By Common Confession

Yesterday evening, I had the opportunity of bringing the devotional at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. I often have that opportunity, especially during the summer period, and I did not bring my camera with me, and the comments ended up being encouraging to folks.

The Context for the Devotional on 1 Timothy 3

So I wanted to spend just a few minutes somewhat repeating what I presented last evening, because the text that we looked at in 1 Timothy chapter 3, verses 14 through 16, ended up being very encouraging to the saints.

I gave as the background the upcoming discussion I'm going to be having with Mr. Harold Camping on the Iron Sharpens Iron radio program in New York. And of course, you may be watching this after that took place.

You can probably find information about that encounter at aomin .org. But for those of you who don't know, or maybe do know who Mr. Camping is, the head of Family Radio, he is a false teacher. He is an individual who manhandles the text of scripture.

He just tears it apart. He can connect anything together using numbers or, well, just simply his own fertile imagination. And the original meaning of the text becomes completely irrelevant in Camping's teachings.

And one of the things he's come up with to help protect him from the various false prophecies he's given, the first was 1994, and the second is his current prophecy concerning May 21st of 2011. And of course, if anyone listens to him after May 21st of 2011, I can't even begin to understand why anybody would.

But be that as it may, one of the things he's come up with is his attack upon the Church of Christ. He says that the church age has ended, that no one can get saved any longer in the Christian church, that the church is under the judgment of God, the Holy Spirit has left the church.

And of course, his methodology for attacking the church is to engage in gross eisegesis. He ignores the main and plain texts and just simply dismisses them and then connects, well, anything, honestly anything, a ship, a boat, a bird, anything, it doesn't matter in his fertile imagination.

He can make a connection between anything and claim that this is the plain teaching of the Word of God. It was his attack upon the church that caused me to look to this text and make the comments that I did.

The Church of the Living God as the Pillar and Foundation of the Truth

In 1 Timothy chapter 3, beginning at verse 14, we read,. These things I am writing, hoping to come to you soon, but if I am delayed, and it would seem from the form here that Paul assumes that he probably will be, but if I am delayed, in order that one might know how it is necessary to behave in the house of God, how it is necessary to behave in the house or the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation or bulwark or possibly protector, we'll talk about that, of the truth.

And by common confession, great is the mystery of piety, godliness, or our religion would be a good rendering of that term. And then in verse 16 we have this fragment possibly of a hymn, an early confession, whatever it might be, in six lines.

Who was he who was manifest in the flesh, vindicated in the spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed amongst Gentiles, believed on in the world, and taken up in glory. So here you have what some have identified as the very heart of this epistle to Timothy.

And looking at it, we note that it comes right after Paul has spent a great deal of time instructing Timothy on other issues, specifically on the issue of elders and deacons. He has given exhortation as to how the church is to behave.

He has given exhortation on how the church is to be organized. This is one of the reasons why liberal scholars reject Pauline authorship, is because they of course assume a evolutionary approach to the church.

The form of the church could not be something of divine revelation, and so this must have been written at a later time, they call it a forgery. When you don't begin with the assumption of guilt, there's no reason to accept such things, but as it may, this clearly is one of the reasons that Paul is now addressing this issue of how we are to behave in the church, is that he's been giving direction.

He's been giving Timothy the necessary instructions as to how the church is to be organized. So in light of that, he then says that he's writing these things, even though he wants to be with Timothy quickly, he may be delayed, assumes he probably will be, and then he talks about the fact that we need to know how it is necessary, not how it would be nice.

These are not suggestions, but how it is necessary for someone to behave in the house of God. There are standards that God has for behavior in his own worship and in his own place of worship, which is the church, the house of God.

And just as the householder has the right to determine the behavior, the parameters of behavior within his own house, so God has the right to determine how we are to behave in his house. Not popular thinking today, certainly where mankind thinks that, well, we do in the church what we want to do in the church.

We do in the church what makes us feel good, because that's where the church exists. Or even worse, we make the church so that it makes sinners feel good, because the church is there for them. That's not found in the New Testament, there's no concept of that.

In the New Testament writings, the church is a place where God is worshipped, where the people of God gather in holiness to worship God. And so it is necessary for men to know how they are to behave in the house of God.

And when he uses this phrase, the house of God, or the household of God, he then tells us, expands upon this, I'm talking here about the church of the living God. The church of the living God. The gathering together, the assembly of the living God.

