A Men’s Ministry Men Want to Know (Part 11) – To Do God’s Good Works, We Must Have Sound Doctrine

Previous posts in this series have been incorporated into Part 2 of my online article, “A Comprehensive Church-Based Ministry to Men.”

In addition to being saved, having the love of Christ in our hearts, joining with other believers in order to do good works as a team, and knowing our Bible well, Paul reminds Timothy in 2 Timothy 3:12-17 that the process of becoming equipped for doing all of God’s good works involves learning sound, Bible-based doctrine.

“All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for doctrine…”

While many translations of 2 Timothy 3:16 translate the Greek word διδασκαλιαν (didaskalian) as “teaching,” that translation is ambiguous because the English word “teaching” can refer to both the act of teaching (“Teaching” as a verb. as in “I am teaching,”) and also to a body of knowledge that is taught (“Teaching” as a gerund that acts as a noun, as in “He follows their teaching to the letter.”).

Since the Greek word is not a verb but a noun, Paul is not saying that the Bible is useful for the act of teaching spiritual truth (which would be the verb form of didaskalian), but rather that the Bible is useful for defining what spiritual truth is (the noun didaskalian). While it is true that the Bible is indeed useful for helping us teach spiritual truth better, Paul is not saying that here.

For this reason, “doctrine” is a better translation than “teaching” because it clearly refers to the body of truth that the Bible is useful for learning. From our Bible we derive, or codify, basic spiritual truths–doctrines–about who God is, who human beings are, how sin entered the world, how we can be saved, what the future holds, and much more. Doctrines are biblical truths in short-hand that make it easier for us to understand and communicate important topics in the Bible.

In other words, Paul is saying to Timothy that because the Bible is inspired by God, we can build an accurate view of spiritual reality as summarized by the doctrines we derive from the Bible. Having an accurate spiritual situational awareness through sound doctrine will enable us to accomplish the good works God has prepared for us to do.

The Bible and sound doctrine

“Take heed to yourself and to the doctrine (διδασκαλια). Continue in them, for in doing this you will save both yourself and those who hear you.” 1 Timothy 4:16

If doctrine summarizes biblical truths, then that raises the question: can one person’s doctrine be a more accurate summary of biblical truth than another person’s?

The answer to that question is yes. As we look at the Scripture supporting certain doctrines, we can decide how accurately a particular doctrine summarizes those passages.

Fortunately, the major doctrines of the Christian faith (Such as the nature of God, the deity of Christ, the atoning sacrifice of Christ, his physical resurrection and return to earth, justification by faith, the standing of believers before God, etc.) have numerous Scriptural passages supporting them. So it is not difficult to discern “sound doctrine” from false doctrine, or heresy, with regard to major Scriptural issues. This is also why, though there are dozens of conservative, Bible-believing Christian denominations in America, there is broad agreement on “the fundamental” doctrines of the Christian faith. (More on “the fundamentals” in a moment.)

But discerning sound doctrine from the Bible does require effort, as Paul’s exhortation to Timothy illustrates, “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth.” (2 Timothy 2:15)

The battle between sound doctrine and false doctrine

The fact that the Bible exists so that we can derive sound doctrine from it implies that there is such a thing as unsound doctrine. Paul affirms the reality and danger of false doctrine when he writes to Timothy in 1 Timothy 1:3,4 “Stay there in Ephesus so that you may command certain people not to teach false doctrines (διδασκαλία) any longer, or to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies. Such things promote controversial speculations rather than advancing God’s work—which is by faith.”

The battle between sound doctrine and false doctrine, between biblical belief and unbiblical belief, between orthodoxy and heterodoxy, is an ongoing battle the church has been waging for two thousand years. That battle is a manifestation of Satan’s strategy of distracting, obfuscating, negating, and marginalizing biblical truth.

