Hi, I'm David Bercot. Tonight we're gonna be talking about the spirit of sectarianism. You know, I've always been a firm believer in the inerrancy and infallibility of Scripture. Well, that was until I ran upon a passage in Galatians that really has me baffled. Let me read it to you. It's Galatians 5 verses 19 through 21. And as I read it to you, I think you'll agree with me that there's something amiss here. Let me read it.
It says this: " Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. Of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.
Now, the first part of that passage is obviously true, that if you're practicing immorality, idolatry, sorcery, well, of course you're not gonna inherit the kingdom. And the last part of it, drunkenness, carousing. Again, obviously. But I can't believe that Paul puts into the same camp as those obvious sins. Such fairly innocuous things that are part of normal kingdom church life, enmity, strife, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions. Now come on.
We all know you can't have a godly church without those things. There's nothing wrong with them. I mean, you have to dispute error. You have to break off and start a new church if it won't correct its errors. So what gall Paul had to lump those righteous things in with such detestable things as immorality and idolatry? Well, I'm guessing by now that you've caught on that I'm not serious. I was speaking in irony.
But you know the truth is that even though none of us would ever make the kind of statements I made at the beginning, it's really the way that most serious-minded Bible-believing Christians behave. It's the way that most what I call kingdom Christians behave today. They think that disputes, dissensions, angry arguments, and divisions, well, they're just a natural part of kingdom life. After all, surely God doesn't want us to compromise. But is that what God says?
Let's look again at the things he talks about: enmities and strife, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, and factions. Certain members in church envying other members, usually over a position of power. Now, he says that people who practice those things will not inherit the kingdom of God. He puts them in the same category as immorality, or sorcery, or idolatry. I mean, kingdom Christians would never tolerate that in their churches. Things like idolatry or sorcery or immorality.
But somehow we have convinced ourselves that that part of Galatians 5, God doesn't really mean. He really is not saying that that is going to bar us from the kingdom of heaven. Oh, how blind we are. He is telling us, yes, that will bar us from the kingdom of heaven. We might be in the kingdom now, but we're not going to inherit it if those are the kind of things we practice. And we are no better off than someone practicing witchcraft, someone who worships idols, someone who's living in adultery.
God lumps us right in with those same people. Let me clarify one thing on that verse. I did not read it to you from the King James or even the new King James because of the way that those translations translate the Greek word hairesis. It's where we get the word heresy. Heresy is just a transliteration of hairesis. The problem is hairesis meant a faction or a school of thought.
Like the Pharisees are referred to as a hairesis, and not necessarily in a particularly negative sense when Paul uses it to talk about them. It has nothing to do with whether your theology is correct or not. Now, over the ages, the word heresy has taken on the meaning of a theological error, someone who holds or teaches a theological error. But that is not what God is talking about here. That is not what that word meant in Paul's day. Let's look at another passage, 1 Corinthians 3, verses 1 through 4.
Paul says, " And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual people, but as to carnal, as to babes in Christ. I fed you with milk and not with solid food, for until now you are not able to receive it. And even now you are still not able. For you are still carnal. For where there are envy, strife, and divisions among you, are you not carnal and behaving like mere men? For when one says, " I am of Paul and another, I am of Apollos, are you not carnal?
" So even though we accept it as perfectly normal to have these kind of divisions, when there is strife and divisions among Christians, then we are carnal. We shouldn't think of ourselves as being on this lofty pedestal above all of these worldly churches out there and groups like that. The Bible clearly tells us that we are carnal, and at some level, we are not going to inherit the kingdom of God if we practice these things. They are not acceptable behavior to God. So why do we do it?
Well, I think it's because we imagine that we humans can do something far more marvelous than what even God did in Genesis 1. Genesis 1 says that God created man in the image of God. But we imagine we can do something far greater than that. We can create God in our image. We think that nitpicky rules and theological definitions are extremely important, that they're at the essence of Christianity. And then we project our own Phariseeism onto God. And we make Him like us, at least in our own minds we do.
