It is not possible to deny the virgin birth yet accept Christ as a holy, sinless deity. In 2022 at Christmas no less, Andy Stanley made his statement that there is no need to be concerned with how Jesus got into the world. Here is Pastor Gabe Hughes in a WWUTT 90 second explanation rebutting Stanley’s notion, saying it is actually critical and foundational to the faith. We must believe it.
However, Stanley is not the first pastor claiming to be conservative who denies the virgin birth as necessary to the faith. Billy Graham also denied the necessity of belief in the virgin birth. Yet there was no hullabaloo over Graham’s denial but only excuses made for his ‘misstatements.’
The Annunciation, by Henry Ossawa Tanner, 1898.
In my thorough study of Graham, which encompassed listening to sermons from 1949 through to the 1980s, reading several of his books, reading books about him, listening to interviews, and reading two dissertations looking at the evolution of his theology over Graham’s 50 active years, the conclusion is clear to me. In 1993 Graham said to Time Magazine (as codified in Ken Garfield’s book Billy Graham, a Life in Pictures, of the virgin birth specifically,
“Graham has said that the virgin birth of Christ is NOT an essential part of the Christian faith. In an interview with a United Church of Canada publication in 1966 (“Billy Graham Answers 26 Provocative Questions,” United Church Observer, July 1, 1966), Graham gave the following reply to a question about the virgin birth of Christ: “
Q. Do you think a literal belief in the Virgin birth — not just as a symbol of the incarnation or of Christ’s divinity — as an historic event is necessary for personal salvation? A. While I most certainly believe that Jesus Christ was born of a virgin, I do not find anywhere in the New Testament that this particular belief is necessary for personal salvation.
Graham denied the necessity of the virgin birth not just once but several times in different decades. Graham’s response was a classic example of his penchant for doubletalk. Is there any other kind of salvation, besides the personal? Is there global salvation? Impersonal salvation?
And if we use his contradictory statement as the basis, “I don’t find anywhere in the New Testament” …we can also say “I don’t find anywhere in the New Testament any specific reference to the Trinity” so therefore “belief in the Trinity is not necessary to personal salvation”.
If Christ be not the virgin-born Son of God, He could not be our Savior. To reject the doctrine of the Virgin Birth is to reject the only Sinless Savior that God has provided for sinners.
Graham’s public denial of Jesus as the exclusive way to God, as seen in his adoption of the wider mercy approach, was articulated clearly and affirmed with follow-up questioning, at Robert Schuller’s Crystal Cathedral interview in 1997, displays Graham’s saddest denial of all.
Though there are discussions about which fundamental of the faith is necessary for belief, there are at least five fundamentals of the faith below which are essential for Christianity and must be believed-
1. The Deity of our Lord Jesus Christ (John 1:1; John 20:28; Hebrews 1:8-9). 2. The Virgin Birth (Isaiah 7:14; Matthew 1:23; Luke 1:27). 3. The Blood Atonement (Acts 20:28; Romans 3:25, 5:9; Ephesians 1:7; Hebrews 9:12-14). 4. The Bodily Resurrection (Luke 24:36-46; 1 Corinthians 15:1-4, 15:14-15). 5. The inerrancy of the scriptures themselves (Psalms 12:6-7; Romans 15:4; 2 Timothy 3:16-17; 2 Peter 1:20).
GotQuestions: Why is the Virgin Birth so Important? Jesus was not born in sin; that is, He had no sin nature (Hebrews 7:26). It would seem that the sin nature is passed down from generation to generation through the father (Romans 5:12, 17, 19). The Virgin Birth circumvented the transmission of the sin nature and allowed the eternal God to become a perfect man.
Ligonier: Must Christians believe in the Virgin Birth? Christians must face the fact that a denial of the virgin birth is a denial of Jesus as the Christ. Grace To You: Why the Virgin Birth is Essential The virgin birth is an underlying assumption in everything the Bible says about Jesus. To throw out the virgin birth is to reject Christ’s deity, the accuracy and authority of Scripture, and a host of other related doctrines central to the Christian faith. No issue is more important than the virgin birth to our understanding of who Jesus is.
Praise God for His unique, stunning, and most compassionate Gospel, with all its details, including that “Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, a virgin will be with child and bear a son, and she will call His name Immanuel.” (Isaiah 7:14).
SYNOPSIS: People wonder when it is reasonable to leave off following a teacher. What are the standards for giving loving benefit of the doubt, or assessing them as false and banning them completely from your purview? Both are called for in the Bible.
SYNOPSIS The post critiques the modern emphasis on dreams and visions within charismatic circles, asserting that such experiences were not part of historic Christianity after the closure of the canon. It emphasizes reliance on scripture over personal revelations, warning against false teachings that distort biblical truth.
Pastor Adrian Rogers has gone on to glory, but I enjoy his sermons and the clips that are still broadcast on the radio or Youtube. His body of work remains with us even if his soul is now with Jesus.
I was driving home from church on Sunday and the Christian radio station I was listening to broadcast this short clip from his ministry Love Worth Finding. Dr. Rogers began it by saying Satan is the cleverest liar. It turns out the clip was from a longer sermon called “The Great Deceiver”.
It’s not that often these days that a preacher forthrightly discusses the evil qualities of our adversary. I turned up the volume to listen.