Now, this text, of course, has been abused many times. There's two ways of abusing it. On the one hand, you have those who take this and say, ah, see, the church of Rome is the pillar and foundation of the truth.

Well, Timothy wasn't in Rome. Timothy was in Ephesus, most probably. And so, Paul is talking here not about a universal church. He's talking about a local church. That's plainly seen from the preceding context, where he's talking about what?

Elders and deacons. The only two offices given in the New Testament, any other offices that people have, are expansions beyond apostolic authority. And so, he's talking about the local church. The local assembly of believers, organized by God's will, with elders and deacons, practicing church discipline, engaging in the ordinances, the Lord's Supper and baptism.

This is described as the pillar, bulwark, protector of the truth. Now, I think a lot of modern Americans might have some, or Westerners in general, might have some problems in viewing it this way, simply because we look at the local church and there's a lot of disdain for the local church today.

The mindset of church shopping, where you go from place to place looking for the right.

Fit.

A place where I like the pastor, I like the pews, the music, whatever else it might be. The children's programs, the parking lot, who knows? That leads obviously to a very low view of the local church, because it's sort of like a used car dealership.

You just go from one to the next to the next until you find what you like. That's certainly not how inspired scripture views the local church. It is a place where the gospel, God's truth, is supported.

That's what a pillar does. And then the other word that is used here, we know what a stulos is. We know that that is a pillar, that which holds something else up. We can see today when we go to Greece or we go to Italy and places like that, you will see these ancient ruins and you'll see that after 2 ,000 years, what's still standing?

The foundation and the pillars. The roof's gone, the walls are frequently gone, but the pillar and the foundation are still there in many of these buildings. When you think about the volcanic and seismic activity that goes on in that region of the world, very active.

It is amazing that anything that was built that long ago would still be standing. But that second term, hedrioma, what does that mean? It's a difficult term to define. A number of different suggestions have been made.

Foundation, support, a bulwark like that which protects a foundation or protects a building. Dr. Mounce, in his commentary on this section, actually translates it protector. And that would make sense, a pillar and protector, something supporting, holding up and protecting the truth.

And very often in the pastoral epistles, that term, the truth, is used in the entirety of the Christian message, the Christian faith itself. And so the church of the living God has a function. Now, there are no articles before these two terms, pillar and foundation.

Now, we render it the pillar and foundation of the truth, because we're not just simply saying a pillar, a foundation. But at the same time, the article is not there. And a number of commentators have pointed to that.

This isn't the only means that God uses, but it's a vitally important means that God uses as that which supports, holds up, defends, protects the very truth of God. To attack the Christian church as it is biblically organized is to attack the very means God has chosen to bless his people, to protect his people, and to present his gospel to the world.

So that's one of the reasons why what Mr. Camping is doing is so evil. Heresy is not a victimless crime. Heresy is not amoral.

It is immoral.

And what Mr. Camping is doing is immoral in attacking the church. And so the local church is described as the very church of the living God, the pillar and protector of the truth. And there is nothing in scripture that tells us that that's going to end during this age.

I mean, very clearly, the ordinances such as the Lord's Supper, how long will the church practice the Lord's Supper? Well, until he returns. Mr. Camping has people not doing the Lord's Supper anymore.

But the Lord hasn't returned. So we can see that this kind of attack that Mr. Camping makes is a horrific distortion of the text of scripture. But we're not actually finished here, because in that church, once he has spoken of this truth that the church upholds and protects, then he says, by common confession, here is what Christians confess.

Here is what holds us together. What held the early church together in light of all of the persecution that was going to be coming upon it in the next few decades, and in fact for the next more than 200 years.

What gave them the strength, gave them the power to go through all these things. By common confession, great is the mystery of our religion, of our piety. Here is what we confess. And when it speaks of a mystery, it's talking about something that has been hidden from the past but has now been revealed.

It's not that this is somehow something that we're to be looking for, you know, some type of allegorical meaning to, or something like that. But here is what Christians confess together. Our faith, our piety, our religion is filled with this great revelation from God, this great mystery.

The Mystery of Godliness and the Confession of Christ

And then we have, like I said, these six lines. Now, you look at any critical commentary and you'll find pages of discussion as to how this text has been understood, specifically how it's divided up. Some people would say that you go with two lines each, and it's A-B-B-A-A-B.

