RIGHTLY DIVIDING THE WORD OF TRUTH
By ERNEST J. LONG
IN
these days of declension and widespread departure from the truth of God, the
task of the Christian teacher is one of grave and growing responsibility. Happy the man who, in his ministry of the
Word, can affirm with the utter sincerity of the Apostle Paul:-
“I do not handle the word of God deceitfully, but, by
manifestation of the truth, commend myself to every man's conscience in the sight
of God” (2 Cor. 4:
2). Paul’s dying commission to
Timothy was - “preach the Word.” Now that is surely another way of saying, “declare the whole counsel of God,” without fear, and without reservation.
This
is no light undertaking. It commits us to declare not only pleasing
truth, but pungent truth; though most of us certainly need the bracing
tonic - if not the outspoken rebuke - more than we need the soothing
syrup! Natural eloquence, and a
novel message - particularly if it flatters the carnal man - may fill a church,
but it will never glorify Christ.*
[* Note. The fear of the Lord is the
beginning of wisdom. “Our
brethren who say that every believer will escape the Great Tribulation,
and our other brethren who say that every believer will experience the Great
Tribulation, both unwittingly jettison overboard the priceless dynamic of fear,
which therefore is sadly lacking in nearly all Second Advent literature. No plot of ground is so carefully avoided as
one in which lies an unexploded time-bomb, if it is known to be there.
Scripture commands fear. ‘If ye call on him as Father, who without respect of persons
judgeth according to each man’s work, pass the time of your sojourning in
fear’ (1 Pet. 1: 17). For there is a ‘salvation’
- an escape from the perils of coming judgment - which is within our own grasp
and dependant on our own efforts: ‘work out your own
salvation with fear and trembling’ (Phil. 2: 12). So our Lord, though He constantly said, ‘Fear not’ anything on earth including martyrdom,
commands fear with awful emphasis. ‘I will warn you’ - He is addressing disciples (verse 1) – ‘whom ye shall
fear: Fear Him, which after he hath killed hath power to cast into hell
[Gehenna]; YEA, I SAY UNTO
YOU FEAR HIM’ (Luke 12: 5).”]
Now
Paul, who is our pattern, was no mere man-pleaser. “If I yet pleased man,”
he said, “I should not be the servant of Christ”
(Gal.1: 10). It mattered little that his carnal critics
said of him,- “His bodily
presence is weak, and his speech contemptible”: in other words, “he has neither personality nor eloquence.” Here is Paul’s rejoinder to such critics (I am
giving the virile rendering of
It
is tremendously reassuring to remind ourselves that God has foreseen the
exceptional difficulties and dangers of these last days, and has made the
fullest provision for our needs. It is
as true today as when Peter wrote his Second Epistle that “His divine power hath given unto us ALL THINGS that pertain unto life and godliness” (2 Pet. 1: 3); and although we may be standing upon
the very brink of the great apostasy - the general landslide from the Faith -
there are certain things which, if we do them (says Peter), “WE SHALL NEVER FAIL.” For not only is our faith sustained
and buttressed by “exceeding great and precious
promises,” but all the resources of the Godhead are, through the Holy
Spirit, constantly available to us. The
grace of God, the power of God, and the truth of God are at the disposal of the
Lord’s [obedient]
children in every age: and let us remember that the grace that saves also suffices; the power that keeps also enables;
the truth that sanctifies also equips.
Then,
too, it is greatly reassuring to remember that not only is the Truth of God
constant and invariable in every age, but that error itself, even so-called “modern” error, is no novelty, that
it should take us by surprise. I believe
the devil exhausted his ingenuity centuries ago; for all pseudo-modern cults,
stunt religions, spiritisms, tongues’ movements and
the rest are simply ancient errors in modern guise - reappearances, recrudescence’s
of early heresies that assailed the Christian Church in the days of Paul and
John, of Tertullian and Chrysostom,
Augustine and Cyprian. Were any of these
saints and worthies in the world today, they could immediately and infallibly
pigeon-hole such re-hashes as Christian Science (falsely so-called), Millennial
Dawnism, Buchmanism, and a
score of other “isms.” Such “isms,”
alas! have split up, not merely Christendom, but often the Church of God itself
into water-tight compartments of intolerant and mutually exclusive little
coteries.
