← Doctrine Matters with Kevin DeYoung
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Hello, and welcome to Doctrine Matters, a weekly podcast exploring the rich theology of the Christian faith. Each week we want to take hold of one aspect of our faith and try to understand theological concepts that sometimes have been debated, controversial, or maybe just hard to understand. And hopefully we can look at them in a way that is clear, concise, and accessible. The goal is that believers would be encouraged and edified and that God would be glorified so we can love him.
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More, know him more, enjoy him forever.
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I'm Kevin DeYoung, your host and teacher, and this is Doctrine Matters.
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This week on Doctrine Matters, we continue with ecclesiology, the doctrine of the church. And as I said earlier, there are so many issues that we wrestle with today that we don't even realize are actually issues of ecclesiology. And even if every single one of our questions cannot be answered, a lot of them can. And a lot of the best minds in Christian history have given thought to these questions already. What I want to start with today is thinking about the nature and extent of church power. That is, what kind of power is given to the church, and on what sorts of issues and in what sorts of ways does the church exercise this power. We can think about God ordaining two great agencies, institutions of divine authority on the earth, the state and the church. And you can also many people would put in there the the family. But let's just talk about the state and the church. They are both governed by God and accountable to God. But the way in which God exercises his power through the state and the church differs. This distinction we see in germ form, seed form, in Matthew 22, rendered to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, the gods, the things that are God. So the state has been given authority to exercise power relative to its sphere, to the outward and temporal rights and privileges of men. The church has been given authority to exercise power relative to the inward spiritual state and consciences of men. The nature of church power, and these are two key words, especially in the Presbyterian tradition. The church's power is ministerial and declarative. This means all church power, whether it's exercised by the whole body or it's pronounced from the pulpit or is bound up in the officers of the church must be in service to Christ. So ministerial, so it's serving. It's serving Christ. And declarative, that means it involves stating the word of God and enforcing the word of God upon its own members. Now, in a Presbyterian polity, a group of elders exercises that church power in a session and then in a presbytery and in a general assembly. But even if that's not your polity, it's important to realize in. In my tradition, those different bodies are called courts, the courts of the church. And that's important, that they're not the legislature of the church, because the power vested in church officers, and if you have congregational polity, believe that, yes, those officers are important, but it is ultimately vested in the congregation itself. Or in Episcopalian system, there is an added layer where power is vested in the bishop. But just thinking here, in my Reformed Presbyterian tradition, there's a reason they're called courts. Because the church officers do not legislate new ideas. They're called to declare the mind of Christ, not to sit down and write new laws, as it were, or to declare their own minds on whatever they deem important. Church power is a spiritual power pertaining to believers, exercised in a moral and spiritual way and never resorting to force. Reformed theologians have typically described this church power in three categories. Now, there are Latin phrases for them or Greek phrases for them sometimes, but let's just deal with the English. The first we call the power of dogma. This is the authority the church possesses in regards to doctrine and faith. The power is not absolute, but consists in the church's calling to interpret the Scriptures, to draw up subordinate standards. That means creeds, confessions, catechisms, to press the claims of Christ upon the consciences of men. So this power of dogma is the church's authority to bear witness to the truth of God to those inside the church and those outside the church. Second, the power of ordaining. This is the authority the church possesses in regard to its own ordinances and government. So the Church cannot bind the conscience to any man made law, but it does have power to adopt rules for effective operation that are in accord with the teaching of Scripture. Like any society, the Church wants to do things decently and in good order. 1 Corinthians 14. So there is the power of ordaining, not just ordaining men to office, but ordaining or ordering its own society. And you can hear there, there's bound to be some gray areas at time, what sorts of rules are necessary for the ordering of this society, and which ones are binding the consciences of men. So we have a Book of Church Order in the pca, and it's revised and it's written by lawyers over the years. And do not claim that it is inerrant. In fact, the vows that one takes are different with the doctrinal standards than with the book of Church Order. But we are agreeing to say this is how we're going to do life and ministry together. Now, those things get changed almost every year. They're in the pca. There are overtures to change things. And so obviously this is not like the Scriptures or even like the Confessions, which very rarely get changed. But this is our way of saying we are going to order ourselves in this way. This is how we're going to do certain things. These are the rules that we all agree on. We're not binding the consciences. We are voluntarily saying this is how we're going to order. And the Church has authority to do that. And then third, the power of distinguishing. Now, what does this mean? It means the. The authority the Church possesses in regard to discipline. That's what we really mean here. The Church is not given a sword, as the State is, but rather keys. It might open and close membership. This is really key, to use a word I just used, that we don't have a sword. Swords are used for violently putting people into order, for punishing the wicked. And a sword is given to the civil magistrate. So that is ordained by God. What is a key for? A key is to lock or unlock a door. The keys of the Church, the discipline. Membership of the Church is insofar as we try to reflect the heavenly reality, to open and shut these doors of membership, the entrance or expulsion into Christ's heavenly kingdom. So the Church has the power of discipline, but it's disciplined not with a sword, not by force, but keys. The function of the Church then is distinct from the State. It is to proclaim, to administer and to enforce