A recent example of the battle between sound and unsound doctrine was the rise of modernism in American mainline denominations that started in their denominational seminaries in the 1880’s. Modernism was an attempt to harmonize the Christian faith with scientific materialism, including Darwinism. The result was a reinterpretation of major Christian doctrines that eviscerated them of their original biblical meaning.

For example, modernism regarded the Bible, not as “inspired,” but as “inspiring.” Jesus was not God incarnate, just a good man. His miracles didn’t actually happen. They were invented by the early church. In fact, Jesus may not have existed at all. But that didn’t matter, these heretics thought, because we can still gain some insight from the teachings the early church put into his mouth. In the view of modernism, the resurrection did not physically happen, but believing in it anyway in a spiritual sense gives us hope. “Salvation” was redefined in social terms as salvation from poverty, hunger, ignorance, and poor health; concepts that were branded the “social gospel.”

This massive apostasy permeated almost all mainline denominations in America until, by the 1930’s, the majority of American mainline churches had been impacted by it. It is hard to comprehend now, but by the end of the first half of the twentieth century, bible-believing Christians who held to historically orthodox theology had become a minority in America.

The rejection of sound Bible-based doctrine by mainline Christian seminaries, denominations, and churches in the first half of twentieth century America resulted in cultural heteropraxy in the second half, especially among men

“People act the way they think,” conservative theologian and philosopher, the late Dr. Francis Schaffer, used to say.

How true. While I have previously documented the moral decline of American men that started in the 1960’s and continues to this day, my purpose here is to point out that male moral decline hasn’t happened in a vacuum. Rather, men are simply living out the logical conclusions of the heretical naturalistic doctrines that decimated American Christianity over one hundred years ago.

Prior to 1880, there was a broad cultural belief that existed in America in the inspiration and authority of the Bible, in a personal God who is holy, that Jesus Christ was God incarnate who died for the sins of the world and rose again physically from the grave. The vast majority of Americans believed that people have been created in God’s image, have fallen into sin, and need to be saved from his wrath. That belief produced a very specific set of cultural practices.

But by 1950, that broad consensus in the authority of the Bible and all that it taught had been replaced in mainline seminaries, denominations, and churches by naturalism and the belief that all that exists is matter and energy and chance. There is no personal God, they held, let alone one who is holy. There are no moral absolutes. And people are just the end product of evolution and have no intrinsic value. This new cultural belief has also produced a very specific, but very different, set of cultural practices.

The result? We now have the first thoroughly pagan culture in Western society in eighteen hundred years.

However, what has only recently been discerned by sociologists and psychologists is the deleterious effect this transition has had on men. Sound doctrine, it turns out, matters in men’s ministry after all.

The Fundamentals and the preservation of sound doctrine

The conservative response to the tsunami of heresy besetting the church was to ask two questions. The first question was what doctrines are critical to the Christian faith? Where do we draw the line between essential doctrines and non-essential doctrines.

The second question was, how do we defend the essential doctrines of our faith?

The answer conservative Christian leaders at the beginning of the twentieth century gave to those questions came in the form of The Fundamentals.

“The Fundamentals: A Testimony To The Truth (generally referred to simply as The Fundamentals) is a set of ninety essays published between 1910 and 1915 by the Testimony Publishing Company of Chicago. It was initially published quarterly in twelve volumes, then republished in 1917 by the Bible Institute of Los Angeles as a four-volume set.”¹

It was the Bible Institute of Los Angeles (BIOLA) that made “The Fundamentals,” a household term when, using funds provided by the oil baron, Lyman Stewart, BIOLA sent all four volumes to every English speaking pastor and missionary in the world. The goal was to refute Modernism, provide a “critique” of higher criticism of the Bible, prove the non-biblical foundations of contemporary cults, as well as to reassert the essential, or “fundamental” doctrines of the Bible. The result was the establishment of “fundamentalism” and “fundamentalists” as a major movement in Christianity in the first half of the twentieth century.

