Subtle Shift #2: From Obedience to Doctrine
Blog Series: Mission Creep (part 4)
Larry Osborne
Unfortunately, early on in my faith journey I picked up an opposite message. I thought the telltale sign of a genuine Christian was a deep and accurate knowledge of the Bible and theology.
The churches and ministries I hung around focused on the debatable passages of scripture and doctrinal unity. It’s what they taught. It’s what they believed. And they questioned the salvation of anyone who claimed to be a Christ follower but failed to line up precisely with their understanding of scripture.
It is no wonder that I thought heaven’s entrance exam involved a Scantron instead of a blood test. It’s what everyone told me.
Now I want to be clear. Doctrine is very important. Bad doctrine leads to bad living. What we believe about God, salvation, sanctification, and eternity matters. It has a tremendous impact on the choices we make and how we relate to the world around us.
At the same time, I never want to forget that Jesus didn’t tell us to go and make disciples of all nations, teaching them great doctrine. He told us to, “Go and make disciples of all nations … teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” Jesus said the irrefutable proof that we love Him is found in our obedience to Him: “If you love me, you will obey what I command.”[i] It’s not found in the intensity of my intellectual pursuit or my hard-earned ability to parse every word of Scripture. It’s found in my obedience.
So according to the words of Jesus, the goal of the Great Commission is obedience. It’s not scholarship, doctrinal acuity, or a self-feeding Bible scholar. It’s an obedient Christian.There’s nothing wrong with producing well-taught, biblically accurate Christians. That’s a good thing. As a pastor and Bible teacher, I’ve spent my life helping people become well-taught and biblically accurate. But it’s not the thing. It’s not the bull’s-eye. Obedience is.
Unfortunately, it’s a lesson many of us have forgotten. It’s a lesson I had to learn the hard way.
Three Out of Six
During my first years of walking with Jesus, I was deeply influenced by six key mentors. Some I knew well. A couple I knew mostly through their public ministry. Each had a profound impact on my theology, faith, and approach to ministry. I looked up to them and dreamed of being like them someday. In my mind, they represented the epitome of spiritual maturity.
Two were brilliant scholars who taught directly from the original languages. All the others had powerful Bible-based ministries and a solid grasp of theological nuances. Their biblical fidelity was unquestioned. They seemed to have a Bible verse for every situation and a biblical answer for every question. They stirred in my heart a hunger to know the scriptures.
Yet before the decade was over, three of the six would fail a rather important spiritual test. Despite their incredible grasp of theology and doctrine, despite their mastery of the so-called spiritual disciplines, they couldn’t keep their pants on. They failed the test of obedience. Sexual fidelity proved to be too much for them.
Now I’m not here to cast stones. I realize that some of God’s best have failed the same test. If Peter could deny Jesus, Abraham lie under pressure, and David could murder a close friend and steal his wife, only God knows the evil I’m capable of.
The moral failure of half my mentors left me shaken. It messed with my paradigm of spiritual maturity. And it taught me an important lesson I’ve never forgotten: Godliness is not determined by what we know. It’s determined by how we obey.
Why Obedience Is More Important Than Doctrine
Like many, I had fallen into the trap of equating knowledge and a proper grasp of doctrine with spiritual maturity. I assumed that the more I knew, the better I’d live. So when it came time to disciple people, I focused primarily on making sure that they knew the Bible inside out and got all of our doctrines right. I figured obedience would naturally follow.
I was wrong. It’s the exact opposite.
Obedience begets spiritual knowledge. Whereas knowledge may or may not produce obedience.When I began to realize that a solid grasp of core (and not so core) doctrines had begun to replace simple obedience as my primary discipleship goal, I made a subtle change in the way I taught the Bible. It enabled me to realign my discipleship bull’s-eye with the target that Jesus gave us in the Great Commission. It put obedience back in its rightful place.
I offer it by way of description, not prescription. But it has made a huge difference for both me and the church I serve.
I no longer see my primary job in preaching as merely teaching the biblical text. I see it as instructing people how to live the Christian life with the Bible as my only authority. It’s a subtle shift. But it keeps my eyes on obedience.
I’m no longer satisfied with presenting facts about the text, its history, and its meaning. I’m not satisfied until I’ve figured out the “so what?” and how we can live in light of it. And every passage has one.
Writing to a young pastor named Timothy, Paul reminds us that obedience—not doctrine—is the goal: “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of Godmay be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”
He wanted to make sure that Timothy understood the bull’s-eye, that at the end of the day discipleship is all about obedience.
This blog series is based on the new FREE eBook Mission Creep: The 5 Subtle Shifts That Sabotage Evangelism & Discipleship by Larry Osborne. Download it here to read the full chapter.
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Larry Osborne is one of the senior and
teaching pastors at North Coast Church in Vista, California. Under his
leadership, weekend attendance has grown from 128 to over 10,000.
Recognized nationally as one of the Ten Most Influential Churches in
America and one of the most innovative, North Coast Church pioneered the
use of video worship venues and is one of the leaders in the multisite
movement with over 31 local worship options each weekend – each one
targeted at a different missional demographic. Over 90% of North Coast’s
average weekend attendance participates in weekly sermon-based small
groups, a concept that is spreading across the nation as an alternative
to traditional small group methodologies. Larry’s books include, Innovation’s Dirty Little Secret, Accidental Pharisees, Sticky Teams, Sticky Church, The Unity Factor, A Contrarian’s Guide to Spirituality and 10 Dumb Things Smart Christians Believe.
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