Churches today use a lot of different means to get people to join.  They often start with the interests that people have, their carnal desires, hoping that their lust could be a jumping off point for spiritual interest later.   A whole new theology has been built around this, a doctrine to justify talking people into coming to church on their terms.   Fundamentalists, evangelicals, emergents, and even the orthodox use marketing techniques and strategies to lure people in.  This does give one major explanation for why you will hear people offer many different reasons why they attend church or why they go to the church they do.

In my first submission in this series, I contended that God should be the top priority for why you’re in the church you’re in.  God should be what and Who church is about.   This one thought should serve as a baseline for elucidating why we’ve joined the church we have.   In one sense, the thinking about God relates to the subject of eternity.  Since we believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, we make decisions based upon the fact that we will face God some day and that He is our ultimate Judge.   With this in mind, all the following reasons for why I’m in the church I’m in do relate to the first.   All the reasons hence will correlate to the first reason.  All the other reasons consider what will please God, since He is why I’m in church.

With pleasing God as the major grid for my church decision, the doctrine and practice of a church stands as the next two criteria for joining a church.  I want a church that believes and practices according to Scripture.  As long as a church keeps the same, right doctrine and practice, I will stay a part of it.   I see those as the emphasis in the Bible.   We want the right view of God and then to do what He says.  Those both keep God in the highest priority.  We know God exalts His Word.  Jesus said that those Who love Him will keep what He said.  With all other factors considered, belief and practice will determine what church I’m a part of.

If a church continues in the right doctrine and obeys the Bible, I can keep fellowshiping with it.   I may have a personality issue with someone else in the church.  I want to get that resolved.  Of course, that’s what God wants me to do, but it will be worth it to remain in fellowship with a church that believes right and does right.  Even if I’m the one that has been offended, I want to do what it takes to stay in the church.

On some other blog someone asked this kind of question.  I thought it was a good question and something I wanted to explore with everyone for perhaps more than one post, that is, unless we pick a topic and go after it.  I’ll put this on hold then for a little while.  The other two jackhammers can write on this too if they want.   I think we’ll be back to our old schedule sometime soon.

First, I should get to the most basic part of the question, why am I in a church?   Perhaps the first thing you thought of was those people who say that they don’t believe in organized religion.  You get that out there when you’re talking to the lost.   But I’m not going there first.  I’m going to get into something that is even more basic than saying something good about the institution of the church itself.  The reason I’m in a church is because of God.

I want to please God.  I’m not in a church for myself.  I’m in a church for God.  That guides all the other thoughts and actions that I have about a church.  I don’t attend church for myself.  I go to church for God.  I don’t determine whether the church is good by what it does for me.  I make that decision based on what I believe is best for God.  I might have a bad relationship with someone in the church, but that doesn’t stop me from being in church.  Why?  I’m not there for other people.  I’m there for God.  I’m there for other people too, but entirely without one single other person, I would still be there.

God never fails.  He never changes.  He’s always great.  He’s always the best.  He’s amazingly worth it.  What it is that I like about whatever church that I’m going to be a part of starts with who God is.  He loves me.  I love Him.  Every good and perfect gift has come from Him.  I could never repay Him, but this life I’m living is going to be about Him.   So I’m there for Him.  I don’t care if my feelings are hurt.  He didn’t hurt them.   No one or no thing is going to keep me away, because it is all about God.

If you don’t have that as the reason, I feel sorry for you.  If you don’t have it as the reason, I think you’ve got it wrong right off the bat.  You’ll likely have problems because you don’t have that settled.  I also think that not having that as the reason is at the root of most problems with churches and with people toward churches.  Have church first be about God.  It will be the best thing you’ve every done for church is to have it not be about you or about your family, but about God.  It will be the best thing for you and for your family and for everyone else in the world if church would be about God to you.

Thanks to Jack Schaap, the KJVO debate has reached a rolling boil among the ranks.  Right now, on my desk, sits a stack of articles from all sorts of sources, not least of which is the Sword of the Lord, and mostly those representing the various colleges in the Hyles circle.  The articles have titles like “The Inspiration of the King James Bible,” “Is the AV 1611 King James Bible Inspired?” “What Did Jesus Write?” “Siding With the Plowman,” “Editor Makes the Case for Inspired Text,” “The Inspiration of the Scriptures,” and “The Inspiration and Preservation of the King James Bible.”  In each case, the author denies that he believes in “double-inspiration.”  And in each case, the author proclaims a doctrine that is impossible unless God re-inspired the Bible in English. 

Here is what flabbergasts me.  These men claim that they believe in preservation — they claim to believe that God kept every word of Scripture.  And then, they turn around and deny that.  In their attempts to argue that God’s Word is preserved in English only, they make statements like, “God allowed the Greek and Hebrew to go into oblivion.”  They deny that God’s Word is preserved in the languages in which it was given.   They argue that the Originals do not exist, and cast reflexion on the integrity of the various manuscripts of the TR, the basis of our King James Version.

In order to uphold our English Bible, those who claim to be King James Only are now denying that God has preserved the very words that he gave.  I find this mind-boggling.  What purpose does it serve to attack the foundation of the King James Bible? 

When the Psalmist said in Psalm 12:6-7, “The words of the LORD are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. Thou shalt keep them, O LORD, thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever,” what words was he speaking of?  What words did God promise to keep?  Would David have understood this to mean English words?  Would he have thought that God was promising to keep any words other than the Hebrew words in which the Old Testament was given? 

How about Matthew?  When the Bible says in Matthew 24:35, “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away,” how would Matthew have understood this?  Would he have thought that Christ was referring to English words?  Would Paul understand this to mean that God would lose the Greek words, the very words in which this verse and the majority of New Testament verses were given?  Would Peter have understood this to mean that the Greek words would be lost and/or replaced with English words?

To argue that the Greek and Hebrew words were lost or “went into oblivion” is to argue that God failed to keep his promise.  He promised to keep them, as the old Divines would say, “by His singular care and providence.”  Ironically, those who have made the King James Version their first issue are now denying God’s promise in order to maintain their singular loyalty to this version, and subsequent rejection of the Original Languages.

 How sad.

Every year at about this time, I find myself re-amazed at the amount of money and effort people in Utah put into decorating for Halloween. But this year especially, I am beyond re-amazed. In a bad economy, as people lose their shirts and undershirts to the stock market, as businesses fold, and as unemployment rates spike, Halloween Stores are popping up all over town, filling every vacant store they can find.

Is there really that much demand for Styrofoam gravestones and inflatable monsters? As I drive around, I find that yes in fact, there is that much demand for it. Utah has several cultural oddities, but Utah’s fetish with all things Halloween just might be the most glaring obsession of all. What gives with that?

As Christians, we must remember that men become what they worship. People who worship a god that has eyes but see not, that have ears but hear not, that have mouths but speak not, become just like that — sightless eyes, speechless mouths, just like their gods of stone (see Psalm 115 and 135). Only in this case, we are confronted with a god who is the brother of Satan, and who demands from his worshippers, not groveling at the feet of a stone god, but rather a strict adherence to a very rigid set of “traditional values.”

In their system, righteousness comes by the law. And, since righteousness by the law is an impossibility (Galatians 2:16; Acts 13:38-39), it can never produce redemption or rest. The only thing that “traditional values” can possibly produce is guilt (Romans 3:20; James 2:10). What we have then, among the practitioners of the local religion, is a religion that is laden with guilt. One pastor rightly compared it to the Salt Lake — an enormous dead sea of guilt. It is their “traditional values,” their commitment to righteousness by the law that generates this Salt Lake of guilt. Their “values” produce such a weight, such a burden of standards that the load of guilt crushes them.

