In the days in which we are living as ministers of the gospel, as evangelical pastors, there are several things that we notice about the environment and the company and some of the transformations that have taken place, indeed during my lifetime as a Christian believer, things that were common currency among evangelicals in my teens are now in many communities regarded as right-wing and reactionary.

Deepening Concerns Within the Evangelical Church

There is much that could make us despair of evangelicalism into the 21st century. For several reasons it seems to me that in much evangelicalism, medievalism has come home to roost in which worship rather than being congregational has become spectator.

Liberalism. The liberalism of Friedrich Schleiermacher, the father of modern theology as he used to be called, has come home to roost in much evangelical thinking, well expressed by the ghastly statement that the Spirit and experience unite and doctrine divides.

Post-modernism rather than come home to roost and evangelicalism had in some ways evangelicalism as its front-runner in the radicalized individualism that has taken root in our evangelical culture. And in a context like that, we need to return to the kind of model that you find in the great reformers who are all incidentally pastors as well as theologians. John Danielle Benwa said of John Calvin, something that I have tried personally to take much to heart; that he sought to become a theologian in order that he might be a better pastor. And in that sense, none of us can afford not to seek to be growing experts in biblical theology, in understanding the history of the church. We should be growing spiritual technicians in the way in which we are able increasingly to handle Scripture. And we must face the balance of those who have become accustomed to the balance of Scripture, to face the question of the balance of the sanctuary, as our Puritan forefather spoke of it.

How do we deal in the context of the life of our local assemblies and in all the assemblies of God’s people with the driving unity of the gospel of which we were hearing in the midst of the diversity, of ability, of understanding, of growth, of spiritual development? We are all, as pastors, constantly engaged in a Nehemiah like task, going out quietly with a secret burden on our hearts that sometimes we dare not share with others to review the walls of Jerusalem, to be able to deal with the rabble, to deal with the enemies who come from outside and will spoil the sheep, to deal with the slothfulness, the decay that there is, the disobedience that plagues us from the inside. We must deal with it in such a way that with true spiritual biblical balance, we are constantly nourishing the people of God and simultaneously guarding the people of God in order that our Zion may be built in this 21st century.

The Work of Demolition and Construction

There is something about the gospel you see, the fact that it is centered in both the death of Christ and the resurrection of Christ, the mortification of the flesh and the vivification of the Spirit, that means the Christian pastor is always both a demolition expert and a construction expert. And there really is no way properly to grow as ministers of the gospel without understanding that our ministry is, yes, a ministry like that of Nehemiah, and yes, a ministry like that of Jeremiah.

It is, as Luther said, what the gospel does/ This is how he describes Paul’s letter to the Romans. He says it roots up and it destroys all the wisdom of the flesh and it plants Jesus Christ. And by nature, most of us fall on one side of that psychological personality kind of balance. We are far more comfortable with the positives of the gospel than the negatives of the gospel, or vice versa with the negatives of the gospel rather than the positives of the gospel.

But we can never teach our children to grow, either physically or mentally or spiritually, whether natural children are spiritual children, without having that ability to teach them the yes and the no, the inside and the outside, without being able to feed them and to warn them against poisons that there may begin to appear in the garden.

Paul’s Burden of Teaching

As we turn, as we are doing again to second Timothy this time to the teaching that flows from chapter two, I want you to notice how profound a concern this is in the teaching of the apostle Paul. In 2 Timothy 2:1–7, he is concerned positively about the growth of the man of God, and he uses these marvelous illustrations or metaphors in the first seven verses that encourage us to guard up our loins and be men in the gospel.

Then in 2 Timothy 2:8–13, he relates the kind of men of God we are to be to the gospel of God that masters us. He says, “Remember Jesus Christ raised from the dead, descended from David, this is my gospel.” Then on that twin basis, he begins to speak to Timothy in a series of injunctions beginning in 2 timothy 2:14, in which he is concerned that Timothy is the man of God who is a soldier in the Lord’s army, who is running the Lord’s race, who is a victor of the crown, who is sowing the good seed of the gospel as a farmer, who is rooted in all the riches of our inheritance in Christ Jesus.

Against that background of the glory of the gospel, he urges his younger friend Timothy to see that which distorts the gospel, that which destroys the church, that which ultimately demeans the inheritance of the children of God, and to deal with false teaching. He says, “Keep reminding them of these things. Avoid godless chatter, teaching that spreads like gangrene. Flee the evil desires of youth. In the last days there will be terrible times when men will have for themselves teachers to satisfy their itching ears as they long Athenian-like for the latest new thing. But you man of God, stay steady course, steady path. Keep your head. Fulfill your ministry.”

It’s remarkable to think that all of this is said to Timothy who has sat down in the context of that most privileged of all Christian churches in all history, the church at Ephesus. It’s the church into which the apostle Paul poured himself for almost three years teaching the disciples daily in the lecture hall of Tyrannus, which he hired as some of you will know according to the Western tradition of the manuscripts of the Acts of the Apostles. Yes, it was probably just a scribal marginal note, but one that is probably accurate. He was teaching them during the siesta hour between the fifth hour, which was 11 a.m. in the morning and the 10th hour, 4:00 p.m.. He did this day by day, an entire seminary education for ordinary Christian believers.

A Single Robe

Yet the apostle has left him in Ephesus as he says in 1 Timothy 1:3: “I urged you when I went into Macedonia, stay there in Ephesus so that you may command certain men not to teach false doctrines any longer.” It’s interesting. He says, “any longer.” They were already doing it. They devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies which promote controversies rather than God’s work.