To give you a sense of what the fundamentalist movement was all about, here is a list of the essays as they appeared in the original twelve volume set:

The Fundamentals: A Testimony To The Truth

Volume I:

The Virgin Birth of Christ – James Orr
The Deity of Christ – Benjamin B. Warfield
The Purposes of the Incarnation – G. Campbell Morgan
The Personality and Deity of the Holy Spirit – R. A. Torrey
The Proof of the Living God – Arthur T. Pierson
History of the Higher Criticism – Dyson Hague
A Personal Testimony – Howard A. Kelly

Volume II:

The Testimony of the Monuments to the Truth of the Scriptures – George Frederick Wright
The Recent Testimony of Archaeology to the Scriptures – Melvin Grove Kyle
Fallacies of the Higher Criticism – Franklin Johnson
Christ and Criticism – Robert Anderson
Modern Philosophy – Philip Mauro
Justification by Faith – Handley Carr Glyn Moule
Tributes to Christ and the Bible by Brainy Men not Known as Active Christians

Volume III:

Inspiration of the Bible—Definition, Extent, and Proof – James M. Gray
The Moral Glory of Jesus Christ a Proof of Inspiration – William G. Moorehead
God in Christ the Only Revelation of the Fatherhood of God – Robert E. Speer
The Testimony of Christian Experience – E. Y. Mullins
Christianity No Fable – Thomas Whitelaw
My Personal Experience with the Higher Criticism – James J. Reeve
The Personal Testimony of Charles T. Studd

Volume IV:

The Tabernacle in the Wilderness: Did it Exist? – David Heagle
The Testimony of Christ to the Old Testament – William Caven
The Bible and Modern Criticism – F. Bettex
Science and Christian Faith – James Orr
A Personal Testimony – Philip Mauro

Volume V:

Life in the Word – Philip Mauro
The Scriptures – A. C. Dixon
The Certainty and Importance of the Bodily Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the Dead – R. A. Torrey
Observations of the Conversion and Apostleship of St. Paul – Lord Lyttleton (analyzed and condensed by J. L. Campbell)
A Personal Testimony – H. W. Webb-Peploe

Volume VI:

The Testimony of Foreign Missions to the Superintending Providence of God – Arthur T. Pierson
Is There a God? – Thomas Whitelaw
Sin and Judgment to Come – Robert Anderson
The Atonement – Franklin Johnson
The God-Man – John Stock
The Early Narratives of Genesis – James Orr
The Person and Work of Jesus Christ – John L. Nuelsen
The Hope of the Church – John McNicol

Volume VII:

The Passing of Evolution – George Frederick Wright
Inspiration – L. W. Munhall
The Testimony of the Scriptures to Themselves – George S. Bishop
Testimony of the Organic Unity of the Bible to its Inspiration – Arthur T. Pierson
One Isaiah – George L. Robinson
The Book of Daniel – Joseph D. Wilson
Three Peculiarities of the Pentateuch – Andrew Craig Robinson
Millennial Dawn: A Counterfeit of Christianity – William G. Moorehead

Volume VIII:

Old Testament Criticism and New Testament Christianity – W. H. Griffith Thomas
Evolutionism in the Pulpit – Anonymous
Decadence of Darwinism – Henry H. Beach
Paul’s Testimony to the Doctrine of Sin – Charles B. Williams
The Science of Conversion – H. M. Sydenstricker
The Doctrinal Value of the First Chapters of Genesis – Dyson Hague
The Knowledge of God – James Burrell
“Preach the Word” – Howard Crosby
Mormonism: Its Origin, Characteristics, and Doctrines – R. G. McNiece

Volume IX:

The True Church – Bishop Ryle
The Mosaic Authorship of the Pentateuch – George Frederick Wright
The Wisdom of this World – A. W. Pitzer
Holy Scripture and Modern Negations – James Orr
Salvation by Grace – Thomas Spurgeon
Divine Efficacy of Prayer – Arthur T. Pierson
What Christ Teaches Concerning Future Retribution – William C. Procter
A Message from Missions – Charles A. Bowen
Eddyism: Commonly Called Christian Science – Maurice E. Wilson