So, what do we make of Halloween in Utah? Why is it celebrated so furiously? Besides the fact that they are celebrating their lord’s next-of-kin, we can also say that this is their way of dealing with their guilt. I suppose that we could make the same comparison to slavery — men find odd ways to put a positive spin on their condition. Even in slavery, men still found a way to be happy. A man who is enslaved by guilt soon finds a way to enjoy it, even to make it seem like this is the way it is supposed to be.

Bobby Mitchell, pastor of Mid-Coast Baptist Church, Brunswick, Maine, sent me an email in which he and his father chronicled the reasons why churches and their Christian families are losing their children to the world.  He was asked by someone doing research for a book to give his explanation.  I thought they were bullseye at diagnosing the problem, so I asked Pastor Mitchell if we could publish it here or at my blog, What Is Truth. Here is the answer that was authored by his dad and him

1.  Many are not genuinely converted because of the watered down Gospel presentations that are so prevalent.  They are told to acknowledge a few facts, they are led in a prayer, then they are told to never doubt their experience.  Of course, over time, if they are never genuinely converted then they either continue on trying to “fit the mold” of their church, or they just walk away from it when they are able.

2.  Many are told what to do, but not taught why to do it, or what not to do, but not why. They have been told that baptism is by immersion only, that the KJV is the Word of God in English, that women should be modest, etc.  But, these things are not taught to them from the Scriptures.  They grow up just thinking that these are merely the rules of life for independent Baptists.  So, they are not really convinced, or convicted, and it is easy for them to slip into other doctrines and practices.

3.  Many grow up in homes that are plagued with inconsistency.  The standards change based on who the family is around.  The family Bible time is hit-and-miss or non-existent.  Discipline is not consistent.  There is an open or even silent disagreement with what is taught by the church concerning entertainment, dress, roles in the home, etc.  The inconsistency relates to young people that the parents are not really set on doing things the Biblical way.  They become unstable and are easy prey for the world.

4.  Many hear their parents criticize the pastor and other strong Christians in the church.  This can result in confusion.

5.  Many times when the pastor is seeing the young people really embrace the truth and Biblical living the parents become obstacles.  It seems the parents are bothered by their children surpassing them in the things of the Lord.  The parents pull them back and some even express jealousy concerning the influence the pastor has concerning their children.

6.  Many times the parents get their children wrapped up in the things of this world.  The parents are concerned about their children loving the Lord and walking in the light, but they are just as concerned with their kids playing organized sports, becoming popular, being fashionable, seeing the latest movies, making a lot of money, having the newest video game systems, acquiring every type of technology without proper accountability regarding those “toys,” etc.  Through it all the dad and mom seem to be sowing thorns that choke the seed of the Word of God.  This is especially true when the sports, fun, and such ever come before any of the aspects of New Testament ministry.

7.  Many times the young people are not really involved in the ministry of the church until they are pressed to do so in their late teens.  Too many are just observers and not participators.  All that is expected of them is to sit and be entertained instead of training and serving.  They are not taught that we exist to glorify God.  Practically, they are being taught that the ministry exists to make sure that they are having fun.  They are not taught to “buy in” to the work of the ministry.  Eventually, they realize that the world’s entertainment is better and they look for fulfillment in getting involved in worldly groups and activities.

8.  Many Christian young people are not taught to pray, study the Bible, meditate on the Word, memorize the Scriptures and appropriate them practically in real-life situations.  Real life then comes along and they don’t respond Biblically.

9.  Many times young people grow up knowing of all sorts of sin in the church that is not dealt with Scripturally.  Of course, they also see young people leaving the church and that not being dealt with Biblically.  They don’t realize how wicked this is and they have no fear of God concerning it.

10.  The bar is set too low for so many young people.  They are treated as if they are expected to be “silly teens.”  As long as they don’t do a few really bad things and as long as they do a few good things they are treated as if they are Godly.  So many of the young people in churches that I have been familiar with are good (in the commonly used sense of the word) but they are not Godly!  Good kids will eventually get devoured by the world, but truly spiritual ones will develop into mature Christians.   Too many are treated according to the worldly concept of “teenager hood.”  The Bible speaks of infants, children, young men, young women, and older men, and older women.  I think that a lack of teens understanding that they should be Godly young men and young ladies is hurting many.

11.  Many young people have heard very little of the “fear of God.”  They have a warped image of God that magnifies his love and mercy while almost completely ignoring his holiness, majesty, and wrath.  Subsequently, they walk in pride and rebellion.

12.  Too often the preaching to young people is just fluffy and light, and often-times it is just motivational speaking.  Too many young people do not grow up really learning sound doctrine and being taught through books of the Bible.  Too many preachers that are youth-focused are trying to be “cool” and “hip.”

13.  Many kids from good homes and churches graduate high school and are pushed into the Christian college environment.  Sadly, most (prayerfully, not all) of the Bible colleges are anemic in their teaching and practice.  There is almost an idolatry of fun and good times at many schools.  One college has even been heavily promoting a water park with a wave pool and a place for the young ladies to tan (as if that is so important).  When I visited that same school I was awestruck with the amount of money and time put into “fun.”  The young adults are, in a great way, withdrawn from their parents, church, and pastor.  What little time they have with godly teachers and staff is outweighed by the influence of so many worldly students in the dorm rooms and activities.  There is a mixture of doctrinal persuasions among many of the student bodies.   Their parents and pastors are compared to those of the others and often the lowest common denominator is embraced in matters of holiness.  The dating game is played.  Endless debates rage among peers.  The “pillar and ground of the truth,” the local NT church, is downplayed.

14.  The local New Testament church is treated by many parents as optional instead of vital to spiritual growth and New Testament Christianity.  The same goes for the pastor.

When we consider the number of auto mechanics who openly express their opinion about teachers and their classrooms, or the number of school teachers who shamelessly comment on the way the architects designed the school building, or the number of housewives who have something to say about the Sunday Sermon Series, then we should have no problem if a Pastor comments on an issue normally reserved for Professional Shrinks.

No, I am not a trained psychologist.  I’ve read books writteny by psychologists, particularly on predators and that sort of thing.  But reading an expert never made anyone an expert.  So, by no means should you consider this to be “expert” material.  Consider this post to be a small piece of pastoral advice for those who discover that a Psychopath is at work in their midst.

We’ve experienced this sort of thing firsthand.  It ain’t pretty, believe me.  Probably the most frustrating thing a Pastor will ever have to deal with is the Psychopath.  For, when the Psychopath has finished, the world goes topsy-turvy, the Pastor struggles to make heads or tails out of the situation, and the church finds itself groping in the dark for the truth.  Psychopaths have the unique ability to turn brother against brother, and somehow to be the only one who emerges from the pile unscathed.  Churches have split and Pastors been destroyed at the hands of a Psychopath.  And in the end, the only winner is the Psychopath himself.  Or so it seems.

The Psychopath: A Description

Psychopaths are liars, first and foremost.  But they are not just any kind of liars.  People lie for many reasons.  Often, people lie because they fear getting caught.  People lie in order to preserve their reputation or status.  Men sometimes lie in order to keep the peace (“No dear, that dress doesn’t make you look fat.”)  The lie might be a sin of omission (i.e., the husband who leaves out the next statement: “being fat makes you look fat.”)  Sometimes we lie because we are embarrassed about the truth.  Sometimes a lie is meant to do damage.  If we summarized all the motives for lying, they would fall under one of two heads: those lies told for self-preservation, and those lies told for malicious purposes, in order to cause harm.The Bible teaches us that the lying tongue hateth those that are afflicted by it.  Never is this more true than in the case of a Psychopath.

