Embracing Unity and Holiness in the Church

R.C. Sproul: Yes, I would. That is an application. It’s certainly not mentioned specifically by our Lord in that prayer, where the other things, the other three do feature prominently in His concern. But again, I think it is as you would say a subset of the unity of the church and of our understanding of the church. [00:47:27]

R.C. Sproul, Jr.: I was going to ask maybe a helpful pastoral, practical question on catholicity that I think is important for us to consider, and that is how does – and you may have a particular challenge here being in Washington, D.C. – how do we make sure that the reality of the catholicity of the church is communicated in our worship services when we live in a country that’s so quick to conflate what may be a perfectly legitimate commitment to patriotism with the Christian faith? Isn’t… Isn’t it important for us to remember that when we gather together for corporate worship, we don’t come as Americans, we come as Christians? [00:30:11]

Steve Lawson: Well, I have pastored a church in the past when I was at Dauphin Way that, you know, we had extravaganzas that were patriotic. Well, for me I wanted as I found myself in that situation, which was a time for me to formulate certain convictions, one, I wanted us… for the preeminence of Christ, the centrality of the Word of God. I mean, this is a worship service of the Lord on the Lord’s Day, and this is not a patriotic rally. [00:04:31]

R.C. Sproul: When we went to Romania from Hungary, we were warned to be careful when we got to the border of Romania because we could run into significant hostility from the border guards. And we were in a train that I think was a pre-World War II train. It was pretty difficult. And we got to the border, and we stopped, and these two rough looking guards came in and ordered us to open up our suitcases. And so we brought our suitcases down from the upper hold there, and we were about to open them, when the head guard came on, and he was even bigger than the other two. And one of our women in the party had her Bible in a brown paper bag. And the head guard saw that, and he said, “What is that?” And she opened the bag, and we thought, oh, here we go. And he grabbed the Bible, and he opened it up to the text, and he pointed to me, and he said, “Read what this says.” And he said, “You not American. You’re not American. You’re not American.” And we said, “Oh my, what is this? We got our passports. Of course, we’re Americans.” He said, “No, you’re not American.” “You no American,” he said, “I no Romanian.” He said, “Read what it says.” We are citizens of the commonwealth of heaven. And he said, “I’m a Christian.” And he turned to the other guys, he said, “These people are Christians. They’re alright. Let them go.” I mean, what a taste of benevolent providence that was. But I mean, but that’s the way I have always felt. I love my country, and if you… as you lived in Europe and I lived in Europe, only when you, I think, and when you live in a different country that you really begin to appreciate the profound blessings that we enjoy in this country. But my loyalty, ultimately is to the King of the kings. It is to Christ and to His kingdom, not to the government of any particular nation in this world. [00:06:13]

Mark Dever: Okay, which pushes us on then to the next message, where I led us in thinking about creeds and confessions and their utility. I’m just curious, Steven, in your experience with Baptist churches, have you found a hostility to creeds and confessions or have you found they understand we were all started with each congregation having a statement of faith, and there’s no problem having a statement of faith? [00:15:24]

R.C. Sproul: In church history, I think the chief driving force for the creation of confessional statements and creeds has been the appearance of heresy. Whenever heretics arise like the Arians, that produced the Nicene Council and so on, or the Monophysites in the 5th century, and you see these radical distortions of the Biblical message, to protect the church and the people in it from the impact of heresy, the church is forced to sharpen with greater precision its explanation of what they mean by their statements. Like… Like somebody says, “I have no creed but Jesus.” And I’d say, “Okay, who is Jesus?” Once they begin to say anything, they’re into theology, they’re into doctrine, they’re making some kind of theological commitment to their understanding of the person and work of Christ. And so the church has to have these things, or you’re susceptible to every kind of heresy that comes down the road. And… And again, the church will get along for a long time with ambiguous understandings of certain doctrines until the heretics take it in this direction, and you’re forced now to precision and to deny the antithesis of what the Bible affirms. We say this and not this. [00:17:38]

R.C. Sproul: Let me just say one of the historic dangers that we’ve seen in this is the use of the studied ambiguity in creeds or in confessional statements. The studied ambiguity is an attempt to use language that is intentionally ambiguous, so that both sides in a dispute can affirm it in good conscience. We ran into this with the ECT initiative where I remember being with Jim Kennedy at the time in a discussion with the… with one of the two architects of the document, and the Roman Catholic architect made the public statement that here we have this agreement that we’ve handed out, but of course, we don’t both mean the same thing by the words that are used. And the Protestant guy seconded the motion and in front of Jim Kennedy. And Jim Kennedy said, “Now, wait a minute. Let me see if I understand this. You guys are saying that you have this Evangelical and Catholic document where you’re affirming your agreement, and that you have a unity in the gospel on these sort of things, and you both signed this, and you both say that you both don’t mean the same thing by the words that you agree on.” And Jim Kennedy said, “Isn’t that fraud?” So the elephant was in the room. But that’s exactly… and Rome’s great at that sort of thing. That’s what happened at Regensburg with the attempt to nullify the Reformation by using language that anybody could affirm. [00:22:00]

R.C. Sproul, Jr.: I wanted to emphasize a couple of things about it. One, it’s not only that confessions… that doctrine doesn’t divide, but doctrine – let’s affirm the antithesis – doctrine unites. That we have to have, and this is probably frankly a little easier for the Presbyterians than the Baptists. We have to have some communal sense of shared convictions that keep us together, and it should build unity among us. Here we are gathered together, and we even have this here with Baptists and Presbyterians because we have a shared set of… [00:30:20]

R.C. Sproul: I think the one that was most important – they were all important, but if you were to ask me the one that’s more important for pastors, it’s discontent, because when I’m not content with what I have, when I envy somebody else, what I’m saying is that God, “Why have You bestowed that blessing on that person and not upon me?” My discontent is an affront to God. It’s an act of unbelief, really. And I’m despising the hand of God’s providence when I’m not content with where I am and with what I have. And yet that the other thing that Steve pointed out I thought so wonderfully, he mentioned in the text Paul doesn’t just say, “Be content.” But Paul said, “I had to learn.” I mean, contentment is not something that comes automatically with conversion. It’s an acquired… the more we understand the sovereignty of God and the goodness of God, the more we understand that every good and perfect gift we have comes from Him, the more… the easier it is to become content. [00:56:00]

R.C. Sproul: You know, the thing is, is when that first hit the scene, again, it’s chief architecture… architect made the statement that he was trying to create a theistic view that was between process theology and orthodox Christianity. So by his own statement, he understood that the doctrine of God he was espousing departed from Christian orthodoxy. [00:33:24]

R.C. Sproul: Jim Boice used to say that the problem with the church today was that we were trying to do the Lord’s work in the world’s way, listening too much to the marching of the beat of Madison Avenue. I remember once reading a book about that thick on advertising. When we first started to distribute Ligonier tapes, and we had to write advertising copy, and I read this big thick book of all the tried and true and tested techniques that absolutely generate a greater response. And there were certain principles that you had to use if you wanted optimal response to your ad, like you had to guarantee a successful outcome of the use of the project… product, for example, when we say get this tape on the holiness of God, and it will change your life. And I used to sit down with the people that would write this copy, and I’d say, hey, I got to reject 50% at least of the tried and true techniques that work. We know that they work from the testing, but I cannot give people a guarantee that this tape is going to change their life, other than it just cost them $4 or something that they’ve lost, because they may read it, and it might go… or listen to it, and it might go right past them and have no benefit, salutary benefit for them what’s… at all. [00:46:31]