What is Your Authority?

Imagine attending a church where some members refused to believe in the resurrection of the dead. Imagine that these church members were converts to Christianity from another religion and that their prior religion taught them that the body and matter were evil. After joining the Christian church they still held onto these ideas. Therefore, their conscience and ‘subjective religious opinions’ stood in opposition to the doctrine of the resurrection. How should a situation like this be handled?

In today’s American Evangelical climate, it is highly unlikely that anything would be done or that this would be viewed as a troublesome situation that needed to be addressed or corrected. Why? Because far too many churches have abandoned the scriptures and have instead embraced the tenants of American Pop-Spirituality. As a result, a new ‘spiritual authority’ has arisen to take the place of the scriptures. This new authority is our own subjective opinions.

Sadly, the churches that have embraced this new authority teach us to look 'within ourselves' for the truth and decide what is true based on how it makes us feel. The drill goes something like this…

Question: Is the resurrection true? Answer: Well…how do you feel about the idea that God miraculously raises people from the dead?

Question: Should I get married to the girl I’ve been living with for the past 2 years? Answer: How do you feel about marriage?

Question: Is Jesus really the Son of God? Answer: Do you feel comfortable believing that He is?

Question: Does God really send people to Hell for all Eternity? Answer: How does that picture of God make you feel about him/her?

Sadly, this new ‘spiritual authority’ has created a culture where there is no such thing as objective truth. There is only ‘subjective truth’ and ‘feelings’. In fact, your feelings and my feelings may lead us to believe differently about many things. But according to this new ‘spiritual authority’ neither one of us would be ‘wrong’ as long as we were true to ourselves.

The Bible As Authority

I opened this blog entry with a hypothetical scenario. I said, “Imagine attending a church where some members refused to believe in the resurrection of the dead.”

This scenario wasn’t hypothetical for the Apostle Paul. This was a real situation that he faced at the church in Corinth. In 1st Corinthians 15 we get to see how Paul dealt with this situation.

First, Paul reminded the Corinthian church about the content of his preaching. Said Paul, “Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, in which also you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, 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 Cor 15:1-4).

Notice that Paul said that Jesus died ‘according to the scriptures’ and that he was raised ‘according to the scriptures’. Paul is pointing the Corinthian church to an objective authority. He is not asking them to look inside themselves for the answer, he is instead pointing them to a truth that is outside of them.

Paul then asks the Corinthians a very logical question, “Now if Christ is preached, that He has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?” (1 Cor 15:12)

This is a great question! In this question Paul is appealing to the law of non-contradiction. The law of non-contradiction teaches that two mutually exclusive statements cannot both be true at the same time. In other words, you can’t believe that Jesus was resurrected from the dead AND that there is no resurrection. The two contradict each other therefore, they can’t both be true. One must give way to the other.

Paul then demonstrates the logical conclusion of the belief that there is no resurrection. Said Paul, “For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins.” (1 Cor 15:16-17). In other words, if it is true that there is no resurrection then Christianity is a lie.

This passage gives us a great example of Biblical Authority in action and gives us a model that needs to be employed in churches today; A model where the truth of a doctrine or matter is decided by scripture rather than by our feelings.

What is your authority?

If your subjective opinions and feelings are your authority then you've got it wrong!

Repent and Believe the Scriptures!

Comments

[Micah]

Hey Chris, I love that picture because it says everything about the new idea of spirituality in a nut shell. Before I became a Christian I had a problem with the Bible because I was not willing to except certain things in it. I did not believe in miracles....The only way to describe my spirituality is to say that I was more like a Deist. The God that I believed in sat back and watched as his creation did for himself and achieved goals by his own means. I believed that there was some sort of creator or a generic form of creator that was outside human contact. I "felt" that each individaul person put their own name on him because they needed to identify with a system to feel like they were a part of something based on the culture they lived in or identified with. I had no moral code of conduct that I adhered to, but did things if they felt good or if they were percieved to be good acts by others or myself. So, in looking back, I was more like a demi-god and worshiped myself and the things that I accomplished. But that all changed when I came to the realization that I had ruined everything that I had accomplished myself and had done it almost deliberately. I could not do things by myself anymore; I realized that I had become my worst enemy. So, I asked Jesus one night to save me from myself! From that moment on my whole life changed.

[Logan]

I think an inspired text requires an inspired interpretor, however, many people claim to be inspired by the spirit yet there are different interpretations, where is the objective truth? Which party has the objective truth? The 'objective truth' of scripture is found through such subjective enterprises that it's a limit on God's workings and thus blasphemous.