What good is a church made up of people seeking unless there is something to be sought and known? That seems to be the issue. Either we have the truth in God's Word and this is the ground of being for the Church or else we don't and are left with one big guesstimate. So either the Church is a group of blind people feeling their way along or we are those whose eyes have been opened and on whom the light has shown. It has to be one or the other. For that matter, either the Spirit has been given to us merely as a companion on our common journey or the Spirit actually guides the Church into all truth. I mean, really, we are two millennia away from Christ's death and resurrection and, according to Leo, we are still far from the truth. Now, of course, we would all agree that we are not there yet in the sense of the perfect consummation of all things but as possessor of the truth, why else is there a Church? The Scriptures? The Spirit? The Church has the illumination of Scripture and the Spirit along with the catholic witness down through the ages and possesses the fullness of the truth within the bounds of our human frailty.
What is the Church the guardian of except the truth? Indeed, while it fits with the modern idea of an evolving and changing truth in which the seeking is even more significant than the truth itself, it does not accord with the promise of Christ, the gift of the Spirit, and what the Scriptures claim of themselves. Jesus did not claim to be a companion with us along the way but the Way, the Truth, and the Life. He is not a means to an end but the end. To know Him is to know the truth in all its fullness. These words of Leo do not even accord with customary Roman teaching regarding the pontiff and the teaching magisterium of Rome. So what is it? Is this merely an unfortunate example of the kind of imprecise language used by the advocates of change or is it the sign that Leo has joined Francis, against Benedict and JPII and others in seeing the role of the faithful in discerning where God wants them to go instead of proclaiming what God has done in Christ on behalf of the whole world? If it is the latter, then the Gospel is reduced to a mere marker along the journey or a principle for the path instead of the eternal Gospel of Revelation meant for the all people. If that is the case, Leo and those who think like him will have transformed Rome into a fully contemporary Protestant church -- something for which Luther did not aim nor should he be blamed.
I have often wondered why both the Catholic Church, and the Lutheran church, LCMS as well, rarely say much about John 3. I was a Catholic for many years, until age 40 or so. No remembrance of a Catholic priest ever giving a sermon about John 3, and the Lord’s teaching on the necessity of being “born again.” In the LCMS as well, my memory cannot come up with a single preacher making reference to being “born again.” Yet, can you think of any chapter in the New Testament that bears repetition and should be preached more often? Yet, a few churches do continually speak about being born again in Christ. And it is well that they do. The topic of this article seems to be that seeking truth is not the same as teaching revealed truth. And that is a good topic for discussion. Christ taught the revealed truth, not some evolving truth. Indeed, we must grow in grace and seek to discern the many facets of God’s word, but Jesus laid it all out for us in John 3, and all we have to do is read it, meditate on it, and embrace it. Why do some churches go so far away from the words of Our Lord, embellishing and adding doctrines which makes it even more difficult for an ordinary Christian? I wish more preachers of the word would address John 3 and the need to be born again in the Spirit. Nicodemus couldn’t quite understand it at first, probably because he was legalistic by religious training, and immediately thought of man’s works as a cooperative effort in salvation. Jesus said it was all God’s doing, by grace, and the mystery of the act of being “born again” was something the Lord does, and it leads to revealed truth. Let me just add one personal experience. While I was still a Catholic, I was in a local playground with my young children back in the middle 1970’s. Along came Margie, an acquaintance of ours, whose young son played with our son. When we saw her, we would say, “Oh, here comes Margie again!” Margie was a housewife and a Bible Christian who felt the need to evangelize frequently. Her way was to engage in short small talk, then press on into the important stuff. She would say, “John, are you born again?” I might respond, “Margie, we are Catholic.” And Margie would say, “No, I already know that. But have you been “born again?” I would shuffle my feet, awkwardly, and Margie would talk about John 3. I went home and both my wife and I looked it up, and read John 3. We thought about it, and it seemed to us Margie was right. Later, we left the Catholic Church for an LCMS church, went to other denominations as well, as we sought to find the truth. For all Christians, John 3 should be an essential chapter to read frequently. For preachers, it should be taught through the church year on a scheduled basis. If one wants revealed truth, you will find it clearly taught by Jesus in John 3. Soli Deo Gloria
ReplyDelete