Pride and the Ministry of the Word - Glenn Conjurske
Pride and the Ministry of the Word
by Glenn Conjurske
Knowledge is essential. We must have it in order to be saved, and in order to walk with God. Yet knowledge is a dangerous possession in the hands of sinners, as a knife is in the hands of a small boy. “Knowledge puffs up.” So says Paul. This, it would seem, is its natural tendency, in the present condition of the human heart. The knowledge is good, but our hearts are bad. Yet we may possess knowledge without being puffed up by it. If our knowledge increases at a faster rate than our moral character, we are sure to be puffed up. If our character and spirituality keep pace with our knowledge, we may maintain our humility, though learned and wise.
Peter therefore admonishes us to “grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.” (II Pet. 3:18). Knowledge without grace is sure to inflate the pride.
The first and foremost purpose of the ministry of the word of God ought therefore to be to “minister grace unto the hearers.” (Eph. 4:29). Alas, the primary notion which most of the modern teachers seem to have of grace is only of doctrinal grace. John MacArthur, one of the typically intellectual preachers of the present day, names his ministry “Grace to You,” but the grace is doctrinal and intellectual. The program would be better called “Knowledge to You,” though even much of its knowledge is impertinent and unprofitable. But I do not single out John MacArthur for censure. He is not the author of modern intellectualism, but the heir and the product of it, and in this respect there is not a whit of difference between him and most of his doctrinal opponents. The ministry of the word in the present day exists, in general, almost solely for the purpose of imparting knowledge. “Expository preaching” and “Bible teaching” are taught in the schools and seminaries, and this is the only sort of preaching which is known to many. This is the fruit of the intellectualism which prevails in the modern church, and its effect is to turn the ministry of the word into a dangerous and damaging thing. The preachers preach primarily to impart knowledge, and the primary effect of their ministry is to puff the people up.
As I survey the church in America today, it seems that its most prominent characteristic is pride. Look where we will, and we see pride, pride, pride, pride. Everyone thinks he knows better than everyone else. Every babe and tyro thinks he knows better than his teachers. Every novice must be preaching or writing a book or editing a magazine. To teach the saints of God anything seems in many cases a simple impossibility. They already know better. They do not hear a man’s preaching or read his writings to learn, but to judge, and every man is judged according to the extent of his conformity to their own opinions. It rarely enters any man’s head that he might be ignorant, much less that he might be wrong. It is a foregone conclusion with most that whoever disagrees with their opinion is wrong, though their own opinion may have been adopted yesterday, and that on the most slender and shallow foundation. They have read one side of the question, or it may be they have read one book or one tract on the subject, or heard one sermon, and henceforth they know.
This is the pride which possesses and characterizes the modern church. But what concerns me is that the great bulk of the ministry of the word in the present day is actually calculated to produce and augment this pride. It exists merely to impart knowledge. It is all intellectual, with little or nothing in it to move the heart or exercise the conscience. It fills the head, while it leaves the heart empty, the passions unsubdued, and the character unchanged. It seems to me that the primary and inevitable effect of such ministry is to make men proud.
Alas, it is nothing uncommon for the young pridelings to forsake their teachers and their fathers. After a year or two under this intellectual sort of ministry, which fills their heads with knowledge, and so inflates their pride, they grow too big for their fathers, and must enter their protest against the defective doctrines of those who have taught them all they know, and declare their independence. