My last post was about ditches. Not really. I just used a scene from my childhood as a way of talking about how we deal with issues as believers when there is a clear tension between options, and the Bible does not resolve it either way. The Bible lets them both stand. My grandfather used to tell me when I first started driving and was leaving for a Saturday night adventure, “Bo, keep it between the ditches.” It was his way of calling me to be alert and to stay in the middle of the road. He did not want me to veer too closely to the ditches that were on both sides of the more than a few dirt roads in our county.
What I addressed in the last post was one of the most familiar of the tensions in the Bible and one of the most controversial: the tension between God’s sovereignty in salvation and our responsibility before God to choose to commit our lives to Jesus as Lord. Both are found in the Bible. God chooses and we choose. God predestines but we must purposefully and passionately choose to pursue Jesus as Lord. This is a big one, but there are others that stand as well side by side in the Bible. For example, when we speak of the character of God, do we say that He is first and foremost holy and just, or do we say that He is first and foremost gracious and merciful. Or when we think about what are the first obligations of the church, do we focus on the worship of God or the witness to our world. Or when we address what is the primary priority of the church in outreach do we conclude that it is almost entirely evangelism and that is all, or do we see caring for the poor and helping the hurting as also extremely essential. All of these and many more stand side by side in the Bible. We are to hold them that way in our lives. Don’t get in either ditch on either side of the main road and from there to launch spiritual grenades at the other side.
BUT let’s not forget that there are many issues about which the Bible speaks clearly and conclusively. There are many issues for which “two roads do not diverge.” Only one way exists. We are not heretics when we hold tenaciously to the sovereignty of God in salvation; we are not heretics when we hold tenaciously to the reality that we must make a choice either to follow Jesus or to forsake Him. But we are heretics when we hold tenaciously to views that so clearly are opposed to what is in the Bible. Generally these issues come down to theology and polity, what we believe and how we behave as the church of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Let me give you some examples. Here are two theologically: we cannot waver on the deity and the humanity of Jesus. He is truly God, truly Man. To see Jesus is to see God; To see Jesus is to see Man in all that Man is intended by God to be. Second, we cannot waver on the exclusivity of Jesus as the only means of access to God. There are not many ways to God, there is one way. And let me just add here that both these are grounded in the inerrancy, infallibility and full sufficiency of Holy Scripture from which to depart is to devolve into heresy. But we can also devolve into heresy through our polity. The Bible is clear about how a church is to be governed. The offices of a New Testament Church are two: Elders who give shape and substance to the Spiritual life of the church and deacons who give shape and substance to the practical life of the church. The Bible certainly gives some wiggle room for how we employ the diaconal ministry and whether or not a church has both ruling and teaching elders, but there is no wiggle room for the number of offices (two) and how they operate in the church. One would have to be very brazen or very blind to the Truth of God to profess Jesus as Lord and to stand against this very clear way of how the church is to behave. Or take the issue of church membership where the Bible is clear that to belong to Jesus is to belong to His church. Again, someone would have to be pompous or so poorly schooled in Scripture to profess faith in Jesus as Lord and not participate actively as a member of a local church.
Let’s watch out for the ditches. But let’s know that there are some dead ends from which we cannot escape except to say, “The Bible says it . . . that settles it.”