Volume X:

Why Save the Lord’s Day? – Daniel Hoffman Martin
The Internal Evidence of the Fourth Gospel – Canon G. Osborne Troop
The Nature of Regeneration – Thomas Boston
Regeneration—Conversion—Reformation – George W. Lasher
Our Lord’s Teachings About Money – Arthur T. Pierson
Satan and His Kingdom – Mrs. Jessie Penn-Lewis
The Holy Spirit and the Sons of God – W. J. Erdman
Consecration – Henry W. Frost
The Apologetic Value of Paul’s Epistles – E.J. Stobo
What the Bible Contains for the Believer – George F. Pentecost
Modern Spiritualism Briefly Tested by Scripture – Algernon J. Pollock

Volume XI:

The Biblical Conception of Sin – Thomas Whitelaw
At-One-Ment by Propitiation – Dyson Hague
The Grace of God – C. I. Scofield
Fulfilled Prophecy A Potent Argument for the Bible – Arno C. Gaebelein
The Coming of Christ – Charles R. Erdman
Is Romanism Christianity? – T. W. Medhurst
Rome, The Antagonist of the Nation – J. M. Foster

Volume XII:

Doctrines that Must be Emphasized in Successful Evangelism – L. W. Munhall
Pastoral and Personal Evangelism, or Winning Men to Christ One-by-One – John Timothy Stone
The Sunday School’s True Evangelism – Charles Gallaudet Trumbull
Foreign Missions or World-Wide Evangelism – Robert E. Speer
What Missionary Motives Should Prevail? – Henry W. Frost
The Place of Prayer in Evangelism – R. A. Torrey
The Church and Socialism – Charles R. Erdman
The Fifteen Books Most Indispensable for the Minister or the Christian Worker²

But the fundamentalist movement tended to produce orthodoxy without orthopraxy

Years ago the producer of Focus on the Family’s radio show contacted me and invited me and some of my ministry’s volunteers to be on their program. I wondered why, out of the thousands of parachurch ministries in America, they were asking us to be on their show, so I asked him about it and he responded with one word, “orthopraxy.”

“Orthodoxy,” he went on to say, “is correct doctrine. Orthopraxy is correct practice. New Commandment Men’s Ministries, with its emphasis on using men to serve widows and single moms, is a great example of orthopraxy.”

Unfortunately, it has not always been the case that “fundamentalists” like me have stressed orthopraxy to the same degree that we have stressed orthodoxy.

And yes, I am a classic fundamentalist. The original four volume set of The Fundamentals has been in my library and in my father’s library for over one hundred years. My father, brother and sister all attended BIOLA. My mother and father were members of BIOLA’s sister institution, Church of the Open Door, for several decades and raised all five of us children in that church. My father and mother were close friends of Dr. Louis Talbot, pastor of COD and founder of Talbot Seminary, and also close friends of Dr. J. Vernon McGee, another well-known pastor of COD and the Bible teacher on Thru the Bible Radio. My uncle, Dr. John G. Mitchell, was in the first graduating class at Dallas Theological Seminary, the flagship fundamentalist seminary. I also graduated from Dallas Seminary and was ordained into ministry by IFCA (Independent Fundamental Churches of America) at Church of the Open Door.

Therefore, I have acquired from first-hand experience an extensive knowledge of, and deep respect for, the fundamentalist movement.

On the positive side, fundamentalism did succeed in reestablishing orthodox doctrine in much of the church as it exists in America today. Unfortunately, it did not succeed, except for a few instances,³ in restoring mainline seminaries, denominations and churches to orthodoxy. Instead, Fundamentalism, and its successors, evangelicalism and the charismatic movements, have largely replaced “mainline” Christian institutions as the primary drivers of American Christianity. In a very real sense, as the number of conservative, orthodox Christians in America have rapidly increased, mainline denominations have declined and become what I call, “sideline denominations.”