However, the God that I see in the Bible is a God who cares primarily about two things. Do we love Him with all our heart and soul? And do we love our neighbor as ourself? Now, we can't love God if we ignore His commandments, so I'm not trying to water everything down into a nothing kind of Christianity. But we need to look at who the God of the New Testament really is. What is He really like? What does He tell us that matters to Him? And what does He tell us that He is not going to put up with?
I think the 16th century Christian writer, Richard Hooker, described God very accurately when he wrote, " God is no nit-picking theologian, eager to trip us up whenever we say something amiss. " But a courteous teacher, ready to adjust what in our weakness or our ignorance, we say in error, and eager to make the most of what we do say correctly. That's the kind of God I see in the New Testament. What do any of us read in the life of Jesus that would make us think otherwise?
Did he go around correcting people on theological definitions, theological errors they made? No, he almost never brings it up unless one of the scribes or Pharisees were trying to trap him or something. Did he go around adding further definitions to the law? Or did he say that his burden was light? So what's the answer? How do we break free from a spirit of sectarianism? How do we avoid watering down the gospel on one hand, and on the other hand, not being factious or argumentative? Neither extreme is acceptable.
Well, you know, I wish I had the whole answer. Now, as far as getting all Christians back into one organic network of churches, I don't think that can be possibly done without a miracle from God. On the other hand, I do know that the early church was able to be one for several centuries. So at least it is possible for not only small groups, but even large groups of Christians to be free of sectarianism among themselves.
For example, all conservative Anabaptist groups could be one if they could free themselves of a sectarian divisive spirit. I say that because leaving out the horse and buggy groups like the Old Order Amish, there are less than 100,000 conservative Anabaptists in the world. By conservative, I mean what is known among the Anabaptists as plain churches. But the plain churches are not all one. They are very divided among themselves. But there were between 1 and 3 million Christians, say, in the year 80 to 90.
And they were all one organic body, with just a few exceptions like the Novatianists and the Montanists. So what I want to do tonight is to first look at the early church and see some of the factors that enabled them to be one. Then we're going to look at some of the false solutions Christians have tried in order to bring an end to divisions. Next, we're going to look at an entire movement that was focused on restoring unity to Christ's body. We'll look at what they did right and where they went wrong.
Then finally, I want to talk about what you and I can do to remove every vestige, every hint of a divisive sectarian spirit from our own souls. So let's first talk about how the early Christians were able to remain one, how for three centuries they were able to remain a church that was not marked by divisions and dissensions and factions and things like that.
Well, it's important that we understand that during the first and second century, and to a large degree during the third century as well, Christian churches were all independent. No church had authority over another church. There was no hierarchy, no organization beyond what existed at the local city level. At the same time, all the churches were interdependent. They were cognizant of the fact that they made up one single organism, the body of Christ.
To illustrate, when Paul wrote a letter to the Church in Rome, you shouldn't imagine that there was some huge meeting hall where all the Christians came together every Sunday to worship, that there was one single church there. Not at all. In fact, speaking about Aquila and Priscilla, Paul asked his readers to greet the church that is in their house. And you'll notice that at the end of many of his letters, he talks about greeting people who were at the church in somebody's house.
The church in Rome, or the church in Corinth, or the church in Ephesus, was made up of a lot of small congregations meeting in homes. Yet they collectively made up just one church in that city. Because even though they were independent, they were also interdependent. And they recognized that they together all made up just one church in that city. And that situation still existed in the year 200, when perhaps there were between a half a million and maybe a million Orthodox Christians.
They all made up one United Church, even though there were thousands of individual small house churches. Yet today, committed kingdom Christians have trouble staying united in a house church as small as five or six families, or in conferences consisting of only 5,000 to 10,000 Christians. We can't even stay united in those settings. And they were able to be united with a million, maybe to 3 million Christians. Now I'm jumping a century ahead to about the year 290. So what was the secret of the early Christians?
Well, William Law, the English spiritual writer of the 18th century, made the following observation about the early Christians. He says, " The early Church knew that they were of God, that they belonged to God, because the Spirit had been given to them, and had begun to work in them. " End quote. What they had wasn't brought about by human wisdom or by some ingenious organizer. It was brought about by the Holy Spirit. So let's look at some of the characteristics that the Holy Spirit built into the early Church.