No Christian assembly is safeguarded by a great past ministry. For present safety, present spirituality, present, wholehearted holistic ministry of all the gospel of God is necessary for all the people of God. It’s clear — and I hope we will see this in the teaching of the apostle Paul, even limiting that teaching narrowly to the pastoral epistles — that the apostle Paul recognized the need for present ministry to safeguard and nourish present Christians. Great ministry in the past is no substitute for present ministry in the contemporary world. The great books of the past are not adequate for present ministry in the present world. The language of the past is not enough. Alongside that, one of the things that emerges and it has emerged very forcefully to me in preparation of these messages, that for the apostle Paul, the Christian gospel is a single robe worn by Jesus Christ.

Calvin, who has been already referred to — and perhaps it’s safe for me to refer to him, like a little boy sitting on Anthony’s shoulders today — makes a great point when he says about the nature of the gospel that in the gospel Christ comes to us clothed in its garment. That gospel is a unity. As Anthony was speaking this morning, I wrote down in my notes at one point — which in a wonderful way, he then went on to answer my question — what is the gospel? That seems to me to be the single greatest issue of our times for evangelical ministers, that we really know what the gospel is.

Paul regards that gospel as a great unity in which doctrine and experience are gloriously integrated. Also it’s such a unity that if you pull on a loose thread at any point of the gospel, then eventually that gospel is going to unravel in its totality. I don’t know what they do these days with buttons on shirts, but one of my bad habits as a little boy was that I was obsessed with twisting buttons off shirts. My punishment was that as a very little boy I learned to thread needles and to sew buttons back on shirts. My mother, who was not then a Christian, although thankfully she came in later life to the Lord, understood the basic principles of repentance. She knew that repentance means going back the way in which you have drifted. But nowadays, you just touch the thread and the whole button comes loose. And so insecure, brothers, is the church’s grasp of the gospel today. Pull just a little on the thread and the whole garment may suddenly dissolve.

Pulling at Loose Threads

Way back in the days when the inerrancy of scripture was the debate, one of the great arguments used was a “domino theory.” Well, I don’t necessarily subscribe to a domino theory because I don’t think that every single individual holds all the logical implications of the position with which they start. But the sad fact of the matter is that as you look back over the last 25 years, whether the domino theory is logically correct, it has proved to be historically accurate. Better perhaps, I would like to say, is the single garment theory, but what does that mean? It means that at any point in which a loose thread appears in our understanding of the gospel is if that loose thread is pulled, over time the gospel itself will begin to disintegrate.

I say again lest I be misunderstood, thankfully, none of us holds all the logical implications of any position we adopt, and we always need to remember that. We always need to remember that in debate and especially in polemics. But it has always been true in the history of the Christian Church when men have begun to pull on those threads of the gospel instead of weaving those loose threads of the gospel, because we do not understand everything. Instead of weaving those loose threads back into the gospel, when men begin to pull on loose threads within two generations, the whole gospel disintegrates. And I think there is no period in the history of the Christian Church that stands in contradiction of that principle. That’s why it’s important for us to know something about the history of Christian doctrine and the life of the Christian Church and to have a future vision for where teaching is going to lead not just ourselves but the next generation, and the generation after that.

Our Teaching for the Future Generations

In the middle of the 19th century in Scotland, there was not only a great awakening with which you are familiar because it was so widespread in the Christian world, not only in the United Kingdom. There was an amazing, absolutely amazing, divine gift given in my home country of perhaps the most extraordinary theological faculty that has ever existed in the English speaking world, on whose literature you continue to feed yourself. It was George Sweeten, James Buchanan, William Cunningham, Bannerman. There were all of these amazing names, and then naively bright young men were sent to Germany. That was the cutting edge and they began to come back. They were men who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ. If you asked them what is the way of salvation, they would’ve said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.” And in the first generation, as is always true, these men thought that they could hold on to the great centralities of the gospel, believing in Jesus Christ as the only way of salvation and all would be well.

But they had begun to pull on the seamless robe of the Lord Jesus Christ and those they taught in the next generation and in the generation afterwards, and even in their own generation, the garment began to be pulled apart. Some of you will know. Let me give you an illustration. Some of you know the name of A.B. Bruce who wrote some extraordinarily able books. But he had begun to pull on the loose threads of the gospel rather than saw that loose thread back into the heart of the gospel to see the consistent runners in the warp and woof of the garment of Jesus Christ. It was said of A.B. Bruce by one of his friends and contemporaries, Sandy Bruce died without a single Christian conviction. James Denny, who in some ways contributed so marvelously to the early 20th century church’s understanding of the work of Jesus Christ, when his work was republished by InterVarsity in the 1960s — The Death of Christ — it had to be edited to conform to biblical standards.

Those of you who are familiar with the reviews, those great reviews of B.B. Warfield in the 10th volume of his collected works, you may remember reading his sensitivity to the way in which he thought Denny was really drifting from the centralities of the gospel, as he indeed sadly did. So that by the end of his life the substitutionary atonement that had been central and principal at the beginning was marginalized. I say, again, it may not be necessarily logical and it may not be evident in the first generation, but is certainly going to be evident in the second generation and the third generation. And dear brothers, if we are not living for the second and third generation, then we are not living in faith. Ministry in faith is always looking forwards. You read through Hebrews 11, what’s the great characteristic of faith? It’s always looking forward to the fulfillment. Yes, in Jesus Christ, and now in Jesus Christ to all that will be true.

