Our Real Purpose
W. Carl Ketcherside
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"And ever since the Reformation, when or where has existed a Protestant or dissenting sect who would tolerate a free enquiry? The blackest billingsgate, the most ungentlemanly insolence, the most yahooish brutality, is patiently endured, countenanced, propagated, and applauded. But touch a solemn truth in collision with a dogma of a sect, though capable of the clearest proof, and you will soon find you have disturbed a nest, and the hornets will swarm about your eyes and hands, and fly into your face and eyes."--John Adams, Letter to John Taylor.
I do not want my readers to forget that the purpose of this journal is to plead for the unity of all believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. Whatever else we write about is subsidiary to our real goal. This is not to say that unity is the ultimate end of our faith. The end is to lead the whole world to believe that God sent His Son. The unity of believers is the means by which this end can be accomplished. Jesus made conversion of the masses contingent upon our unity.
The reason why our present emphasis is upon oneness is because we are divided. If we were united and working together we could get on with the paramount task. As it is, our condition contradicts our contention. Unless we can demonstrate that we have a unitive principle which is magnificent enough to hold us together we will labor in vain to influence those about us to think in terms of the one body and the one Spirit.
We have been the victim of certain fallacies. As long as we equate these with God's will and seek to bind them upon others we will only confound and confuse. We must face up to these erroneous views honestly and sincerely, and we must openly renounce them, or we will foster schism and disunity. Our fathers were not infallible. They made mistakes. It is no honor to us to adopt and perpetuate their errors. We should divest ourselves of them and heal the breaches which were caused by those whose zeal ran far ahead of their knowledge.
I am not inclined to speak in glittering generalities and allow my readers to guess at my meaning. The time for ambiguity and equivocation is long past. Let me specify some of the perversions of the truth which have splintered and fragmented us until we have been made a laughingstock in the eyes of perceptive people who know that our divided status belies our words.
1. We have abused God's revelation by applying scriptures designed to separate us from pagans and idolaters to our relationship with other children of God. A good example is found in the misuse of 2 Corinthians 6:15-16. The command, "Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers," has been deliberately used by factional promoters to break the tie that binds believers. The context plainly shows that "unbelievers" are those who do not recognize Jesus as Lord. They are heathen. "What has a believer in common with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God with idols?"
The word of God consistently distinguishes between brethren in the Lord and unbelievers. A good example is found in 1 Corinthians 6:5, 6. Here the apostle is
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No one who was in Christ Jesus was an unbeliever in the scriptural context. There were a lot of things wrong with the members of the body at Corinth. Some of them thought that an idol might have real existence. Others were confused about the resurrection, and still others about spiritual gifts. But in spite of their errors they were never designated as unbelievers. They were called saints. They constituted the temple of God. They were Christ's as Christ was God's.
There is nothing more calculated to create schism than to apply to citizens those statutes which relate to aliens. This is subversive of all law. It is destructive of all peace. To call upon God's precious children to come out from among His other children and be separated is to become an apostle of discord. It is immature, carnal and shameful. To create parties of the redeemed ones over personal views concerning instrumental music, the millennium, cups, classes, colleges, radio programs, and such things, is sinful and sectarian.
Every time the Spirit refers to division among the brethren it is condemned. Not once does an apostle even hint that fragmentation of the saints is approved as a means of maintaining purity of teaching. Factions are works of the flesh. They are inimical to the purpose of God, negating the design of the cross, and defeating the plan of heaven for the universe. When men quote those passages intended to build a barrier between those who follow Christ and those dominated by Belial, and use them to erect barriers between those who are brethren in Christ, they are frustrating the work of God.
I care not how sanctimonious such men appear, or how couched in scriptural terminology their pronouncements may be, they are still profane and unspiritual, using the sword of the Spirit to carve and chop into bits the very body it was intended to defend and protect. The purpose of God is to gather together all things into one body, to unite us to each other by uniting us all to Christ. What species of arrogance and bigotry causes men to think they have uncovered a malignant mystery and that the real purpose of revelation is to set us at odds with one another, rending the body into bits?
It is time to repudiate the philosophy of those men and papers dedicated to the inglorious task of widening the chasms and deepening the cleavages between God's children. Let men of courage rise up and batter down the walls of senseless division. Let us challenge every attempt to misuse and misapply the words of the Holy Spirit to justify that unholy spirit which rips and ruptures the body of which we are members. Let us resist every ignorant application of God's word intended to alienate, separate and estrange members of the family from one another.
