HOW TRUTH IS PERVERTED
HOW TRUTH IS PERVERTED
There is nothing in the history of the church, or of souls, more grievous than the fact that truth can be so perverted that the name of it only is left, and often so much so that the name stands for the very contrary to that to which it was originally attached. It has often been said that Satan will spoil what he cannot hinder, and hence we ought to be more careful to assure our hearts from the word of God of the idea which belongs to and characterises the names of doctrines received by all christians. The true and scriptural names are retained, but when we come to examine what these names stand for, we find that they do not represent the ideas given to them in Scripture. They are really perversions of the truth. Man’s ideas have been adopted as exponents of the truth, instead of the ideas set forth in the word of God.
[p. 75] We must in this day own that the prediction of our Lord has been verified, namely, “The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened”. The leaven is the introduction of an element which has extended the original thing unnaturally. The human idea is this leaven, and it has so added to the original and divine teaching that the doctrine now called in christendom after the scriptural name bears little or no resemblance to the doctrine to which the same name is attached in Scripture. This is very serious; and it is not from outside that this evil occurs. “Of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them”, Acts 20. If there were no perversion of the truth, there would be no disciples except disciples of Christ. No man would attain to any distinct leadership, “for one is your Master, even Christ”.
It is very important to see that if the truth were not perverted there could be no leadership but in Christ, and that it is in the perversion of truth that disciples are drawn away. The effect of the simple maintenance of truth is to draw to Christ. John the baptist proclaimed the truth; and his disciples, in adopting it, forsook him to follow Christ. And in this day it is a well-known fact that, as godly earnest ministers have pressed truth, the simple and devoted among their followers have left them, in order that they might follow the truth more perfectly than the instruments through which they had first learned it; and doubtless, if every godly minister would discard everything not scripturally true, then the faithful would cease to be ranked under the leadership of men. One may ask, How is it that godly earnest men do not discard everything not scripturally true? I answer, Because they are guided by conscience and not by the word of God. By their consciences they are calmed into the assurance that they are doing the best for the general good; and this [p. 76] they seek. Now it is the word of God alone which should guide me, and my conscience ought not to be satisfied unless I am assured that everything I teach and adhere to is scripturally true. To say that this or that is the definition given to any doctrine by the most devoted man is really no warrant to my conscience. Such comments may help me to understand the doctrine, but I am bound to understand it in the light of Scripture before I teach it. Scripture must be my guide, and not my conscience or the comments of my brethren. The teacher receives his gift neither by man nor from man; he is gifted of the Lord, and he must not only be conscientious, but he must be enlightened according to Christ’s mind, before he can be the organ of that mind. If every minister of Christ nowadays set himself sedulously to ascertain from Scripture the true meaning of any doctrine, as there set forth, divesting his mind of the definition and interpretation into which it had swollen, he would soon find that he had escaped from a mass of confusion, and that an unerring light had now shone in on his soul and mind.
But it is not only from making the conscience umpire that earnest men suffer; there is another snare which is still more difficult to expose. Perversion of the truth is always to suit a practical state. It is the lower order of practice which, when there is conscience, leads to a lower order of truth, or a misplacement of the order, because it matches the state and quiets the conscience; and the lower order of practice is confirmed and perpetuated by the lower order of truth. Now when anyone attempts to form an idea of a truth from his own practical observance of it, or seeks to make it practicable, of course he shapes the truth to his practice, instead of demanding that his practice should conform to the truth. Man, as is natural, likes to leave out from a doctrine that which makes it impossible to man in nature, and to substitute something under the same name, and thus deceive the conscience with what is [p. 77] possible for man without self-sacrifice. To follow truth now, I can only do so in the Spirit, outside nature; this is the starting point.