the law of Christ revealed in the Scriptures. That's a quote from the PCA Book of Church Order. So the Church qua church, and that Latin word there just means the Church in its capacity as the Church. Not thinking about, you know, if, if a Christian is a legislator, good Christian is the president or Supreme Court justice good. But the Church in its capacity as the Church, has not been granted authority to address every topic, nor authority to settle every controversy, nor does it have expertise in every area. The nature of Church power extends to those under its care, but it is limited to doctrine, order and discipline. That's very key as we think about what the mission of the Church is. So with, with that in place, it does lead naturally to this important question which is really debated in our day. And I think, you know, Greg Gilbert, my friend Greg Gilbert and I wrote a book, came out in 2011, what is the mission of the Church? And you can even hear in the Subtitle of that book. It's something about making sense of social justice. Shalom and the Great Commission. We, we were thinking of one set of diversions from the mission of the church. Good things, important things. Fifteen years ago, you heard a lot of the language of renewing the city, maybe transforming the culture. A lot of concern about the arts and the poor language of human flourishing. It seems a long time ago now, but people were concerned about third World debt relief or AIDS in Sub Saharan Africa or digging wells, or even eradicating racism. It was that sort of here is the mission of the church. And the mission of the church is both word and deed. And the mission of the church is to tackle all these things. And Greg and I tried to thread the needle there to say, look, we don't want to say that tackling these things as Christians, that these things ought not to concern us or that we won't as Christians do some of these things out of neighborly love and sometimes as an opportunity to speak of Christ. We don't want to be heard as saying, stop blessing people, stop helping with problems, stop relieving suffering. We want to do this, but we're talking about the mission. That is, what are we sent into the world? What is God saying? Church, this is what I want you to accomplish in the world. What is the mission of the church? And not just what might Christians do in obedience to Christ, but the church as the church do. And so he said, the church's mission is the Great Commission. Now, everyone agrees with that until you start saying, well, then maybe certain things aren't the mission of the church, and Christians as salt and light, will be engaged in these areas. But you might not expect your church, in its budget, in its mission dollars, to try to tackle all these problems, solve all these problems for, for the pastor to comment on all these problems, develop solutions for these problems. Because there is a narrower mission of the church, doesn't encompass everything that good thing that Christians might do in the world, but it's the Great Commission. And you look at the Book of Acts, you see what Paul does and the apostles do. It is word ministry. Yes, they care for the saints. Do good to all people as you have opportunity, especially to the household of faith. Galatians 6, 10. But the, the thing that drives Paul on and his mission and the other apostles is to preach the word. Even you look at Jesus. Yes, Jesus, out of compassion, helped hurting people. But he never went into a town and set up a tent that he might do an exorcism clinic or a Healing Clinic. He went there to preach. That's. That's what he did. So Greg and I wrote this book. Now, 15 years later, some of that is still out there, but I think there are possible diversions on the other side that perhaps it's the mission of the church to establish a Christian nation, to establish Christian laws wherever we can, to enforce Christian standards. So you hear different kinds of concerns. And again, we're trying to thread a needle lest someone say, you don't want your nation to be more Christian. You don't want the laws to reflect Christian virtue. Certainly we do. And yet it is important to say, what is the mission of the church as the church? What is the thing that God has called us to. To do? Because when mission is everything, mission becomes nothing. And mission creep is very possible and likely. And we see in the history of the church, it can swallow up the things that, for example, we see Paul doing in Acts 14. There are three things very clearly he's doing. You can read it there at the end of Acts 14 as he recounts his missionary journey. He is doing evangelism, discipleship, he's planting churches, he's strengthening churches. So, yes, we can define the mission of the church too small, too narrowly, and act like we're just getting decisions, we're just getting conversions and put all our efforts into. Just get to the field as quickly as possible. Send out your missionaries, write home, hey, 10,000 people got saved because we threw a bed sheet up in the woods and we watched a movie together. And people said they loved Jesus. That Paul did not practice that kind of evangelism, nor was he ever motivated by an impatient hankering for numbers to report back home. On the other hand, we want to avoid the danger of making our mission too broad, as if everything counts as mission. Improving job skills, digging well, setting up medical centers, redeeming Hollywood, redeeming law schools, establishing political victories, all of which can be wonderful expressions of Christian love and good citizenship, but bear little resemblance to what we see Paul and Barnabas sent out to do on their mission in Acts. We see over and over in Paul's missionary journeys and again in his letters, the central work to which he was called was the verbal proclamation of Jesus Christ as Savior. His goal as a missionary was the conversion of Jews and pagans, the transformation of their hearts and minds, and the incorporation of these new believers into a mature, duly constituted church. And what Paul aimed to accomplish as a missionary in the first century is an apt description of the mission of the church for every century.
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Thanks for listening to doctrine matters with me. Kevin DeYoung Our hope and prayer is that this has been helpful to you.
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As you look at script Scripture and.
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Try to understand the best of our theological tradition as Christians. Please consider subscribing to doctor Matters through Spotify, Apple Music or however you listen to your podcasts.
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And if you'd like to learn more.
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About this week's doctrine, you can ask your pastor for good resources or check out my year long mini systematic theology book, Daily Doctrine, which is available in print or audio at crossword until next week. Thanks for being with us.