Sincerity without diligence will not lead us to the truth.
I remember a conversation I had with a fellow believer who was struggling to accept a difficult doctrine. He couldn’t make sense of the issue and, rather than digging deeper into his Bible, he prayed, “Lord, make me know the truth!” He wanted God to resolve his struggle in a flash.
What’s missing in this prayer?
There’s certainly something right about asking God to help us know the truth. But is that all that’s necessary? While I don’t doubt this man’s good intentions, his attitude represents a shortsighted and undisciplined approach to doctrine. His method appeals to quick and easy convictions by God’s Spirit, neglecting the diligent study of the word of God.
This seems to parallel an underlying issue in how many of us develop our doctrinal views. While we certainly ought to pray for God’s Spirit to help us understand the Bible (the Apostle Paul prays many times for God to help believers know the truth), it is not enough to simply pray, expecting that God will straighten everything out in our minds while we ignore what He has said. It is akin to asking God to provide for our physical needs, then sitting on the porch in a rocking chair waiting for the blessings to roll in. Though Scripture teaches that God provides for our needs, He does so in large part through our diligence. Wanting results without work is mere laziness.
So too, God illuminates our minds by His Spirit, yet He does so in large part through our study of Scripture. Without the hard work of digging into Scripture, we will not be led to a right understanding of the truth. We will not get the Spirit’s blessing without reading the Spirit’s words. Sincere prayer is not enough. We need to dig into Scripture if we want to know the truth.
Be Diligent
We can’t expect to understand biblical doctrines with only a surface knowledge of Scripture and a few well-intentioned prayers. If we want to know God’s truth, we must put in the effort to study His word. Sincerity (though important) is not enough. We will not discover the truth by sincerity without diligence. The apostle Paul has this in mind when he says to his protégé Timothy, “Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15).
Three things deserve our attention. First, Timothy is tasked with “dividing the word of truth.” “Dividing” translates a Greek figure of speech that “means something like ‘cutting a straight road.’[1] In regard to the message of truth, it means ‘correctly handling; or ‘imparting it without deviation.’”[2] He must cut it straight, teaching and preaching the Bible accurately and clearly, without corruption or confusion.
Second, we notice that it is possible for Timothy to fail to faithfully divide the word. He may, in the final analysis, be “ashamed” before God. He has been tasked with shepherding God’s sheep, a task which largely involves the ministration of Scripture in public and in private. His faithfulness in this will be determined by whether or not his teaching agrees with the word of God. Is he preaching the full gospel, the true gospel? Is his doctrine sound? Is the Christ he preaches the same as the Christ of the Scriptures? If he fails to correctly divide the word of truth, he may be ashamed before God in the end. Whether or not he is approved by men is of no consequence; God’s assessment will determine his faithfulness. Paul urges Timothy to “be diligent” so that he “does not need to be ashamed.”
Since this is such a weighty matter, how can Timothy be sure his ministry will not be in vain? Here’s the third thing to notice: He must put in effort to know the truth. “Be diligent,” Paul says. Timothy will have to rearrange his priorities—sacrificing comforts, giving up hobbies, and putting in shorter days at work. “Make every effort to present yourself before God as a proven worker…” (NET). This is not something that will happen incidentally or accidentally. No, he must put in the hard work of studying Scripture. If he does, he will be an unashamed, proven worker—well pleasing to God.
Now that we have a handle on this passage, we can apply it to the issue at hand. If we want to be faithful workers, how do we determine what is true? We must study the word of God. We will not get results without effort. We will not get conviction without being filled with the word of God. Transformation happens through Scripture, not apart from it.
It is not enough to pray for God to lead us to the truth. Yes, that prayer is essential, but it is not enough. In humble dependence on the Spirit of God—the Master Teacher—we go to work. We study. We apply ourselves. We dig through commentaries, check cross references, work out knotty problems and compare Scripture with Scripture. We check lexicons and dictionaries, all in our effort to know Scripture accurately and thereby to know the truth correctly. We read systematic theologies to see how the various truths of God’s word can be synthesized while maintaining faithfulness to the whole.
We need to study the Bible to discover the truth. Yes, I’m saying that we all need theology.
Fatal Allergies
It’s been observed by others that many Anabaptists are allergic to theology. Some of us think that theology is too complex for our ordinary, uneducated minds and therefore most of us shouldn’t be expected to understand it. Three things I observe in response. First of all, many of us men are skilled workers and businessmen, able to diagnose and fix complicated machinery, lead successful businesses, or manage finances and taxes. The ladies likewise are skilled homemakers—managing busy family schedules, growing luscious gardens, baking, etc.. We are skilled thinkers and problem solvers in these practical areas, but somehow this doesn’t transfer into our theology.
Forgive me if this is too harsh, but it seems to me that we do not lack the ability, but rather the desire. We pursue what we love. If we aren’t willing to put ourselves to task to understand the doctrines of the Bible, maybe the problem isn’t our skills but rather our hearts. If we really love God, won’t we want to know Him?
Second, God created us to know Him. He made us imago Dei—in His image. A part of that image is the capacity to have relationships—with each other and with Him. Healthy relationships involve both knowledge and affection. I know many things about my wife, and much of my relationship with her requires that knowledge. But I could know all those things without loving her. I also have affection for her. I feel a certain way toward her because of our common experiences and our common commitment to our marriage. At bottom, these affections are built upon my knowledge of who she is. While it would be possible for me to know much about her without feeling affection toward her, it is doubtful that my affections could exist apart from my knowledge of her.