One reason that the Psychopath’s lies are so dangerous, and in the end so damaging, is because they lie without conscience.  “Normal” people will feel guilty about telling lies. In fact, we rely on their guilt to give them away when they lie.  But the Psychopath feels no guilt, no remorse, not even a twinge of conscience.  They lie as naturally as they breath.  To compound the issue, they get a thrill – Anna Salter called it “duping delight” – out of telling lies.  They lie in order to fool people, and they fool people, not necessarily because it gains them any real advantage, but because they enjoy fooling people.  It is pleasant to get away with things, and we find narrow escapes to be especially pleasant.  And the Psychopath finds a special thrill in telling lies — lies that you will believe.

The Psychopath uses two things against you in order to tell his lies: first, your confidence in yourself, and secondly, your confidence in humanity.  He uses your confidence in yourself against you first.  You believe that you can detect a lie.  You believe that you know, that you can tell when someone is lying to you.  You know all the signs of lying.  But he knows all those same signs as well, and he has learned to tell his lies without any of the body language, facial expressions, stammering, watery eyes, dry mouth, and so forth that you believe always accompany a lie.  He tells very believable lies, and tells them in ways that are undetectable.  And often, he tells lies that would require you to question his integrity in order to discover the lies.  He knows that you don’t want to do that.  He understands that if he can persuade you that he is not lying, even that he wouldn’t lie, then he can persuade you of what he is saying.  That is the first thing.

The Psychopath also uses your expectations against you.  You expect people to  tell you the truth, especially adults.  Society doesn’t work very well if we can’t expect people to tell the truth about the little things in life.  We just naturally expect that people will tell us the truth.  We are naturally trusting and charitable, giving people the benefit of the doubt.  The Psychopath knows this too, and takes full advantage of it.

You should understand that the Psychopath is first and foremost a confidence man.  He cons for the fun of it.  He gets a special pleasure out of duping those around him.  And since that has become the main event for him, there are several things that a Psychopath will almost always do.  First, he will almost always work his way into the good graces of the key people in the church.  Psychopaths carefully cultivate their relationships with pastoral leadership, as well as with key people in the church. 

Psychopaths are betrayers.  I had a friend in college (we’ll call him Chad) who bragged that he had something on every person in the college, and that if anyone ever tried to “turn him in,” he would unload the truck on them.  I saw him do it, too.  These were not empty words.  His “best friend” (and the reader should understand that a Psychopath doesn’t ever have a ‘best’ friend) happened to mention some concerns about him during a reference interview.  “Chad” did not get the job.  But in return, he did succeed in damaging that so-called ‘best friend’s’ reputation.  Chad told me later, and I now know that he intended for me to get the message as well, that if he goes down, he is taking everyone with him.  I watched him set people up, so that he could get dirt on them.  We picked up a friend from work to give him a ride home, and on the way home, Chad turned on some music that would get us all in trouble if we were caught.  If Chad could get our friend (and me) to listen without protest, then he had us.  As I think back now, Chad was setting me up as well.  We worked in the same place, and one day at the beginning of work, he asked me to turn on one of the TV’s in the shop for him.  When I turned it on, a pornagraphic video was playing… He of course had no idea how that happened.  And since our boss bragged about watching that sort of thing, Chad speculated that it must have been left on when the boss left the shop.  I think I know better now.  Chad always had something on you, but he always wanted something more. 

I haven’t seen or heard from Chad in many years, but I have no doubt that he has impressed many people, that he has made many very loyal friends, and that he has destroyed many lives.  And, quite possibly, churches too.

You see, Psychopaths cultivate very loyal followings on purpose.  At the end of the day, when the chickens come home to roost, and the piper comes around to collect his pay, the Psychopath must ensure that he wins the day.  He betrays whomever he must in order to come out ahead.  I saw a bumper sticker on a very nice convertible recently.  It said, “As a matter of fact, it is all about me.”  That is the Psychopath’s motto.  The Psychopath has just one loyalty, and that is to himself. 

The Psychopath’s gregariousness makes him easy to like, and hard not to trust implicitely.  What most people don’t understand is that this is a part of the game for him.  You are not a person or even a friend.  You are a challenge.  You are an opportunity.  You are a conquest, a competitor.  He wants a concession out of you.  Any small concession will do.  But he wants one.  And when he gets that concession, he knows that he can win with you.  You might consider that a strange way to look at friendship.  You are honest and straightforward, and when you extend yourself to someone, it is out of an honest desire to be a friend, to help that person, to be a blessing.  But not so with the Psychopath.  He will seem very genuine in all that he does, and from the surface, you really can’t see a difference in him.  But in reality, beneath all the kindness and sympathy, is a desire to prevail.  He wants you to trust him.  That is important.  The rest is only possible when he gains a little of your trust.

In her book Predators, Pedophiles, Rapists, & Other Sex Offenders, Anna Salter makes a comparison between the Psychopath’s approach to life and friendship and the way a football player approaches a football game.   The opposing quarterback doesn’t feel bad that he tricked the defense.  That was his purpose.  When he scores, whether it is a five yard gain, a first down, or a touchdown, he accomplished his purpose, and this is a delight for him.  Most people don’t think this way, which is why they are so vulnerable to the onslaughts of a Psychopath.  For the most part, we want to do our part to help, and so we don’t view life as a competition.  We want to be a friend.  But to the Psychopath, life is all about competing and winning.  Friendship isn’t about friendship, it is about gaining the advantage.

When the Psychopath’s ways begin to catch up with him, that is when the real danger begins.  I doubt that there is any real research on this, but I would speculate that the majority of “church splits” have a Psychopath somewhere in the mix, probably as the ringleader, although never apparantly so.  And why is his leadership not always apparant?  One reason is that if the Psychopath can stir up the hot-heads in the church, then he doesn’t have to stick his own beloved neck out.  He can sit back, watch to see where the chips fall, and then take sides with the winners.  Anytime that the Psychopath can avoid exposure, he will.  He is the one who will play both sides of the fence as necessary.  The Pastor might even believe that the Psychopath is on his side, and at the same time, the opposition might also believe this same person to be on their side.  He will keep it that way as long as necessary. 

Dealing with the Psychopath: A Prescription

In dealing with a Psychopath, it is absolutely essential that the Pastor and the church follow Scripture scrupulously, and that they conduct themselves with true Christian maturity.  The Psychopath relies on the emotional aspects of friendship to win the day for him.  We had a Psychopath in our church a number of years ago.  I was amazed to find that even though church members knew what he had done — and he had done some truly horrible things — they still took his side and felt that the church was mistreating him.  Emotion won the day with those people.  But we must understand that the Psychopath expects this.  He preys on the emotions of people. 

This is why I stress the importance of dealing with such things in Christian maturity.  When a church exposes sin and disciplines that sin according to Scripture, it is not because that church dislikes the person.  For one thing, finding a church that will actually practice church discipline according to the Word of God is a challenge.  Not many churches still do what God says in this.  Churches don’t practice Scriptural church discipline in order to win friends and influence people.  You won’t find a chapter in the hottest new Church Growth Handbook entitled “Faithful Church Discipline.”  When a church deals with sin publicly in accordance with Scripture, it is a painful thing.  Mature Christians understand this. 

But that won’t keep the Psychopath from attempting to cloud the waters and stir up the mud from the bottom.  Having been through this sort of thing, the best recommendation that can be offered is for churches to teach through the passages on church discipline during the times when none is needed.  And a second recommendation would be to faithfully preach God’s Word — every part of it, so that your people will be accustomed to having the Bible dictate what our response should be. 

Probably the biggest difficulty in dealing with the Psychopath comes, not in exposing and rebuking the sin, but in how to deal with his repentance.  Pastors and churches must understand that in dealing with a Psychopath, you are dealing with a different kind of sinner.  I say that cautiously.  A sinner is a sinner is a sinner, as we all know.  And yet, in dealing with sinners, we still have a set of expectations about how they will respond to rebuke.  A hardened sinner will rebuff the rebuke and will continue in his sin.  That kind of sinner makes discipline very cut-and-dried.  A weak-willed sinner will repent and be genuinely sorry, but will slip and fall later.  In his case, patience will be necessary, along with a good accountablity program.  Some sinners, when rebuked, will repent and will return to that sin no more.  These are the cases that every pastor wishes were the rule rather than the exception. 

But the Psychopath does something that we might not have expected.  The Psychopath repents.  He repents immediately — as quickly as he is caught.  He repents in sackcloth and ashes.  And he doesn’t mean a word of it.  Not one of his tears comes from a sincere heart.  Repentence for him is a part of the game, and he delights in duping the pastor and church leadership once again. 

And that gives the godly pastor his greatest challenge.  He sees the Biblical commands to “restore such an one in the spirit of meekness.”  He understands that if his neighbor trespasses against him 70 times in a day, he is to forgive him 70 times that day.  But what do we do with the man who openly repents, and his repentence is an intentional lie? What then?

A Pastor-friend of mine contacted me a few years ago.  A man in his church was having an affair.  The Pastor rebuked the man and demanded that he separate from the woman.  At first the man refused, and the Pastor began the proceedings for church discipline.  At the last moment, the man called my Pastor friend to tell him that he had repented, and that he wanted to meet with the Pastor and deacons.  The Pastor and deacons drove over to his house and met with the man.  In tears, the man told the Pastor that he had sinned against God and against the church, told them how sorry he was, cried and sobbed and asked them to pray for him and help him.  The man told his Pastor and Deacons that he had separated from the woman, and promised to cut off all contact with her.  This Pastor prayed with the man, laid out the terms of discipline, and rejoiced as he departed.

Two weeks later, the woman called my Pastor friend and told him that on the night when this man was crying and confessing and repenting and forsaking, during all the time that he was doing this, that she had been at the house the entire time.  This man, the adulterer, had his cell phone turned on in his shirt pocket, and the woman sat in the back yard listening to the entire conversation.  When my Pastor friend and the deacons left the house, this woman confessed that she came back in the house and spent the night with this man once again before finally separating.

My Pastor friend wanted to know what he should do.  When he confronted the man about the lies he told, he immedietely acknowledged that he had in fact done this, and that it was wrong, and once again begged for forgiveness.  So, what now? 

We need to understand the difference between genuine, godly sorrrow that works repentance, and the sorrow of the world that works death.  And one of the first things we need to understand is that the sorrow of the world is not repentance at all, though it often masquerades as repentence.  True repentence can be identified easily enough — it is marked by a full and uncoerced confession of sin, by a volunteering of information that would not and sometimes could not be known otherwise.  The man who is truly repentent wants to come clean.  When a man only tells what he cannot escape telling, when he conceals what information he can conceal until he is forced to confess it, when he withholds information in order to enable himself to continue in his sin, that man is not truly repentent. 

In cases where there is not genuine repentence, the church has full authority to pursue discipline.  In the case of the Psychopath, the church must understand that they will be required to pursue that discipline in the face of withering opposition and vehement protests.  But they must remain firm.  The Bible has another name for the Psychopath.  The Bible calls it a “reprobate mind.”  The church cannot afford to keep such a person.

The Psychopath has the ability to destroy a church.  And in cases when the Psychopath fails to destroy the church, he will always leave a scar.  In order to deal with such a man, the church and particularly the Pastor will need a godly resolve, a fortitude, and a courageous spirit.  May God grant us discernment, wisdom, and boldness in such cases.

As anyone knows, we aren’t Hyles fans here.  But I think Jack Hyles, and while we’re at it, Jack Schaap, are owed an apology.   Don’t get me wrong—Hyles and Schaap deserve  criticism.  They merit the exposure of their errors and have earned the censures they have received.

So why the apology?  The denunciation of Hyles and Schaap should proceed from their false doctrine and practice, their violations of God’s Word.   The reprimands of them or anyone else should not arise from some personal distaste.   We want to protect and propagate the truth out of love for God.  When we desire for God to be honored, then the personalities are irrelevant.   We are honest critics, ready to point the error where we see it.   If we’re not going to be consistent in this, then we should apologize to Hyles and Schaap.    We weren’t doing it for the right reason—it was only personal.

Where men have excoriated Hyles and Schaap, they have remained comparably silent on others with the same doctrinal or practical error.  And I mean in the doctrine or principle behind the negativity over Hyles and Schaap.  In this way, Hyles and Schaap have become the whipping boys for those who don’t seem to have a problem with the actual false doctrine or practice when it is practiced by other men.  This rings of hypocrisy, one that no doubt God can see.

We’re either against a false belief and practice or we are not.   The identity of the person who holds the distortion shouldn’t matter.  So what are the practices of other fundamentalists and evangelicals that parallel those of Hyles and Schaap?

1.  DEPENDENCE ON AND ACCOMMODATION TO THE WISDOM OF MEN FOR CHURCH GROWTH

In 1 Corinthians 1, the Apostle Paul writes in v. 22 that the “Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom.”   Wrong church growth methodology starts with an evaluation of what unsaved people want.  Paul took the opposite tack.  He gave to the Jews what was to them a “stumblingblock” and what was to the Greeks “foolishness” (v. 23).   He just preached the gospel to them.   He didn’t want the growth of the church to stand in the “wisdom of men,” but in the “wisdom of God,” which was “to them that perish foolishness” (v. 18).  Why?  “That no flesh should glory in his presence” (v. 29).   “He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord” (v. 31).  Men get the glory through the modernistic church growth methods.

Hyles pioneered many of the modern methods of church growth.   A primary strategy of his at First Baptist Church in Hammond was to offer a particular demographic (children) an attraction for church attendance (small toys, candy, soda pop).    The incitement to attend church would fit only the specific demographic, not another one (elderly, middle aged adults, etc.).   Hyles targeted a special group with an appropriate seduction.  Because of the success at increasing attendance, this method was imitated by many.   The Jews required a sign, Greeks wisdom, and children temporary excitement.  Rather than avoiding this wisdom of men, Hyles accentuated it.  Schaap continues it.   This technique directly violates 1 Corinthians 1:18-2:16.

But is it only Hyles?  Consider these recent statements on SharperIron, a fundamentalist forum, by fundamentalist leader Stephen Davis from Calvary Baptist in Lansdale, PA in an article entitled “Planting Urban Churches”:

Church planting involves numerous details such as strategy, demographic studies, . . .

You might be surprised at how many people think that new churches should dance to the same tune as churches which have existed for decades with their well-established traditions. The traditions are not necessarily wrong but may be unnecessary barriers in planting an urban church among those unacquainted with those traditions.

You might need to ask them to be open to different forms of worship, a different leadership style, a different philosophy of ministry, and a different way of living out practical Christianity.

Davis encourages young fundamentalists planting churches to accommodate the urban culture to enhance evangelistic efforts, just to be careful not to be too offensive to mother churches who practice something more “traditional.”  A huge emphasis of the article is this decision for the church planter to cater to the way of life of the inner city lost.

The founder of SharperIron, Jason Janz, chronicled the “launch” of his church in downtown Denver with these words:

At the end of the meeting, we passed out a white envelope to everyone in attendance, and inside it was the balance of our checking account: $1,500. We gave every person $30 cash and asked him to find a person in need and give him the money. As clear as day, God said to me that we should do it again.

I walked into staff meeting on Thursday morning and explained the direction God had placed on my heart. I thought we should do the reverse offering again and give every attendee $10. They all agreed that we should do it in spite of the fact that we only had $2,500 in our checking account and the knowledge that we could have 250 people in attendance.