I can’t find the audio to that clip but here is a transcription I found in a book about Dr Rogers. I’ll post it and then below flesh it out from my memory of it as I heard it in the car.
Two things we learn about Satan from the Lord Jesus Christ. 1. He is a murderer. 2. He is a liar. Never forget this about the devil. His motive is murder. His method is the lie. And he is the father of all liars. And he is the best liar. He is the master liar. And because he is the master liar he tells the cleverest lies. And the cleverest lies sound the most like the truth. And every good lie has just a little truth in it. We had a clock that wouldn’t even run that was right twice a day. And any lie has some truth in it.
But I want to say, dear friend, that a clock that is five minutes wrong is more dangerous than a clock that is five hours wrong. You see a clock that is five hours wrong, and you say, “Ha, that’s wrong, what time is it? Somebody tell me.” But a clock five minutes wrong could have caused you to miss your plane. And so the devil wants you to believe the wrong thing. And there are seducing spirits with doctrines of devils. And the devil is not primarily a pusher of dope, though he is; he is primarily a pusher of lies.
He is making an excellent point here. A false teacher who is waaaaay off base and on the fringes of orthodoxy, will be seen for who he is much more easily. You look at a clock that has stopped and you know that is the wrong time, except for one minute, twice a day.
But a clever false teacher will be a clock that is only 5 minutes off. He will blend lots of orthodoxy with the false. He will twist in subtle ways the verses he is preaching. This is a more dangerous path to follow because whether you are 2 hours off or 5 minutes off, you will still miss your plane. You will miss that important appointment. Follow a five-minutes-off clock long enough and your course will soon be off by a wider margin than you realize.
One rebuttal I usually hear when I point to this or that false teacher is, “But they follow/mention/preach Jesus!” This Gospel Coalition article titled “7 Traits of False Teachers” reminds us that,
It’s rare for someone in church to openly deny Jesus. Movement away from the centrality of Christ is subtle. The false teacher will speak about how other people can help change your life, but if you listen carefully to what he is saying, you will see that Jesus Christ is not essential to his message.
In this essay, John MacArthur sticks close to the Bible when explaining the marks of a false teacher by his life and his doctrine.
Invariably, if I write about a false teacher’s lifestyle, a rebuttal will include that it’s none of my business how they live. However in this article by Wyatt Graham, we learn that False Teachers Out Themselves by Their Way of Life, too.
False teachers by definition teach false doctrine. Usually, we imagine that this means that false teachers deny certain concepts like the Trinity, the Incarnation, or the Second Coming. Yet second Peter challenges the idea that false doctrine only means denying true ideas. In Peter’s second letter, false teachers primarily are called such because of how they live. For Peter, false doctrine can mean denying true concepts or denying our Master by our behaviour.
The Bible is precise The Gospel is precise. God is precise. The Word is so precise it can divide bone from marrow (Hebrews 4:12). A clock that is five minutes off is still wrong.
I teach in an elementary school. When I gather my second graders for our small group reading instruction, I rely on the clock to finish the session so I can go pick up my third graders for their small group instruction. I have to release each group to within a minute of the scheduled time because they are on to the next session and they need to arrive punctually so the next teacher has a full period of teaching. The 3rd graders leave me and go to their classes to pack up their books and then disperse for the bus. The buses need to roll within a minute of their schedule so that car riders can get going and release all the children in the gym one by one into the waiting cars. This needs to be completed by 3:10. And the car riders can’t get started until the buses roll, and the buses can’t roll until all the kids are aboard, and the kids can’t get aboard until they pack up and line up, and they can’t pack up until I release them from our group. And so on. It’s an interlocked and cascading schedule of events that relies on precision in order to work.
If I am 5 minutes late letting the kids go from group, the entire school schedule will be put off. The other day I re-adjusted my clock because it was 2 minutes slow.
Why do we care about precision during our commuting/working day, but not about the Gospel? Or a favored Bible teacher’s teaching?
I highlight recurring themes of discontent among women throughout history. Citing examples from contemporary figures, the essay stresses the importance of accepting one’s roles and challenges the notion that fulfillment lies beyond traditional duties. True happiness is found in gratitude and contentment- in Christ.
I was destined for great things, my mother promised. Women can do anything, my mother said. We should be feminists, my mother urged. All in our family members are successful- entrepreneurs, professors, businessmen, doctors. So that was proof.
I was indeed on that trajectory when Christ interrupted my plans, humbled them, humbled me, and plucked me from the secular notion of success and began the long road of transforming my mind into acceptance of Christian success.
It took a long while of shaving, sharpening, and altering before I ceased to yearn for the worldly conception of fame, honor, and prosperity. Perhaps that is why I’m so sensitive to unsuitable female Christian yearning. Perhaps there are still vestiges of the old yearnings in me still. Likely both.
We read of so-called Bible teacher Beth Moore’s yearning for opportunities for leadership she lamented would never come her way, so she quit seminary.
1988: “After a short time of making the trek across Houston while my kids were in school, of reading the environment and coming to the realization of what my opportunities would and would not be, I took a different route.” (source).
YOU SHALLNOT COVET what the Lord has not given you.
Yet the Bible says: And he said to them, “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” (Luke 12:15).
We read of author Sarah Young, author of Jesus Calling, and her yearning ‘for something more’ … because the Bible wasn’t enough.
2004: “I knew that God communicated with me through the Bible, but I yearned for more. Increasingly, I wanted to hear what God had to say to me personally on a given day.” (Source)
Yet the Bible says: All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, (2 Timothy 3:16).