That’s why Luther’s principle is so helpful for us and important to us that if we don’t defend the gospel at the point at which the gospel is being attacked, it won’t be long before we have actually abandoned that gospel. And it is striking to see this in the pastoral letters, which after all what are they? They seem to be manuals for pastoring the congregation. If there are any letters in the New Testament, you would think, that belong to the level of the imperative and the practical and the ecclesiastical rather than to the level of the indicative and the theological and the doctrinal, then you would have to say it’s the pastoral letters. I wonder if you’ve ever asked the question that I’ve been asking, how much theology does it take to write 13 chapters, directing two younger men to be pastors of the flock of Jesus Christ? The answer is, I think, fairly astonishing.

Building and Maintaining the Fences of the Church

Well, with that somewhat extensive preamble, let me focus our attention here in the spirit of Nehemiah 2:13, as we examine the walls of Jerusalem, let me focus our attention on four things. Number one: vital distinctions that we need to make in building the church’s fences. Number two: key points of entry which break down the church’s fences. Number three: the hallmarks of those who actually destroy the church’s fences. Number four: principles that we need to employ for dealing with the church’s broken fences.

Vital Distinctions in Building the Church’s Fences

First of all, vital distinctions in building the church’s fences. I’m leading you along here with the not altogether accurate feeling that there are four points to this address. Vital distinctions in building the church’s fences. There are five subpoints.

1. A Distinction in Maturity

First of all, we need to understand as we deal with Christian theology that there is a difference between the new Christian baby and the mature Christian believer. Put very simply, there is a difference between the confession of faith and understanding expected for entry into the fellowship of God’s people, and therefore entry through the boundary fence between the gospel church and the worldly world. There is a difference between that and what is expected of somebody who is a mature Christian believer as a candidate for leadership. That’s why we have the teaching in 1 Timothy 3:6 verse six, that the one who is going to be an overseer and a teacher among the people of God must not be a recent convert.

We understand that, I’m sure, in most of our churches, that the confession of faith required to be welcomed with open arms into the body of Jesus Christ does not demand that the individual be able to distinguish between infralapsarianism and supralapsarianism or be able to articulate to us the nuances of high Christology, but because Christ is all to him or her, and Christ is in all of us, as Paul puts it so beautifully in Colossians three. Because those two things are true, Christ has become his or her Savior and Christ has become his or her Lord. And that same Lord Jesus Christ in the power of his Holy Spirit has been pleased and unashamed to come and by one and the same spirit as the Spirit who indwells you come to indwell them.

We embrace all of those who trust in Jesus Christ for salvation and we understand that they are our brothers and our sisters, but we do distinguish along biblical lines between the doctrine of regeneration and the doctrine of ordination, or leadership, however we frame it. We are sensitized to those with whom we deal, because we understand that distinction.

2. A Distinction Between Weak and Strong

Second, we understand that there is a vital distinction we need to make between the weak and the strong and, of course, part of the problem in making that distinction as must have struck you as you’ve read through those chapters towards the end of Romans is that usually the weak are those who think they are strong.

The weak in Paul’s teaching are those who would say, “I have a strong conscience.” So we need ourselves as pastors to be sensitive to the fact that Christian believers do not always — sometimes do not often — understand themselves and their immaturity. And we are called upon to be soaked in the various applications of Scripture. This is surely why James says you shouldn’t, many of you want to be teachers because you will be judged more severely. What a calling we have to be able to distinguish between the weak conscience and the strong conscience.

That was touched on earlier on in Anthony’s address. Let me just probe it a little further because I think there’s something generally helpful here. Most of us are not in the situation of the church in Rome or the church in Corinth, but we are all in situations where there are weak and strong and we need to be able to deal with them appropriately.

What is the driving principle here that we can employ? One of those driving principles I believe is this: The difference between the weak and the strong of which Paul speaks in the latter half of Romans teaches us to view individual Christian believers within the context of their historical Christian and cultural tradition. That’s a very important thing. That’s why it is foolishness to find somebody who has come from a frankly Arminian background and drop the four volumes of Calvin’s Institutes on their head and say, as though you are some wild charismatic, “Be Calvinist.” We don’t believe either sacramentally or theologically in any ex opere operato view of anything. We don’t. And this is a wonderfully helpful thing I find as I view Christians to try to see Christians in this Romans 14 and 15 context — yes, Jews and Gentiles, but they are Jews and Gentiles there with theological and cultural baggage that they bring into the church, and to understand an individual not as an isolated individual.

You see, that’s where our postmodern world is not going to help us, and that’s frankly where much of our evangelical theology over the last hundred years isn’t going to help us either. I begin to see that the baggage an individual brings is a baggage that only by the ministry of the Holy Spirit is going to be released from his shoulders only at the cross of Christ. You see, only at the cross of Christ is that believer going to be released in conscience as well as in mind from the things that bind their conscience, bind their thinking, and bind their theology and restrict their fellowship with other believers. Otherwise, as I said yesterday, you will end up keeping the greatest sense in the Christian Church out of your assembly.

Fellowship in the Centrality of the Gospel

I owe a great deal, as I said yesterday, to two Johns. I also owe a great deal to a third John, John Murray. Many of you will know his name and I hope if you don’t know his name you will read his writings. I owe an extraordinary debt to John Murray. But let me tell you about John Murray. John Murray was in the tradition of Rabbi Duncan. Yes, first a Christian then a Catholic, and (point number five), a Presbyterian, but he was also, (point number six), an exclusive somatist. He was also (point number seven) so convinced of the danger of docetism, that the Lord Jesus only appeared to be really human, that he had grave, grave, grave principal reservations about serving communion if the wine were not alcoholic. Now, once you get there, you are pretty high up that tower, aren’t you?