But there was one primary problem with the fundamentalist movement that engendered several subsidiary problems. While many of those subsidiary problems have been–and continue to be–addressed over the past one hundred years, the main problem still exists. That problem is an emphasis on orthodoxy without an emphasis on orthopraxy.

Let us be clear, orthodoxy is foundational and essential to true orthopraxy. But while orthodoxy is essential, it is not sufficient. In our “passage for getting there,” 2 Timothy 3:12-17, Paul tells Timothy that while the Bible produces sound doctrine, sound doctrine is not sufficient in itself, but one of the necessary means (“so that”) for being equipped for our ultimate goal, that of doing “every good work.” Unfortunately, the fundamentalist movement forgot this truth and focused almost solely on holding to sound doctrine, often resulting in sterile intellectualism.

As a result of ignoring the importance of good works in the Christian life (When was the last time you heard a sermon on, or preached a sermon on, good works?), fundamentalists never learned about the biblical teaching on how to minister to widows, single moms, fatherless children and others with long term needs. Because of the church’s failure to practice the biblical teaching on ministering to its widows, “in 1934, roughly one half of seniors were estimated to be poor.”⁴

In response to the desperate situation of seniors, the conservative, fundamental church could have stepped in, applied the clear biblical teaching on this subject, and provided a beautiful example to the entire nation of how the love of Christ functions (our protocol), just as Jesus Christ intended and just as the early church did. But it failed to do so and instead, the federal government stepped in (and rightly so) and met the need by establishing Social Security.

In place of demonstrating the practical application of the love of Christ towards those in its midst who were in deepest need, and the beauty that comes from doing so, fundamentalists fell back on legalism (“Don’t go to movies. Don’t dance. Don’t play with playing cards. Don’t smoke. Don’t drink. Don’t…”) and reveled in their cultural isolation, resulting in cultural irrelevance.

Then, forgetting that the concept of fundamental doctrines implies that some doctrines are not fundamental, fundamentalists began fighting with each other over their differing views on biblical prophecy, speaking in tongues, and, more recently, the ordination of women. In essence, fundamentalists forgot the important adage, “In essentials, unity. In non-essentials, liberty. In all things, charity.” It is no wonder then, that the term “fundamentalists” often conjures up in the mind of modern unbelievers pictures of harsh, unyielding, and condemning Christians–exactly the opposite of what Jesus intended.

Sound doctrine always has good practical applications, and that includes practical applications for men

So what are the practical applications of sound doctrine for men? Here are some of them (Of course, sound doctrine has practical implications for women as well. But since this article is about men’s ministry, I’m focusing specifically on men.):

Sound doctrine explains the God-alienating, relationship-destroying, and self-defeating power of sin in men’s lives.
Sound doctrine describes the reality of a spiritual world that surrounds men and influences men for good and evil.
Sound doctrine tells men about a personal and holy God who loves men but is separated from men by our sin.
Sound doctrine speaks of the God-man, Jesus Christ, who lived a perfect life on this earth, died an atoning death on the cross for our sin, and rose again.
Sound doctrine tells men how they can be saved from the penalty, power, and presence of sin through faith in Jesus Christ.
Sound doctrine gives men hope as they wait for the return of their savior.
Sound doctrine shows men how to walk in fellowship with God through the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit.
Sound doctrine provides a template for a man’s role in marriage and family.
Sound doctrine shows men a way to surround themselves in their families, church, and community with people who love them.
Sound doctrine motivates men to sacrifice themselves in doing good, good that lasts for generations and generations.

Take away sound doctrine, and you strip men of all of the above. Want to know why men are struggling in America today? It is because of the absence of sound doctrine in their lives.

This post first appeared in NewCommandment.org.

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