Chapter 25: How Church Standards Can Help. This is liberty, true gospel liberty, experienced by every believer; not freedom from the law of God or the works of God, but from the law of sin and the works of the devil. John Wesley. The two things which, of all others, need the most to be under a strict rule are our time and our money. William Law. Church standards, or rules of conduct, can be an enormous help in our quest for obedience.
My dictionary defines standards as "those morals, ethics, and habits established by authority, custom, or an individual as acceptable." Just as it is with plain dress, most people today associate church standards with the so-called plain churches, conservative Amish, Mennonite, and Brethren churches. However, church standards have been around since the days of the early church. Early Christian congregations often used manuals of church life.
The Didache is the earliest of these surviving manuals, and it dates back to about the year 100. Some other surviving church manuals are the Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus, year 200; the Didascalia, year 250; and the Apostolic Constitutions, year 390. These church manuals make specific applications of various New Testament principles of conduct. For example, most of them list specific occupations from which Christians were excluded, such as actors, magicians, and gladiators.
Of course, none of these church manuals were intended to cover every type of sin. Instead, they focused on the most prevalent issues of their day. By their very nature, manuals for Christian living can't adequately cover what Jesus called the weightier matters: justice, mercy, and faith. Nor can they enforce the two greatest commandments: to love God with our whole heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. After A.D. 400, church manuals largely fell into disuse.
Thereafter, church discipline mainly depended on the zeal and concern of the local bishop. Nevertheless, Christians who were serious about their Christian walk often voluntarily put themselves under the rule of life of some Christian community. During the Middle Ages, these communities were nearly always limited to single, celibate Christians. Married Christians and those who didn't want to join a community had to develop their own personal rules of life based on the teachings of Scripture.
Most of the groups who broke from the Catholic Church during the Middle Ages, such as the Lollards, Waldensians, and Czech Brethren, featured strong church standards that distinguished their lives from their Catholic neighbors. In fact, during the Middle Ages, the authorities often suspected as heretics those who were living exceptionally godly lives. After the Reformation, some churches reinstituted church standards or rules of conduct for their members.
The most notable of these were the Anabaptist, Moravian, and Calvinist churches. Over time, other churches made use of church standards, such as the Quakers, the English Baptists, and the German Baptist Brethren. In addition to such churches, numerous spiritual societies, both large and small, flourished inside the larger state churches, such as the Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Lutheran churches. The most famous of these societies were the Methodist societies founded by John and Charles Wesley.
The Methodist Societies. John Wesley was one of the most effective evangelists of all time. He preached over 42,000 sermons throughout his life and was instrumental in the conversion of tens of thousands of people. However, Wesley never founded a church. The Methodist church was not established until after he died. Rather than starting a church, Wesley tried to support the existing churches. At the same time, Wesley organized hundreds of Methodist societies.
These societies were companies of people who met weekly for Bible study, prayer, and mutual encouragement. They lived by a list of standards that comprised a rule of life. People who didn't live by the society's standards were soon excluded from the group. The Methodist societies met on evenings when there was no church service, so as not to compete with the local churches. Many of Wesley's converts joined one of these Methodist societies, but many did not.
Several years into his ministry, Wesley made this observation: "The far greater part of those who had begun to fear God and work righteousness but were not united together in a society grew faint in their minds and within a few months fell back into what they were before. Meanwhile, the far greater part of those who were thus united together continued striving to enter in at the strait gate and to lay hold on eternal life. They wanted to flee from the wrath to come and to assist each other in doing so.
They therefore united themselves in order to pray together, to receive the word of exhortation, and to watch over one another in love, that they might help each other to work out their salvation." Wesley discovered that disciplinary standards, joined with prayer and teaching, make an enormous difference as to whether someone stays on the vine and produces fruit or else falls by the wayside. The Methodist Standards. The rule of life for the Methodist societies addressed both negative and positive conduct.
In other words, their standards set forth things the members were to avoid, and they set forth things the members were to do.
First, by doing no harm, by avoiding evil of every kind, especially that which is most generally practiced, such as: taking of the name of God in vain, profaning the day of the Lord, either by doing ordinary work therein or by buying or selling; drunkenness, buying or selling spiritous liquors, or drinking them, unless in cases of extreme necessity; slaveholding, buying or selling slaves; fighting, quarreling, brawling, brother going to law with brother; returning evil for evil, or railing for railing; using many
words in buying or selling, that is, haggling; buying or selling smuggled goods; giving or taking things on usury; uncharitable or unprofitable conversation, particularly speaking evil of magistrates or of ministers; doing to others as we would not want them to do unto us; doing what we know is not for the glory of God, such as the putting on of gold and costly apparel; engaging in such amusements as cannot rightly be done in the name of the Lord Jesus; singing such songs or reading such books that do not tend to
the knowledge or love of God; luxury and needless self-indulgence; laying up treasure upon earth; borrowing without a probability of paying, or purchasing goods on credit without a probability of paying for them.
Secondly, it is expected of all who remain in these societies that they should continue to evidence their desire of salvation by doing good, by being in every way merciful according to their power, as they have opportunity, doing good of every possible sort and as far as possible to all men, to their bodies, according to the ability that God gives, by giving food to the hungry, by clothing the naked, and by visiting or helping those who are sick or in prison, to their souls, by instructing, reproving, or exhorting
all whom we have any dealing with, by doing good, especially to those who are of the household of faith or seeking to be so, by employing them preferably to others, by buying from one another, helping each other in business, and so much more because the world will love its own and only its own, by living with all possible diligence and frugality, so that the gospel is not reproached, by running with patience the race that is set before us, denying ourselves and taking up our cross daily, by willingly bearing the
reproach of Christ to be as the filth and offscouring of the world, by expecting that men will say all manner of evil about us falsely for the Lord's sake.
Thirdly, it is expected of all who desire to remain in these societies that they should continue to demonstrate their desire of salvation by attending upon all the ordinances of God, such as: the public worship of God, the ministry of the word, read or expounded, the supper of the Lord, family and private prayer, searching the Scriptures, fasting or abstinence. Some Christians mistakenly think it is unspiritual to be subject to church standards.
Yet such standards were the key to the spirituality of the original Methodist societies, as well as to many other Christian movements. In fact, virtually all of the great spiritual classics were penned by Christians who belonged to a church, society, or Christian community with a rule of life. Nevertheless, as helpful as church standards are, they do have their limitations, as we're about to see.