That is, not many of you are much higher up that tower. And yet there is this great story about Professor Murray that still hangs around Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia that from time to time he used to go downtown in Philadelphia to hear an African American preacher in a Methodist church, and the students zealous for Reformed theology and their professor’s consistency of lifestyle used to try and take him on. And Murray used to say this, “I love it.” He used to say, “I can take Arminianism from a Methodist.” Do you understand that? He said, “I can have fellowship in the gospel with this man. I can benefit from this man’s ministry without compromising what I believe about the gospel because I have an understanding of the pressures that there are on this individual and on his ecclesiastical tradition, and on the whole way in which he thinks about the gospel.” Like Wesley and Whitfield, because we are both offering men Christ, I’m still able to feast my soul without constantly feeling that I am not going to take the word of God from a man who does not share.

That’s really what the apostle is speaking about, that the weakened, the strong are able to embrace one another in the centralities of the gospel without first of all engaging in doubtful disputations. So we distinguish the new Christian, the baby Christian from the mature, we distinguish between the weak and the strong. I don’t mean by this that we go around looking for distinctions, but we are sensitive to these biblical categories.

3. Qualifications for Fellowship and Leadership

Thirdly, we make a clear difference between the qualifications for fellowship and the qualifications for leadership. Leadership in the church of Jesus Christ — about which the pastoral letters say so much — requires a full firm grasp of the gospel, and such an articulation of the truth of the gospel that you are not only able to encourage believers, but you are able to deal with false teaching.

And that duality is exceedingly important. This is why Paul says what he says in Ephesians 4. You don’t expect baby Christians to be able to tell the difference in the waves and winds of doctrine that blow through the church, but it is absolutely essential for leadership. In many ways much of our angst and concern is either about those who are leaders appointed by their churches, or those who aspire to be leaders in the churches to which they have not been appointed to leadership. In that sense — and I hope you will not misunderstand me — all of the Scriptures are not for all of the people of God in precisely the same way. Jesus’s promise that the Spirit will lead us into all the truth is not for me in precisely the same way it was for the apostles.

If I fly over the application of it to the apostles, I am going to end up in cloud cuckoo land of spirituality, in the same way the teaching that he gives to Timothy, an evangelist of the Christian Church serving as a pastor in a local congregation, or among local congregations. That’s not something that is applied willy-nilly to all believers as though to say, “Unless this is true of you, you cannot be a Christian and I cannot have fellowship with you.” So we differentiate between the new Christian and the mature Christian, the weak Christian and the strong Christian, and the qualifications for leadership and the qualifications for fellowship.

4. A Distinction Between Truth and Error

And we learn to distinguish however painful it is for us to speak of it, between that which is truth and that which is error. I personally find that some of the strength of the language that’s used in the New Testament about false teaching, so comes to me with such overwhelming power to my basically timid personality and shy disposition that I think to myself, “God, could you have called me to anything more alien to my being than to engage in polemics and controversy?” But the difference between truth and error, the glory that truth produces in likeness to Jesus Christ, and the poisonous spread of the gangrene of false doctrine makes it absolutely a requisite that we make a clear distinction between clear-cut truth and clear-cut error.

5. A Distinction Between Schism and Heresy

And the fifth distinction we need to make is a distinction between schism and heresy. The two are not the same thing. Throughout the history of the church, Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 11 about there being divisions and differences between there being schisms and heresies has always been understood I think rightly along these lines that we need to distinguish between deviation in love among those who share convictions about the same truth, and deviations from truth which lead to divisions in love. We need to understand that. We need to understand that not all deviation — though it may be caused by our sinfulness — has to be named or should be named “heresy.” Schism and heresy are not the same thing.

So there are vital distinctions we need to make in building the church’s fences.

Key Points of Entry into the Church’s Fences

Second, there are key points at which the church’s fences break down, key points of entry at which the church’s fences will be broken. We operate within our boundary fences, I am sure in more than one way, regarding the profession required for salvation and the profession involved in membership locally.

Now these are not quite the same thing. The profession involved for salvation is simply, “Jesus Christ is Lord.” The profession that is involved in membership, whatever language we use about it, involves us engaging in a covenant bond both vertically with Jesus Christ and horizontally with one another. And so, one thing for us to become believers, but those who have become believers knowing only that they have come to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, as they are welcomed into the bosom of the church was so true in the early church, need to be taught sufficient elements of the gospel and how it applies not simply vertically but horizontally — to begin to be able to function within the life of the fellowship. There is a covenant bond with Jesus Christ for salvation. There is a mutual bond among his people that is the implication of that salvation. It too needs to be embraced because in coming to Jesus Christ, we are drawn nearer to one another.

So there is a profession required for salvation, there is a profession involved in membership, and there is a profession that is essential to leadership. And it’s clear, at least it seems to me to be quite clear, that the profession involves leadership or an aspiration to leadership. FirstTimothy 3:1 says, “If anyone reaches out, sets his heart on being an overseer (a leader) he desires a noble task.” It’s not illegitimate to desire to be a leader, but either in leadership or in the aspiration to be a leader, there is an extensive confession of faith required.