YIU SHALLNOT COVET what the Lord has not given you.
We read of Elizabeth Graham’s (now working for the ERLC) letter to the Southern Baptist Convention, and her yearning to be more than “just” a wife and mother, sent in 2009 and resurfaced a few years ago
2009 “I have aspirations of being a wife and mother, but I also desire to be more than that, and I see very few opportunities within the SBC to do so.”
Yet the Bible says: Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. (1 Thessalonians 5:18).
Discontent is a killer.
Satan whispers to women that being a wife and mother isn’t enough. That unless you are a leader, out there and in front, you’re behind. This Jen Wilkin’s mantra, incessantly talking about “closed doors” for women, and “not being at the table.”
We hear from satan that staying at home means you are missing all the opportunities, all of them! … for what, he doesn’t say. He just stirs up discontent with where women are, with what they have.
Now there is great gain in godliness with contentment, for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world. But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content. (1 Timothy 6:6-8).
If there is great gain in contentment, there is great loss in discontentment. It’s safe to say this is a corollary.
How long has this discontent in women been present on earth? Since the beginning. Eve had a conversation with the serpent, and suddenly she was discontent because she wasn’t like God, she didn’t know good and evil, she was not wise enough. She yearned.
In researching for this essay, I discovered an incredible, hilarious, and bulls-eye essay about the poison of “Discontented Women”. It was written in 1896 in the height of the Suffragette movement of First Wave Feminism. Its author Amelia Barr (1831-1919) was a mother, widow, and novelist. The 10-page essay is found easily online in lots of places, and I am also going to quote liberally from it below. It was published in the North American Review in 1896.
Discontent is a vice six thousand years old, and it will be eternal; because it is in the race. Every human being has a complaining side, but discontent is bound up in the heart of woman; it is her original sin. For if the first woman had been satisfied with her conditions, if she had not aspired to be “as gods,” and hankered after unlawful knowledge, Satan would hardly have thought it worth his while to discuss her rights and wrongs with her. That unhappy controversy has never ceased; and, with or without reason, woman has been perpetually subject to discontent with her conditions and, according to her nature, has been moved by its influence. ~Amelia Barr, 1896
Puritan Thomas Boston argued that discontent is actually a violation of the Tenth Commandment, [You shall not covet] expressed in his monumental sermon “The Hellish Sin of Discontent.” He wrote:
Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
Question: “What is forbidden in the Tenth Commandment?” Answer: “The Tenth Commandment forbiddeth all discontentment with our own estate, envying, or grieving at the good of our neighbor, and all inordinate motions and affections to anything that is his.” … [Discontent] is the hue of hell all over.
“But, but”, women say, “changing diapers and wiping noses is boring! Tedious! Monotonous! Being out in the world is better!” Mrs Barr replies,
In the van of these malcontents are the women dissatisfied with their home duties. One of the saddest domestic features of the day is the disrepute into which housekeeping has fallen; for that is a woman’s first natural duty and answers to the needs of her best nature.
It must be noted that this revolt of certain women against housekeeping is not a revolt against their husbands; it is simply a revolt against their duties. They consider house- work hard and monotonous and inferior, and confess with a cynical frankness that they prefer to engross paper, or dabble in art, or embroider pillow-shams, or sell goods, or in some way make money to pay servants who will cook their husband’s dinner and nurse their babies for them. And they believe that in this way they show themselves to have superior minds, and ask credit for a deed which ought to cover them with shame. For actions speak louder than words, and what does such action say?
Mrs Barr pulls no punches! Of these women who eye the world as their salvation and a salve for their discontent, I am reminded of one of the women of the She Reads Truth Bible study online organization. Diana Stone loves to write, so much so that at first she employed a nanny in the home part-time to help with her daughter, and subsequently decided to load her daughter to day care, so Diana could drop off the kids from the house completely, return home and write. And so, any stranger could and did substitute a poor ambition for love.
Mrs Barr continues:
Suppose even that housekeeping is hard and monotonous, it is not more so than men’s work in the city. The first lesson a business man has to learn is to do pleasantly what he does not like to do. All regular useful work must be monotonous, but love ought to make it easy; and at any rate, the tedium of housework is not any greater than the tedium of office work. … And as a wife holds the happiness of many in her hands, discontent with her destiny is peculiarly wicked.
Lest one think that Mrs Barr was writing from a catbird seat, she emigrated to New York from England with her husband, leaving her home country behind forever. Her husband’s business prospect failed, so they moved from New York to Texas, where her husband and four sons promptly died of yellow fever, she lost many other of her 12 children. She never remarried.
Don’t fail through defects of temper and over-sensitiveness at moments of trial. One of the great helps to success is to be cheerful; to go to work with a full sense of life; to be determined to put hindrances out of the way; to prevail over them and to get the mastery. Above all things else, be cheerful; there is no beatitude for the despairing. ~Words of Counsel: 9 Tips for Success, Amelia E. Barr.
Mrs Barr concludes her essay Discontented Women–
Unconscious Influence
In conclusion, it must be conceded that some of the modern discontent of women must be laid to unconscious influence. In every age there is a kind of atmosphere which we call “the spirit of the times,” and which, while it lasts, deceives as to the importance and truth of its dominant opinions.