Now if I wish to accept a truth, and at the same time to save myself — in a word, to escape the edge of it — I necessarily alter it in such a way that I may feel I retain the doctrine without subjecting myself, my nature, to death by the acceptance of it. Peter savoured of the things of men, and not of the things of God, when he said to the Lord, ‘Spare thyself’. The real difficulty to the simple acceptance of truth is the annihilating exaction it makes on nature. And whenever a truth is said to be held without this exaction, we may be assured that some modification or alteration of the truth has been adopted, in order to spare oneself. Strange and peculiar are these modifications and alterations. Faith is a unity, and can only lead in one way. Every truth, truly apprehended by faith, must lead directly in the same way. It may be seen differently in measure, but the same measure produces the same results. If Mark returns from Pamphylia (Acts 15: 38), it is because the truth exacted too much from him. If Peter refuses to eat with the gentiles (Galatians 2: 11 - 12), it is because he would spare himself; the truth of the gospel, for which Paul contended, exacted too much of him. Demas cannot bear the exaction of the truth; 2 Timothy 4: 10. If Timothy knows and follows Paul’s doctrine, he must also know and follow his “manner of life”. If the doctrine be truly held, the manner of life will be an exemplification of it. If a man says — as has been said — that the church, the body of Christ, is in heaven, and speaks of Jesus as being here, with man as Man, he so entirely misplaces the truth, without denying it, that to hold this doctrine imposes on him no self-death here, and his conscience is lulled, and the truth lost. For if the body of Christ is in heaven, I am not responsible to walk here on earth as of it; and if Jesus, who is really in heaven, and known here by the [p. 78] Holy Spirit, is put on a level with us in the flesh, christianity is reduced to a mere human thing, and the truth that now, through the Spirit, we are united with Him in heaven, and thence receive of Him, to fill our place in the body here on earth, is lost. Could there be a greater perversion of truth than that the church, the body of Christ, is in heaven? The truth is that it is from heaven, but on earth; yet many earnest conscientious souls accept this perversion as the truth; and the consequence is that they have lost the truth, and with it the effects which are produced by the truth. Each truth produces its own proper effects; hence, if you lose the truth, you must lose the effects of it.
Again, another will so accept and explain the unity of the Spirit, that all christians can be received as united, because professors of the same life, though they are connected with systems and orders of things most opposed to one another; so that the unity of the Spirit is practically reduced to the socialism of a club. Again, others, with more light, will contend that similar opinions, with soundness in faith, and holy walk — that is, individual propriety — necessarily places in the unity of the Spirit. Then the Spirit is only a common bond for separate and distinct units, and not the unity of the body of Christ, where each is affected by the other, and is necessarily a guardian of the other; for it is the Spirit, who baptises the whole into one, who must be considered, and not the individual, as to what he holds or does. He may neither hold what is wrong or do what is wrong, and yet his association may grieve the Spirit of God, the unity be denied, and the body suffer. The unity of the Spirit makes the body of Christ one, because the Holy Spirit is one. We are all baptised by one Spirit into one body, and where He is, there must be an abnegation of everything unsuited to Christ. The thing which by no possible means could injure one naturally becomes vitally dangerous when in the unity of the Spirit. As a man, I may not suffer [p. 79] from the bad habits of my associates, unless they seduce me into like ones; not so in the church of God; a little leaven leavens the whole lump. I may not suffer as a man because I hear vain babbling in the society that I resort to, at least, I may not be morally degraded by it, or unfitted thereby to be a good member of society; and yet it is so in the church; and a man cannot be a “vessel unto honour” unless he purges himself from such things. To bid an ordinary farewell to a man who brings not the doctrine of Christ can in no wise injure or affect me naturally; and yet, as in the fellowship of the Spirit, if I do so, I am partaker of his evil deeds, and necessarily disqualified for church association; 2 John.
“The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned”. If the natural mind receives it or knows it, it is not of the Spirit of God. The unity of the Spirit cannot be maintained truly but as there is a distinct dissociation from and exclusion of all that which is contrary to the Spirit Himself, and as in conjunction with all those who are walking in the Spirit. We are exposed to perversions so long as we are babes. To raise us to maturity is the aim of all ministry, as it is written (Ephesians 4: 13, 14): “Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ: that we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness”, for a method of deception — as it may be more freely translated. The force of the passage is that, if I am not matured in Christ, I am exposed to human sleight, which, by cunning craftiness, grows into a method of deception. It is man’s work and way of escaping the edge and power of the truth, and it ends in a systematised error.