We've already talked about one of those characteristics, that you had independent congregations who were interdependently connected. At the beginning, they met in houses. Later, they met in small buildings. I don't think it turned on where they met. I think it turned on the attitude and spirit that was inside of them. Also, am I saying it's wrong to have a church conference today? No, I'm not saying that.
In fact, typically in the early churches in a given geographical area, the congregations would all work closely together, such as all of the churches in Western North Africa, or all of the churches in the Grecian Peninsula, something like that. The ministers from these various independent individual congregations would meet together from time to time to discuss issues and to try to have some measure of uniformity in church discipline in their congregations.
Now, a second extremely important characteristic is that they held to a simple theology that covered nothing more than the essentials of Christianity. What we know as the Apostles Creed today was the basic types of creeds that the early churches all had. There wasn't one uniform creed. Each church had its own creed, but they all were extremely similar.
The form that we know that creed today says this, " I believe in God the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and buried. He descended to Hades. On the third day, he rose again from the dead, ascended to heaven, sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. From there He will come to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Universal Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. That was it. Those were the essentials of the faith. But let me ask you, why isn't that still the creed of churches today? It's because there are people we want to exclude from God's kingdom who believe everything that's in that creed. So over the centuries, Christians have amplified that creed in order to exclude this group.
And then they amplified it again to exclude that group. And every time Christians amplified it to make it more specific, they invariably put in language that was not language of Scripture, and that somebody else couldn't agree with. And what was the result? The result was all of the things that the Spirit talks to us about in Galatians 5. You had strife, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, and factions. It's inevitable when you want to have a complex theology that everybody has to agree to.
The issue isn't so much that you're amplifying that particular creed. The problem is, is that you are invariably amplifying the words of the New Testament. You think you have to say things more precisely than the New Testament writers said them. And as long as Christians keep doing that, there are going to be strife and dissensions and factions and disputes. 3. The early Christians didn't nullify any New Testament commandments.
When a church doesn't uphold Jesus ' commandments or other specific commandments in the New Testament, it inevitably causes dissension and division down the line. It puts serious Christians, Christians who want to be obedient to God in an extremely awkward situation. Now, typically, a church isn't going to force you to break a specific commandment of God just because it allows others to.
For example, most churches today, in direct disobedience to what Jesus taught, allow Christians to divorce one another and remarry. Now they don't make a Christian couple divorce. It's fine to live by Jesus ' teachings, but it creates an unhealthy spiritual atmosphere for kingdom Christians, for people who want to follow Jesus ' words. I mean, what you end up with, you're driving home from church with your family, and you have to explain to your children.
Well, I know the minister said it's alright to get a divorce, that God forgives that. But that's not what Jesus said. Jesus said such and such. And then the next week, you have to explain to your children, " Well, I know the minister said that it's alright to go to war and to kill other people, even other Christians, but Jesus said to love your enemy. " And you go on and on. Pretty soon you realize that the church you're attending is dragging down the faith of your family.
And so then you want to try to find another church where God's commandments are upheld. So when churches do that, when they nullify any New Testament commandment, they are responsible for causing division. At the same time, the early Christians didn't add any new commandments. Later in time, they did. In the 8th century, the State Church added a commandment, not just a suggestion, but a commandment that Christians had to venerate icons. So where does that put you as a kingdom Christian?
Are you obedient to the institutional church, or are you obedient to Jesus Christ? The Church has now forced you to have to make a decision, and it has forced a division in the church. But today, kingdom Christians are often overzealous in defining the New Testament commandments more specifically than the Holy Spirit chose to define them. But just like in theology, when you start adding to the language of Scripture, you will create dissensions and arguments and church splits.
Now, am I saying it's wrong for a church to make applications of New Testament commandments? For example, the Bible commands women to dress modestly. And I think by inference, the same commandment is on men. Now, is it wrong for a church to say, well, here are the limits of what we consider modest dress to be? Well, I think voluntary agreements are okay, that if a group of Christians say we all feel that the length of a dress needs to be so far below the knee or something like that.