Many women have doubtless thus caught the fever of discontent by mere contact, but such have only to reflect a little, and discover that, on the whole, they have done quite as well in life as they have any right to expect.
Happy is the woman who unashamedly says “I am a wife.” “I am a mother.” If we are not ashamed of the Gospel, we are not ashamed of any element within it, including the role He has given us to reflect His glory and image. ‘Just a mom’? Might as well say ‘Just a Christian’ when in fact being a woman, a wife, or a mother is all, because we have all, in Christ.
Further Reading
I heartily recommend the full Amelia Barr essay Discontented Women. And these other items as well
Discernment is the skill of understanding and applying God’s Word with the purpose of separating truth from error and right from wrong. ~Tim Challies
Charles Spurgeon drills down even further:
Discernment is not knowing the difference between right and wrong. It is knowing the difference between right and almost right.
Though ALL believers must train in discernment (Hebrews 5:14), some believers are given a heightened ability to discern by virtue of possessing a gift from the Spirit.
and to another the effecting of miracles, and to another prophecy, and to another the distinguishing of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, and to another the interpretation of tongues. (1 Corinthians 12:10, underline mine).
For spirit-gifted discerning believers AND all others, we must practice discernment in our walk. (1 John 4:1, Philippians 1:9-10, Romans 12:2). That means both identifying it AND acting on it. It’s non-negotiable.
Where does God command believers to exercise spiritual discernment? Perhaps a better question is, where doesn’t He? The answer is Philemon. Of all the books in the New Testament, this letter of twenty-five verses is the only one in which there is no instruction for the believer to be on guard against falsehood. All remaining twenty-six books of the New Testament (and many of the Old Testament) exhort the believer, to a greater or lesser degree, to discern truth from falsehood and to act upon it.
Satan downplays the importance of discernment. How? He twists scriptures such as the ones under discussion today, two of the most abused scriptures in the Bible, plus one more-
Judge not, that ye be not judged. (Matthew 7:1)
And this one:
If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. (Matthew 18:15).
And this admonition based on nothing in the Bible but bandied about as if it was:
Be nice. Jesus ate with sinners, you know.
Sadly, when I write an essay discerning a false teacher, or speaking against a false doctrine, inevitably I receive a slew of comments from women who insist I perform one or the other of the verses above. This makes me sad, because I know from such comments these women are not operating at peak Christian condition. Their insistence that I employ one or both of these verses usually reveals two things about them:
— they hold to an errant understanding of the verses above — they hypocritically have failed to follow their own advice and ‘come to me privately’, and to ‘judge not’.
Wise people treasure knowledge, but the babbling of a fool invites disaster. (Proverbs 10:14).
Here is my rebuttal to the commenters lobbing the most abused discernment verses:
Judge not, that ye be not judged. (Matthew 7:1).
‘Do not judge’ cannot mean ‘do not discern.’ There are calls to discern in every book of the New Testament except Philemon, and many of the Old. (1 John 4:1, Philippians 1:9-10, Hebrews 5:14, Romans 12:2, 1 Corinthians 2:14, 1 Kings 3:9, & etc.)
So, ‘Judge not’ can’t mean do not judge, because in John 7:24 we’re told to judge. Wisdom would suggest that rather than there being an inconsistency in the Bible, there is an inconsistency in our understanding.
So if Matthew 7:1 doesn’t mean not to discern and it doesn’t mean judge not, what does it actually mean? Well, first, read the verse in context. Here is Matthew 7:1-5,
Do not judge so that you will not be judged. For in the way you judge, you will be judged; and by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you. Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ and behold, the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.
It means when we do have to judge something, as in test, discern, check, etc, do not do so hypocritically, harshly, or wrongly.
In this one, commenters are referring to a section in Matthew 18, where the Bible outlines procedures for church discipline. Here is the passage:
If your brother sins, go and show him his fault in private; if he listens to you, you have won your brother. But if he does not listen to you, take one or two more with you, so that by the mouth of two or three witnesses every fact may be confirmed. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. (Matthew 18:15-17 NASB)
This verse is about church discipline, when one member of a local body has sinned against another person in the local body. It is a local, internal procedure. It is not referring to our response to book reviews or other public statements false teachers have made in public.
It would be a serious mistake to imagine that a private meeting is always a mandatory prerequisite before any Christian can legitimately express public criticism of another believer’s published work or public behavior. On the contrary, sometimes—especially when we’re dealing with a public and scandalous transgression—open rebuke may be warranted as a first response (cf. Galatians 2:11-14). Matthew 18:15-17 outlines instructions for dealing with private sins and personal offenses. These are not guidelines for dealing with false teaching or public behavior that might cloud the truth of the gospel or besmirch the reputation of the whole church.
Strangely, in a third most abused verse in the discernment world, many of them say ‘Be nice. Don’t condemn. Jesus ate with sinners.’ What they are referring to is Mark 2:16.
And the scribes of the Pharisees, when they saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors, said to his disciples, “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?”
If you think about it, you realize how massively ridiculous their statement that one should not cry out against false teachers or false doctrine is.
The only sinless person who ever lived was Jesus. Of COURSE He ate with sinners. He ate with sinners every time He ate. Jesus eating with sinners verse was about the Pharisees complaining that Jesus was eating with tax collectors and prostitutes whom the Pharisees believed were “sinners”, outcasts unworthy to be in polite society, while at the same time believing that they themselves were NOT sinners and thus worthy to grace Jesus with their presence.
