Buying the Truth

Proverbs 23:23 says, "Buy the truth and do not sell it. Also wisdom, instruction, and understanding (NKJV)." While the Bible teaches us that God has revealed truth, and it is there for us to see we continue to wait for a mandate from above. People within the church wait for their colleges, or their leaders to tell them what they should believe. We seem to have come to a point where we expect those who are "enlightened" to share with us what they think we need to do. That is not the case.

We talk a lot about the church "being the church." If we are going to be the church it will be because we have made the necessary sacrifice to "buy the truth." Not "a" truth, but "the" one truth of God, revealed to us in His Holy Word. Throughout history the church has been the church when people have been willing to do this. It is when government type bureaucracy runs the church that it has seen problems. The apostolic church was not mandated by any government. It was not ruled by man. It was composed of people who had bought, and seen, and experienced the Truth.

I would suggest that the church is in trouble. We will not climb out of the whole in which we find ourselves until we ignore the man-made creedal statements, the liberal emerging-church type propaganda, the idea that others will tell us what God's Word means, and all of the other things that take the focus off of Scripture. We must buy the truth no matter what the cost. The church will stand when it's foundation in in the Word of God.

Holy Standard

Against what do we measure our spiritual lives? How do you know that your relationship with God is growing and maturing? I would contend that within holiness movements the standard against which we measure ourselves has become increasingly low. Rather than using the Word of God as our guide, we want to compare ourselves to the atheist who lives next door.

"I'm not perfect, but I'm not as bad as that guy," we tell ourselves. We are always on the lookout for those who are living far below the standard to which God has called us. They give us a great excuse to live beneath the holy standards of God's chosen people. I cannot even count the number of times that I've heard people excuse themselves with, "It's not like I've killed someone."

Here's a fact: If you are not living God's commands, and growing in a relationship with Him, it is like you've killed someone. It's exactly like that. Jesus died to SAVE US FROM our sin. I can't find anyplace in Scripture that would lead us to believe that He died to save us in our sin. Yet, we continue to live in sin. I read a blog by an emerging church leader just last week that claims that it's alright for homosexuals to serve in the church. He began his claim by asking readers to ignore the verses in the Bible that speak directly about homosexuality so that we can debate it from a philosophical perspective. Why can't we debate it from a biblical perspective? Homosexuality is not the only issue that some try to deal with in this way. We eliminate what the Bible says about divorce with regularity. We want to look at everything from our perspective and not from God's. If we eliminate His Word all that we're left with is our opinion.

Again I ask, against what do you measure your spiritual life? I would suggest that it should be God's Word.