Purity Of Doctrine – Continued

I have chosen another portion from a lecture by C. F. W. Walther, a Lutheran scholar and pastor from the 19^th century.  To learn more about this scholar please see the prior post Purity of Doctrine. 

   This quote from Walther demonstrates his passion for students of the Scriptures to  recognize and reject false teaching.  There must be a driving desire for truth.   God certainly expects as much from those who are His disciples. 

   Walther’s message is so important for believers today.  With massive Internet content, T.V., radio and endless printed materials the poison of false teaching is rampant and readily available to all.  All followers of Christ need to be diligent in studying the Scriptures.   I believe that it is also vital to understand the creeds and confessions of the ancient church.  The great reformers of the 16^th century and the Puritans of the 17^th and 18^th centuries also have much to teach believers today concerning the heart of the gospel message and the importance of being confessional in the Faith.  The Reformation refocused on the authority of Scripture and the truth of the gospel, correcting many errors of the Roman Church of that time period.  Only the Scriptures are fully inspired, yet the Holy Spirit has been in the midst of and teaching the Church throughout her history.  We must not ignore the working of the Holy Spirit over the last two thousand years.  As serious followers of Jesus Christ we all need to be students of Scripture, history and theology.  I hope you will find the following quote helpful.

“MY FRIENDS: – Christ Himself describes the way to heaven as a narrow path.  The path of pure doctrine is just as narrow.  For pure doctrine is nothing less than a teaching on how to get to heaven.

   It is easy to lose your way when you are taking a narrow and rarely traveled path through a dense forest.  Without intending to do so and without being aware of it, you might make a wrong turn to the right or left.  It is just as easy to lose the narrow way of pure doctrine, which likewise is traveled by few people and leads through a dense forest of false teachings.  You may land either in the bog of fanaticism or in the ravine of rationalism.  This cannot be taken lightly.  False doctrine is poison to the soul.  If people at a large banquet drink from wine glasses to which arsenic has been added, they can drink physical death from their wine glasses.  In the same way, an entire audience can be subject to spiritual and eternal death when they listen to a sermon to which the poison of false doctrine has been added.  People can be deprived of their souls’ salvation by a single false comfort or a single false rebuke administered to them. [And this is all] the more [true because of] the fact that we are all by nature more attracted to the glaring and glittering light of human reason than to God’s truth.  For ‘the natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned’ (1 Corinthians 2:14).

   Thus you can gather how foolish it is – in fact, how terribly deceived so many people obviously are – when they ridicule pure doctrine and say to us, ‘Enough already with your “Pure doctrine, pure doctrine”!  That can lead only to dead orthodoxy.  Focus on pure living instead.  That way you will plant the seeds of righteous Christianity.’  That would be like saying to a farmer, ‘Stop fretting about good seed!  Be concerned about good fruit instead.’

   On the contrary, if you are concerned about good fruit, you will also be concerned about good seed.  In the same way, if you are concerned about pure doctrine, you will at the same time also be concerned about genuine Christianity and a sincere Christian life.

   Spreading false doctrine is like sowing weeds.  The enemy does this.  This in turn produces offspring of wickedness.

   On the other hand, pure doctrine is like wheat seed; from it spring the children of the kingdom, who even in this present life belong in the kingdom of glory.  May God even now instill in your heart a great fear – even a real hatred – of false doctrine!  May He graciously give you a holy desire for the pure, saving truth revealed by God Himself!”

[Concordia Publishing House, Saint Louis, publishes Law & Gospel, 2010].

In John’s Gospel 8:31 – 32 Jesus says the following:  “So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, ‘If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”  So let us “stand fast in the liberty in which Christ has set us free” (Galatians 5:1).