(A)

Firstly the TRINITY. Many of us believers only think of this wonderful truth in baptism of individuals, in the benediction after the service, and after that, we hardly consider this truth in the outworking of our Christian lives.

The Bible affirms that there is only one God, but the New Testament clearly shows us three divine persons acting as a team to carry through the work of grace that saves sinners and creates the church.

The first is the Father, who planned everything, who sent his Son to take human nature and die on the cross in his people’s place, thus releasing them from the judgement that faced them, and who now justifies them, adopting them as his family and heirs when they put faith in Jesus.

The second is Jesus the Son, God incarnate, his Father’s servant, our Mediator, who died for us, rose for us, reigns for us, and will return fo us – the Saviour and Lord whose devoted disciples we are called to be, and whom we shall be adoring forever.

The third is the Holy Spirit, the executive, hands-on agent of the Father and the Son in creation, providence, and grace, who draws us to faith in Christ by making us see that we need him and calls us to come to him, who unites us to him as we receive him, who renews us constantly through Word and sacrament, prayer and fellowship, in our new life of discipleship to him, and who from within that life gives us glorious foretastes of heaven’s happiness and joy. As the three persons are linked together as sources of blessing, so they are linked as the focus of praise, prayer, and benediction.

We are not looking at tritheism, a doctrine of three separate gods cooperating, that would be a form of polytheism; nor are we looking at modalism, a doctrine of one person playing three separate roles, which would be a form of unitarianism. No, we are looking at a doctrine of the only God as a tri-personal Three-in-One, a truth beyond what our minds can grasp, but nevertheless a certainty, a truth to be affirmed, and not to be lost sight of, as we move ahead as believers and as a church.

REAFFIRMING WHO GOD IS

Certain truths of God, in particular, have been eclipsed over the years, even among believers: we shall highlight them briefly in this sharing.
First,God is holy, different and standing apart from us, awesome and sometimes becoming fearsome to us. Holiness signifies the God-ness of God, the combined quality of being infinite and eternal, omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient, utterly pure and just; utterly faithful to his own own purposes and promises, morally perfect in all his relationships; and marvellously merciful to persons meriting the opposite of mercy. God in his holiness is greatly to be praised and worshipped for both his greatness and goodness at all times. We see many of the psalms expressing this. But somehow, in the outworking of many lives of believers, there is the ‘taking for granted’ the holiness, mercy, and grace of God, and we approach Him frivolously, and expect Him to overlook our repeated sins and indifference, and we think that it is alright to be immoral and insist that God, being merciful ,would not punish us at all. We take His name and goodness for granted and we surmise that He will not have the heart to discipline us and to afflict us even as we continue in our misbehaviour. His determination to make us holy like His Son means that He would inflict us in His love, to mould us into the image of Jesus, and He would fulfil His promises given to us in His covenant.
Because God is gracious, He continues to love the unlovely and seemingly unlovable, with the purpose of making the loved one great and glad; never mind the cost, and rescues those in need, never mind their unworthiness.

GOD SETS LIMITS TO, AND IDEALS FOR, HUMAN BEHAVIOUR

God’s moral law is found in the Ten Commandments and in the ethical teachings of Jesus and other teachings in the letters of the New Testament. His moral law is essentially family instruction, given with parental authority, goodwill, and concern for the family’s well-being. It is vital to realise that His law actually expresses His holy will and reflects His holy nature, in essence fits and fulfills humanity as created; we might also say that it is for true human happiness. Disregarding His moral law not only displeases Him but also damages ourselves. God has made us and redeemed us so that we might bear His image, and this includes, along with rational and responsible wisdom, moral perfection which matches His own (1 Peter 1:15).

Pleasing God must always be our goal, and lawless disregard of Him, of our fellow-humans, and of the behavioural standards that have been set is always sin, needing repentance if it is to be forgiven.

All Christians have lifelong battles with unruly desires of some form, and repentance must necessarily be life-long. Wrongful desires must be resisted in God’s strength as strongly as possible. But we cannot fight these battles by harbouring wrong concepts about God and His being; that would mean we must appreciate sound and good doctrines handed down to us by God in His Word and through His servants. This is the other major area to be ‘redeemed’ and ‘reaffirmed’.