I want us to try and field test this just a little by asking ourselves how much is involved in Timothy and Titus being leaders in local churches? And I say again, the pastoral letters are not the letters to which we ordinarily go in order to build the doctrine of the gospel. Read through these pastoral epistles and ask yourself, “How much gospel doctrine is required for these young men to be leaders in the church, how much is specifically stated?” I’m not speaking about what is assumed, but what is specifically stated. Let me run through them quickly.

Knowledge of the Nature of Scripture

First, there is a conviction about the nature of Scripture (2 timothy 3:15–17) as to the fact that it is the source and means of our saving knowledge of God in Christ, that it is unified, that it comes to us with divine authority, that it is breathed out by God, that it is essential in its functionality for the life of the Christian Church. So the doctrine of Scripture in all of these aspects is a prerequisite in Paul’s understanding of a qualification for leadership. At any point alienate myself from that teaching, I disqualify myself from that leadership.

Emphasis on the Attributes of God

Second, there is an emphasis on the being and character of God, on his attributes. As Paul speaks about this, he deals with God’s sovereignty, he deals with God’s providence. He speaks of God (1 Timothy 4:3) as the creator of a good world. He speaks of him as the preserver and provider (1 Timothy 3:4, 1 Timothy 4:10). He speaks of God the creator and God the sustainer. He speaks of him as the Savior (1 Timothy 1:1, 1 Timothy 2:3). He speaks of him as the one God (1 Timothy 2:5), yet who works as Father, Son, and Spirit. He speaks of him as eternal, immortal, invisible, good, kind, gracious, and merciful (Titus 3:4). In 1 Timothy 1:16, he speaks of him as peace-giving, merciful, and purpose-working in salvation. And in 2 Timothy 1:3 and 2 Timothy 3:15 as identically the God of the Old Testament. In 2 Timothy 3:16–17, he speaks of God as the author of all Scripture. In 1 Timothy 1:17 he is worthy of all exclusive worship. I alienate myself from this God at any of these points in my confession, and I disqualify myself from leadership.

Emphasis on Other Vital Doctrines

He speaks about the doctrine of man, anthropology, created as Adam and Eve (1 Timothy 2:13–14), and he is emphatic about the impact of the fall and human sinfulness (1 Timothy 1:15). He is emphatic that we cannot save ourselves. He speaks about Christ as the Savior, the one who fulfills his office as redeemer, purposed from all eternity (2 Timothy 1:9), coming into our world by a real incarnation as the seed of David (2 Timothy 2:8). He is the destroyer of death in his glorious resurrection (2 Timothy 2:8, 2 Timothy 1:10), ascending and returning in glory (1 Timothy 3:16, Titus 2:13). He is the mediator in our humanity who gave himself as a ransom to redeem us from sin (1 Timothy 2:5–6), as the one who will come in glorious majesty and power at the end (2 Timothy 4:1, 2 Timothy 4:14).

He speaks about the importance of the right doctrine of salvation that, as we saw last night, he traces from all eternity to all eternity (2 Timothy 1:9–10, 2 Timothy 2:10). He believes in prevenient grace in the application of redemption (1 Timothy 1:12–14, as well as 2 Timothy 1). He believes in the necessity of regeneration and justification (Titus 3:7), and in the absolute vital importance of sanctification, both as a doctrine and as a reality in our Christian living (2 Timothy 1:9, Titus 2:2, Titus 2:5–6, Titus 2:11–14). He believes in adoption into the family of God as his heirs (Titus 3:7) and in the glorious reality of being able to persevere through suffering (2 Timothy 1:12, 2 Timothy 2:3, 2 Timothy 3:12).

He believes in the Christian ethic in the role of the law (1 Timothy 1:6–11) and understands the essence of the New Covenant that brings us to a living faith in Jesus Christ is nothing other than the law coming to be written in our hearts. That’s the shape of salvation. He believes in the church, in the reality of its fellowship, of mutual love and joy (2 Timothy 1:4). He believes in pastoral emotion. He says, “I remember you with tears.” He believes in ordered ministry in the church, both with respect to the marks of those who are called to be leaders in the church and with respect to their activity on behalf of the church (1 Timothy 4:13–14).

He believes in the absolute centrality in the work of the elders, the work of the evangelist, the role of the minister, in the preaching of the word (2 Timothy 4:1). He believes that churches should be ordered with the ministry of elders and deacons (1 Timothy 3, Titus 1). And he believes that our worship, whatever the difference there may be in our circumstances, will be common in all the churches with respect to the elements. And he believes in the last things. He is explicitly not a full preterist (2 Timothy 2:18).

Now I hope you see the point, the point is not that this is everything. The real point is that this is minimal with respect to leadership. This is not the fence, as it were, that has the gate at the entry to the kingdom of God and to the fellowship of Christ’s people. But these are fences the apostle Paul erects, and he says on the other side of these fences an individual disqualifies himself from true leadership in the church of Jesus Christ. So he regards these things as absolutely minimal in our understanding of the gospel.

You understand that if the gospel is indeed a seamless robe, then they are minimal because the one who is the leader in the church of Jesus Christ has to be able to feed the people from the riches of their inheritance and also be able to distinguish every point on the circumference at which the thread may be pulled and the whole gospel may eventually dissolve. Yes, I know not necessarily in our own generation but in the future. So within this context, the apostle Paul makes vital distinctions in building the church’s fences, he underlines key points at which the church’s fences need to be established because it is here that they may be breached.