In
this age, as in every age, there is only one type of Christian who is carried
away by every new stunt religion; and that is the Christian who does not know
his Bible. The devil comes not always as
a roaring lion, neither do his emissaries always
appear as fairly obvious wolves in sheep’s clothing. They
often turn up like silver-tongued angels of light, complete with frock-coat and
bed-side manner; and they look upon the Christian who does not know his Bible as
their lawful prey.
Now
let us bear in mind, in view of all this, that the Bible is not only
up-to-date, up-to-the-minute; it is over a thousand years ahead
of the daily newspaper and of current error. We may therefore accept Paul’s advice to
Timothy, the young teacher, as the safest possible guide in these days when
Satan is making a final, large-scale, and alas! highly
successful onslaught upon the citadel of the Church’s faith.
First
of all, in his Second Letter to Timothy (2 Tim.
1: 13) Paul reminds Timothy that truth is
neither fluid nor flexible. It is not
something that you can conveniently pour into any mould, or press into any
shape. The “whole counsel
of God,” therefore, cannot receive a purely
denominational impress. The exact opposite
is the case. Truth is itself a mould, a
matrix, an exact pattern or form: the truth of God is expressed in words: so
the doctrine of Verbal Inspiration is simply the obvious insistence that
infallible truth can only be expressed in infallible words. And so Paul urges (verse
13 of 2 Tim.1) - “Hold fast the form of sound words.” “Hold tenaciously”
- never for a moment relax your grip - “the form, the
pattern, the inspired outline, of the sound doctrine, the wholesome teaching,
which you have heard from my lips.”
“To differ from Paul is to confess oneself in error”:
to hearken to Paul is to sit at the feet of Christ; for the great apostle was
Christ’s chosen vessel and mouthpiece for the transmission to His Church of
precious revelations of divine truth that had been kept secret from the
foundations of the world.
Later
on, in his Second Letter to Timothy, the last that Paul ever wrote, he
underlines the duty and responsibility of the Christian teacher in these words:- “Study to show thyself approved unto
God,* a workman that needeth
not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the Word of Truth” (2: 15). The
context is illuminating. In the previous
verses Paul condemns those that “strive about words to
no profit”; whilst in the following verse condemns “profane and vain babblings that increase unto more
ungodliness.” To modernize the
language and clarify the point at issue, with younger readers especially in
view, may I say that here, as ever, the truth is indicated as a mean - a sane,
wise, spiritual mean - between two extremes.
[*“What is so wonderful, so unique in the Christian life is
that in every believer there are such undreamed of possibilities. On the human plane we are so hopeless and
helpless. Our friends assess us at our
true value. They know our weaknesses,
our deficiencies, our limited capacity, how few are our talents, how puny our
possibilities. They have sized us up so
clearly, sometimes so cruelly. But when
a child of God steps out in faith and on God, and discovers the secret of
taking hold of God, of taking Him at His Word by faith, then a
new factor is introduced which confounds all calculations, and nullifies all
estimates.” ]
In
verse 14 Paul is warning against a narrow
rigidity. In verse
16 he is opposing a wanton laxity. There is a narrowness that begets exclusivism;
and there is a broadmindedness that leads to ungodliness. Both are abhorrent. In verse 14
there is “strife about words,” Bible readings in
which verbal polemics degenerate into wordy contentions, clamorous strife, open
discord; with the inevitable result that the faith of those who listen is
either unsettled or even completely overthrown. Narrow-minded intolerance, masquerading as
orthodoxy, was in the Church in Paul’s day: it is with us still. In verse 16,
on the other hand, there is a laxity in the pulpit that goes to more and
more daring lengths of impiety. Such
loose teaching, says Paul, destroys the hearer like a deadly gangrene that eats
deeper and deeper. And Hymenaeus and Philetus are also
with us still.
What,
then, is Paul’s ideal for Timothy, for you, for me? Listen: - “Study”
(strive; be diligent; seek earnestly) “to show thyself
approved unto God” (to commend yourself to God; to “set yourself in God’s presence as one who has been tested,
and proved worthy by trial”; that is what the words mean); “a workman that needeth not to be
ashamed” (one who needs not blush for his work); “RIGHTLY DIVIDING THE WORD OF TRUTH.”
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