And in order that we don't create conflicts between families because this family allows their girls to wear these short little skirts and other ones require their girls to wear much longer dresses or skirts that, " Okay, we're going to agree together. This is where we're going to draw a line on modest dress. " Well, I think that's okay as long as it's a voluntary agreement. But so often what happens is somehow that voluntary agreement becomes a law.
And then pretty soon, we are dividing from other Christians who don't define it exactly the way that we do. And we label them as bad associations. We won't have communion with them. We might not even greet them as a brother. And see, at that point, then we are committing serious sin. We are doing the things that the Holy Spirit said in Galatians, we cannot do. If we are doing that, we are carnal and we will not inherit the kingdom of God.
There have been voluntary associations throughout Christian history that have worked. I mean, the religious orders that you have from the fourth century up to the present day, there have been a lot of things that have gone wrong with them here and there and a lot of hypocrites who have been part of them. But the actual concept has worked fairly well of Christians saying, " Look, we want to live an extra disciplined life or a more specifically defined Christian life, and so we're going to live this way.
" But it worked because those Christians didn't isolate themselves from all other Christians. They didn't say, " Now, we are the only true Christians, and all of you are wrong, " or, " We're not going to have communion with the rest of you. " No, they said, " We're going to live this way, but we've realized that we have defined things more precisely than the New Testament did, and we're not going to exclude you as a brother, unless you are actually violating a specific commandment of Scripture.
" The last characteristic I want to talk about concerning the early Church that made them one was that they saw unity as something that was not negotiable. They labeled division for what it is, an extremely serious sin that will keep us from inheriting the kingdom of God. So they were willing to be flexible, where the Scriptures are not inflexible, so that they could remain together.
Instead of creating walls all the time that would force them into division and force them to violate one of the basic principles of God's kingdom, of Christ's body, and that is that we are all one. Let's now look at some of the false solutions that Christians have come up with in order to try to restore unity either among all of Christ's body, or at least on a smaller level. One of these false solutions is ecumenism. That is, all right, let's not worry about the differing beliefs and conducts of other Christians.
We'll just accept one another as Christians if we all believe in Jesus Christ and label ourselves Christians. Well, the problem is, is that most churches today throw out specific commandments of Scripture. For example, liberal churches would nearly always today say that homosexuality is not a sin. They even ordain homosexual ministers. Many liberal churches deny even the basic apostles ' creed. They don't even believe that, as basic as it is. So all of us trying to be one on that basis is a false solution.
I mean, Paul did tell us specifically, or I should say the Holy Spirit tells us, that we are not to fellowship with anyone who calls himself a Christian, who's an adulterer or idolater, and he lists a number of things like that. So ecumenism is not the answer, because the Bible tells us we are not to do that. Well, another false solution is easy believism. And that's what we see in the majority, I would say, of evangelical churches and charismatic churches today, and certainly in liberal churches as well.
But in the evangelical and charismatic churches, typically they're big on theological doctrines. They don't compromise there. I mean, they might be in error, but they don't willingly compromise on it. But they teach that the commandments aren't really that essential. In other words, if you've invited Jesus into your heart, made Him your personal Savior, then you have a ticket to heaven that cannot be canceled. So, yes, maybe you do things the Bible says we shouldn't.
You get divorced and you remarry, but that's not going to keep you out of the kingdom of God. In other words, we get to pick and choose what commandments we want to follow based on the century in which we live and what's acceptable in our century. Well, that has the same problem as ecumenism, and it's not acceptable to God. At the other extreme, people have tried to do away with divisions in the body of Christ by creating cult-like exclusivity and requiring cult-like uniformity.
They often take 1 Corinthians 1, verses 10 through 13 as their motto. There Paul says, " Now I plead with you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment. For it has been declared to me concerning you, my brethren, by those of Chloe's household, that there are contentions among you.
Now, I say this, that each of you says, " I am of Paul, I am of Apollos, I am of Cephas, " or " I am of Christ. " Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? So what some churches do with that passage and the sect that I grew up in was this: Okay, what the leaders of the organization, the leaders of the sect or the church say, " This is all truth. " And so if you disagree with anything, then you are guilty of causing a division.
