Last June I wrote a blog called “Church Cooperation”. I looked at some of the stupid reasons that churches split, but I also touted the great relationship that I have with the local pastors in town. How we focus on what we agree on, agree to disagree lovingly on the things that we don’t. Last week, I described a conflict brewing in SBC life, and indicated that if I was forced to go that direction, I would be obligated to go elsewhere. I closed, claiming that is how we have so many denominations. So which way is it, is division good, or should it be avoided? The answer: It depends.
The concept of church division is nothing new, I’ve been preaching through Galatians recently and that whole letter is written because the Judaizers had convinced the Galatians that they needed to follow the Old Testament Law in order to be Christians, and Paul wanted to set that straight. So even the early church had issues, but they held together though the apostles.
While there were some smaller disputes that caused division, the first major church split didn’t occur until 431 AD, creating the “Church of the East” where they disputed over the nature of Jesus, Nestorian believed that the Christ had two distinct natures (God and human), rather than one person with two natures, and was accused of teaching that He was two separate persons. As an influential bishop when he separated 20 to 30% of Christianity went with him.
Twenty years later the same debate was still on the table with some pushing that Jesus had “one incarnate nature” and another 30% or so left as the Oriental Orthodox Church was formed.
It doesn’t matter what side you agree with, what we need to see is that those splits came about because of their understanding of who Christ was, and what His nature was. That is a really strong doctrinal issue, and on strong doctrinal issues you can’t just cave to pressure, you have to stand up for truth (at least your understanding of it) and so those seem to be valid reasons to separate, even if we don’t agree.
The next major split didn’t occur until 1054 AD, and while doctrine was part of the issue, with the adding of “and the son” to the Nicaean Creed without ecumenical authority. Power politics and ego were bigger factors involved. The whole debate really revolved around authority, and if Rome had supreme authority, or if the Pope was just “first among equals”. Of course, any history buff knows how that played out. Over 50% sided against the pope, creating a formal division between the Eastern Orthodox Church within the Byzantine empire (Greece, Russia the Middle East and parts of the Balkans), and the Roman Catholic Church (Western Europe, and anyplace else that was under Roman influence).
While the Eastern Orthodox Church did believe that putting “an in the Son” into the creed was Biblically wrong, they were just as concerned about it being put in without proper approval. The whole affair was not handled in Christian love, and ended up being more about human authority than God. It makes it easy to see how pride, arrogance, and a lack of humility can get in the way of proper Christian behavior, and damage God’s church in the process.
Over the next 463 years there were dissensions, and Biblical pushback to what the Church was teaching, but there was not real major exodus. Until… The events put in motion in October of 1517 when Martin Luther put a list of 95 questions that he expected the Catholic church to answer to, most of them with heavy Biblical backing. He did not get the answer that he was looking for, but instead was excommunicated. His goal was reformation of that existing church, not division, but in 1530 the Augsburg Confession was presented to Emperor Charles V, in essence establishing the Lutheran Church. That event in turn gave other groups the confidence to step out on their own as well, creating such denominations as Reformed (influenced by Luther, with more reforms and in Switzerland) Presbyterian (Reformed in Scotland) Anabaptist (Radical reformists, where we get Mennonites and Amish today) and Anglicans (Similar to Catholic only without papal authority). All of them with Biblical reasons for breaking from Rome, and geographical reasons for being their own denominations.
The reformation opened the door for every differing opinion to become a new religion. Once people realized that they could leave Rome, and their heavy-handed authority, it went from splitting over who God was, and how salvation worked to splitting over the use of musical instruments or even what people wear. Now today as mentioned last week we have up to possibly 50,000 different denominations. This continued division needs to stop.
How does any of this apply to us? It’s not like any of us plan to start our own denomination. For individuals it’s about breaking one fellowship to join another, changing churches. In essence, that is breaking fellowship, and moving on, the same as starting a new denomination. The question is “Is there ever a good reason to leave my church?”. While I don’t recommend randomly church hopping, there actually are good reasons to move on.
Dave Miller has a book out called “Brick Walls and Picket Fences” and in that book he lists 6 doctrines that we must build brick walls around, basically meaning that there are things that are important enough to break fellowship over. While I’m not going to give you his whole list, I would encourage you to read the book yourself, but I will tell you a couple.
