Don't Let Your Doctrine Lead You Away From Christ — Tim Conway

Testing Every Teaching by the Faith and Knowledge of Christ

You give yourself to these other things. And this is what happens. Plausible things. Reasonable things. Listen, listen. It can be biblical things. You know, one of the things Paul's addressing to the Colossians are things that people dig up out of the Old Testament.

Somebody can come along. They want to start talking about limited atonement. Somebody else wants to start talking about the law. Somebody else wants to start talking about cessationism, the impassivity of God, biblical marriage, the sanctity of life.

There's all sorts of things. Should I immunize my children? You just beware. Because what Paul is saying is this, what you want to attain is the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God. That's the test.

False Teachers and Empty Controversies

That's always the test. If He's not essential, if He's not central, listen, these wolves, these deceivers, these crown-stealers, these false Christs, these false apostles, false prophets, false teachers, these that come around, they come swaying in their silly myths or vain discussion.

Paul talks all about this to Timothy. The reverent babble, endless genealogies, controversy, quarrels about words. He even says to Timothy, science. People want to come around and they want to bring all their arguments.

Testing Doctrines by Christ's Supremacy

You just remember this. There are those people out there, Paul calls them dogs, John calls them anti-Christ, Peter refers to damnable heresies or destructive heresies to the Philippians. Paul says that their God is their belly.

This doesn't happen by accident. This is happening on purpose. And everything is to be tested by the position given to the Lord Jesus Christ. This is what you have to ask. Is He essential? Is He central?

Christ as the Center of Scripture

Is He all in all? Is He the focal point? Because this is where people, this is where the devil is trying to move away. The devil hates Christ. One of the reasons he attacks the Scriptures is you know what Jesus said.

People make their appeal to Scripture, but he says, they speak of me. The reason that Satan wants to go after that word is because this is where you find out about the biblical Christ. And he will seek to distort it and he will seek to take you away from it, but the issue is Christ.

The Danger of Minimizing Christ in Doctrinal Debate

Oh, these people are too clever to deny Christ altogether, but they minimize Him. And you can get into your arguments about whatever doctrine you want to bring on the table. And if those arguments take you away from Christ and they take you away from His glory, they take you away from His centrality, they take you away from trusting Him, from knowing Him more, from having greater confidence in Him, watch out, watch out, beware.

It doesn't matter how much somebody says, well, you know, this comes out of the systematic theology and I was reading Robert Raymond, I was reading Grudem, I was reading this, I was listening to that.

Knowing Christ Rather Than Winning Arguments

But you just listen, because the dead giveaway is the absence of Christ. Listen, listen. We are to be attaining, attaining, reaching the faith of the Son of God, the knowledge of the Son of God. We need to walk around with that heart of Paul, oh, that I might know Him, oh, that I might know Him.

Learning Christ as the Goal of Doctrine

You see, brethren, what we're looking for is whatever the doctrine is, the aberration when things go wrong is when Christ is left out. When we suddenly become those who argue for some position or another, but Christ is subtly fallen out.

Coming to Christ and Learning from Him

Brethren, children argue all the time. The thing about children is they typically don't know how ignorant they actually are. Your children typically think they're a lot smarter than they are. If you want to be smart, go learn of Christ.

What we heard in the first hour. Come unto Me, all you that labor and are heavy laden. He says, learn of Me. I am meek and lowly. We want to learn of Him. We want to be saturated with Him. All our doctrines need to come back to Him.

Recognizing Doctrinal Aberration by Its Effect on Christ

This is the dead giveaway. This is the test. Christ, if He's not unique, if it's not Him at the center, if He's not above and beyond all, if He doesn't dwarf everything else and anything else, then the teaching is false.

Be sure of this. That which detracts from Him, that which takes away from Him, that which promotes something else. Oh, it's subtle. They like to come to you and say, this is what you really need. Anytime you recognize it and it pulls your eyes off of Christ, you've got it nailed right there.

It's false. And even if this person doesn't realize what they're doing, oh, if you've got eyes to see, there's a claw reaching for your crown. This excerpt was taken from the full sermon, No Longer Children.