For example, in that sect, if you even question one small teaching, even privately to your best friend or somebody, and it was reported, you would be put out, excommunicated, shunned, for questioning anything. And then the group would say, " Look how united we are. We have this perfect unity. " Well, uniformity is not Holy Spirit led unity. There's a difference between the two. And there are plenty of other groups that do the same thing. Sometimes that might be just one small house church.
It might be a conference of churches. It might be a worldwide sect. But you see that same pattern. What we say is true, and if anyone disagrees with us, then they are guilty of schism and of being divisive. Well, I think the opposite is true. When you set yourself up as the teacher, instead of Jesus Christ being the teacher, then you are the one responsible for causing divisions if people disagree with you because they see Jesus saying something different.
One final false solution is the odd notion that God actually wants sectarianism. And some groups take 1 Corinthians 11 to try to establish this. Let me read that. It's 1 Corinthians 11 verses 17 through 20, where Paul says, " Now in giving these instructions, I do not praise you since you come together not for the better, but for the worse. " First of all, when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you. And in part, I believe it.
For there must also be factions among you that those who are approved may be recognized among you. Well, a number of groups take that verse 19, " There must be factions among you that those who are approved may be recognized among you. " To say, " See, Paul is saying, it's good to have factions. " But how can that be? We've already looked at these other passages, particularly Galatians 5, that says that those who are involved in factions will not inherit the kingdom of God.
So do you think he suddenly had a brain transplant between 1 Corinthians when he wrote it and Galatians when he wrote it? Of course not. The early Christians never understood 1 Corinthians 11:19 to be saying God wants us to have factions so that we can show ourselves to be the approved ones of God. He's saying it the other way around. That there must be factions so that those who aren't factious, who are not divisive, who don't take part in causing division, that they can be shown approved.
In other words, he's separating those who cause factions in contrast to those who are approved. In fact, a number of Bible translations even render it that way, although the Greek itself is perhaps a bit ambiguous. But the teaching of the New Testament isn't ambiguous. It's very clear that there are not supposed to be divisions.
And again, some take that passage to mean, okay, if in our group, let's say we are a church of 50 people, and there's 20 here who believe this is how we should apply a particular commandment or teaching in Scripture.
And then there's 20 over here who think, " No, we should apply it this way, " and there's 10 over here who have a different understanding of it, that what Paul is saying we should do is then just all three groups separate, create your own church, and then within your own church, you don't have any division because you all believe alike. Well, that's hardly what he's saying in 1 Corinthians.
He's condemning them for having divisions for saying, " I'm of Paul, I'm of Apollos, " or the super spiritual saying, " I'm of Christ. " He's not telling him, " Hey, keep separating and really form whole new churches based on this. " They were still just one church. And he's saying, " That's wrong. " He's saying, " Do away with the factions, " and you do away with them by quit defining beyond what Scripture has defined.
As Paul said, although he was talking about a different thing, don't go beyond the things written. If by trying to be more precise, whether it's dealing with theology or lifestyle, by trying to be more precise than Scripture, if that is going to cause a division, then we need to back away and just stick with the language of Scripture. It's not acceptable to just cause division and to even imagine that that's what God wants.
I would like to now talk about an exciting and serious effort that many Christians in the early 1800s made to end divisions in the body of Christ. The movement came to be known as the Restoration Movement. That is, its purpose was to restore the unity that was there in the first few centuries of the Church. One of the early leaders of this movement was a Presbyterian minister named Thomas Campbell. And I'd like to read to you some excerpts from his Declaration and Address.
This was delivered in 1809 to a group of Christians. He said, " That ministers and people should consider the fact that there are no divisions in the grave, nor in the world which lies beyond it. There, our divisions must come to an end. We must all unite there. If only we could find in our hearts to put an end to our short-lived divisions here. So we might leave a blessing behind us, even a happy and united church.
He continues that, " Although the Church of Christ upon earth must necessarily exist in particular and distinct societies, locally separate from one another, yet there should be no schisms, no uncharitable divisions among them. They should receive each other as Christ Jesus has also received them to be the glory of God. " And I think he made a very good point. We all know that we're not going to have these divisions in heaven.