Jesus ate with sinners, having compassion on them, because they were lost sheep. However, He never expected them to remain in their sin. He told the adulteress to ‘go and sin no more,’ for example. He also was very harsh with many other sinners. He whipped up a fury against the merchant greed-mongers in the temple. He called the Pharisees blind guides, fools, wicked, and greedy.
Of course we (forgiven) sinners will eat with (unforgiven) sinners because we are to be in the world. But if we see a friend involved in a false doctrine, do we eat their food but leave them with a poison in their soul? No.
As precious as this truth is—that Jesus is a friend of sinners—it, like every other precious truth in the Bible, needs to be safeguarded against doctrinal and ethical error. It is all too easy, and amazingly common, for Christians (or non-Christians) to take the general truth that Jesus was a friend of sinners and twist it all out of biblical recognition.
Jesus was a friend of sinners not because he winked at sin, ignored sin, or enjoyed light-hearted revelry with those engaged in immorality. Jesus was a friend of sinners in that he came to save sinners and was very pleased to welcome sinners who were open to the gospel, sorry for their sins, and on their way to putting their faith in Him.
People ask me this all the time, “What is the greatest need in the church today? What is the most compelling need? What do you see as the biggest problem in Christianity? The biggest problem in the church?
It’s simple for me to answer that. The biggest problem in the church today is the absence of discernment. It’s a lack of discernment. It’s the biggest problem with Christian people, they make bad choices. They accept the wrong thing. They accept the wrong theology. The are prone to the wrong teaching. They’re unwise in who they follow, what they listen to and what they read. ~John MacArthur, Principles for Discernment 2002.
You can enhance your discernment through constant training, (Hebrews 5:14), prayers for wisdom, (James 1:5) and staying in the word (Psalm 119:11). Then perhaps at some point you can help advise a sister and encourage her in her discernment walk. 🙂
The Parable of the Weeds He put another parable before them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field, but while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also. And the servants of the master of the house came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds?’ He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ So the servants said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ But he said, ‘No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.’” (Matthew 13:24-30)
Donald Grey Barnhouse, in his sermon “What is God Doing Today?” explained,
Now, the Lord Jesus Christ taught clearly that we are in this age to sow the seed – that is, to spread the Gospel. But we are to expect that only part of the seed will fall on good ground, that is, believing hearts. And that the rest will not produce good fruit. The fault is not with the seed, but with the hearts. Christ taught that satan would plant counterfeit believers in the midst of true believers so that it would be difficult to tell the real from the false. The true and the false, the real and the counterfeit grow together until the harvest which is the end of the age in which we live. These truths He taught in the Parable of the Sower and the Wheat and Tares. And he gave the explicit interpretation Himself, not leaving it to man’s imagination. The good and the bad are to grow together. Neither will destroy the other. God will take care of the separation.
Matthew Henry:
So prone is fallen man to sin, that if the enemy sow the tares, he may go his way, they will spring up, and do hurt; whereas, when good seed is sown, it must be tended, watered, and fenced.
EPrata photo
What is a weed? It is useful to study the properties of the object of the agricultural metaphor which the Lord in His wisdom used to explain the parable to us. As we read these properties of weeds, let’s keep in mind how these properties mirror the properties of the unbeliever. At the Penn State Extension website, we read Introduction to Weeds,
–a plant growing where it is not wanted –a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered. (R.W.Emerson). [Ed note: i.e. a virtueless plant] –plants that are competitive, persistent, pernicious, and interfere negatively with human activity (Ross, et. al.) –No matter what definition is used, weeds are plants whose undesirable qualities outweigh their good points.
These qualities of weeds certainly mirror the unbeliever’s qualities. Unbelievers in the world interfere with our activity, in pernicious, persistent, and competitive ways. This is because they are sown by satan. To continue looking at weeds:
Certain characteristics are associated with and allow the survival of weeds. Weeds posses one or more of the following:
a) abundant seed production; b) rapid population establishment; c) seed dormancy; d) long-term survival of buried seed; e) adaptation for spread; f) presence of vegetative reproductive structures; and g) ability to occupy sites disturbed by human activities.
I was particularly struck by the notion that weeds engage in “rapid population establishment”. Satan does not rest. One weed soon leads to others.
Weeds are troublesome in many ways. Primarily, they reduce crop yield by competing for water, light, soil nutrients, and space.
The parable is fairly simple, as parables go. The field is not the church. The Lord said the field is the world. (Mt 13:38). If we interpret the field as the church, then we would have a conflict with Matthew 18:15-17, which says to put unrepentant sinners out of the church, i.e. uproot them. So the field is the world, and the unbelievers are sown by satan.
In this tolerant, all-inclusive age, some people chafe when we say that there are two kinds of people in the world, those who are children of the Kingdom and those who are children of satan. We hate to think that there is no middle ground, or love to think that there must be ‘some good’ in people, they’re kinda, almost, mostly good. But no. If a person is not under the control and sovereignty of the Lord Jesus, they are under the control and sovereignty of satan. Wheat or tares. There are no hybrids.
The parable is telling us that we believers are sown into the world by Jesus. Let’s stop there. How wonderful! To be specifically planted by Jesus in the time and in the place He desires us to be grown is a very comforting thought. Matthew Henry wrote the comment to the verse by saying, “when good seed is sown, it must be tended, watered, and fenced,” and how wonderful it is to know we are being grown, nurtured and tended by Christ Himself.
