EPHESIANS 4:11–14 – And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.

THEME OF THE DAY. THEOLOGY AND DOCTRINE REALLY MATTERS: A LOT. Our foe, the devil, attacks the individual Christian and churches in many ways. Two of the most effective and devastating are ignorance of spiritual warfare and failing to grasp the importance of theology and Biblical doctrine.

To the Christian, the devil has defeated and continues to defeat many believers by simply getting them to forget every day is a day of intense spiritual conflict. Use ourselves as an illustration. Did we wake up today with the first thoughts being spiritual and aware we are about to enter a spiritual combat zone that will bring us into spiritual battles all day long with the devil, the world, and flesh? Ignorance means defeat. Neglect means losing the battle. If we are Christians who do not discipline our hearts and minds to realize and live life as it is, a war in enemy territory, we will be in constant spiritual defeat.

To the professing church, the devil is achieving many victories by influencing leadership and people to downplay, even resist, the importance and commitment to theology and sound doctrine. This is seen with the growing concept among believers that the church is all about us; our needs, our preferences, and our desires. It also has impacted our teaching and preaching with a heavy emphasis, even imbalance, of application of doing instead of a theology of who God is and our position in Christ. David Wells in his book, God in the Wasteland: The Reality of Truth in a World of Fading Dreams, discerningly wrote, “We have turned to a God that we can use rather than to a God we must obey; we have turned to a God who will fulfill our needs rather than to a God before whom we must surrender our rights to ourselves. He is a God for us, for our satisfaction – not because we have learned to think of Him in this way through Christ but because we have learned to think of Him this way through the marketplace. In the marketplace, everything is for us, for our pleasure, for our satisfaction, and we have come to assume that it must be so in the church as well. As so we transform the God of mercy into a God who is at our mercy. We imagine that He is benign, that He will acquiesce as we toy with His reality and to co-opt Him in the promotion of our ventures and careers.”

The need of the hour in our churches is a recovery of biblical doctrine and theology that is Christ-centered and leads to self-denying lives grounded in the fear of God and pursuing personal holiness. We must refuse a heavy dose of “how to” teaching and preaching and focus more on seeing the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ through a commitment to sound doctrine and theology. Remember, doctrine doesn’t divide. It unifies and matures. It is the foundation for all Christian living. And as we did in the preceding paragraph with a question of self-examination on spiritual warfare, let’s do the same in the area of how grounded we are doctrinally and theologically. Without a Bible, could we give detailed scriptural support from memory, on the deity of Christ, the Trinity, salvation by grace alone through faith alone, the inerrancy and inspiration of the scripture, man’s depravity, and the substitutionary death of Christ? I hope so because there may be a time in the near future we might not have a Bible. Doctrine and theology matter. A lot.

So, as we live life today, let’s remember the spiritual nature of life and commit ourselves to being a people of sound doctrine, not tossed to and fro by the many winds of false teaching abundant in our land.

PRAYER: “Father, help me to see life and live life as it really is . . . in a spiritual realm with eternity at hand.”

QUOTE: “Without sound doctrine steering a church, it will run aground on the dangerous shoals of unguided experience”