#4. The Balance of Doctrine and Practice.


In the last two papers we have been exercised with a subject so vast, that, while it may be granted to the earnest believer to obtain some glimpse of the perfection of the great purpose of the ages, in this life no one can ever hope to comprehend a tithe of what the Scriptures actually teach on the subject. Let us now leave this vast and overwhelming aspect of truth and turn to something that is within our grasp. Let us consider the necessary balance that the Scripture insist should be maintained between doctrine and practice.

The example of the apostle Paul and the character of his teaching will supply sufficient material to show how vital to all living faith this balance is. First, the Apostle’s own example.

At the close of his life’s work he thus wrote to Timothy:

“Thou has fully known (didst follow up) my doctrine, manner of life . . . . .” (II Tim. iii. 10).

What consistency of walk is implied in such a challenging statement! Having joined the Apostle early in life, when Paul and Barnabas had but traveled half way round their first missionary journey (Acts xvi.), Timothy had thereafter remained in close contact with the Apostle. It is comparatively easy to maintain a “platform” or “pulpit” consistency, but it is another matter to challenge investigation into one’s life, especially one spent in perilous journeyings, bitter feuds, periods of want, general misunderstanding, and unmitigated opposition from within and without. Yet the Apostle was able to do this. “I have showed you, and taught you” said he on another and earlier occasion (Acts xx. 20), and in the same passage he supplemented this statement by saying:

“I have coveted no man’s silver, or gold, or apparel. Yea, ye yourselves know, that these hands have ministered unto my necessities, and to them that were with me. I have shewed you all things, how that so labouring ye ought to support the weak, and to remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how He said, It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts xx. 33-35).

Hupodeiknumi, “shewed” (Acts xx. 35), gives us hupodeigma, “example” (John xiii. 15), and Paul, fulfilling his doctrine by his practice, is found following in the footsteps of His Lord. This is teaching indeed, compared with which mere exactness in the form of doctrine and accuracy of presentation appear cold and lifeless.

The Apostle exhorted the Philippians to stand fast, being in nothing terrified by their adversaries, adding, “For unto you it is given, in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on Him, but also to suffer for His sake” (i. 28, 29), and then concluded on the personal note, “Having the same conflict which ye saw in me, and now hear to be in me” (i. 30).

How near his Lord the Apostle must have walked to have taken this thought further, as he did in the fourth chapter:

“Those things which ye have both learned, and received, and heard, and seen in me, do: and the Lord of peace shall be with you” (Phil. iv. 9).

Let us take some of the doctrines that we have received through the Apostle’s writings, and see how he urges us to balance them by practice.

Forgiveness.
“Having forgiven you all trespasses” (Col. ii. 13).

That is the doctrine. What is the corresponding practice?

“Forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any; even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye” (Col. iii. 13).
“Be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you” (Eph. iv. 32).

Kindness.

In this second practical exhortation there is the word chrestos, “kind”. This in its turn is the practical outcome of the doctrinal truth revealed in Eph. ii.:

“That in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness (chrestotes) toward us through Christ Jesus” (Eph. ii. 7).

This same practical outworking is found in Col. iii.:

“Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness (chrestotes)” (Col. iii. 12).

Put on.

The exhortation, “put on”, reminds us of the passage in Eph. iv., which in its turn is the practical answer to the doctrinal passage of Eph. ii.:

“For to create in Himself of twain one new man, so making peace” (Eph. ii. 15).
“Put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness” (Eph. iv. 24).

This passage makes us think of Col. iii. 10, where we read:

“And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created him.”

but this in its turn is the practical outworking of the doctrine contained in that wondrous passage concerning Christ:

“Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature” (Col. i. 15).

Again, several items of the Unity of the Spirit which, in Eph. iv., the believer is enjoined to keep, are found in the doctrine of Eph. i., ii., and iii.



While the Apostle uses the word prosagoge, “access”, in Eph. ii. 18, we have to turn to Peter’s testimony to discover the actual doctrinal fact, of which this “access” is the practical balance:

“For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the Just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God” (I Pet. iii. 18).

“That He might bring” is the verb prosago from which “access”, prosagoge, is derived. In other words, we “draw nigh”, personally, because we have been “made nigh” by the finished work of Christ.

As the concluding example of this balance between doctrine and practice, let us take the great fundamental of Paul’s gospel, “righteousness”, dikaiosune. Nothing is more incisive than the teaching of the Apostle concerning the way in which righteousness must be received under the gospel. It is “by faith” (Phil. iii. 9), it is “not by works” (Tit. iii. 5), it is not “by the law” (Rom. iii. 21), it is “reckoned”, not as a wage, but as a gift (Rom. iv. 5). Christ is “made unto us righteousness” (I Cor. i. 30), and is “the end of the law unto righteousness to every one that believeth” (Rom. x. 4).

Here is the doctrinal basis; what of the practical correspondence? Those thus justified by faith are told that they have become “the servants of righteousness” (Rom. vi. 18), that their members should be yielded as “instruments of righteousness” (Rom. vi. 13); and that the armour in which they stand contains “the breastplate” of righteousness (Eph. vi. 14), and is itself called “the armour of righteousness” (II Cor. vi. 7). Timothy is exhorted to “follow after righteousness” (I Tim. vi. 11; II Tim. ii. 22), and the Apostle looked forward to receiving “a crown of righteousness” (II Tim. iv. 8) from the hand of the Lord, as the recognition by Him that the Apostle had finished his course and kept the faith.

Those of us to whom the Lord has shown such “longsuffering” as He did to Paul, the pattern of those who should after him believe (I Tim. i. 16), should find it comparatively easy to walk “with all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love” (Eph. iv. 2), but, if we are to be guided by the evidence of our senses, it seems, alas, easier to leave the presence of the Lord, having been forgiven so great a debt, and to take one’s fellow-servant by the throat and say “pay me that thou owest”.

We shall never err by exercising too much longsuffering and forbearance, for we can never estimate in this life the debt that has been forgiven us by grace. Let us seek this wonderful balance, so that in our degree, low and little though it be, we shall be able, with all humility, to draw attention to both our “doctrine” and our “manner of life”.

“Who is sufficient for these things? . . . . . . . My grace is sufficient for thee” (I Cor. ii. 16; xii. 9).

------------------

(From The Berean Expositor, vol. 33, page 226).

-------------------