Hallmarks of Those Who Breach the Fences of the Church

Thirdly, he goes on in these pastoral letters to give us some clues, some hints about the hallmarks of those who will breach those fences. And this, of course, is true because as he says — and it’s true at the theological level as well as at the moral level — men’s sins precede them or follow them in rather different ways. And sometimes the first sense that we have that the church’s fences are being broken down will be a sense that we discover because of a genuinely spiritual dis-ease about style as well as about content.

A dominant note you must have sensed as you’ve read the pastoral epistles is that false teaching and false teachers from wherever they spring always cause controversy that leads not to nourishment but to destruction, and they are frequently argumentative (1 Timothy 1:4, 1 Timothy 6:4–5, 2 Timothy 2:14–16, 2 Timothy 2:18, 2 Timothy 2:24, Titus 3:9). Often the hallmark is an individual who drives for power and influence over others rather than sacrifice and edification for and of others. The result, of course, always is that they divert us from the proper work of the gospel. That’s why Paul in part uses this language. It isn’t that he is some kind of homophobic or heresy-phobic. He says, “Avoid these men.” Why is there that strong negative note in his teaching? Because he understands that central to the church’s task in the world is the evangelization of the world.

One of the ways in which Satan seeks to destroy Christ’s building of his bride, the church, is by diverting us — our time, our energy, our emotions, our passions — by diverting us away from the proper work of the church of Jesus Christ, to bring honor and worship to him in our assemblies, to live for his glory in the world and to bring the world in tribute to the feet of our Savior Jesus Christ. One of the things the enemy does constantly is to divert us, to divert us, to divert us from what we see is the proper focus, vision, and drive of gospel ministry to save and sanctify the lost, to save ourselves and our hearers. And in such amazing contrast, Paul says, over against those driving, argumentative controversialists. And here’s a word for some of us, for all of us probably.

Using the Worlds Tones in the Battle

I think if you’ll allow me this illustration without drawing the false conclusion that you may draw from it, I have a picture in my mind of an abortion clinic, and a line of evangelical people on the one side and a line of secularists on the other, both shouting abuse at one another. I see that the greatest temptation for us as strong believers in Jesus Christ is that in responding to the agenda the world sets for us, we respond to that agenda in the very tones that the world uses. Now, listen to this. The man of God is not quarrelsome (1 Timothy 3:3). The man of God is not violent but gentle (2 Timothy 2:25, 1 Timothy 3:3). The man of God (Titus 1:9) holds firmly to the word as taught in order to encourage. The thing that makes the difference is the difference.

Sometimes, dear brothers, it is that difference in spirit that creates the aroma that our spiritually sensitized noses pick up. You know what it’s like in our no smoking world? In the smoking world, we became immune to the smoke, but in the air of those places where there is the sign, “No smoking,” we could have a room this size and one individual in the furthest corner turning his back to us and smoking away there and it wouldn’t belong before wafting down the rows of the assembly, I would see noses beginning to go and eyes and you would know what was going on right in the back corner in advance of knowing what was going on in the back corner. And this, says the apostle, is one of the marks of those who breach the fences of the true gospel of Jesus Christ.

Principles of Positioning the Church’s Fences

Well, let me come to my fourth main point and that is to say something about this exceedingly difficult matter of the principles that we must put in place in positioning the church’s fences and the positions we need to put in place as we seek to build the church’s fences.

I’m sure many of these things are going to come out in the nitty gritty, in the question and answer time. Let me run through these major points of Christian truth that Paul emphasizes in his letter to Timothy to try and bring out some of these principles that we’ve been speaking about.

The Doctrine of Scripture

First, consider the doctrine of Scripture. We do understand this very important principle that a conviction about biblical infallibility guarantees the exegesis only of those texts that speak about biblical infallibility. We understand that. And it’s very important, it seems to me, as we deal with questions of boundary markers and fellowship that we learn to understand that our Reformed doctrine of the perspicuity of Scripture by definition means that we confess that not all Scripture is equally perspicuous.

I have found in my own life as I have sought to intelligently understand the gospel that one of the most liberating things about being a Reformed believer is that it has liberated my conscience to say, “I don’t know the answer to your question.” I don’t understand every text in Scripture. And the fact that you are absolutely certain about what that text of Scripture means is not itself a coherent argument for the correctness of your understanding. We need to differentiate our doctrine that all Scripture is inerrant and all Scripture is infallible from the doctrine of our own infallibility and our own inerrancy, and stand with Peter and say, scratching our heads, there are frankly some things that are difficult to understand. How interesting that he adds that it’s those things, those loose threads in the garment.

And you do understand in the inherency of Scripture, the Scriptures come to us in such a way that there are loose threads. We come with our baggage of logic and we say, “I can’t put these two things together. Let me pull in the thread.” And one of the things that means that personally I’ve found very helpful is that I do not attach the same emotional commitment to the question of the substitutionary atonement as to the question of whether the sermon precedes or follows the offering. I understand that the Scriptures are given to me with a shape pointing me to Jesus Christ, and I understand that my full intellectual and emotional attachment is given to those things that are perspicuous in Scripture. When I do that, I begin to be able to deal with fellow Christians by God’s grace who do not cross all my T’s or dot all my I’s.

