_____________________________________________
What does the
New Testament claim to be?
1. The letters
of the apostle Paul claim to be letters from an apostle to a local church.
Paul never claimed that his letters had the same stature as Old Testament
scripture. Paul wrote to Timothy to remember the scriptures he had been taught
as a child. None of the New Testament had been written when Timothy was a child.
And how from
infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make
you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All scripture is
God-breathed..." (II Tim. 3:15-16)
When Paul wrote to the
Corinthians he drew a sharp distinction between what Jesus said and
what Paul himself was saying about marriage:
To the married I give this command (not I, but the Lord):
A wife must not separate from her husband. 11But if
she does, she must remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband. And a
husband must not divorce his wife. To the rest I say this (I, not the Lord):
If any brother has a wife who is not a believer and she is willing to live with
him, he must not divorce her...Now about virgins: I have no command from
the Lord, but I give a judgment as one who by the Lord's mercy is trustworthy...and
I think that I too have the Spirit of God. (I Cor. 7:10-12, 25,
40)
Some would say this is an
unnecessary distinction, believing that since Paul had the Spirit of God, then
his words carried the same weight as Jesus' words. But Paul seems to disagree
with that viewpoint, feeling obligated to tell the Corinthians which commands
are from Jesus directly and which are from Paul. This may indicate the early
church's careful preservation of Jesus' actual teachings handed down initially
by word of mouth. At the time of the first letter to the church in Corinth (AD
55) it is believed that none of the gospels had yet been written (AD 60-85).
It is Peter that pronounces Paul's
writings to be scripture:
II Pet. 3:15,16.
2. None of the
New Testament letters focus on the format of the worship assembly.
The closest we have to rules about
the assembly are in Paul's first letter to the church in Corinth,
chapters
11-14. Paul addresses the abuses of the Lord's Supper in chapter 11, and the
abuses of the gifts of the Holy Spirit in chapters 12-14. Much controversy has
arisen from Paul's statements about women wearing veils or headcoverings in
chapter 11, some seeing this as a custom of
Greek or Corinthian society, others seeing it as a custom of the Roman
Empire, others see it as a distinctly Christian custom in contrast to the Jewish
custom of the men covering their heads to pray. Whatever the case, we are left
with questions about Corinthian society and customs, which were well understood
by the writer and the receiver of this letter, but not easily understood by
present day readers.
This example illustrates that the
letters in the New Testament cannot automatically be used as a rulebook for
present day Christian practice. This is theoretically understood by the
Restoration Movement, with
D. R. Dungan's book on
Hermeneutics as the old standard. Dungan taught that before one could
understand a passage one had to know who was talking to whom and why. Somewhere
this lesson got lost.
Paul encouraged the Corinthians not
to be selfish during the Lord's Supper communion, but to share, for the simple
reason that Jesus was sharing when he instituted the Lord's Supper, and the
Lord's Supper commemorated the sacrifice of Christ--the ultimate in sharing.
Selfishness during the Lord's Supper was the opposite of what Jesus intended,
according to Paul. Paul's written record of what Jesus said at the Last Supper
is the earliest written record of the Last Supper that present day readers
possess. Paul probably received his information from the apostle Peter, but he
probably heard it many times, and he reminded the Corinthians that they had
heard it before.
Paul then went on to restrict the
uses of the gifts of the Holy Spirit in the assembly (chapters 12-14) to things
that built up and encouraged the group. Anything that was chaotic or
discouraging or selfish was restricted.
And that is all we have written
down as rules for the assembly. And we have to be careful because these rules
were written for one church in the first century in response to problems that we
are not totally clear about today.
3. The book of Acts is a book of history of
the early church's response to Christ.
Some have tried to take the book of
Acts and ferret out all of the worship rules that the apostles gave the early
church. They see that Paul met with the church at Troas on the first day of the
week (Acts 20:7), and put that together with the fact that Paul instructed the
church at Corinth:
Now about the
collection for God's people: Do what I told the Galatian churches to do.
2On the first day of every week, each one of you
should set aside a sum of money in keeping with his income, saving it up, so
that when I come no collections will have to be made. 3Then,
when I arrive, I will give letters of introduction to the men you approve and
send them with your gift to Jerusalem. (I Cor. 16)
About half of commentators on this
passage interpret it to mean that each person was to save up money at home.
Others disagree because then there would have had to be a collection when Paul
arrived, contrary to Paul's instructions. Some see this passage as a clear
statement that the churches all met on the first day of every week, just as the
synagogues met every Saturday.
This is only important to those who
are looking for rules of worship in the New Testament. Only those who assume
that the New Testament contains the rules of worship of today's church see these
passages as important. But is their assumption valid?
3. Why is there no rule
book in the New Testament?
It could be that God intended the
New Testament church to be an oral tradition. It certainly was an oral tradition
for the first 30 years.
If God wanted a rule book He could
have had one written. In the Old Testament the Ten Commandments are written very
carefully on stone as well as in Exodus, and the rules of the tabernacle and the
nation of Israel are carefully written out in Leviticus and then again in
Deuteronomy. Why then would God
leave the church with no comparable book to rely on?
The answer is because God did not
want one. There are no specific rules of worship in the New Testament beyond the
ones Jesus gave. It is a waste of time and pride to ferret out the customs of
the early church and bind them on today's church.
3. Why
are people so intent on finding rules where there are none?
It is so much more comforting to write down five acts of worship and fold up the
piece of paper and put it in my back pocket, than to accept that I am in Christ
Jesus, not by my own power, but by his righteousness and his sacrifice on the
cross. It is so much easier to go to church and badmouth all the other religious
groups who have not correctly discerned the early church's customs, than to
accept that God loves me because He created me in His image and welcomes me into
the Prodigal Son's banquet where there is food, music and dancing.
4.
What did Jesus ask for?
Jesus certainly did not focus on
the rules for how to worship in an assembly. Jesus focused on how to view God,
the Father, and how to respond to the Holy Spirit. That is what Jesus wants us
to focus on, and that is what the apostles focused on. That is what the early
church focused on. The reason there is not much information on the rules for how
to conduct a worship assembly is because the early Christians were obeying
Christ in focusing on what Christ wanted them to focus on.
When churches today focus on the
rules for worship assemblies, bind those rules, divide over those rules, base
the security of their salvation on keeping those worship rules, they have lost
sight of Christ. The reason these churches bear almost no resemblance to early
churches is because they do not focus on what early Christians focused on.
Next Page