“God said to” Janz that they should do it again.  This is the very kind of statement that Hyles often used to justify some evangelistic method that he used.

In the last year many fundamentalists expressed outrage over statements criticizing Calvinism by a pastor in a regional Fundamental Baptist Fellowship (FBFI) meeting.  The blog world burned up with articles and comments.  Shortly thereafter, the national meeting of the FBFI titled their corresponding children’s program, “When I grow up, I want to be a fundamentalist.” This as well fired up young fundamentalists. And yet there hasn’t been a peep about the Hyles-like philosophy represented by Davis and Janz from fundamentalists.

And conservative evangelicals?  Or even a conservative evangelical who is the hero of fundamentalists and evangelicals, John Piper?  Piper was in a conference this last year in Cleveland, OH and he answered a question about evangelical pastor Mark Driscoll, and in his answer he said these exact words, imparting his own belief and philosophy about evangelism:

These are weird people comin’ to his church . . . look at this . . . they wouldn’t come to hear me for anything.  They wouldn’t go to my church, but they’ll go to his church.  I’m cuttin’ him a lot of slack because of the mission.  It’s kind of a both/and for me.  You don’t need to go as far as you’ve gone sometime with your language, but I understand what you’re doing missiologically there and I have a lot of sympathy for, because I like to see those people saved.

Mark Driscoll does things in the way of coarse language and other strategies, completely detached from scripture and the Holy Spirit, that make him effective at seeing people saved.  John Piper believes this.

If the fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals are not going to scrutinize and denounce other fundamentalists and evangelicals, then they should just apologize to Jack Hyles and Jack Schaap.  They don’t really care about these false doctrines and practices.  I don’t know what it is, but they’ve got some other agenda.

Yes, we do.  We’ve got inner connectors too.  You know, like sinews and stuff.  We’ve got our tendons stretched and our ligaments relaxed.  Our joints and marrow are holding up fine, thank you.  We’re all connected, and we’re staying connected.

We’ve got other connections too.

Its not what you know, its who.

We’ve got connections just like you.

And that is so true.  Thank you.

We see similarities where others don’t want to.  We see comparisons that others ignore.  Get out your special connector glasses, and you might see them too.  Invisible lines that are quite visible.  Invisible ties that bind and gag.  Conspiracy 101.  Black helicopters circling people.  Watching crop circles.  Drives you nuts.  Drives us nuts too.  But we’ll tell you what we’re seeing from the Eye in the Sky.  Watch closely now, the similarities are only obvious when you pay attention.  And we’ve been paying Attention — payday is bi-monthly.

What do Hylots have in common with BoJo’s?  What do Sharpie’s have in common with Hylots?  How about EV’s?  We think there is an answer.  You might not agree.  We’ll give it a shot.  All month in September.

In a fallen world, disciplinary matters are rarely neat and tidy, or easy to navigate through.  Most of the time, when we are dealing with sin, we find ourselves shoveling through some pretty large piles of scat in order to get to the bottom of things.  Occassionally, those under investigation will decide to be honest and forthright, understanding the gravity of their sin and the necessity of genuine repentance.  I say occassionally — I don’t have any statistics to back that up.  “Rarely” might be the better word.  Certainly the word “usually” would not be the case.  When men sin, they want to hide it.  There are plenty of reasons for this, but those reasons lie beyond the scope of this brief foray into Scriptural Church Discipline, so we will leave that alone for the time being.

By all appearances, Eddie‡ was a faithful father, husband, and church member.  He was a gifted businessman as well, and a generous filler of offering plates in his local church.  Eddie seemed to addict himself to the ministry, and was a faithful witness both through the ministries of the church and in his workplace.  From all appearances, Eddie genuinely loved his pastor , his church, and the ministries that he was involved in. 

So, it was a great surprise to Eddie’s pastor when, one day, Eddie’s wife Carol called in tears, and accused Eddie of having an affair.  Pastor Flint immediately set up a meeting with Carol, and then called his wife and asked her to come right over to the church office.  What Carol described to Pastor and Mrs. Flint in that meeting was beyond belief for Pastor Flint.  After all, he had known and even become close friends with Eddie.  Or at least, he thought of Eddie as a close friend.  He thought he knew Eddie — if the pastor knew anyone in the church, he thought he knew Eddie.  Could these things be true?  If they were, then Pastor Flint realized that he never really knew Eddie at all, that Eddie had been living a lie.  Could that be?

Pastor Flint considered himself a pretty good judge of character.  He figured that, all things being equal, he would be able to tell if Eddie was lying to him.  So, after the meeting, Pastor Flint asked Carol to allow him time to meet with Eddie before she said anything to him.  Before Pastor Flint left his office that afternoon, he put in a call to Eddie, and fifteen minutes later, Eddie showed up at the pastor’s office alone. 

An hour later when Eddie left, Pastor Flint was not sure what to think.  Eddie had denied any wrongdoing whatsoever, and had done so in convincing fashion.  And yet, Carol had been just as convincing in her accusation.  Certainly, her tears were genuine.  The details that she had given as evidence were certainly damning.  But Eddie had an answer for every detail.  And Eddie’s denials seemed to be just as genuine as Carol’s charges.

Before Eddie left the office, Pastor Flint insisted on setting up counselling sessions for the two.  Eddie agreed gladly.  “If it’ll help restore my marriage, I’m all for it,” he said. 

And so, the very next night, Pastor Flint found himself sitting in the office once again, this time with Carol and Eddie together.  Once again, Carol was open and adamant with her accusations, and Eddie was equally adamant in his denials.  Carol even brought up things that Eddie had told her not to bring up in front of pastor.  But once again, Eddie had a legitimate explanation for everything. 

After the meeting, Pastor Flint spent some time in prayer, and then decided that, lacking evidence, the best course of action would be to probe the root of the problem between Eddie and Carol.  For the next two months, Pastor and Mrs. Flint met with Eddie and Carol on a weekly basis.  Sometimes, Pastor Flint kept the couple together in order to deal with a particular issue.  Other times, Mrs. Flint took Carol in one office while Pastor Flint met with Eddie in another office.  After each meeting, Pastor and Mrs. Flint would compare notes and discuss what they were finding.  But these meetings got them nowhere.  And both Pastor and Mrs. Flint began to get a nagging suspicion — Carol was right. 

But they had no proof.  No matter how incriminating the charges seemed to be from Carol, Eddie seemed to always have an answer, and that answer always seemed sufficient.  Pastor Flint wondered what to do.  Short of hiring a Private Investigator, something that he felt was unthinkable when it came to a member of his own church, Pastor Flint could find nothing else to do. 

Then late one night, or more accurately early one morning, at about 2 a.m. to be exact, Pastor Flint’s phone rang.  It was Carol.  “Pastor Flint, I have the proof I need.  I have been going through my husband’s phone records, and there is a phone number on here a number of times — a phone number that I don’t recognize.  That is the woman he is having the affair with.  I’m sure of it.  I even called the number, and a woman answered.” 

It took Pastor Flint a moment or two to gather his senses about himself, and when he did, he asked Carol if she had asked the woman for her name.  She hadn’t.  He asked Carol if she had asked the woman about Eddie.  She hadn’t.  “But I think you need to ask Eddie about this.”  Pastor Flint agreed.  He promised to talk to Eddie about it.  In the morning.  After the sun came up in the morning, that is.

And true to his word, Pastor Flint called Eddie first thing the next morning.  Eddie apologized for his wife’s behavior, and told the pastor that he had been disputing that phone bill with the phone company for a couple of weeks.  He did not know who the phone number belonged to, he said, nor had he ever called that number even once.  Once again, Pastor Flint asked Eddie the question that he had asked over and over before.  “Are you having an affair with any woman, either physically or emotionally, or are you fantasizing about any woman other than your wife?” 

