What you get when you fail to rightly divide the word of truth.Passenger trains and freight trains must be distinguished!
"Distinctions in theology are never looked upon favorably by those Christians who are content with believing themselves over Scripture." - Lane Chaplin
"Distinction is the essence of sound theology." unknown.
What an apt statement! But few see its implications.
People who don't rightly divide the word of truth hold to illogical and contradictory ideas - inevitably.
I was taught this maxim when a new student of the Scriptures:
Distinction is the essence of sound theology.
For example people who can't distinguish a declaration of fact from a conditional offer have always end up perverting Scriptures.. "whosoever believes have eternal life" - a declaration of fact means whosoever believes does so because he possesses eternal life, but that is understood by so many as a statement of conditional offer, i.e. "whosoever will believe shall have eternal life" - making it in a conditional offer, eternal life is conditional upon believing.
Then the implication is that the spiritually dead is able to perform spiritual task... repudiating a most basic principle, life must precede the activities of that life.
The same with 'justification by or through faith' - the way it is commonly understood, i.e. faith is the instrument to OBTAIN justification before God, instead of the instrument to EVIDENCE or MANIFEST the justification that has taken place by God's free grace. Such view ignore a DEADLY implication - i.e. the UN-justified by God (still under just condemnation) is able to believe!
People can't distinguish the distinction between
- LEGAL justification that took place at the cross, and the
- VITAL justification that is APPLIED PERSONALLY by God's free grace at effectual calling to grace and salvation, and the
- EXPERIENTIAL justification by faith (what we see in Gen 15:1-6.
The old baptists distinguish them so plainly.
"Those Christians who are content with believing THEMSELVES over Scripture" are obsessed with their their faith, i.e.
- their believing in obtaining eternal life; their believing is instrumental to their regeneration, AS WELL AS
- their believing in obtaining their justification; their believing is instrumental is securing their justification before God.
They surely are content with believing themselves... even though their self-centred notions are full of logical nonsense and contradictions!
Apostle Paul did warn of a time when people will be lovers of themselves. Apostle Paul was not speaking of heathens, such have always been lovers of self. He was speaking of believers in perilous times.