The Doctrine of God

We come to the doctrine of God, our conviction that God is trinity, that there are three persons of one substance, the father is of none, the Son is begotten, the Spirit proceeds from the Father. You know that the fathers who formulated that theology said sometimes we are speaking so that we have got something rather than nothing to say, not because we understand everything we are saying. Although I do actually believe in it, I do not place the same level of emotion in discussion as to the ineffable nature of the procession of the Holy Spirit, whether he proceeds from the Father through the Son, from the Father, or from the Father and the Son as I absolutely am committed to doing, to saying that he is one God, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. I recognize what in some of our circles we call the creator-creature distinction.

That means I can only understand God as his little image, not as God understands himself. I am content with my ignorance so long as that ignorance is set within the context of divine revelation that prostrates me before the greatness of God because he is actually greater than my understanding of him. So I differentiate what is central in revelation, from what is ineffable in the divine being. And you see, dear brothers, I know many of you come from many different kinds of backgrounds. Let me put it this way, I hope it is not offensive. That’s the difference between being a fundamentalist and being Reformed.

When you are Reformed, you’re prepared to gaze up and say to God, “Oh, ineffable God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, I don’t begin to understand. Even as I stretch myself on the shoulders of giants and reach up into the heavens, I recognize that I see the breadth from the length and the height and the depth and I know the love of God in Christ, but it is incomprehensible to me. So all the more I adore you that in your ineffable greatness you have lifted me from the pit and the miry clay.” With that understanding, I’m able to embrace all those who love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity and truth.

The Doctrine of Creation

I come to creation and I understand that there are planks set in the scriptures that if you begin to try to adjust them, the whole house will collapse, like the historicity of the opening chapters of the book of Genesis that’s underlined by the teaching of the rest of the Bible. But I also learn to differentiate between the truth that Genesis teaches and the mechanisms to which it makes virtually no reference.

Now again, let me skate on thin ice in many of our controversies over creation — creation days, the length of creation. Much of the argumentation is drawn from outside of the Bible, science against science. I am all for science against science. I want to stand second to no man in insisting on the historicity of those early chapters of Genesis. But we need to see the difference between the truth that the Scriptures teach and the baggage that we bring. Otherwise, dear ones, it will not belong before we have excommunicated Hodge and Warfield and Augustine.

Now that doesn’t mean that at any point we yield our convictions to some kind of amorphous haze. I studied theology under a leading neo-Orthodox theologian. He said the task of the theologian is to come to the very margins of revelation and then say, “This far and no further.” The great challenge is to know what that point is. When you have that spirit, “I am just little me. The more I know, the less I seem to know, the more I gaze upon this ineffable God, the more I feel my creatureliness. My theology does not deify me, it sanctifies me and prostrates me.

And as I read scripture more and more I learn to differentiate the truth that comes to us in the once for all givenness of what is said and its context and the mechanisms God may have used to bring his glories to pass.

The Doctrine of Christ

I come to Christology that my Lord Jesus Christ, the Savior is both God and man. And I understand with Calvin and Arinias and Athanasius, that any deviation in the doctrine of Christ that distorts the reality of his humanity as the seed of David is eventually, when you pull on that thread, going to create a Christ who cannot save because he is not one of ours, or who lacks the power to save because he has not come to us from the bosom of the Father.

The Doctrine of Salvation

I come to soteriology and I need to learn to understand the difference between the logical construct of my soteriology and the reality of that soteriology operating in the life of an individual. And I see that in different ways. The more I know about the history of the Christian Church, the more I realize the extent to which there are frameworks of understanding of the application of redemption built into us so intimately and discreetly that we aren’t actually able to make the distinction between what the Scripture actually says and the framework of reference we’ve used.

I owe a great debt to Francis Schaffer. I was a student in the days when Schaffer’s books burst upon the world and I remember the powerful impact of Schaffer’s writings and his personal presence on those who had gone to L’Abri and who had been with them and been molded by him. But I also heard people who seemed to have adopted the position that you couldn’t understand the Christian gospel unless you first of all understood the line of despair and knew what Hegel had done to Western philosophy. And to a certain extent we all do that. It comes from our traditions with the way in which we formulate our soteriology.

The more we know about Scripture, the more we know where we came from, the more we have a broader sense. Let me give you an illustration of this. I’ve often used this in the context of students. As a Reformed believer, as a Calvinist. You read through the chapter headings in Institutes book three and you come across this title: “Regeneration By Faith.” Is Calvin also among the Arminians? You ask yourself, “Why does sanctification get expanded in Institutes before justification? Is Calvin also among the collegians?” And then you begin to ask questions about the way in which you structure your soteriology. But at the center of this is your confession that Jesus Christ saves because he cleanses us in the double cure from sin’s guilt and sin’s power. And you’re able to differentiate what is a logical construction from what is a christocentric salvation.

The Doctrine of the Church

I come to ecclesiology. Let me ask some questions: Is episcopacy in its Anglican form within the borders of orthodoxy, but not in its Roman form? Should a Baptist regard a paedobaptist as a heretic? Should a memorialist regard Calvin’s view of the supper as papist? How do I operate? While it’s very interesting in Paul’s teaching in the pastorals about leading the church, how very little he seems to say about the structure of the church, about the structure of the church’s worship.

We need to learn to distinguish the regulative from the adiaphora. We need to learn to distinguish the elements that are prescribed in all worship services from the circumstances that may make those worship services different according to the specific identity of the people who are actually engaged in that worship, so that we do not accuse one another of heresy when what we are seeing is the marvelous, pluriformity of the body of Jesus Christ. We never make the mistake of confusing the symbol of the gospel with the substance of the gospel.