So too, our relationship with God involves both knowledge and affection. Additionally, we need to realize that knowledge is a prerequisite for affection. To the point—we cannot have a meaningful relationship with God if we don’t know anything about Him. Thus theology is a prerequisite to relationship. It is rightly said that we will never know God fully, but that doesn’t mean we can’t know Him truly. The true knowledge of God that we have leads us to true relationship with Him.
If theology (knowing information about God) is necessary for relationship (vibrant and dynamic experience of God), and if God has created us for relationship with Him, it follows that we must be created with certain equipment, certain capacities to discover truth about God so that we may love Him more. That’s a significant part of what it means to be created imago Dei. If we deny the importance of theology, we cannot but dim our perception of what it means to be created by God in His image. It is an offense to the goodness of God’s creation to say that He has not made us with the necessary faculties to know Him.
Third, if we say that theology is beyond us, we (intentionally or not) say something about what we believe about Scripture–we say that God didn’t speak clearly enough. But God did not write Scripture to befuddle us. Though there are some things that are “hard to understand” (2 Peter 3:16), in the main Scripture is clear and to the point. It takes simple people and makes them wise (cf. Psalm 19:7). We discount the quality of Scripture when we say that it cannot be understood. That doesn’t mean that every biblical concept is simple. It does mean that most of them can be worked out if we are willing to put in the effort. Put another way, the more we know of Scripture the clearer picture we will get of the truth. Greater knowledge of Scripture means better understanding of the truth.
God has spoken clearly and intelligibly. He intends us to know the truth.
Distractions
Why do we sometimes go astray in our pursuit of the truth? Three things regularly distract us from the pure milk of the word: (1) Tradition, (2) Philosophy, and (3) Assumptions.
Tradition sometimes blurs our understanding of the truth. Don’t get me wrong, there is immense value in the teaching which is passed down from generation to generation. The life of the church has largely been preserved by those who have faithfully transmitted gospel truth to their children, generation by generation. Tradition broadly includes commentaries, confessions of faith, doctrinal and practical writings, etc.. These things give us a tremendous boost toward biblical fidelity. Tradition is an excellent complement to biblically-grounded Christianity.
But it is a poor substitute. The moment our faith is focused on the tradition itself rather than Scripture, we have drifted. Tradition is valuable inasmuch as it tethers us to God’s word. When that connection frays or fails, we quickly drop off into corrupted doctrine.
Philosophy likewise can either support or hinder biblical faithfulness. By philosophy, I mean those ideas which originate in the mind of man rather than in the mind of God. We should all be philosophizing on some level—finding reasonable explanations for the issues of life. When these musings are subjected to Scripture, they can be helpful. Philosophy is beneficial as a secondary method, helping us sort and apply Scripture in areas where it is less clear.
But sometimes, our ideas of truth and error interfere with our interpretation of Scripture. We resist the Bible’s teaching on a particular issue because it grates against our ideas. We adjust our interpretation of certain passages to conform them to our preconceptions. In short, we allow our ideas of what is true and right to trump the clear teaching of Scripture. Our philosophy distorts our view of the truth.
Most commonly, though, I think we just live by our assumptions. On the ground, we often accept or reject an idea based on a reflexive response rather than by Scripture. When we encounter an unfamiliar concept, we may judge its truthfulness by a general sense of right and wrong rather than bothering to compare it with human reason (philosophy), what we’ve been taught (tradition), or the Bible. We live within a framework of preconceptions—the amalgamation of a lifetime of experiences, conversations, books, and sermons.
Again, this has a certain value. We cannot rework our entire theology every time we encounter a new idea. We need the stability that is provided by a working set of ideas and assumptions. There’s a sort of inertia here which keeps us heading in more or less the same direction. We can maintain meaningful lives even when wrestling with some of the most foundational questions of life and meaning. But when our assumptions become the dominant touchstone by which we determine what is and is not true, faithful Christianity quickly deteriorates into a husky shell. We dare not allow our assumptions to go unchecked by the piercing truth of Scripture.
Climbing the Ladder
How do we progress toward Christian maturity? We need to climb the ladder from our assumptions, through philosophy and tradition, to biblically-grounded truth. Herein is a framework for discriminating between sources of truth. We all operate by our assumptions—it’s the natural way to live. But we need these assumptions, these habits of mind, to be conformed to the truth. We need our minds renewed (Romans 12:2). How does that happen? Philosophy has a part, inasmuch as it is subjected to the word of God. Tradition is a good teacher, inasmuch as it preserves “the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3). But above it all, we need the Bible to shape our thinking. “Our first task must be to test all the words of men by the authoritative Word of God, to receive only what Scripture endorses, and to reject all that is contrary to it.”[3] We need the Spirit of God, by the word of God, to shape our minds (and our hearts) into the image of Christ. We need to be taught, convicted, and changed by Holy Scripture.
Returning to the opening theme of this article, how should we develop doctrine? Is it enough to pray for God’s help then continue on our merry way? I think this approach is one-sided and misguided. We certainly must pray, but we must also “be diligent.” Pray for God’s help, then get to work.
[1] NET Bible, Full Notes Edition (Biblical Studies Press, 2019), 2277, Footnote d.
[2] Ibid..
[3] Packer, J. I., “Fundamentalism” and the Word of God (Eerdmans Printing Company, 1976), 19.