Bible Believing Church

 

I used to cringe at this statement.  Let me explain, before coming to why I write “used to.”  It is a statement used by some Protestant churches, and, to my knowledge, only Protestant churches.  I would cringe because I took it as a slight against those churches that also embrace tradition (as if even the lowest of low protestant churches don’t hold to some tradition).  In other words: we believe the Bible, and only the Bible.  Sola Scriptura.

I didn’t like it.  Even the churches that embrace tradition (Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, etc.) are “Bible believing.”  They are just Bible believing plus some other things.  But this was my frame of reference: the self-proclaimed Bible believing churches aren’t like those Catholic and Orthodox churches.

Now, what I am about to write – and that this is revelatory to me – is truly…stunning.  It turns out that a better way to understand the phrase – whether it is meant by all who use it or not – is not in the frame of contrasting against “Bible believing plus.”  Instead, to contrast against “Bible believing minus.”

The big “minus,” which is the obvious point for my being stunned, is on all points regarding embracing every woke concept.  We believe the Bible except what is says about a man and a woman, about marriage, about sexual relations, etc.  We believe the Bible except for the idea that God was purposeful in Creation.

Now, that many Protestant churches believe in the Bible “minus” has been obvious to me.  Yet I didn’t see this phrase “Bible believing” as an indictment of these.

Why now?  Why am I writing this now?  Here again, I have known for quite some time that not everyone who uses the words “Christian” or “God” or “sin” or “saved” mean the same thing as others or mean what it is the Bible teaches on these subjects.  For much of my life, I was just such a “Christian” – a Christian as long as Bible believing minus was acceptable.

This is what hit me like a two-by-four across the skull: being faced with this reality personally, intimately, and directly by people who use such words yet mean something else entirely…well, now I understand what “Bible believing” means in its best sense.

It is in contrast to such Christians: The Bible “minus” Christians.  Subtracting what God says from the definition of “Christian,” “God,” “sin,” and “saved.” 

It is a god, and a Christianity made in their own image.

Conclusion

Matthew 7: 21 Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven

Lloyd-Jones described these words as “…in many ways the most solemn and solemnizing words ever uttered in this world… How often, I wonder, have we considered them, or heard a sermon on them?”

As I noted at the time: The warning is one of avoiding self-deception and self-delusion.  It isn’t a warning simply of and for our teachers, but for ourselves.  It is emphasizing that nothing avails but true righteousness and true holiness.

This true righteousness and true holiness doesn’t come by picking and choosing what we want from the Bible.  God doesn’t change; His commandments do not change either.