(B)

OUR DOCTRINE

Doctrine is the truth revealed by God, taught in the church, by the church, for the church, and for the world.

A disciple is basically a learner; the church is a community of disciples i.e. learners. Every congregation should consist of persons labouring to learn more about Christ than they knew as yet – a congregation that does not consist of such individuals can hardly be called a church by the standards of the New Testament. Such a congregation was chided by the writer to the Hebrews and told: “You have become dull of hearing. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food…solid food is for the mature” (Heb. 5:11-14). I wonder how many of our current congregations fall into this category and sorely need such a rebuke.

Doctrine is taught not only by sermons, instructional talks, printed books, audio-visual devices, but also by worship patterns, creeds, hymns and songs. It is learned by attending to the above, and buttressing them with personal and group Bible study. By all these means, Christians and congregations seek to assimilate, articulate, and apply what the apostles taught the first churches in Christ’s name. Faithfulness to this heritage is the hallmark of sound doctrine – i.e. that which promotes spiritual health.

Deviations from this heritage constitutes false doctrine, which will not only stunt spiritual growth but may, at its worst, destroy the souls of believers. Thus Christian doctrine is serious business, as serious as anything with which the church ever deals. The conscientious teaching and learning of doctrine should be given a highest priority in the church; doctrine is a declaration of what God Himself has shown and told us that is relevant for all time. God uses the gift of language given to us to communicate with us, and He is the primary author of the Bible.

The sum and substance of the church’s defined doctrine is the gospel itself, the good news of how our Creator has become our Redeemer through Jesus Christ our Lord. Today, believers tend to shrink the gospel to a threefold declaration, often set forth in the following:
All have sinned and now stand under God’s judgement.
Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.
Confess Christ as your Saviour and Lord. Commit yourself to lifelong service to Him.

This has its application at times; but the gospel says far more than all these. The gospel is the full declaration of the gracious saving plan that God is fulfilling in and for His spoiled world, plus the full demonstration of the proper response – faith in Christ and repentance, good works, and love both Godward and manward, with gratitude and joyful hope. In the action of Christ the Redeemer, who died and rose to deal with human sin, and in the action of the Holy Spirit, who prompts the entire response to Christ and the gospel, first to last, God the Father fulfills His purpose if glorifying Himself by glorifying His Son – the Holy One who was the channel of all the wisdom and power that went into the creation and that now goes into God’s ongoing providence, and who today, in His glorified incarnate life, actively communicates to us the fullness of the grace that renews and saves. Thus bound up with the revelation of the gospel is the truth of the Trinity.

Hence the importance of understanding and appreciating the Trinity. The shallow understanding of the Trinity in many believers gives rise to much concern. The realisation that many believers have not even read through the whole Bible once, not to mention anything about studying it, explains why the church of God is so easily led astray by the enemy, for Satan can dress as an angel of light and he can quote the Scripture very eloquently. How can we engage in spiritual battles when we do not know God’s Word adequately? How can we discern what is false and what is true when we do not even know well enough the truth revealed in the Scripture? I recall being rather taken aback when in a Bible study, the wife of an elder in a particular congregation insisted that there is no suffering for Christians – Christians ought to be victorious all the time and suffering is not taught in the Bible. Then there are the many interactions with youth leaders from various congregations in my clinic who do not pay much heed to the holiness of God and insist that it is ‘normal’ to live in ways that are no better than non-believers. When shown the teachings in the Bible, they looked stunned and questioned why they were never taught what the Bible teaches in their congregations.

Enough is said to conclude why we need to seriously redeem and reaffirm the doctrine of our Christian Faith. It must begin with each individual in the congregation and it should not be looked upon as optional.

(C)

We have considered the redeeming and reaffirmation of our faith and our doctrine. We have looked at who God is, the Trinity, the Gospel (details also in previous sharings which also include the mission and work of the Son of God). But perhaps some of us may ask, ‘Why the need to do this?”