So I think it should come down to, do I expect this professing Christian here to be in heaven with me? If so, then why is there a division between us? If our differences are not of such a sufficient kind as to prevent us both from being in heaven, then why can't we be charitable here? Now, as Thomas Campbell pointed out, we can't all meet in one gigantic assembly. Distance is one of the reasons why we can't. The other is in many communities, there wouldn't be a building large enough for every Christian to fit in.
But even more importantly, the New Testament pattern points to small churches. All of the references that we have to specific churches are those that are meeting in various people's houses. And it's fine if various congregations have different practices than other congregations. We don't have to create a homogenized kind of Christianity, but we don't have to let these differences cause uncharitable divisions among us.
Now, what Thomas Campbell saw as the problem was this: " That in some instances, a partial neglect of the expressly revealed will of God has been the cause of division. " And in others, an assumed authority for making the approval of human opinions and human inventions as a term of communion by introducing them into the Constitution, faith, or worship of the Church.
They are and have been the immediate, obvious, and universally acknowledged causes of all the corruptions and divisions that ever have taken place in the Church of God. " And I totally agree with him. If Christians had stayed with the original creed, which was good enough for 300 years, what we know as the Apostles ' Creed, we would have no divisions based on theology.
And then if every congregation kept the commandments that are in the Scriptures, without deleting them or altering them, adding to them or taking away from them, then again, we wouldn't have divisions. Or perhaps I should say the only divisions we would have, like they had in the early church, was between the church universal and the various heretical groups like the Gnostics who were teaching a totally different kind of religion.
Now I want to read to you Thomas Campbell's proposal to end these divisions in the body of Christ. None of this was some hypothetical thing. He and other Christians were very serious in working to bring about what he says. " That in order to do this, nothing ought to be imposed upon Christians as articles of faith, nor required of them as terms of communion, but what is expressly taught and commanded of them in the Word of God.
That with respect to the commands and ordinances of our Lord Jesus Christ, where the Scriptures are silent as to the exact time or manner of performance, if there are any, no human authority has power to interfere in order to supply the supposed efficiency by making laws for the Church. Nor can anything more be required of Christians in such cases other than that they observe these commandments and ordinances in such a manner as will obviously fulfill the declared and obvious purpose of their institution.
Much less as any human authority, the power to impose new commandments or ordinances upon the church. He continues that although inferences and deductions from Scripture premises, when fairly inferred may be truly called the doctrine of God's Holy Word, yet they are not formally binding upon the consciences of Christians farther than those Christians perceive the connection. " End quote.
In other words, yes, we can make reasonable inferences from things that are said in Scripture, but our inferences aren't binding upon the consciences of other Christians if they don't see the same inference. He continues, " Therefore no such deductions can be made terms of communion, although they do properly belong to the progressive edification of the church. " Hence, it's evident that no such deductions or inferential truth ought to have any place in the church's confession.
That it is not necessary that persons should have a particular knowledge or distinct understanding of all divinely revealed truths in order to entitle them to a place in the Church. Neither should they, for this purpose, be required to make a profession more extensive than their own understanding.
Lastly, that if any circumstances indispensably necessary to the observance of divine ordinances are not found upon the page of express revelation, then only such things that are absolutely necessary for this purpose should be adopted under the title of " human expedience " without any pretense to a more sacred origin. Therefore, no subsequent alteration or difference in the observance of these things should produce any contention or division in the church. " End quote.
Let me explain that last clause in case he lost you there. He's saying that let's take, for example, the observance of communion. There are some absolutely necessary decisions that we're going to have to make. For example, should everyone in the church come up to the front and receive communion there served from the minister or elders or deacons? Or should everyone remain in their seats and the bread and wine be passed down the rows? There's nothing in the New Testament that expressly states how that is to be done.
There might be some clues. So we are going to have to make a decision one way or the other. But whatever decision we make, we should recognize that it's just a human expedient. In other words, we're going to do it this way in our congregation because this is what we prefer. But we're not going to pretend that there's some sacred origin to that. So we certainly shouldn't have contentions and divisions over those kind of issues.
Now, the only thing I would add there would be, on some of these matters, we can look into the testimony of the second century, and often there it is explicit how they did it then. Now that doesn't mean again that we have to do it just like they did it in the second century, but I think it's a pretty good clue of no doubt how they were doing it in the first century. I think it's something that's a commendable way to approach these things, but again, we can't make them the basis for division in the church.
