Galatians 1:6-10 (Why Doctrine?)
Doctrine, or that which one believes to be true, is important. However, we live in a time where people focus on passion, sincerity, and emotion instead of doctrine. They see it as too divisive and removed from real life. It is true that for far too long people focused simply on intellectual aspects of faith without letting them impact their everyday lives. Today things have changed toward an emphasis on authenticity and away from absolutes. It is a paradox of postmodern thinking. The problem is, without the foundation of doctrine, all the passion and sincerity are pointless. Without a foundation in reality, why do we do the things we do?
Paul was driven to write Galatians because the churches he started on his first journey had turned away from the truth they had been taught. In this letter, Paul gives a clear argument of the dangers of the false teaching they had embraced. He begins, though, by showing how serious the issue is. The false teachers were to be cursed!
Christianity believes that the doctrines found in the Bible are not man-made; they are from God. Any churches we start or join should be churches that seek always to follow the teachings of the Bible. It is a vital task of missionaries, church-planters, pastors, and teachers to continually and clearly teach and practice what the Bible says.
(In doing so, we may at times discover things that we have come to believe that are not actually Biblical. Dogma vs. Doctrine is perhaps an issue for another post.)
Paul was driven to write Galatians because the churches he started on his first journey had turned away from the truth they had been taught. In this letter, Paul gives a clear argument of the dangers of the false teaching they had embraced. He begins, though, by showing how serious the issue is. The false teachers were to be cursed!
Christianity believes that the doctrines found in the Bible are not man-made; they are from God. Any churches we start or join should be churches that seek always to follow the teachings of the Bible. It is a vital task of missionaries, church-planters, pastors, and teachers to continually and clearly teach and practice what the Bible says.
(In doing so, we may at times discover things that we have come to believe that are not actually Biblical. Dogma vs. Doctrine is perhaps an issue for another post.)
Comments
Post a Comment