The last part of the parable reminds us that Christ will do the separating at the end of the age. Again, this does not mean pastors aren’t to pursue biblical correction or even excommunication for unrepentant church members. It means that the world’s harvest will be accomplished by Jesus, since He has the power and discernment to see men’s hearts.(John 2:24).
The tares’ fate is to be thrown into the fire, and a woeful moment that will be for them, but for believers it will be an honor to watch Jesus right everything and avenge His name. (Revelation 6:10, 19:2).
Angels if you notice are God’s ministers of judgment. They often carry out the judgments God pronounces. They did at Sodom, also, it was an angel of the Lord that struck Herod down, and throughout Revelation angels execute the dread judgments, to name a few examples. And at the end of the age, they are the harvesters.
The five worst words in the Bible in my opinion. “…and the earth was reaped”. It demonstrates the power and might of the Lord to easily punish men. It also shows the meager and measly efforts of man to thwart Him. It is not possible. It is a terrifying verse because at some point all things will not go on as they have been. There is an end day. It will end for the tares/weeds. But it will continue in glory for the wheat!
Some sayings sound legitimate on their surface. They sound pious. They sound biblical. Like this one: “Cleanliness is next to Godliness”. Only problem is, that one isn’t in the bible. At all.
It is sometimes hard to tell what truly is Christian and what merely sounds Christian. Charles Spurgeon wisely said, “Discernment is not a matter of simply telling the difference between right and wrong; rather it is telling the difference between right and almost right.” So what sayings are right, and what sayings are almost right (AKA ‘wrong’)? Let’s look at the following sayings which have become such cliches. Some of these mottoes are:
“Let go and let God”
“He’s so heavenly minded he’s no earthly good”
“I don’t use commentaries because they’re men’s wisdom. I only use God’s Word when I study.”
We tend to pray small prayers, shy prayers, safe prayers. God wants us to pray big prayers, risky prayers, prayers that stretch our faith, expand our vision, and place us firmly in His hands. He wants us to take His word seriously and “with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” (Hebrews 4:16) Praying Big begins with remembering that we serve a very BIG God. He is bigger than our fears, our struggles, our falls, our joys, our plans, and our expectations. Praying Big encourages us to invest ourselves in prayer in a big way. Faith-full people are always big pray-ers. When we pour ourselves into prayer, God pours Himself into us. Praying Big invites us to see our lives, our challenges, our opportunities, and our world through heaven’s eyes. Prayer changes our vision, our responses, and our attitudes because in prayer God changes us.
Here’s a popular little jingle in Christendom: “Pray BIG, because we have a BIG God.” But what does this mean exactly? If we need a car, does God want us to pray for a brand new SUV instead of some small beat up clunker? If we need a new place to live, does He want us dreaming of mansions instead of just hoping for a room somewhere? If finances are tight, are we supposed to name and claim millions instead of just what we need? Is God offended by our lack of faith when we don’t dream big and pray expectantly? Well, it depends.
God wants us to be bold in our prayers, but only when our priorities are aligned with His. ~Anna DiehlGee. That sounds good too.
Or does it mean as so many in the ‘name it claim it’ camp casually teach, like Joel Osteen, that we need to be more ambitious in what we’re asking God for and more confident in what we’re looking for in our lives and to do this we need to pray ‘God-sized prayers’?
No. That definitely sounds bad.
This confusion is why we need to examine what we say and be mindful of our cliches.
The root verse for this ubiquitous phrase we’ve come to hear so frequently is usually supported by an interpretation of Hebrews 4:16,
“Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”
Gill’s Exposition explains the boldness and confidence indicated in the Hebrews verse:
“…a drawing nigh to God in that ordinance with spiritual sacrifices to offer unto him: and this may be done “boldly”; or “with freedom of speech”; speaking out plainly all that is in the heart, using an holy courage and intrepidity of mind, free from servile fear, and a bashful spirit; all which requires an heart sprinkled from an evil conscience, faith, in the person, blood, and righteousness of Christ, a view of God, as a God of peace, grace, and mercy, and a holy confidence of being heard by him; and such a spirit and behaviour at the throne of grace are very consistent with reverence of the divine Majesty
Let’s contrast confidence to approach the throne after the cross as opposed to the Temple days before the cross. In the days before the veil was torn it meant that you had to go through an incredibly time-consuming and intricate set of rituals to enter the holy of holies where the presence of God was. The High Priest must atone for his sins in order to be considered pure enough even to enter. If you made a misstep, you would be struck dead.
Think of Uzzah, who put his hand on the Ark of the Covenant, and was stuck dead instantly, because his hand is sin while the dirt of the ground is just dirt, not sin.
In those days, coming boldly before the throne with confidence was not possible. However, once the veil was torn, signifying that THE atonement had been completed, we can all approach now. We don’t have to wait for a certain day, we don’t need a representative to go for us, we can all approach and He is listening. We know He is listening because He is our intercessor. (Romans 8:34)
So understanding the reason for our confidence (or boldness as some versions say) it brings the focus back on Jesus. Now to look at the size of prayers we’re told to make.
We have somehow equated boldness in behavior to largeness of prayer. We’ve swapped confidence in approach for magnitude in request. If there are “big” prayers by definition they are saying that there are “small” prayers too, and worse, assigning a size to prayers tacitly insinuates that the small prayers are no good.