2. We have been guilty of propagating the inconsistent and untenable view that fellowship in Christ Jesus is contingent upon conformity of opinion and interpretation of doctrinal matters. I use the term "inconsistent" because there is not a single party among us, regardless of how extreme and exclusive it may be, that does not make some provision in its unwritten creed for differences of opinion within its constituency.
Every faction allows for latitude upon many points and while the members may differ seriously upon such matters they do not divide. There is no other basis for any kind of community action than a recognition of and a provision for men to differ. We can no more all think alike than we can all look alike. To set up an accepted mental standard for the new humanity is as ridiculous as to formulate a recognized physical stature for citizenship in our own nation. Men's thoughts will differ in weight as their bodies do. The only unity possible for rational beings is unity in diversity, and every sect
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This very fact makes it imperative that every faction arbitrarily select and elevate to prominence some point upon which agreement must be absolute in order to be deemed faithful and loyal. It is this point which calls the party into existence and becomes its breath of life. It is the creed of the party, the thing which must be believed in order to be accepted. For its defence the party lives, moves and has its being. On other matters you may be free to differ, but on the "root issue" you must swallow your doubts, shackle your thoughts, and warp your mind into submission. Otherwise you become a traitor, a renegade, and an apostate.
Suppose, for example, the party standard around which "the loyal brethren" are to rally and encamp is opposition to the present method of support for a television program, Herald of Truth. The banner is unfurled over the gates of the party bastion. All who enter must salute it and pledge allegiance to the segment for which it stands. Once inside, they can differ about the morality of war, contraception and birth control, the work of the Holy Spirit, the qualifications of elders, and a hundred other things, including divorce and remarriage. But these do not count in the world of pious pretext Where casuistry conceals the duplicity of the factional attitude. None of these things affect the "loyalty" of the partisans so long as they are "sound" on the real issue.
But who authorized fallible beings, including editors, to sort out the issues, and decide which one would mould the Procrustean bed upon which to measure men to see that all of the zealots reach the same height--or depth? Who prescribed this species of pharisaism which regards all of the geese in one's own party as swans, and all of the swans in other parties as geese?
Who authorized men to interpose themselves and their thinking between other men and the kingdom of heaven? Who gave them the right to beatify and canonize one issue and damn another? Shall our faith stand in the wisdom of men? Will we allow ourselves to be herded and driven into one corral or another by self-appointed whip-cracking guardians of the faith? Let me serve notice right here and upon all who feel inclined to rope and brand me with their partisan irons that I shall not become the pawn of any sect or faction. I belong to the great Shepherd of the sheep. I shall never wear the stigma of another! Never!
The simple truth is that fellowship in Christ Jesus is wholly unrelated to our differences of opinion and interpretation in the one body. Not one passage in the new covenant scriptures urging us to be at peace or to live in harmony was written to bring us into the fellowship. Every such injunction was addressed to those in the fellowship, and precisely because they were in it. Harmony is not essential to fellowship, but fellowship is the foundation for attainment of harmony. We do not come into the fellowship because we have achieved harmony, but we strive to achieve a greater degree of harmony because we are in the fellowship.
Men who make tests of fellowship out of either the pro or con of such matters as instrumental music or the millennium are schismatic and sectarian. Children of God may hold diverse opinions about such matters, and they always will. They can and should discuss them at any length they deem profitable, but to elevate them to tests of fellowship is to make them more important than the cross. It is an effective testimony of the little regard men have for the cross, that they permit such secondary and inferior issues to destroy the relationship secured by the blood of God's dear Son.
Jesus did not die to purchase an instrumental or non-instrumental party. This is not to be the culmination of the plan conceived in the divine mind before the foundation of the world. It was not for this that myriads of angels waited and prophets suffered and died. No man is true to the Lord who predicates a communion upon such a flimsy basis and
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It is time to recover the majesty and might of the kingdom which Jesus came to proclaim. It is time to recapture that sense of oneness in the divine family which is kept inviolate in spite of human failings and misunderstandings. Let the men of God arise and assert their faith in the eternal values and refuse to dabble longer in the puddles of trivia which besmirch all who splash in the muddy shallows.
Let us answer the prayer of Jesus in our generation. Why should we postpone that answer until future ages through our timidity and fright? It is as valid for us as for our posterity. Our fathers were wrong when they divided and created factions and parties. We will be wrong if we perpetuate them. Let us cease the sectarian double-talk and forego the weasel-words and let the world know that we are for unity--not unity at any price, for the price has already been paid. He paid it at Calvary.
To the promotion of the divine program of unity in Him, and in Him alone, we dedicate this paper and our lives. Will you dare to join with us in welding our warring brethren into a unit "according to His purpose set forth in Christ"?