The fact is: much has gone wrong in the understanding and propagation of the Christian faith and Biblical truth over the years and this matters greatly to the Triune God and to His eternal purpose, principally to be worked out in the church.
The Christian doctrine covers wide and deep truths God has revealed through the Scripture and to the church; hence we cannot possibly cover all the truths revealed from the Old Testament to the new, but there are certain other core values and teachings which need to be recovered significantly. This is especially important in the light of what has taken place over the years which ‘threaten’ the purity and integrity of the Christian doctrine.

Relativism has come in with the abolishing of all absolute standards for belief and behaviour; scepticism about all long-standing beliefs seeks to destroy the credibility of what has been taught and adhered to, in the history of the faithful church of God. Pluralism, – the condition in which we accept incompatibles (with our doctrine) side by side without full commitment to any of them, has arrived. Agnosticism – the state of mind where individuals cannot be sure of what they believe, coupled with the lack of definite opinion, and the conclusion of ‘whatever’.
The rise of biblical criticism, evolutionary dogma, socialist utopianism, scientific pragmatism, and liberal theology (which has its roots, surprisingly, in certain bible colleges) called into question many aspects of biblical teaching and Christian beliefs, and recast biblical narratives to which they have denied factual status (miracle stories, including Jesus’s virgin birth, bodily resurrection and ascension to heaven) and proper method of biblical interpretation.
There is therefore the need to return and recover the true biblical teachings and truths taught by Jesus, the Prophets of the Old Testament, and the Apostles of the New Testament. God willing, we shall cover some of these core values and teachings not communicated in the previous sharings.

THE AUTHORITY OF THE BIBLE

The canonical Scriptures are unique, both because they tell God’s story from creation in the past to consummation in the future (hence we need to know the whole Bible) and because they have a double authorship throughout: as all the books are in their different ways human witness to God, so just as truly they are also God’s witness to Himself, given in and through what His chosen individuals have written about Him. Accordingly, the sum and substance of their teaching is to be rated as revealed truth for all time. Believing and obeying God’s Word has always been the fundamental frame of godliness; so conforming to the Bible is always in line with the church’s task and calling, and also that of every Christian. Our belief and behaviour must always be shaped by the truth revealed in the Bible. When it comes to interpretation of the Bible, the objective is always to seek the fullness and coherence of the biblical message under study; hence the recognition that Scripture always interpret Scripture i.e. one part of the Bible never contradict another part, for God the Author is the One who ensures the unity of the biblical revelation, with its wholesome coherence, in line with the complete revelation of the Triune God.

THE SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD

God’s control of HIs creation, including rebellious human beings within it, is basic to the biblical view of things. We are not robots; we are rational self-determining beings, answerable to other people and to God for what we do; yet, it is a fact that as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit sustains us and the world in existence every moment, so the Triune God overrules all that takes place, having Himself foreseen and in some real sense foreordained it. All of everyone’s freely chosen actions are included in this; how God can thus overrule is more than we can tell, but that He does so is biblical fact. The knowledge that God is fully in control is presented to us in the Bible as a certainty. The implication is that we can trust Him totally to fulfill HIs promises and achieve His purposes and to carry His people through all circumstances to their final home. How can we reconcile the sovereignty of God with the responsibility of man? It is indeed a mystery; nevertheless the Bible teaches both God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility.

We shall continue to look at other core values and teachings that are important in the doctrine of the church subsequently.

(D)

REPENTANCE

The talk, thought, and understanding of REPENTANCE have ‘vanished’ from our post-Christian secular world; they are also virtually ‘absent’ from the lives of church people.
However, if we look at the New Testament, ‘repentance’ features prominently in the preaching of the Christian Gospel. John the Baptist started his message with ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand’ (Matt. 3:2); after John’s imprisonment, Jesus began to preach, saying the same words (Matt. 4:17); and when Jesus sent the twelve on their firs mission, he told them to “proclaim that people should repent” m(Mark 6:12).
On Pentecost morning, Peter’s sermon impacted the crowd and when they asked him what they should do, Peter replied by declaring Christ and His mission and saying, “..repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in His name to all nations”.
Today, whenever the gospel is preached, sadly, repentance often is not declared, and even it is mentioned, the concept and understanding of its meaning is lacking. Even in the church, repentance is hardly taught or preached in many congregations, although it is central in the message of the gospel as well as in the lives of believers in the church.