Well, from what Thomas Campbell said in his message there, I think it's easy to see why the motto of the Restoration Movement became, " We speak where the Scriptures speak, and we are silent where the Scriptures are silent. " And I think that's a great motto for all of us. Let me give you another illustration of what I think Thomas Campbell is talking about on these inferences. For example, the New Testament teaches that sisters are to dress modestly. Now, that has to mean something.
And actually, every church draws boundaries somewhere on that. I mean, even the most liberal church, I don't think would allow someone to come to church in their underwear or a woman to come in topless or something like that. But surely Paul meant something much more than that when he was talking about dressing modestly. And I don't see a problem if one congregation wants to draw the line here, if they're following a reasonable inference from New Testament teaching.
And another congregation perhaps has a stricter interpretation of where they draw the line. Okay, those two churches can each practice their own inferences from that passage, but they don't have to treat each other as being enemies. They don't have to have a schism in the body of Christ over it. They don't have to make those terms of communion. The problem is we tend to make our inferences terms of communion.
Thomas Campbell's son, Alexander Campbell, eventually became one of the main leaders of this new restoration movement. In the magazine he published called The Christian Baptist, he wrote, " This plan of making our own nest and fluttering over our own brood, of building our own tent, and of confining all goodness and grace to our noble selves and the elect few who are like us. " Well, this is the quintessence of sublimated Phariseeism. The Pharisees of old were but babes in comparison to the modern.
And the longer I live and the more I reflect upon God and man, heaven and earth, the Bible and the world, the Redeemer and His Church, the more I am assured that all sectarianism is the offspring of hell.
All differences about words, names, and opinions, whether they're hatched in Egypt, Rome, or Edinburgh, are like the frolics of drunken men, where there is a new creature or a congregation of them with all their imperfections, frailties, and errors in sentiment, views, and opinions, they should receive one another. The strong should support the infirmities of the weak. " End quote. Well, sadly, the Restoration Movement did not succeed in its goal of ending divisions in the body of Christ.
The churches that that movement started are still with us today, but they have not in any way restored unity to Christ's body. And that's because somewhere along the line, the vision of the Restoration Movement changed from working to restore unity among all Christians to let's restore the perfect New Testament church.
And so these Christians, and I'm not in any way, belittling them, they imagined that they had eliminated divisions in the body of Christ by claiming that they were the one true church and everybody else were denominations. And so there's no division in the body of Christ because we're the body of Christ, and you guys aren't. The movement came to focus primarily on doctrine and on church institutions, how you do communion and baptism, and singing, and things like that.
Somewhere along the line, they forgot that the essence of Christianity is an obedient love faith relationship with Jesus Christ. They entirely lost focus on that, and it became a matter of getting all of your doctrines and all of your ordinances just right, and then that makes you the real body of Christ. You know, about a century before the Restoration Movement, William Law made some, I think, striking observations about different movements in his own time to try to restore Christianity to where it should be.
I want to just read to you a few of those quotes. He said, " A zeal based solely on doctrines can only do for Christians what it did for the Jews. It will murder the person and purposes of Christ. " Again, he said, " I believe that every group of Christians whose religion stands upon this ground, however ardent their zeal may seem to be in such matters " he's talking about doctrines, they will sooner or later find that their evil, ungodly nature is at the bottom of it.
They will soon enough discover a selfish, earthly, overbearing pride in their own definitions and doctrines. " One last one, he said, " He who places any value in theological arguments or opinions that are held about the biblical doctrines of faith, justification, sanctification, election, and reprobation depart from the true worship of the living God within him. In fact, he sets up an idol of ideas to be worshipped. " And that's exactly what happened to the Restoration Movement.
It wasn't true to its own motto of where the scriptures speak, we speak, where the Scriptures are silent, we're silent. The movement had several splits. One of them was over the issue of instrumental music in the church. I guess when I read the scriptures, I would have to say the Bible is silent on that matter. There's no commandment that you are not allowed to have musical instruments in the church. And there's no statement that says you are allowed to have them.
