Sunday Sermons

The Christian Mind and Truth

Mark Dunagan
03/05/06 - Sunday Morning

The Christian Mind

As one reads the Bible is it clear that the Bible tells us how to live, but even beyond this, it tells us how to feel and how to think:

· “I will put My laws into their minds” (Hebrews 8:10).

· “You shall love the Lord your God will all your heart, and with all your…mind” (Mark 12:30).

· “But be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Romans 12:2).

· “We have the mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:16).

· “That you be renewed in the spirit of your mind” (Ephesians 4:23).

· “Have this attitude” (Philippians 2:5).

Divine Revelation is the Objective Standard of Truth

Jesus taught that His words would judge mankind at the last day (John 12:48); that God’s word is truth (John 17:17); and that through the apostles would be revealed not some of the truth, but all of the truth (John 16:13). Thus the Bible would be the final and complete authority concerning what is the truth. In contrast to this mindset, “Ours is an age in which ‘conclusions’ are arrived at by distributing questionnaires to a cross-section of the population or by holding a microphone before the lips of casually selected passers-by in the street. In many spheres of activity, quality is measured by mass-preference. The Top Ten or The Week’s Best-Seller indicate what is worth having…perhaps they ought to be more seriously concerned of the surrender of standards to the whims of the biggest crowd making the loudest noise” (The Christian Mind, Harry Blamires, p. 107).

Truth is given and not constructed

Jesus said that when the Holy Spirit would come He would guide the apostles into all the truth (John 16:13). Paul plainly stated that God’s truth was given to him by revelation (Ephesians 3:3). In contrast to such a mind-set, “Our culture is bedeviled by the it’s-all-a-matter-of-opinion code. I have known educated people, professing Christians, who purposely gathered together for religious discussions men and women representing the widest possible varieties of religious conviction. This was fair enough. Unfortunately their aim, as they put it, was to get everyone to make his ‘individual contribution’ so that collectively they might arrive at the truth. But there is no rational basis for the notion that by mixing a number of conflicting ideas you are likely to arrive at the truth. You cannot construct truth from a mass of dissonant and disparate material. You cannot construct truth at all: you can only discover it. And the more noisily opinionated people intervene with their contributions, the less likely you are to discover it” (Acts 17:21). “It is being assumed that the more people there are with different opinions to contribute, the greater ‘truth’ will emerge from the mixing of these opinions in the melting-pot. Truth is regarded as a kind of pudding, or brew, which you concoct from human opinions. Christian truth is objective, four-square, unshakable. It is not built of men’s opinions. It is not something fabricated either by scholars or by men in the street, still less something assembled from a million answers” (pp. 112,113).

To love God is to love His word

· Since the gospel was given by revelation and delivered to man (Jude 3), “no human being invented the Christian Faith. It was God’s idea. If you think it is a bad idea, you’d better blame God. It’s no good blaming me. You’ll have to blame God, He gave us this Christianity. We can accept it. We can reject it” (p. 118). Thus the Christian mind realizes that it is impossible to separate God’s revelation from God’s own character, for He gave Scripture “All Scripture inspired of God” (2 Timothy 3:16-17). One cannot logically argue, “Of course I believe in God, but I have no use for the Bible”. Any attack upon the Bible is a direct attack upon God’s nature. To honor God is to value His church.

· Neither can one say, “Of course I believe in God, but I have no use for the church”, because God is the mastermind behind the church (Ephesians 3:10-11; Matthew 16:18 “I will build My church”). “We must not talk—and we must not allow critics of the church to talk as though the Apostles sat around a table in the early days and one of them said, ‘I propose we have a church’, and another said, ‘I second that’. For the church was not manufactured to a human plan. God made it, not man. Therefore to talk of not seeing the need for the church is like talking of not seeing a need for the moon. The church, like the moon, is not a human project, but a divine creation” (p. 119).

God’s Truth is a “Revelation”

Jesus said, “And you will know the truth” (John 8:32); “If anyone is willing to do His will, he will know of the teaching, whether it is of God or whether I speak from Myself”. Paul added, “When you read you can understand my insight into the mystery of Christ” (Ephesians 3:4); “Who desires all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:4).