Repentance means the comprehensive, habitual turning away from sin to serve Christ in righteousness that the gospel demands and faith energises. Faith and repentance are like two sides of a single coin. God has made us in His own image, meaning us to behave toward Him and each other in a way that reflects His own character of love and justice, truthfulness and trustworthiness, creativity and joy in work. But a corrupting force in our moral and spiritual system, with a corrupt demonic intelligence behind it, has unmade and deformed us all, so that we now are alienated from God and departed from what we were meant to be – the Bible’s name for this deforming force, both in itself and in its various modes of expression, is SIN.

The good news (gospel) is that through Christ the Redeemer, we can be remade – restored to God’s fellowship here and now, and started on the road of being reconformed to God’s image by learning to live Christlike lives. Repentance signifies that change of mind, purpose, attitude, and behaviour whereby we embrace God’s agenda of mercy towards us and turn back from the old life of fighting God by playing God to live the new life of humbly and thankfully serving Him. Repentance is hence a whole-person business in which a pattern of self-centred self-service is replaced by a God-centred habit of seeking others’ welfare, and pride and wilfulness give way to prayer and worship.
In this new frame of life, each act of repentance is specific. When we discern a particular fault, shortcoming, misbehaviour, bad habit, we need to ask forgiveness for it, through Christ’s atonement, telling God that we are asking also for help to break the pattern: to be difference henceforth and not lapse again, and meantime to do all we can do to make amends for the damage, both relational and material, that our past lapses actually caused.This is the reality of REPENTANCE.

Unfortunately, we often think of ourselves as basically good, and certainly better than some people we know, and we really have no idea how we appear to a holy God who searches hearts and knows us literally inside out. Our pride makes it difficult to accept what God tells us about ourselves. But if we are honest and humble, we shall end up accepting that His diagnosis of us is true and correct – that begins the process of repentance, and it continues throughout our lives on earth because Christ has not come again and the consummation has not taken place (when He would make all things new).

If we do not appreciate what sin means (and if this is not communicated clearly in the sharing of the gospel), the likelihood of repentance taking place is very dim. The way of sin is to live, not for God, but for ourselves, to love and serve and please ourselves without regard for our Creator and Maker, to try to be independent of Him as a means to our own ends and to user Him as a safety net when we are in trouble (is it not true that we cry out to God only when we are in trouble and in need?). Sin is deviation from the God who wants our fellowship and worship, and sin embraces self-absorption in place of God-centredness.

Repentance, like sin, begins as a desire of the heart. Sin will paralyse thought, so mesmerising us by the dazzling prospects it offers that reason and conscience cannot get a word in edgewise. Habitual yielding to sin’s alluring offers will blind and harden us. Slowly but surely, one’s conscience ceases to function with regard to particular things one is up to, or the attitudes of pride, godlessness, lovelessness, hatred, contempt, dishonesty, untruthfulness, or whatever one is indulging in – spiritual blindness and hardening become even deeper realities in one’s life.

Countermeasures must take place in the form of thought, prayer, meditating on the Scriptures, keeping close and becoming transparent to fellow-believers, and making a point of repenting – formally, frankly, and fully, in an explicit transaction with God the moment we realise we have in any way gone wrong.
Repentance is not just for the individual believer; it is also for our corporate life as a church. This is one major reason why God is grieved with many congregations The letters to the churches in Revelations 1-3 by Christ assess their achievement, note their failures, and tell them to repent of particular shortcomings or be pulverised in judgement, after which, all are encouraged by a promise of eternal bliss with the Lord Himself for all who ‘conquer’ – that is who say a firm no to sin and error, who uphold gospel truth as Christ and His apostles gave it, and who practice faithful obedience to it, despite all persuasions and pressures to do something else instead. We need to return to God, redeem and reclaim repentance as a way of life, both for individual believers and for the corporate church.