Philippians 4:6 teaches, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.”
Thanksgiving Prayer, 1942.Photo by Marjory Collins. Farm Security Administration (Library of Congress)
It doesn’t say “by prayer let your BIG requests known to God” but instead it says do not be anxious about anything and make requests [of any size] known to God.
My God is big enough to care about everything, not just the big things. Are we to dispense with “small” prayers because He could get busy and overwhelmed? What a ghastly thought! He is perfect in patience. Because we don’t want to take up His time? Time in heaven does not exist, and He is the author of time on earth!
So…is praying for our food a small prayer? The Lord told us to pray in this way. In Matthew 6:11 He said to pray for our daily bread.
Praying for our children? Is this a small prayer? Children are a heritage from the Lord, according to Psalm 127:3. Should David not have prayed for his sick son? (2 Samuel 12:16). Should Hannah not have prayed to be given a son? (1 Samuel 1:13). Should Job have not continually interceded for his children? (Job 1:1-5). Yet Job was called blameless and upright.
What about the persistent widow? What hers a ‘big’ or a small petition? She was lauded for persisting in her plea for justice. What about the admonition to always pray, and to pray ceaselessly? (1 Thessalonians 5:17)
Ephesians 6:18 says “And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests” ‘All kinds”, the verse doesn’t say not to bother God with small petitions. It also does not say that the bigger you pray the bigger your faith is.
I think it’s dangerous to start sizing up prayers, it’s especially foolish to base a size of a prayer on the size of our God, because we can’t know how big He really is.
Just meditating on the fact that we can pray to an interceding Jesus is an amazing thing to ponder and be grateful for. God isn’t impressed by the size of our prayers. Just as Jesus wasn’t impressed by the length of the prayers of the Pharisee but by the condition of the prayer’s heart.
Growing up in my town in the 1960s, there was a train track running along the shoreline. Behind the tracks there was a busy wharf with fishermen, moorings for recreational boaters, and shoreside homes and their children running about. There were a lot of train crossings, and many of them weren’t guarded by automatic gates and warning signals.
Sadly, we frequently read back then in our local paper of crossing fatalities, both vehicular and pedestrian. To my impressionable ears it seems like almost a weekly occurrence. It wasn’t that frequent but I do remember my father, who was on the town Zoning Committee for a time, talking about the Town Council’s plans to automate and/or close some of the crossings to reduce potential for fatalities.
Chris Martin used to write at his blog Millennial/Evangelical, which is now defunct. FYI, Hardcover or paperback books never go defunct, but online essays come and go like milkweed seeds in the wind. OK, old lady rant over, lol.
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In 2015 he wrote a piece called 3 Bad Reasons to Leave Your Church which is in archive mode now. The link works. Mr Martin is currently content director for Moody Radio and keeps a substack instead of a blog now.
I had not read a great quantity of articles at his site, but I did enjoy this piece. At the bottom of it, he has a link to a companion piece called 3 Good Reasons to Leave Your Church. Here is his archived essay ‘3 Bad Reasons’ opening paragraph:
“Stop treating your local church like your high school girlfriend, and start treating it like the bride of Christ.”
“You don’t leave the church when it doesn’t share the same musical interests, when it hurts your feelings, or when a newer, more popular one catches your eye.“
“The people of God, the Church around the world, is the bride of Christ, and the bride of Christ deserves the faithfulness of a bride, not the summer crush you bailed on when you were a jerk in college.“
And in like manner Mr Martin did indeed write about 3 ‘good’ reasons to leave your church. In the former (the bad reasons) they were trivial and self-serving. But sometimes there arises an issue in one’s church which violate one’s conscience, harms the sheep, or otherwise provide a basis for a holy reason to leave. Here are his opening paragraphs about ‘good’ reasons to leave:
On Wednesday I shared “3 Bad Reasons to Leave Your Church.” That sort of piece is common, almost a rite of passage for Christian bloggers these days. As I was brainstorming some blog posts the other day, I realized that I’ve read a bunch of posts on why not to leave your church, but I’ve read very few on reasons why you should leave your church. Allow me a bit of disclaimer as well: even among these “good” reasons to leave your church—it is my hope, as one who deeply cares about the local church, that even these problems wouldn’t cause you to leave. My hope is that somehow you could work through the problems listed below, stay at your church, and see them through to health and new life. However, not everyone is in a position to enact major change in their churches, so leaving may be the best option, unfortunately. Here are three good reasons to leave your church…
I recently left my church. I left in good standing and with recommendations from my elders to the church I’m currently a member of now. It was a plant to which I’d been a member since before the first service when we were praying and organizing. One of the elders who planted it had been my Sunday School teacher for 5 years prior to that. It was very hard to leave. I miss him so much to this day.
EPrata photo. Leaving your church is hard. It SHOULD be hard, anyway.
I left for 3 reasons. I’d had an issue since 2 years into the plant, then another issue cropped up 5 years later, then a final issue which cemented my decision to depart. I’d prayed for the elders and been a submitted member the entire time I was wrestling with my issues, but eventually, the Spirit in me made it clear in the way He makes it clear, that it was acceptable to depart. My first and longest-lasting issue was my church’s eschatology.