We can look at the example of the Second and Third Century Church, and the evidence there would seem to indicate that acapella singing was the normal thing in the church. I don't think I could say I could prove that, but I could say that's the great weight of evidence. And then there were things that are commandments in the Scriptures that the Restoration Movement dropped. The teaching in 1 Corinthians 11 on the head covering. Somewhere along the line, they threw that out. Greet one another with a holy kiss.
That got thrown out. Raising holy hands to heaven in prayer. That form of worship was taken out. Loving your enemy and not resisting evil. At the beginning, the Restoration Movement taught that. That participation in war is wrong. But over a period of decades, that got dropped out too. And they had other splits over matters where, again, the scriptures don't say it's alright to do this. Neither did they say it's wrong to do it.
The very kind of things that Thomas Campbell was saying we should not have divisions over, well, they ended up having divisions over. So the restoration movement in the end did not accomplish at all what it set out to do. That doesn't mean it has to be a dead vision. My prayer is certainly that the churches that grew out of that restoration movement, who are still with us today, that they could recapture that vision that the founders of the movement in the early 1800s had.
I'm certainly not convinced that God is through with them, that the movement can't recover what was once there. So whether we're connected with the restoration movement or not, what can we do individually to be free of the spirit of sectarianism? Well, first, as far as it depends upon us, we can be at peace and unity with all Christians who love God and have made Jesus Christ their Lord. I like the position that William Law took. He said, " I am neither Protestant nor Catholic.
I cannot say that I belong only to one society of Christians, separate and distinct from all others. To do so would be hurtful to me. The defects, corruptions, and imperfections in all churches do not hinder my communion with the church in which I am now a member, nor do they hinder my being in full union and hearty fellowship with everything that is Christian, holy, and good in every other church. I am part of both the inward church and the outward church. " End quote.
On another occasion, he said, " The one true proof that we are living members of Christ's Church on earth is nothing else but our having the inward nature and the outward behavior that Christ manifested to the world. " Educated people within the Church have given us what they call the marks of the true Church. However, whether a person is educated or uneducated, the only proof that he can have as to his own membership in Christ's Church is his being dead to all sin and alive to all righteousness.
It has taken years for what William Law said there to sink into me. But I realize now how totally right he was. We all can be in communion in what is good and right in every other church. And we can be in fellowship with those whose proof of membership in Christ's Church is their being dead to all sin and alive to all righteousness. Not in an absolute perfection sense, but as a general everyday observation.
Number two, we can believe Jesus when he tells us that the greatest two commandments are loving His Father with our whole heart, mind, and soul, and loving our neighbor as ourself. When we start thinking that doctrines are more important than love, we've missed the boat, and that's why we're not able to have unity with other Christians. Number three, we can also believe what Jesus said about Judgment Day in Matthew 25.
He said he was going to separate the sheep from the goats, and on what basis was he going to do that? Again, on the basis of our love of fellow man. Have we been there to feed the hungry, to clothe the impoverished, to visit those who are sick and those who are in prison? Jesus isn't going to give us a doctrinal quiz on Judgment Day. He's going to want to look at what kind of love have we displayed in our lives.
As William Law said, the true and sufficient mark of our outward church membership is found only where the outward form of Christ's loving behavior towards all men is seen. And I'd like to close this message with a quotation from Benjamin Franklin. This was at the end of the Constitutional Convention. And what he said there I think was very wise, and I think it applies equally well in the Kingdom of God. I think it applies in our church meetings and decisions that we make in our churches. Let me read it to you.
He said, " I don't entirely approve of this Constitution at present. In fact, I'm not sure I'll ever approve of it, but I'm also not sure that I am right. I have lived a long time, and the longer I live, the more I begin to doubt my own infallibility. And the more I begin to respect the judgment of others. We've collected together men who not only have great wisdom, but also prejudices, selfish views, and local interests. From such an assembly, we can't expect a perfect production.
It astonishes me that we have come as close to perfection as we did. It will astonish our enemies as well, who think of our separate states coming together only to cut each other's throats. So I consent to this Constitution because I expect no better and because I'm not absolutely convinced that it's not the best.