Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones Monday - Why Examine Doctrine?
In light of my upcoming series of blogging through the T4G statement, and the blogging challenge, I thought it might prove helpful to quote a few things the Doctor has to say about how to examine Biblical doctrines. If you like, this is what I imagine the Doctor would have said if he could join us in blogging through the T4G statement. I would, of course, have made sure he won a copy of the free book�and I suspect he would have been proud of what his successor, John Piper, had to say!
In the first chapter of his book, Great Doctrines of the Bible, he says that when we begin to look at doctrine, we need to have some things quite clear in our minds beforehand:
What are We Going to Do?
�What do we mean when we talk abut a biblical doctrine? The answer is that the Bible is particularly concerned about teaching certain truths, and nothing is more important than that we should grasp that and that we should start with it. The Bible is a book which has a very definite objective. All its teaching is designed to a certain end; it is concerned with putting before us its doctrines, the particular truths which it wants to emphasize and to impress upon the minds of all of us.�
How Are We Going to Do This?
�We must of necessity confine ourselves to what the Bible says and to what the Bible alone says . . . The position we occupy is that, again, of Deuteronomy 29:29 . . . We must confine ourselves to the things that have been revealed, not to the secret things that are ultimately in the mind of God.�
Why Do We Believe That This Should be Done?
�Now these are some of the answers I would suggest to that question. The first is that the Bible itself does it and therefore we are bound to do it . . . to read my Bible properly means that I must consider doctrine. The Bible wants me to grasp its doctrine. In other words, I may know my Bible very well, but unless I realise the importance of grasping its doctrines, my knowledge of the Bible may be quite useless to me.�
�Another reason is that it is dangerous for us to study the Bible without doing this. We talk, do we not, about missing the wood because of the trees, and what a terrible danger that is! The real trouble with the Jews at the time of our Lord was that they stopped at the letter and never arrived at the spirit. In other words, they never got at the doctrine.�
�But another reason for studying biblical doctrines is that the Church throughout the centuries has always found that it is essential to emphasize the doctrines of the Bible. In the very first days of the Church no one was received into church membership without making the confession, at all costs, that Jesus is Lord. But the moment you say �Jesus is Lord,� you are making a doctrinal statement . . . [But] very soon heresies began to arise; people within the Church began to say things that were not correct . . . the Church found it was absolutely essential to extract its doctrines, and to state them in a perfectly clear and definite manner. So you had what is commonly called among Protestants, the great Confessions . . . Now all these Confessions, and the catechisms which go with them, are nothing but a statement of biblical doctrines, so that people within the Church might know exactly what to believe and what not to believe and the reasons for this belief . . . . Now if that was necessary in the early days of the Church, if it was necessary at the time of the Reformation and in the seventeenth century, surely it is something which is urgently needed at this present hour?�
�But I have a higher reason for considering these doctrines with you. Ultimately it is the only way truly to know God, to come into His glorious presence and to learn something of the wonders of His ways with respect to us. Yes, let us go on reading our Bibles and studying them, but let us not get lost in the detail. Let us pick out these great, mighty, mountain-peaks of doctrine, and realise there who God is, and what He has done for us in the person of His dear Son, and in spite of our sin.�
Finally, the Doctor clarifies what he has in mind when examining doctrine:
�I am not doing this in order to get you some intellectual knowledge or information that you did not have before. God forbid that I should attempt to do that, or that anybody should think of what we are doing in that way. �Knowledge,� says Paul, �puffeth up, but charity edifieth.� (1 Corinthians 8:1) . . . We are concerned with God�to know Him. It is worship. Any consideration of the Bible is worship and to me there is nothing so dangerous as to approach the Bible and its teaching as you approach any other text book . . . The doctrines of the Bible are not a subject to be studied; rather we should desire to know them in order that, having known them, we may not be �puffed up� with knowledge, and excited about our information, but may draw nearer to God in worship, praise, and adoration because we have seen, in a fuller way [than] we have ever seen before, the glory of our wondrous God. May He give us cause to do this, and grant that as a result of these doctrines, we may all come to know Him, the only true and living God, and Jesus Christ whom He has sent�and as a result may all be revived . . . .�
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All excerpts quoted in this post were taken from:
Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Great Doctrines of the Bible, �My Purpose and Method,� Crossway Books, Wheaton, Illinois, 2003, chapter 1, pp.1-10.
