19
Jun

On preaching chaff

   Posted by: me   in Church

Add Comment

It is God’s will and command that in His Church His Word be preached and believed in purity and truth, without adulteration. In God’s Church nobody should utter his own, but only God’s Word (1 Pet. 4:11). Chaff and wheat do not belong together. All “teaching otherwise,” ετεροδιδασχαλειν, is strictly forbidden. 1 Tim. 1:3: “As I besought thee to abide still at Ephesus when I went into Macedonia, that thou mightest charge some that they teach no other doctrine.” It is important to point out again and again that in all Scripture there is not a single text permitting a teacher to deviate from the Word of God or granting a child of God license to fraternize with a teacher who deviates from the Word of God. God is against the prophets who proclaim their own dreams (Jer. 23:31 f.). And all Christians without exception are commanded to avoid such (Rom. 16:17; 1 Tim. 6:3ff.).

from Francis Pieper’s “Christian Dogmatics”

Thanks to Jim Pierce.

Share and Enjoy:
  • Digg
  • Sphinn
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Mixx
  • email

Tags: , , , ,

This entry was posted on Friday, June 19th, 2009 at 9:20 am and is filed under Church. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

4 comments so far

Steve Martin
 1 

That sounds pretty clear to me.

I guess God knows that when it comes to the business of salvation…we wouldn’t have a clue what to do or say on our own.

We would get it wrong every time.

June 20th, 2009 at 8:45 am
Sarah
 2 

Pretty good post. I just came across your site and wanted to say
that I’ve really enjoyed browsing your blog posts. In any case
I’ll be subscribing to your blog and I hope you post again soon!

June 23rd, 2009 at 8:09 pm
Mike Haubrich, FCD
 3 

I am just curious as to what the punishment should be for preaching chaff, or as it is known in the vernacular “heresy.” Perhaps burning at the stake, or boiling in oil, or as Calvin prescribed for Severtus, being turned on a spit.

July 3rd, 2009 at 4:22 pm
me
 4 

As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let that person be under God’s curse! Paul- Galatians 1:9

That is, let God deal with him.

Re Calvin (note that I am not a big Calvin fan), was a product of his times. That doesn’t excuse favoring execution of heretics, but it wasn’t personally his call to burn him… once Severtus was sentenced to death, Calvin tried to convince the council not to execute him by burning. Also note that in a time when burning at the stake was not that rare, Severtus was the only heretic executed while Calvin was in Geneva.

There’s no Biblical justification for killing heretics, and we don’t excuse it. My personal approach (in line with Paul) is to just tell them to go to hell.

July 3rd, 2009 at 8:23 pm

Leave a reply

Name (*)
Mail (will not be published) (*)
URI
Comment
Back to top