The first one that he mentions is that God’s Word is true and authoritative. If you are a part of a church that doesn’t stand on that, then you need to ask yourself what you are actually a part of. While It being true, and It being authoritative, are two separate things, the concept is the same, if we know it’s true, we should view it as authoritative. Ultimately, if we do not view God’s Word in that light, and we just see it as a bunch of stories and concepts, then we will pick and choose the parts that we want to believe, and the parts that we want to dismiss. Once we go down that road, we have made ourselves our own God, doing whatever we want. If Scripture disagrees with our actions, we just dismiss that part. We are all familiar with
2 Timothy 3:16-17
16 All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.
Do we believe that or not? If not, then what do we believe, and if we do believe it, then that makes it authoritative doesn’t it? Plain and simple, it’s either all true, or none of it is, you can’t pick and choose. If we do that, we are creating our own religion. If we do that, we shouldn’t wonder why there are as man denominations as there are.
The second doctrine that Dave shares that I’ll share is that Jesus is our risen Lord and Savior. If salvation is found anywhere other than Jesus, then God is a liar, and everything that we believe is pointless. What is salvation and how do we obtain it? If a church has that wrong, then they are not teaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. And if they are not teaching the gospel of Jesus Christ, then they are not a Christian Church. Plain and simple, we are sinful beings, Romans 3:23 makes it clear that ALL (including me, including you) have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. If we are honest with ourselves that’s an easy one to admit, but here is where it gets harder to admit. Sin has a cost. We’re fine if somebody else’s sin costs them, but we will justify our own, (part of our sinful nature). Reality is, it costs more than we could ever afford.
Romans 6:23
For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord
That verse not only clarifies that the price is beyond our ability, but gives the good news, that Jesus paid that price, he paid it all on the cross, and it’s ours for free. Of course, like any gift, it does us no good unless we accept it. Most professed Christan churches will teach at least this much, if they don’t, they are not a Bible believing church, it’s that simple. Here is where what churches teach gets tricky. What does it truly mean to “accept it”? Romans 10:9 tells us
Romans 10:9
9 because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
We all confess with our mouths that Jesus is Lord, that is clearly part of being a Christian, but do we always confess? When our friends are promoting worldly things, do we confess Jesus, or do we jump in to get along? Only you know those answers, but it’s something that you might want to think about. The real question is what does “believe in your heart” mean? Real belief creates action. And this is where the confusion comes in.
Churches tend to jump to extremes on this issue. A lot of churches will teach that if you do certain things, or refrain from certain things, that is a demonstration of your belief. As a result, people will follow the prescribed regiment, without heart, without care, just do what they are told. I know, I was there. The problem with that is, we believe that we can earn it, we believe that doing all of those things is what saves us. Basically, we believe that it is on us. If a church is teaching that, that is NOT following Scripture. That is teaching a worldly religion, that that is how divisions take place because who sets those rules? Paul makes it VERY clear.
Ephesians 2:8-9
8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
So then were do works come in? James says that “Faith without works is dead” Isn’t that a contradiction? No, not at all, we have freedom in Christ to do whatever we want. And that is where the other extreme take it. “Because we have freedom in Christ, we can do whatever we want”, Basically we can sin all that we want, but that is an abuse of our freedom. While it true, we need to understand that if we TRULY BELIEVE, what is for Christ to be glorified. So yes, we have freedom, but our freedom is used for His glory. Licentiousness says “You’ve got the Gift, do what you want.”, legalism says “Follow the rules to get the Gift.”, but the true gospel says “Accept the Gift, and you’ll want to follow the Giver.” It is not the same. If we don’t see the difference then we are not being taught what God Word actually says, and you have found a brick wall issue.
There are things that are doctrinal but not something to beak fellowship over, such as communion practices, end times issues, things like that. We are not going to agree on everything, but we have to agree on the important things.
While I’m not going to say that it’s always easy to find a good Bible believing church today, I will say that finding one that teaches the truth, and a place where what they say is backed up with Scripture, not their own opinion is very important. When you find that, get involved and encourage others to join you, because we need to be that light to the world.
Thank you for reading this, as always, I would encourage you to spend time in His Word, in prayer and in the fellowship of other believers. And if you haven’t visited already, I would encourage you to come visit our little church on the hill, it’s worth the drive.
Bro. Jason
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