And, like all the other times before, Eddie once again gave a straightforward answer: “no.” 

Break Through

That day, when Pastor Flint arrived at his office, he told his secretary that he was not to be disturbed.  Then, he went into his office, shut the door, got down on his knees and began to pray.  From eight in the morning until well past noon, Pastor Flint prayed and asked God what to do.  He asked God to reveal what was going on.  He asked God to make His perfect will known.  He sought direction.  He sought deliverance from this awful thing.  He poured out his heart to God in prayer . 

Finally that afternoon around three or four o’clock, Pastor Flint began to get some direction.  But what came to mind seemed troubling.  The answer that seemed to be coming to the pastor was this, “Have Eddie swear an oath in the name of God that he is telling the truth.” 

Pastor Flint wrestled with this idea for some time.  Is it Scriptural?  The first passage that came to mind was Matthew 5:33-37.  The Bible says,

Again, ye have heard that it hath been said by them of old time, Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths:  But I say unto you, Swear not at all; neither by heaven; for it is God’s throne:  Nor by the earth; for it is his footstool: neither by Jerusalem; for it is the city of the great King.  Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because thou canst not make one hair white or black.  But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.

Was the Bible here forbidding the swearing of oaths in all cases?  If so, that would mean that it would be wrong, in a court of law for instance, to hold up the right hand and solemnly swear to tell “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God.”  If this passage forbid swearing in every case, then wedding vows would be wrong as well. 

We subject our practices to the Bible, and not the other way around.  If this passage forbid swearing at all, then it would be unlawful for the Christian to swear an oath at any time.  Pastor Flint dug a little deeper.  Christ is speaking here about telling the truth, about the value that we should place on our word.  In order to be telling the truth, it should not be necessary for us to swear out an oath.  We should tell the truth, and perform all our vows, and it should never be required for us to swear out an oath in order for us to tell the truth. 

But the fact that it should not be necessary does not mean that swearing an oath is never necessary.  Nor does it mean that swearing an oath is unlawful.  It simply means that we should always tell the truth, even without swearing “on a stack of Bibles.”  Pastor Flint continued to dig deeper in the Word.

God swears oaths in order to confirm the seriousness of His own Word (Deut 7:8; 29:12-15ff; I Chr 16:16; Ps 105:9; Acts 2:30; Heb 6:16-18).  We are told in Scripture of cases when men lawfully swore an oath in order to confirm the seriousness of their word.  In fact, Numbers 30 gives us God’s laws concerning these sorts of vows.  And the first thing we notice is that “If a man vow a vow unto the LORD, or swear an oath to bind his soul with a bond; he shall not break his word, he shall do according to all that proceedeth out of his mouth.”  These kinds of oaths are especially binding. 

Furthermore, Deuteronomy 23 teaches us that there is no sin in choosing not to vow, but if we vow a vow, we are bound by it… “When thou shalt vow a vow unto the LORD thy God, thou shalt not slack to pay it: for the LORD thy God will surely require it of thee; and it would be sin in thee.  But if thou shalt forbear to vow, it shall be no sin in thee.” 

Pastor Flint studied further.  He began to understand that there are times when swearing an oath is lawful.    In fact, he was amazed to discover that God actually intended for the swearing of an oath to be used in cases where a lack of evidence would prevent the commission of justice.  For instance, Exodus 22:8-11 taught that the accused should take an oath of the Lord in order to reinforce his claim he is not guilty of the crime that he has been charged with.  And if the defendent takes that vow, his vow is to be accepted as true.

Pastor Flint began to feel a sense of direction.  In prayer, God began to direct his steps. As he searched further, Pastor Flint discovered that the Bible prescribed the swearing of an oath in cases where a spouse is overcome of the spirit of jealousy.  The Bible says in Numbers 5,

Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, If any man’s wife go aside, and commit a trespass against him, And a man lie with her carnally, and it be hid from the eyes of her husband, and be kept close, and she be defiled, and there be no witness against her, neither she be taken with the manner; And the spirit of jealousy come upon him, and he be jealous of his wife, and she be defiled: or if the spirit of jealousy come upon him, and he be jealous of his wife, and she be not defiled: Then shall the man bring his wife unto the priest, and he shall bring her offering for her, the tenth part of an ephah of barley meal; he shall pour no oil upon it, nor put frankincense thereon; for it is an offering of jealousy, an offering of memorial, bringing iniquity to remembrance. And the priest shall bring her near, and set her before the LORD: And the priest shall take holy water in an earthen vessel; and of the dust that is in the floor of the tabernacle the priest shall take, and put it into the water: And the priest shall set the woman before the LORD, and uncover the woman’s head, and put the offering of memorial in her hands, which is the jealousy offering: and the priest shall have in his hand the bitter water that causeth the curse: And the priest shall charge her by an oath, and say unto the woman, If no man have lain with thee, and if thou hast not gone aside to uncleanness with another instead of thy husband, be thou free from this bitter water that causeth the curse: But if thou hast gone aside to another instead of thy husband, and if thou be defiled, and some man have lain with thee beside thine husband: Then the priest shall charge the woman with an oath of cursing, and the priest shall say unto the woman, The LORD make thee a curse and an oath among thy people, when the LORD doth make thy thigh to rot, and thy belly to swell; And this water that causeth the curse shall go into thy bowels, to make thy belly to swell, and thy thigh to rot: And the woman shall say, Amen, amen.  And the priest shall write these curses in a book, and he shall blot them out with the bitter water:

This is the law of jealousies, when a wife goeth aside to another instead of her husband, and is defiled; Or when the spirit of jealousy cometh upon him, and he be jealous over his wife, and shall set the woman before the LORD, and the priest shall execute upon her all this law.  Then shall the man be guiltless from iniquity, and this woman shall bear her iniquity.

Pastor Flint thought about this passage and prayed over it for a long time.  ”Lord, is this the answer?”  As he thought about what he was reading here, one thing became very clear — God takes these charges very seriously.  In matters of jealousy, the jealousy is not to be ignored.  

Pastor Flint began to understand that in these sorts of cases, the wife or husband is not to be told simply to “get over it.”  Rather, the accused spouse should be required to swear out an oath in the name of God that they have not sinned against their wife through infidelity.  If the accused will take this oath, then the accuser is to accept it as fact. 

Pastor Flint searched further.  Wouldn’t it be easy for the accused spouse to simply lie?  Certainly, in a human sense.  But as he understood the Bible, the man who swore out his oath was appealing to God as his witness.  In other words, all parties involved would be appealing to God by faith, to expose the truth.  If the accused was guilty, but swore an oath of innocence, then as surely as God is in the heavens, that lie would be exposed.  And if the accused really was innocent, then God would make that clear as well.

When Pastor Flint had finished his study, that inexplicable peace of God settled over him.  And along with that peace came a resolve to pursue the issue to the end.  First, he called together the deacons, and then he asked Eddie and Carol to come and join them.  The pastor explained the gravity of the issue to all those involved .  He then presented the charges that Carol had made against her husband, and asked her if she still stood by those charges.  When she confirmed it, the Pastor then led the deacons in prayer, asking God to oversee the proceedings of the meeting.  When he had finished this, Pastor Flint took out his Bible and explained what he had found in Scripture on how to resolve this issue.  He gave the deacons, along with Carol and Eddie, time to ask any questions that they had.

When the issue was clear, and the solution apparent, Pastor Flint then turned to Eddie.  “Eddie, you have been charged with a very serious crime – the crime of infidelity towards your wife.  Do you swear in the name of God that you have been and are now faithful to your wife, that you are innocent of her charges of infidelity?”

God’s Solution

The question was raised, “If the original offense is denied by the accused, and if when the 2nd confrontation occurs the accused still denies that anything took place, and the two or three witnesses to the confrontation are unable to gather enough facts to determine the case one way or the other, what then?”

