I believe we will all have to guard our hearts, our lives, and our understanding against both ditches. Are we to love sinners, be tolerant of differences, and be patient while people grow? Yes, of course. Are we to avoid judging others and being self-righteous? Yes, of course.
But we are not to change God’s word and biblical standards and call it Christian tolerance and we are not to refrain from applying God’s word to a sinful situation so we can say we are non-judgmental. We “judge” others when we establish our own standards and call them righteous, not when we apply God’s standards. That is called accountability and a call to repentance for the sake of our souls.
Satan can weaken and destroy believers by steering a church into either ditch. Truth governed by love is the center-line that gives us authority over the enemy. Pray for wisdom to always stay in the center of God’s will. Remember, that we are always growing in our understanding of God’s word and being absolutely correct in every point of doctrine is impossible because “we know in part.” But also remember that we do know what biblical standards of living and righteousness are and we have no right to change the standard or morph their meanings into culturally acceptable behaviors. Either creates a huge gap in the wall through which Satan may freely enter our lives or our church.