In other words, if you look at who is manifest in the flesh, justified in the spirit, flesh spirit, seen on by angels, spirit, proclaimed on amongst Gentiles, flesh, believed on in the world, flesh, received up in the glory, spirit.

So you can look at it as A-B-B-A-A-B. Others have suggested, no, it's three lines each. Others have suggested it's one in six, or sort of a way of book-ending the entire thing. So you have who was manifest in the flesh and received up in the glory, and then you take the in-between two lines and see that they are related to justified in the spirit, seen of angels, proclaimed on amongst Gentiles, believed on in the world.

So you have those two sets going together. What is certain is that what we have here are assertions about what takes place in the ministry of Jesus. Now, some even argue that this is all after the crucifixion.

Even manifest in the flesh means after the resurrection, justified by the spirit, resurrection, seen of angels, the angels of the resurrection, received up in the glory, so on and so forth. That's a possibility.

Others see who is manifest in the flesh as the incarnation, justified in the spirit, the spirit's work in Jesus' ministry, seen by angels, proclaimed on amongst, probably at that point we've got the transition into the period of crucifixion, after crucifixion, proclaimed amongst Gentiles, believed on in the world, seen up in the glory.

There's a lot of different ways that you can say, well, this is in reference to this specific aspect of Jesus' ministry. But what's important, I think, to emphasize is that what the Christians were confessing were things that really happened.

He was manifest in the flesh. Same phraseology that we see in John 1 .14. The spirit was active in the vindication of him. He was seen of angels. He was proclaimed amongst the Gentiles. He was believed on in the world.

He was received up in the glory. This isn't just mythology. These early Christians who were going to be giving their lives for their faith needed to have something more than just myth. And so if this is a fragment of an early hymn, an early creedal statement, maybe something Paul himself had come up with to help new Christians to remember the various aspects of the ministry of Jesus.

These are all possibilities. But one thing's for certain. Whatever its origin, wherever it came from, it's obviously extremely primitive. This is what the earliest followers of Jesus were talking about.

And they were talking about one who was manifest in the flesh. They were talking about one who was received up into glory. The reality is that it reflects the historical nature of the gospel events. This isn't mythology.

It happened at a place and time. God has truly entered into his own creation. Now very briefly, I didn't mention when I first read it, the textual variant. That is, Byzantine manuscripts, unsealed text after the 7th century, in the first hand, say theos, God was manifest in the flesh.

And you can make an argument for this. But the majority of scholarship, believing scholarship here, I'm not talking about unbelieving scholarship, but conservative believing scholars, the majority of them would see that Haas is the better reading at this point.

Now I know that the King James Only advocates jump up and down and get very emotional about these things, but it is good to know that the variant is there. And it would not change the meaning of the assertion.

It would just simply strengthen it to have the term God there. And we should recognize that the majority of manuscripts have the word God there, but the earliest manuscripts do not. The point is that even if you have God there, he who is manifest in the flesh, what does that mean?

I mean, think about it. The very statement itself, coming from the most primitive period of the Christian church, the first couple of decades of the Christian church, he was manifest in the flesh. What could be the background of that?

I mean, clearly, any just plain man would appear in the flesh, right? So, manifest in the flesh would point us toward the pre-existence of this one. And so it asserts not only the pre-existence of this one, but the reality of his human incarnation.

The Historical Reality of Christ Against Gnosticism and Arianism

And what were the primary errors of the next number of centuries? First, it was a denial of his true humanity in Gnosticism in the 2nd century. Even we see Proto-Gnosticism in the 1st century, though we don't have any surviving documents.

We see from Colossians and 1st John those Dosedics that were denying the physical reality of Jesus. But then, after that, a denial of the deity of Christ in Arianism. Both would founder upon a meaningful reflection of this particular text.

But, in closing, what is so exciting to me is that just as these few words, this poetic device of summarizing the great mystery of the Christian faith, just as these few words would have given strength to those early Christians, would have bound them together.

Common Confession and the Unity of the Church

This is what bound them together in the Church. It wasn't fealty to Peter or the Bishop of Rome or any of the rest of these things. This is what bound them together. What? Common confession of the Gospel.

What God has done in Jesus Christ. And what's wonderful is that's what binds every true believer together today. That's what binds the believers together at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church, where I presented this material last evening.

That's what binds people together around this world today in our confirmation, our confession of the Christian faith is focused upon what God has done in Jesus Christ. Two thousand years later, the Spirit of God binds us together.

Christ, indeed, is still building His Church. Thanks for watching.