In contrast, there are a good many books in which the author describes his investigation of the various religions and philosophies and claims his grand arrival at some sort of truth. Yet we must reject the idea that God “has been so unjust as to locate Himself at the end of a long course of academic study which you wouldn’t be equal to if you failed your college entrance examination, and which you wouldn’t have time for. It is dangerous to suggest that arrival at God’s truth can be attained only after years of study needing a trained academic mind” (pp. 123). Look closely at the people who became Christians in the first century and you will not find a collection of purely academic individuals who only discovered the truth near the end of their lives.

· God’s truth is not like some child’s Christmas toy that we must “assemble” ourselves with a poor set of directions. Rather, it is clear (Ephesians 3:4), and orderly (1 Corinthians 14:33 “God is not a God of confusion”; Luke 1:1-4).

· God’s truth is not distant (Romans 10:18).

· God’s truth is not hidden, “we are not a lot of amateur detectives on the hunt for clues in a cosmic whodunit” (p. 124). God’s truth is so clear that people can see it coming and those who prefer to live in darkness will actually attempt to hide from its glare (John 3:19-21).

The Bible is not Theory

“Thy word is truth” (John 17:17). This means that:

· “To think of Christianity is to think in terms of Revelation. For the secularist, God and theology are the playthings of the mind, religion is essentially a matter of theory, but for the Christian mind, Christianity is a matter of acts and facts” (pp. 110-111). “Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile an account of the things accomplished among us” (Luke 1:1); “None of these things escape his notice; for this has not been done in a corner” (Acts 26:26); “That Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures” (1 Corinthians 15:3-4). “Christianity is so much more than a mere moral code, a recipe for virtue. It is a religion of acts and facts. Its God is not an abstraction, but a Person. Its God has moved among us. How wonderful are Thy works! That is a persistent biblical theme. Not, How interesting are Thy theories, but how wonderful are Thy works. For Christianity is a religion of things that have happened—a baby born in Bethlehem, a body nailed up on the cross” (p. 111). Thus the Christian mind would never speak of the theory of the Virgin Birth, Resurrection of Jesus Christ, or His Return. Those are not theories, they are acts and facts. “This Jesus---will come in just the same way as you have watched Him go into heaven” (Acts 1:11); “For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout” (1 Thessalonians 4:16).

· In contrast to the above, the tendency in much of the modern world is “to treat the Christian faith as though it were simply a series of interesting speculations, and the Christian practice a matter of interesting experiments, all devised and made by men as part of their search for God and their pursuit of virtue” (p. 111).

· Yet Jesus and the apostles did not engage in speculation. Jesus did not say, “I guess…”, rather He repeatedly said, “Truly, truly I say to you” (Matthew 5:18).

· Clearly, Jesus did not die on the cross for the sake of a theory.

Far more than mere self-improvement

Now following the Bible will improve a person (Galatians 5:22-24), yet we must be clear that the end result of believing the Bible is not some earthly end. “The Christian faith is important because it is true. What it happens to achieve, in ourselves or others, is another matter. For the Christian faith will remain true whether we who profess it turn into heroic saints or into even more miserable sinners (2 Peter 2:20-22). Thus the Bible is true whether or not anyone believes it (Matthew 7:13-14), or practices it. The Bible is true whether or not I see a “need” for God in my life. “Religious conviction is, for the secular mind, a matter of individual preference related, not to objective truth, but to personal need and predilection” (pp. 108-109). In fact, many people do not mind talking about morals, virtue or being a “good person” as long as Christians do not drag God into the discussion, or as one critic said, “Why can’t Christians be good just for the sake of goodness itself, instead of having to drag God and all this theology into it?” (p. 109).

“And it’s true”

· When people argue that the Bible makes too much of the after-life and not enough of this life or that the Bible does not cater properly to the weaknesses of human nature; that it lays too much stress on sin, or that it is too exclusive and dogmatic, let us remind the critic that all such complaints only prove that the Bible is not the work of man. Only the true God would lay down such uncompromising standards, and only a God who is absolutely holy, pure and truthful would not rationalize away our selfish acts.

· When people argue, “Why don’t you bring your Christian teachings up to date” we must remind them that the world has not surpassed the teachings of the Bible and neither have men outgrown them, rather most people are still far behind in bring their lives into conformity with such virtues (Galatians 5:19-24). Thus, what needs to be “updated” are often the thinking and morals of our critic.

· If someone complains, “But I do not need the Bible” then challenge them to live unselfishly without it.

· If others say that His standards are too hard, admit that living unselfishly is hard (Luke 14:26ff); but it is still true, and the most rewarding and worthwhile way to live.

Mark Dunagan/Beaverton Church of Christ/503-644-9017