The Doctrine of Last Things

In our eschatology, must we say, as my confession of faith says that the Pope is that man of sin, the antichrist? My own view is that even if you believe that were true, it would be an inappropriate statement to make in a confession of faith because it would require not only a specific exegesis of Scripture, but a specific interpretation of prophecy to the history of the Christian church in its yet inchoate state. And that’s why most American Presbyterian churches have dropped it.

I learn to distinguish the difference between the primary and the secondary. I learn to embrace brothers and sisters who confess that Jesus Christ is returning in majesty and power and glory, and I don’t make the system of his return to be confused with its glorious reality. The return of Christ is not a crossword puzzle. It’s the denouement of all history.

Principles in Dealing with Broken Fences

Let me try to speak about our whole approach here. Our approach must always, brothers, be ministerial. That is, we are not Diotrephes who loves to have the preeminence, we are servants of the Word which has the preeminence. Roger Nicole in a fine article that’s been published in a volume of his writings. Some of you know how profoundly Dr. Nicole has been involved in controversies of all kinds. He says:

When I approach controversy, I ask three questions: What do I owe in this situation as a minister of the gospel? What can I learn from this brother? And how am I going to cope with the differences?

So we need to learn great care with our language. John Owen says something about this. This is John Owen. Remember that John Owen dreamt in Latin. He says:

It’s difficult to define a heresy, and those who are quickest to pronounce are often those who have erred most.

The best exposition in brief of the difference is found, at least in my experience (it would be a Scotsman of course), in the writings of George Gillespie, one of the Westminster Divines, in his miscellany questions. He says:

A heresy is an error held by those who profess the Christian faith voluntarily and freely chosen. It involves choosing an error which is accompanied by actual rejection of the truth.

And he cites departing from the faith, resisting the truth, and turning their ears from the truth, in the pastoral letters. He speaks about the importance of distinguishing in our language between “heresy” and “schism.” Heresy corrupts the sincerity of the faith with false dogma schismatics, while sometimes even those of the same faith break the bond of fellowship. That’s Augustine actually. Heresy is that which becomes public teaching and causes others to stumble. Heresy contradicts a chief, substantial, and necessary element in or consequence of scriptural teaching.

It is not just any old error, and he cites Augustine: “I will err, but I will not be a heretic.” Fatuously maintained, it draws away disciples. In all ministerial charity, our ministry needs to be profoundly solemn (Titus 1:13, 1 Timothy 1:3, 1 TImothy 1:20, 1 Timothy 3:10, Titus 1:11).

Not All Differences Are Heresy

But it does need to be done in charity because not all differences are heresy. The language of heresy is never to be used in an exaggerated or inflammatory way. The great 17th century pastor and theologian Robert Trail, in the midst of the second great antinomian controversy that swept through England, says:

People are constantly calling others Antinomian. I’m a minister in the great city of London, and I have to tell you, I have hardly ever actually met an antinomian.

We need to be very circumspect in our language. We do not need to deny what is true in order to deal with what is false. We must never use the worst representation of a position as though it were the best. We must understand that denunciation does not constitute an argument. We must check our sources of criticism. We must learn as to our own spirit, as John Bunyan says about these things, that it is possible to commit idolatry even with God’s own appointments. We need to learn to distinguish between words and their meanings.

A rose is a rose by any name, whether that rose be called “elder” or something else. So our approach is an approach of ministerial integrity and charity.

A Communal Approach to Repairing Fences

Second, our approach should always be communal. There should never be in the church of Jesus Christ, a private excommunication. The apostle Paul was very clear, he never engaged in it. Even when he commits others to Satan, he is very conscious that he does it as part of the fellowship of God’s people. Yes, there is strong language — “silence, stop!” — but there is no private excommunication in the church of Jesus Christ. And however painful it is for us, because we are such impatient creatures, we must do things as brothers.

An Approach with Sensitivity to the Eschatological

Our approach must not only be ministerial and communal, it must always be sensitive to the eschatological, to the sense that neither we or others have arrived. We are all in process. And sometimes the key issue is, “Are they climbing up the hill or are they rolling down the hill?” Our approach must always be within the context of the divinely providential. No doubt, says Paul in 1 Corinthians 11:19, there have to be differences, heresies among you to show which of you have God’s approval. It’s part of God’s providence, even though it causes us to ache, that our time, our energies, and our emotions seem to be diverted from the gospel. Yet they clarify the difference between the true church and the false. As in the ancient days, Justin Martyr put it:

Heresies come through men’s negligence. But sometimes they are like poison that you spot in a physician’s bag. They may serve some good to preserve the whole body.

And so while this is exhausting, nerve wracking, burdensome, sometimes diverting work in the grace of God, recognizing the places to build the fence, recognizing the breaches in the fence, recognizing that we live within those fences in different dimensions in the community, in the body of Jesus Christ, we need to recognize that there has never been a creed written, never a ministry exercise that has allowed the church of Jesus Christ to say, “Now we can do without searching the Scriptures. Now we can do without daily dependence on the Holy Spirit. Now we can do without the wisdom of the ages. Now we can do without the fellowship of our fellow believers. And we know it all.”

There is no creed on its own without Christ’s grace in the heart that will build a church against which the gates of Hades will not prevail. But dear brothers, we are always building the church by Jesus Christ in a cosmic conflict context from Genesis 3:15 to the close of the Book of Revelation. And therefore, Paul’s words come to us with real meaning: “Endure hardship like a good soldier of Jesus Christ as one who wants to please his commanding officer” (2 Timothy 2:3–4).