RENEWAL THROUGH RECOVERY (4)
W. Carl Ketcherside

I doubt that even the most prejudiced clergyman among the Churches of Christ would credit Alan Richardson with writing something just to favor us. This eminent editor of the prestigious volume “A Theological Word Book of the Bible” makes a distinct difference between preaching and teaching. The Professor of Christian Theology at the University of Nottingham, he is well qualified to point out that this distinction existed in the Greek, and was manifested in the word kerygma, the thing preached, and in didache, the teaching. He says, “In The N. T. preaching has nothing to do with the delivery of sermons to the converted, which it usually means today, but always concerns the proclamation of ‘the good tidings of God’ to the non-Christian world.”

And this illustrates how elastic slogans can become and how they can be stretched. Our special one, which we tend to proclaim louder and longer than we do the Good News, is “We speak where the Bible speaks, and remain silent where the Bible is silent.” One thing we certainly do not do is to speak as the Bible speaks. Actually we deliver sermons, another word not found in the Bible, upon any and every subject which rubs us the wrong way at the time, and call that “preaching the gospel.” We should be ashamed to live and afraid to die because of our actions.

It was not by accident that Jesus selected a word which meant to “proclaim as a herald” to indicate what the apostles were to do. The heralds were the broadcasters of the news in that day. They were the media men. Sometimes the news was good, sometimes it was bad. Battles were lost as well as won. So the blessed Holy Spirit came up with another word euanggelistes, which always meant a message of glad tidings. It had to do with announcing what God had done for us that we could not do for ourselves. It informed us that the ransom had been paid and we were free at last. It told of the chain being broken and the liberation which followed. It was a message of victory, of triumph, of transcendent joy. It was all that humanity had ever dreamed of.

Jesus was the center of it. He was the way, the truth and the life. Those who were called, and who followed Him, were known as the people of the way. It was grand to see the demonstration of divine power which swept through them. As partakers of eternal life they demonstrated a new dimension of human existence. They willingly laid down their lives for the brethren. The world beheld a species of love never before exhibited. It cut through the red tape of politics, the black despair of immorality, and the gray shadow of death. Men were liberated thoroughly from the past. They became like a new creation. They were born again from above.

But it did not last very long. It never does. The great red dragon managed to dilute it effectively and to betray those who sought to follow Him. And he did it as he often does, by the application of cultural tradition. Three worlds converged and each one contributed its bit. The Roman world gave the structure, the organization and ended with the Establishment. Patterning after the pagan empire which had brought the world to its feet, and held sway and dominance over it, by raw colonialism, it stopped the fellowship in its tracks and reduced men to menial serfs in the organization.

The Greek world introduced its philosophy, which took its place as systematic theology. For generations the church, as the ekklesia began to be miscalled, argued and fought over Aristotelian views, and sought some way of synchronizing them with the revelation of God. As orthodoxy flourished, heretics were created as a spin-off and these were beheaded, burnt at the stake, and otherwise cruelly put to death. Frequently they were much nearer the truth than those who slew them in cold-blood.

The Jewish world gave its legalism, deadening, sterile and stifling. And the departure was complete. Conformity became the order of the day. Men were led to see certain magical qualities in the ordinances. Liturgy was substituted for life. Ritual took the place of redemption. Creeds displaced the Christ. A reformation was eventually attempted. But it borrowed the same old routine. Some say it stole it. It was dressed in new outward garb. But Luther argued with Zwingli about the Lord’s Supper. Calvin gave his consent to the killing of Michael Servetus, the Spanish physician. The spirit of intolerance began to be manifested in new ways. But the one thing that made the ekklesia a world-conquering force was conspicuous by its absence.

That one fact was Jesus as the center. As men began to make other things the center of their allegiance they fell apart. The sectarian spirit became rife, not because men did not believe in Jesus, but because they were attracted by men, systems, doctrines, and things, which acted as magnets to draw them. Every major sect or party on earth today is such because it rallied around a creed. Every minor sect or party is such because it has emphasized some man, some system, some doctrine, some thing. Whether or not the creed states only the truth makes no difference. It is something other than the true center. And to lure men off center will divide them, fragment them, splinter them.

And to call any of these, or all of them, the gospel is to be guilty of egregious error. To proclaim baptism, the Lord’s Supper, some method of financing the proclamation of the gospel, a course of moral conduct, or anything else than Jesus, as the Good News is to deceive oneself and mislead those who accept what he says. Let me say again that what is said may be true, but it is not Him who is the truth and the life. Jesus is the gospel, just as He is our wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption. For this reason it is said, “Let him who boasts, boast of the Lord.” Jesus is also eternal life manifested and one who knows the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom He has sent, has eternal life. He may be wrong about many things, but he has eternal life. Eternal life does not consist of knowing the Bible, but of knowing Him.

It was here that all the reformers and restorationists of past days made their crucial error. They made the Bible, instead of Jesus, the center of their fellowship. Immediately this required knowledge of a Book rather than faith in a person as requisite to salvation. Since the degree of knowledge is always relative salvation was conceived to be unattainable. Those who were asked if they were saved began to say, “I hope to be,” or “If God wills, I want to be.” Jesus became lost in the Bible, the very Book in which were chronicled His life and mighty works in order that men might believe on Him. And he is still lost in the arguments and debates of the various schools of thought in the western world. The Bible itself becomes a source of divided families as witness the argument about “inerrancy of the scriptures.” But fellowship with Christ existed before one word of the Bible was written. The ekklesia, called out by Christ, called together by His Spirit, and centered around Him through faith in His person was alive, vibrant and operating before a book or sentence of the new testament scripture was penned.

This does not mean that we can do without the Bible! Far from it! But we dare not make it our Savior! We are saved by a person. And just as in our homes we can distinguish between our wives and a cookbook, so Jesus can distinguish between his bride and a guidebook. It is in our intimate surrender in union with Jesus that we become one Spirit with Him. And while we revere the Bible as containing a message from heaven we must never confuse it with Him who was “the Messenger” from on high. The faith is not a philosophy. It is not a written code of laws. It is not a compendium of systematic theology. It is man’s technical skills which produce all of these. It is rather a recognition of the man on the white horse, the “theos-logos” of God. Jesus, the conquering hero, is our theology. We must rescue Him from the Bible, just as we must rescue the Bible from the church where it has become lost in centuries of bickering, disputing and debate. We can achieve renewal by the apostolic proclamation. — 139 Signal Hill Dr., St. Louis 63121

Had there been a lunatic asylum in the suburbs of Jerusalem, Jesus Christ would infallibly have been shut up in it at the outset of his public career. That interview with Satan on a pinnacle of the Temple would alone have damned him, and everything that happened after could but have confirmed the diagnosis. --- Havolock Ellis