This week on Twitter/X I saw a poll and a discussion about eschatology which brought to mind this issue of whether to leave a church over its eschatology. The question was, “If your church required a specific end-times view to become a member, would you agree with that policy, though you held that same view of the end-times?“
I haven’t thought through the part about a membership requirement, but it brought to mind the issue of a church member believing differently on Last Things than their church teaches.
I noticed two things about the replies. Everyone called Eschatology (Doctrine of Last Things) a ‘secondary doctrine’. In purely theological terms a secondary doctrine is one that isn’t salvific, that is, requires a person to believe in if they are to be considered saved. The Deity of Christ is an Essential Doctrine. In addition, most of the Essential Doctrines contain a biblically stated penalty for NOT believing. CARM.org calls them Essential Doctrines and outlines them here.
Then there are Secondary Doctrines, AKA Non-Essential Doctrines that don’t touch on one’s salvation. Believing in the timing of Jesus’ return or the specific sequence of end-time events, isn’t a doctrine that illustrates that a person is unsaved. It’s not that the doctrine isn’t important when we call it ‘Secondary’ or ‘Non-essential’, but that it isn’t a biblical mandate to believe.
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CARM asked this question about secondary doctrines: Women pastors is not an essential doctrine, so why worry about it?Shouldn’t we just let those with whom we disagree go ahead and believe what they do about women pastors and not worry about it? The answer is that we should be concerned – very concerned. The reason is that in order to justify having women pastors and elders, several Scriptures need to be reinterpreted.”
If you’re interested, CARM has a Doctrine Grid here. Last Things is classified on CARM’s page as a secondary non-essential, “Any of them can be denied or affirmed, and regeneration is not questioned.”
But that does not mean these secondary non-essentials are insignificant. They are significant. All doctrines in the Bible are tied together with a thread, all of them touch on all the others. In order to believe certain stances, the interpreter needs to change his interpretive method and/or blatantly discount other clearly stated verses. So though a Last Things doctrine isn’t salvific, it comprises a third of the Bible and are a hinge point for many other interpretations and doctrines. It informs the preacher’s hermeneutic, that is, the WAY they interpret all the scriptures. And the way your pastor interprets the scriptures touches every person under his authority.
The second thing I noticed about the Twitter discussion of Last Things and membership was that though most people said ‘nah, do not require a specific eschatological stance for membership, don’t divide over non-essentials…EXCEPT…’ and then the person would state his exception. ‘Except if they believe preterism…except if they want to become a leader…except if they become divisive over it…’
I agree that Eschatology isn’t salvific, but it’s more important than one would think. The Prophets taught on it. It’s taught in the Gospels, referenced in Corinthians, Thessalonians, 2 Peter, and of course Revelation, among other mentions.
Eschatology informs us as to what to think and how to act when certain things come to pass. Eschatology makes certain demands and commands of us, as in Matthew 24, 2 Peter 3, and 1 Thessalonians.
Also, believing alternately from your elders and your church friends creates difficulties and temptations for the member. Several of the Twitter comments referenced this. When one signs on the dotted line to become a member of a church, often there is a clause with asks the prospective member to submit to the church’s teaching.
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In my case, as some of my friends studied and came to eschatological conclusions different from the teaching of our church, they came to me to ask about it. I always referred them to the elders if they had questions. We had open and approachable elders, a blessing. If they insisted to know my stance, I told them in general, but again strongly referred to the elders. If a member goes around teaching something different behind the Elders’ backs, it is divisive and causes confusion and a stumbling block.
This caused me a temptation to teach differently. My conscience was caught between needing to be a submitted member, which the Bible tells us to be, and my conscience in referring people to a teaching I honestly believe is error. A hard go.
Another issue is that the member who believes alternately from his or her church’s teaching on Last Things is muzzled. I wanted to joyfully shout the doctrines and exult in the Lord’s plan. I could not. Eschatology is a third of the Bible that I could not speak to, proclaim, or even encourage. After a while, this hurt my conscience so much.
Why did I join such a church, you ask? It was a plant by a then-young minister who had not completely cemented his personal reconciliation about the Doctrines of Last Things. Two years into it, he had, coming down on an opposite side of what I believed from my own 10 year study of the Old Testament first then the New Testament. What did I do? I was disappointed, but I focused on all the positive things my church did well, and there was a lot to be joyful about.
Until some other issues piled up. Until my conscience issue about the three issues I was having made it impossible and it as clear that I needed to go, not just for myself but for my church family. Let them be joyful in their interpretation, and I’ll go somewhere else and be joyful in mine.
Our church family is family. I know that blood ties feel strong, but they are only fleshly ties. Emotional, yes. Long lasting, yes. But the church family is eternal. It’s a family that is united not by our blood but by the infinitely holy blood of Jesus. Our union is with Him, through Him, and with Him. Leaving one’s church should not be a trivial matter, nor should it be casual.
Here are a few ‘church search’ sites that help you find a church according to the search directory.
TMS church search lists churches led by or planted by The Master’s Seminary Graduates. If you know the doctrinal stances of TMS then you fairly well know the doctrinal stances of these churches. Plug in your zip code or city info and a radius and it brings up a map and a listing. There are links for each search result that bring you to their website with contacts so you can check further:
There are good reasons for leaving a church and there are good reasons for staying. Pray it through, don’t be hasty, honor the Head of the Church and the under-shepherds (your pastors), and may the Lord bless your decision.
the-end-time.org 