Tradition binds men to their past and often blinds them for their present and future. And every movement, political or religious, which survives for two generations, develops a tradition, a handing down or giving over from the prior generation to the successor. Traditional ways of looking at things may be bad, or they may be good. Often they are neutral and are neither bad nor good, being merely an approach taken to problems which have arisen.
Traditions become harmful when they shackle us to our own past and preclude any honest search for new truths and deeper insights. It is then we resent those who dare question our established position and regard them as heretics. Yet every advance in perception and understanding has been made by men branded as heretics. There has never been a reformer who has not been so castigated. We owe our gains of today to the heretics of yesterday. The heretics of today will be the heroes of tomorrow!
When Alexander Campbell was preparing to launch the journal which he designated The Christian Baptist, he said in the preface,
It is a rarity, seldom to be witnessed, to see a person boldly opposing the doctrinal errors or the unscriptural measures of a people with whom he has identified himself, and to whom he looks for approbation and support. If such a person appears in any party, he soon falls under the frowns of those who think themselves wiser than the reprover, or would wish so to appear. Hence it usually happens that such a character must lay his hand upon his mouth, or embrace the privilege of walking out of doors. Although this has usually been the case, we would hope that it would not always continue so to be.
I also labor in that same hope.
It is a tradition with many of my brethren to regard the apostolic letters addressed to communities of saints and individuals as a meticulous pattern for every act of service and devotion to be rendered unto the Father until the return of our Lord. Their attempt to implement this tradition has fractured and fragmented them into more than a score of hostile parties and made them the most divided religious movement on the contemporary American scene.
Their very attitude toward the sacred scriptures will continue to split and splinter them. The only way to avoid such a dismal future is to freeze all knowledge at the current level and place a moratorium on all honest attempts to learn. If we are under law, and our "clergy" are the lawyers, interpreters and enforcers, then there is no freedom in Christ Jesus. The dullest conformist will be more faithful than the most brilliant and sacrificing researchist.
I deny that we are under a legalistic code of statutes, specifications and judgments. Such a system belongs on the other side of the cross. "Christ is the termination of law as a means of justification for every one who has faith" (Romans 10:4). And I have faith! Law was to last only until faith came. "Before faith came, we were confined under law, kept under restraint until faith should be revealed" (Gal. 3:23). You are either under law or under faith. Take your choice. You cannot have both. Law does not rest on faith (Gal. 3:12). Christ has redeemed those that were under the law so they could receive the adoption of sons. I am in this category. Praise God, I have been redeemed and adopted.
The only law under which I serve is that of love, overwhelming love for my redeemer and adopter. I am not under law, but under grace. This is what God said. I accept it without quibble, quirk or question. It is my strength and my salvation. It is my hope! But if I am not under a written code, what is the purpose of the scripture? This is a legitimate question. I am obligated to face it squarely and unequivocally. My answer begins with this article.
The primary purpose of scripture is to bring me into a living vital relationship with Jesus Christ as Lord. It is the divine vehicle which transports me into his presence, a heavenly agent which introduces me to the author of my salvation. It is not familiarity with the machinery of the vehicle nor acquaintance with the agent which makes for life. I can know the agent all my life without ever having a personal relationship with the Son of God.
Indeed, if I think I have eternal life in the scriptures, I may become so devoted to them that I never come to him at all. He said this was possible. "You search the scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness of me, yet you refuse to come to me that you might have life" (John 5:39). These words were addressed to the most intense students of the sacred oracles this world has ever produced.
They revered the holy scriptures, literally binding portions of them to their foreheads and on their arms. The very entrance to their houses had small containers affixed and in these were written verses from God's word in exactly twenty-two lines. Josephus wrote, "If anyone should question one of us concerning the laws, he would more easily repeat all of them than his own name; since we learn them from our first consciousness, we have them as it were, engraven on our souls" (Against Apion 2:18).
Rabbi Hillel, whose school in Jerusalem Paul attended, said, "The more teaching of the Law, the more life; the more school, the more wisdom; the more counsel, the more reasonable action" (Sayings of the Fathers 2:5, 7). After the Babylonian exile, the Jews literally became "the people of the Book." A. R. S. Kennedy says that the Torah in its written form then became "the regulating norm in very relation of life." But they rejected Jesus of whom the prophets spoke.
If life could have been achieved by law, there was no necessity for the coming of Christ. The law given through Moses was holy and just and good. But the purpose of the law was to bring us to Jesus as the source of life. No law can produce life. "For if a law had been given which could make alive, righteousness would indeed be by law" (Gal. 3:21). Obedience to law for the sake of law does not make one good. And it cannot make one live. Life is personal. "In him was life" (John 1:4).
Searching the scriptures is one thing. Coming to Jesus in order to have life is a wholly different thing. The scriptures bear witness of Jesus. This is their function. But if we are not led into a life giving relationship with him all of our scriptural knowledge will go for naught. It will only serve to condemn us. It may be argued that this was true of the old covenant scriptures but not of the new. But John was speaking of his own epistle when he wrote, "Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book, but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name."
Believing in miracles does not produce life. Believing in the record of miracles does not produce life. The design of miracles is not to save but to make credible the claims of Jesus to be the Christ, the Son of God. The testimony is one thing, the attestation another thing, and the belief of that testimony which establishes a personal relationship is still another. What is it to have life in his name?
