Don’t Let Your Doctrine Lead You Away From Christ, by Tim Conway

When I saw the title of this video I was taken back, but I’m glad I watched it. Though the Doctrines of grace and other essential Doctrines are nonnegotiable, and we must unequivocally defend them. But to do so without God the Father, and/or Christ being “thee focal point,” frankly it is sin.

In Revelation 2:1-7 the Lord Jesus warned that many professing believers might seem to be doing the right things, they even “hate” the things that God hates. But they left their first love. In other words, their do-good deeds and doctrines were meaningless without the Lord being front and center of it all.

As Charles Leiter once said, “I remember a time years ago, when I was around a group of guys who were all solid in doctrine, and as cold as can be… I remember writing in one of my notebooks, Oh God put me with men of a burning heart, not cold, carnal, doctrinarians.”

I don’t want to be associated with cold carnal doctrinarians. I want to fellowship with Christians that worship the God of these Doctrines, the Deity of the Scriptures, and the Christ of our Creeds.

Paul said that Christians are to “walk circumspectly” (Ephesians 5:15-16). That word circumspectly in the Greek (akribōs) is tantamount to a soldier cautiously walking through a minefield, or walking a theological tightrope. Though I fall short, but Lord help me walk more upright.