I believe that the Biblical answer is this — to require the accused to swear out an oath in the name of God that they are innocent of the charge.  I believe that the church has sufficient warrant to require such a thing, and that a refusal to swear out the oath should be considered an admission of guilt.  And furthermore, if the accused swears out his oath and continues to deny the allegations, then I believe that the church is duty-bound to accept this denial until such time as God reveals otherwise.  In other words, we leave the matter in the hands of the Righteous Judge, who already knows the answer.  He will reveal the truth in such cases. 

‡ All names are ficticious.

John Bunyan, the author of Pilgrim’s Progress, wrote:

The fountain of Christ

I ever will sing;
The blood of our Priest,

Our crucified King;
Which perfectly cleanses

From sin, and from filth;
And richly dispenses

Salvation and health.

This fountain from guilt

Not only makes pure,
And gives, soon as felt,

Infallible cure;
But if guilt removed

Return and remain,
Its pow’r may be proved

Again and again.

The things that Bunyan says in this poem are things that John MacArthur won’t say about the blood.  Somebody’s wrong.  I’m saying it’s MacArthur.  The blood of Christ is a fountain.  The blood of Christ has power.  None of these are new ideas, novel inventions of modern theology.  They are old.  Actually they’re Bible.  And I’ll talk more about that.

By the way, it might seem like I’m picking on MacArthur and that I do that a lot.  And that my “attacks” on him are the equivalent of a chihuaha jumping up to nip at a passing elephant.  So they’re funny!  There are guys a lot worse for me to target.  OK.  But MacArthur is the bridge to the badder guys.  He often crosses the same line, just not as far as some of them.   Many men who will never be seduced by those worse than MacArthur, will be lured by him.  I understand that it would be a good thing if some on the left would move MacArthur’s direction, but I don’t see that happening.  If anything occurs, those to the right shift MacArthur’s way.  That’s a big part of his following.

What’s somewhat confusing about MacArthur is that he makes true statements about the blood.  However, when you read him carefully, you see that he never has the blood of Christ actually doing anything except one thing, that is, fulfilling the Old Testament types of a bloody, violent death.  He says the death of Christ needed to be bloody, oh yes, but it never does anything itself.  I don’t see how anyone could take that position without some outside influences.  On 1 John 1:7, in his reference Bible, MacArthur says nothing about the blood.  He says nothing about the blood there in Revelation 1:5.    On Revelation 7:14, he writes:  “This refers to the atoning sacrifice of Christ.”  In 1 Peter 1:18-19, he amazingly says nothing about the blood of Christ.   Regarding Hebrews 9:12, he says, “A better translation would be ‘through His own blood.’”  For Hebrews 9:14, concerning “the blood of Christ,” he comments:

This is an expression that refers not simply to the fluid, but the whole atoning sacrificial work of Christ in His death.  Blood is used as a substitute word for death.

That’s it for that verse.  He does the same kind of thing everywhere.  In reading for this, I found a few places where MacArthur may have slipped up.  He said something that was different than he has said he believed.  When he preached Hebrews 9:1-14 in 1972, in commenting on the sprinkled blood of Christ purging us from a sinful conscience, MacArthur said:

Boy, Christian, you need to realize that.  You need to realize that.  It’ll…it may clean up your life a little bit.  You live in the throne room of God, spiritually speaking.  Jesus has taken us in.  He not only went in and sprinkled some blood for us, but He hauled us in with Him.  And He says you can stay forever.  That’s the sanctuary that He ministers in.

He doesn’t elaborate on this at all.     And then consider this line of exposition on Revelation 7:14 from a sermon in 1993:

[T]hese are white robes because they have been washed and they have been made dazzling, leukon, and they have been washed and made dazzling by what detergent?  The blood of the Lamb. . . . [H]ere is a paradox, a precious paradoxical truth.  Blood doesn’t stain, blood cleanses every stain.  The divine detergent removes sin all together.  This wonderful theme of the blood of the Lamb is not new to the book of Revelation. . . .  The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin.

He was extremely careful to say the opposite in the audio that I embedded in part one and in much of what he has written.  The way he has written in the two above quotes says the exact opposite of what he says when he instructs in his doctrine of the blood of Christ.

It is difficult to understand how MacArthur comes to his position.  I don’t deny that the term “blood” can be used as a metonym.  However, its usage in the New Testament in many cases doesn’t read as a synonym or metonym.   MacArthur doesn’t prove that “blood” means “death,” unless you believe that a couple of straw man arguments count.  I can’t assume he’s being stubborn.  I’ve got to believe that he means what he is saying.  With that in mind, I do believe that it is possible that MacArthur was influenced by the teachings of the late R. B. Thieme, oft published author and long time pastor of the Church in Houston, Texas (R. L. Hymers develops this idea here).

By the words that he says and the tone of his voice, MacArthur sounds very upset about the criticism he receives on this issue.  However, the things that he says are not compatible with New Testament teaching.  Scripture reads as though the blood itself is doing something, not just performing as a synonym.  Let me explain how I see it.

What Scripture Says the Blood Does

As I have explained God’s plan of salvation to my own children, here is what I have said to them about the blood of Jesus.  I’ve said that Jesus did two things.  He died for us on the cross and He shed His blood for us.  I have said that through His death He paid the penalty of our sin by substituting for us sinners.  I have also said that His shed blood washes away our sin.  I’ve told them that sin stains us, corrupts us, spiritually, so Jesus’ blood cleanses away our sins spiritually.  I explain to them that we don’t know how His blood does this, but that it does.  How do we know?  Because the Bible tells us.

But MacArthur might contend that the “fluid” doesn’t do anything or that no priest carried Jesus’ blood in a bowl to heaven.  So what?  Who is saying that?  Let’s just stick with what the Bible says and rejoice in it.   None of us can fully explain how Jesus could die for everyone, but He did.  We just accept it.   We accept that Jesus’ blood not only washed away all our sins in the past, but all of them in the present and the future too.  This is more than atonement.  Jesus’ blood takes away all of our sins and keeps taking away our sins.  This is one reason why we willingly confess our sins (1 John 1:9), because as we walk in the light, the blood of Jesus is washing away all of our sins (1 John 1:7).

MacArthur says that we shouldn’t get caught up in the “bizarre notion” that there is some kind of saving efficacy in the actual blood of Jesus.  Why not?  We can believe that the physical body of Jesus had something to do with our salvation.  That is why we partake of the bread and the cup.  Those symbols are not signifying a spiritual death (as R. B. Thieme taught and his doctrinal statement still reads) or a spiritual blood, but actual body and blood.

I don’t know how it is that the blood of Jesus gets applied to me, but it is different than what is only human blood or else why would Peter describe it as “incorruptible” and “precious” (1 Peter 1:18ff).  What makes it precious?  And how is it incorruptible?  Certainly human blood is corruptible, that is, it perishes, decays, rots.  Christ’s blood is the opposite of that.  The exact Greek term translated corruptible relates to “decay” and “rot.”  It’s not like silver and gold that is temporal, the price paid to redeem a slave in the Old Testament.  The blood of Christ is much more.   There is life in the blood (Leviticus 17:11).  In this case the life of Christ, which is Divine and eternal.  Through the Spirit of God the physical blood of Christ has within it a spiritual dimension that cleanses from sin.

MacArthur says that “incorruptible” simply communicates the value of Christ’s blood, nothing about its lack of decay.  Silver and gold is worth a lot and it can’t redeem, but His blood is worth eternal value.  He makes the point that blood is of tremendous worth or cost.  That’s not how it reads, especially in light of the later idea in 1 Peter 1 of things that perish.  The blood of Christ has an eternal quality that is different than the temporal quality of gold and silver, even though they are thought to be supremely long lasting by men’s standards.  The blood of Jesus can be trusted for its longevity even as God’s Word can be trusted in such fashion (1 Peter 1:23-25).

