Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Confessing The Pure Doctrine

Can a person perfectly confess the perfect doctrine?  Can one purely confess the pure doctrine?  Does anyone ever purely confess the pure doctrine?
Having the pure doctrine is very important.  It is through the pure doctrine that God works faith in us and saves us.  The truth is essential for us.  It is life-giving for us.  And without it we could not have life---any life.  God's word gave us life in the first place.  It is by his word that the world and everything that exists including us came into being.
It is also by his word that we have true life---life to the fullest.  That word the center of which is forgiveness and righteousness is what brings us joy and thrill and anticipation and hope in this life.  It is what makes life worth living.  That word is what fills us with life in this world.
That pure doctrine is also what gives us eternal life.  That word brings us forgiveness and righteousness so that we can someday live a life that has none of the ills and evils of this life.  This pure doctrine creates faith in us so that we can receive that which God created for us in Christ. 
But now, are we ever in this life able to purely confess this pure doctrine?  And what happens to us if we are not able to do this?  Or what happens to us if we should be able to do this?
We admit and confess that we are not perfect in any way in this life, except in the perfection that God covers us with in Christ.   If we should claim we can purely confess this pure doctrine, then is there one sector of our lives in this world that does not need cleansing in Christ?  Does this mean that it is not true that we are totally corrupt?  If we should claim we can purely confess this pure doctrine in this life, does that make us more God-pleasing than those who do not?  Would this be called self-righteousness, holier-than-thou attitude?  Or is our ability, the reality of purely confessing our pure doctrine a gift in Christ---a gift in the sense that even our speech, our confession, is dressed in the righteousness of Christ.
This would not necessarily be work righteousness, unless, of course, we claimed we were saved by purely confessing the pure doctrine.  Do some who claim orthodoxy make this mistake?  Sometimes it seems they get very close to this or maybe are actually guilty of this error.
But what if we admit, confess that we are do not, in fact, are not able to purely confess this pure doctrine?  Does that mean we are condemned?
Well, are we condemned?  Do we stand before God condemned because of our sin, our shortcomings, yes even shortcomings in our confession of our pure doctrine?  What does that mean?  I believe it means that we escape that condemnation not by our pure confession, but by Christ's redemption.  We are saved by God's grace alone in Christ alone by faith alone.
Yes, we are to constantly strive to purely confess our pure doctrine.  And part of that confess involves confessing that we never purely confess that pure doctrine.  And we ask for forgiveness in Christ and we keep striving with all we have to purely confess our pure doctrine.  This is a life time struggle, striving for us.  All of us are constantly striving to mold our confession to the pure doctrine God has given us. 
So, what does that say about closed communion?  Some would say that we should not commune with someone who does not confess the pure doctrine.  But if none of us purely confess the pure doctrine, then how do we decide with whom we should commune?
This whole question is a life-long question for us.  We are always striving to purely confess our pure doctrine.  And we are constantly striving to encourage others to do the same as they are doing for us.  And so we are constantly asking ourselves and others if what we are doing is destroying our fellowship or edifying, building it up.  Unorthodoxy always destroys fellowship.  Orthodoxy always edifies it, builds it up.  So even this part of our lives is under constant construction in this world.  The only time we will finally have a permanent, perfect fellowship is when we get to heaven.
In the meantime, we are constantly working to create a pure fellowship here in this life also although we believe and confess that we will never reach perfection in this respect anymore than we will in other aspects of our lives.

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