Replies

Sound doctrine is important but it’s not supremely important. As I noted in a previous post, what is of supreme importance is loving others. We know this is true because that is the metric by which Jesus will eternally divide the saved from the lost. He does not say, in the latter half of Matthew 25, ‘You earnestly contended for sound doctrine—enter into your eternal reward.’ Neither does Jesus say, ‘You failed to earnestly contend for sound doctrine—depart from me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire.’ Rather, the metric is those who actively showed love, ‘to the least among us,’ vs those who turned a blind eye toward people in need. When we stand before Jesus to hear our eternal fate, it will come down to whether our earthly priorities aligned with His or not. Jesus’ greatest priority is not arguing doctrine. It is just as He revealed in Matthew 25: caring for people in need.

But which argument itself, even if motivated by love, is doctrinal, and to present love as supreme as opposed to doctrine being critical is a logical fallacy. For while it is true that the Lord will judge and recompense souls based upon what they did, everything you do is a result of what you really believe, at least at the moment.

If those goats in Mt. 25 really believed in the doctrinal commands to love God with all your being and your neighbor as yourself, then they would have evidenced that they were sheep (not that the weight of their works saved them).

And doctrinally the command to love God with all your being comes before the 2nd great commandment, for we can only correctly love our neighbor insofar as we are in line with what God says we should have done to ourselves. Thus the 2nd commandment presupposes a moral framework, which is something many who quote the "Golden Rule" are ignorant of.

And thus one can sin even though their motive was noble, as was Paul in zealously persecuting the "heretical" sect of the Nazarene.

A more tragic example is Andrea Yates, who loved her children so much that she drowned them rather than let the go to Hell "The way I was raising them, they could never be saved. They were doomed to perish in the fires of hell." In reality the subtle serpent used what in itself was good, that of belief in Hell and love for others, to seduce a women (with postpartum depression) to commit murder in order to save those she loved.

Atheists quote the golden Rule but some believe the loving thing to do would be to place the kids of evangelicals in the care of the secular evolutionist State.

The point is that rather than the importance of doctrine vs love being a issue, doctrine directs us to love and instructs us how while love is doctrine in action, and the two must go together.

What your objection should be is to making assent to correct theological doctrine the prime importance without how that translates to the heart, including horizontally.

A church that is all about assent to formulated correct theological beliefs but is without the heart is like a body that is all bones, while a church that is all about warm and fuzzy social love is like a body without bones. Like faith and works , the too much go together. Thanks be to God.

And this whole debate is one about doctrine, hopefully being love in action. Which is what doctrine means in application.

Take heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine; continue in them: for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself, and them that hear thee. (1 Timothy 4:16)

If any man teach otherwise, and consent not to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which is according to godliness; He is proud, knowing nothing, but doting about questions and strifes of words, whereof cometh envy, strife, railings, evil surmisings, (1 Timothy 6:3-4)