There is a relationship between the physical and the spiritual.  God is a Spirit, but He created a physical universe with spoken word.  Words, which are inanimate, made animate things out of nothing.  We use our physical body to commit deeds that are spiritually corrupt.  Sin, something spiritual, resides in our physical bodies (Romans 1:20-21).  We can yield our physical bodies to God, a Spirit, and glorify Him in our bodies (1 Corinthians 6:19-20; Romans 6:12-13).

There seems to be a bit of the influence of docetism in MacArthur’s thinking on this.  He talks down the place of Jesus’ physical blood in the cleansing from sin, as if the body and blood of Jesus were not able to participate in His eternal works.   1 Peter2:24 says that Jesus “bare our sins in his own body on the tree.”  Is this too a synonym for death?  Jesus conducted something saving with His body that a mere man could not have performed.  Docetism comes, I believe, from doubt.  Docetistic people won’t just accept what the Bible says about Jesus—they have a few “scholarly” presuppositions that won’t allow them to give in to statements that communicate the miraculous nature of our salvation.  Instead of saying “miraculous,” someone like MacArthur will say “magical property” in a mocking way.  Well, was there a “magical property” to Jesus’ body that allowed Him to bear all our sins in His body?

There was something miraculous about Jesus’ body.  His body was conceived in Mary’s womb by the Holy Spirit (Matthew 1:20).  Before Jesus was born, He had a body prepared for Him by God the Father (Hebrews 10:5).  I agree with the Trinitarian statement of the council of Chalcedon (451), but that doesn’t stop me from believing that there was an aspect to Christ’s blood that could do the spiritual work of cleansing sin in conjunction with His death on the cross.

What Have Men Said?

Charles Hodge in his Systematic Theology writes (p. 395):

Such being the Scriptural doctrine concerning the person of Christ, it follows that although the divine nature is immutable and impassible, and therefore neither the obedience nor the suffering of Christ was the obedience or suffering of the divine nature, yet they were none the less the obedience and suffering of a divine person. The soul of man cannot be wounded or burnt, but when the body is injured it is the man who suffers. In like manner the obedience of Christ was the righteousness of God, and the blood of Christ was the blood of God. It is to this fact that the infinite merit and efficiency of his work are due. This is distinctly asserted in the Scriptures. It is impossible, says the Apostle, that the blood of bulls and of goats could take away sin. It was because Christ was possessed of an eternal Spirit that He by the one offering of Himself hath perfected forever them who are sanctified. This is the main idea insisted upon in the Epistle to the Hebrews. This is the reason given why the sacrifice of Christ need never be repeated, and why it is infinitely more efficacious than those of the old dispensation. This truth has been graven on the hearts of believers in all ages. Every such believer says from his heart, “Jesus, my God, thy blood alone has power sufficient to atone.”

C. H. Spurgeon said (recorded in The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit:  Sermons, parts 417-42):

Poor creatures have even gone the length of doubting the power of the Hood of Jesus to cleanse them. If you talk so, I must put my hand on your mouth ; you must not say another word of that sort. Is it not enough that you have bespattered yourself with sin ? Must you now asperse your Saviour?  Will you trample on the blood of Christ ?  Will you deny its cleansing power ?  As he was God as well as man, our Lord’s sacrifice has an infinite virtue in it, and we cannot endure that you, guilty as you are, should add to all your former crimes this highest and most ungenerous iniquity of charging the blood of Christ with a want of cleansing power. Will you give God the lie about his own Son? O sirs, if you perish it will not be because the blood has too little efficacy, it will be because you have not believed on the name of the Son of God, and will not come unto him that you might have life.

Richard Watson in his Theological Institutes, wrote (p. 621):

For what does Dr. P. Smith gain, when cautioning the believer against the use of the phrase “the blood of GOD,” by reminding him that there is reason to prefer the reading, “the Church of the Lord, which he hath purchased by his own blood ?” The orthodox contend, that the appellation “TILE LORD,” when applied to our Saviour, is his title as GOD, and the heterodox know, also, that the “blood of the Lord” is a phrase with us entirely equivalent to “the blood of GOD.” They know, too, that we neither believe that “GOD” nor “THE LORD” could die; but in using the established phrase, the all-important doctrine of the existence of such a union between the two natures of our Lord as to make the blood which he shed more than the blood of a mere man, more than the blood of his mere humanity itself, is maintained and exhibited; and while we allow that God could not die, yet that there is a most important sense in which the blood of Christ was “the blood of GOD.”

We do not attempt to explain this mystery, but we find it on record; and, in point of fact, that careful appropriation of the properties of the two natures to each respectively, which Dr. Pye Smith recommends, is not very frequent in the New Testament, and for this obvious reason, that the question of our Lord’s Divinity is more generally introduced as an indisputed principle, than argued upon. It is true, that the Apostle Paul lays it down, that our Lord was of the seed of David, “according to the FLESH,” and “the Son of God, according to the SPIRIT OF Holiness.” Herre is an instance of the distinction; but generally this is not observed by the apostles, because the equally fundamental doctrine was always present to them, that the SAME PERSON who was FLESH was also truly GOD. Hence they scruple not to say, that “the Lord of glory was crucified,” that “the Prince of life was killed,” and that HE who was “in the form of God,” became “obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.”

We return, from this digression, to notice a few other passages, the meaning of which can only be opened by the doctrine of the personal union of the Divine and human natures in Christ. “For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead BODILY,” Col. ii, 9; not by a type and figure, but, as the word swmatikw~ signifies really and substantially, and for the full exposition, we must add, by personal union; for we have no other idea by which to explain an expression never used to signify the inhabitation of good men by God, and which is here applied to Christ in a way of eminence and peculiarity.

John Owen in His Works wrote:

The blood of Christ in his sacrifice is still always and continually in the same condition, of the same force and efficacy, as it was in that hour wherein it was shed. The blood of other sacrifices was always to be used immediately upon its effusion; for if it were cold and congealed it was of no use to be offered or to be sprinkled. Blood was appointed to make atonement, as the life or animal spirits were in it, Lev. xviL 11. But the blood of the sacrifice of Christ is always hot and warm, having the same spirits of life and sanctification still moving in it. . . .  Every one, therefore, who at any time hath an especial actual interest in the blood of Christ, as sacrificed, hath as real a purification from the defilement of sin as he had typically who stood by the priest and had blood or water sprinkled on him; for the Holy Ghost diligently declares that whatever was done legally, carnally, or typically, by any of the sacrifices of old at any time, as to the expiation or purification of sin, that was all done really and spiritually by that one sacrifice,—that is, the offering and sprinkling of the blood of Christ,—and abideth to be so done continually. To this purpose is the substance of our apostle’s discourse in the ninth and tenth chapters of the Epistle to the Hebrews.

This truth about his blood is seen in the history of believers’ praise to God in the old hymns of the faith.  William Cowper in 1771 wrote:

There is a fountain filled with blood, Drawn from Immanuel’s veins;
And sinners, plunged beneath that flood, Lose all their guilty stains.

The dying thief rejoiced to see That fountain in his day;
And there have I, as vile as he, Washed all my sins away:

E’er since by faith I saw the stream Thy flowing wounds supply,
Redeeming love has been my theme, And shall be till I die.

Dear dying Lamb, thy precious blood Shall never lose its power,
Till all the ransomed church of God Be saved, to sin no more.

A song doesn’t have the authority for Scripture, but it does communicate what Christians believed the Bible taught.  These types of thoughts are all over the old hymns.   They say something different than what John MacArthur teaches on the blood.