In such usage the word "name" stands for the character, attributes and nature which constitute a person. Life in his name is life in his person. One may believe that the Bible is true and still not be saved. It is not intellectual assent to the veracity of a record which saves, even though that record has a divine origin. Rather, it is receiving him of whom the record testifies which spells the difference between life and death. "To all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God" (John 1:12).
The good news, consisting of the facts related to Jesus, was promulgated in Jerusalem on the first Pentecost following his resurrection. This message was gladly received by some three thousand hearers who reformed and were immersed in the name of Jesus Christ. All of them being Jews, they continued to attend the temple together each day, although "breaking bread in their own homes, they partook of food with glad and generous hearts."
Being ignorant of many of the implications of their new relationship, they had to rely upon instruction of the apostles. They did not regard this as a new law and would have deeply resented it if someone had suggested that it was to supplant the law of Moses. In fact, they had no intention of abandoning the law or its forms and ceremonies. They expected to constitute a Messianic synagogue within the framework of Judaism. Years later, after some of the apostles had already been killed, they said, "You see, brother, how many thousands there are among the Jews who have believed, and they are all zealous for the law" (Acts 21:20).
It is obvious that the apostles in Jerusalem did not think of their teaching as the laying down of a new law, and just as obvious that "the many priests who were obedient to the faith" (Acts 6:7) did not so regard it. Upon one occasion, an eminent Pharisee, Gamaliel, a highly revered teacher of the law, came to the rescue of the apostles by suggesting that "this plan or this undertaking" might be of God (Acts 5:38). He would never have said this if he had thought of it as another law.
The apostolic teaching was not then, nor has it ever been since, a written code or law for justification. The apostle who wrote twice as many of the epistles as all of the rest put together, plainly states, "But now, having died to that which held us bound, we are discharged from the law, to serve God in a new way, the way of the spirit, in contrast to the old way, the way of a written code" (Romans 7:6).
In spite of this, men seek to take the very epistles of Paul and warp them into a written code. A law requires lawyers to argue about inferences, meanings and deductions. It requires courts, trials, determination of guilt and assessment of penalties. It must create machinery to enforce conformity, to threaten reprisal and to close loopholes in boycott procedures. The lawyers are those who go to school to study legal matters and to become interpreters of divine meaning.
They bind "heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on men's shoulders." They learn the keen distinction between swearing by the temple, which is nothing, and swearing by the gold of the temple which is binding." They learn how to discourse fluently about giving God a proper measure of mint and anise and dill, and become authorities on sacrificing the smallest garden herbs for the glory of God.
We serve God in a new way. It is a way of the spirit! We are no longer under the old way, the way of a written code. But if the apostolic epistles are not a written code, what are they? Lay aside your legalistic spectacles for a moment. Read them without a veil over your face!
One of them was a letter of endorsement for a runaway slave being sent back to his owner and master as a brother in Christ. One was a letter of thanks to a community of saints for a gift sent to an ambassador in chains. One was a letter to a young man with a weak stomach, who was sick a lot of the time, encouraging him to keep safe and intact that which had been entrusted to him. Another was a farewell letter to the same young man asking him to come soon and bring an overcoat and some books, especially notebooks for writing purposes.
Still another contained a reply to questions about conduct in marriage. One was a letter encouraging the recipients to leave the ranks of the unemployed and not to expect the imminent return of Jesus, nor use it as an excuse for "idling their time away, minding everybody's business but their own." These are not items in a written code. They are love letters to saints and brethren. They were not intended to make polished lawyers but perfect lovers.
The new covenant epistles were designed to assure those who received them of the love of the writers. "God knows how I long for you all, with the deep yearning of Christ himself" (Phil. 1:8). "Only let your conduct be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see for myself or hear about you from a distance, I may know that you are standing firm, one in spirit, one in mind, contending as one man for the gospel faith, meeting your opponents without so much as a tremor" (1:27).
The letter to the Philippians was not a part of "the gospel of Christ." The Philippians had long since accepted the gospel, and had taken part themselves in proclaiming it from the first day until they received this letter (1:5). Contending for the gospel faith had nothing to do with arguing with brethren about the implication of anything which Paul wrote in the letter. By the absurd conclusion that the apostolic epistles are all part of the gospel of Christ, and a perfect understanding of the epistles is essential to obedience of the gospel, we have wrecked all hope of unity in the body of God's Son. Too, we have done with the epistles what their writers refused to do with them. We have made them a written code and reverted to a pre-Calvary means of justification, living B. C. lives in an A D. world.
It is now time for us to renounce our childish and immature traditionalism and grow up in Christ Jesus This means simply to adopt the same attitude and spirit as the apostles had. It is best exemplified in the words of Paul. "I have not yet reached perfection, but I press on, hoping to take hold of that for which Christ once took hold of me. My friends, I do not reckon myself to have got hold of it as yet . . . Let us then keep to this way of thinking, those of us who are mature. If there is any point on which you think differently, this also God will make plain to you. Only let your conduct be consistent with the level we have already reached."
The very next words are: "Agree together, my friends, to follow my example. You have us for a model; watch those whose way of life conforms to it." Amen!
If we can ever sense that Christianity is not a law but a life, that it is not a sacrificial code imposed from on high but the sharing in our lot of a God who came down from above, our fears will give way to faith, and our heartaches to hope. We will cease to ride herd on God's sheep and be willing to follow in the steps of the Shepherd.