The Importance of Doctrinal Precision

In our time we find ourselves desiring to unite and cooperate with anyone and any belief system in order to insure self preservation. Many of the greatest people have accomplished some of the most important events because they knew how to cross boundary lines and knew when to compromise. This is a noble character trait and something we should be willing to pursue ourselves. But, there are extremes. There is a place where a person’s willingness to compromise is only the result of an inadequate relationship with the truth.

Most religions, Christian and Pagan, can find many similar terms and ideas. It is easy to identify concepts that can be used to form camps of unity: God, love, Savior, peace, heaven, sacrifice, martyr, overcoming, worship, etc. Of course, the division starts when someone asks, “Who is God?” “What does love do?” “Who did the savior save and from what?” “How is peace attained?” “Who is the peace between?” “When is overcoming accomplished?” The test of many religions is right conduct or observance.

The test of Christianity is, first of all, right faith. Then actions follow. (James 2:20) Some doctrines of our faith are more important than others but all are divinely revealed.

The Bible teaches that all the terms, concepts and questions are defined and answered by divine inspiration through the prophets and apostles who wrote down what God revealed. This Truth is referred to as a deposit (2 Timothy 1:13,14) and the apostles considered themselves to have been entrusted (1 Corinthians 4:2; 9:17)by God with his revealed truth similar to how we would entrust our money to a bank.. The truth is not found in the “terms” of religion. Truth is found in the doctrine that define those terms. You can not have faith in a term with no meaning. There must be a doctrine. Today our generation has received from the apostles the responsibility for this deposit, “the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints.” (Jude 3; 1 Tm. 4:16; Titus 2:1)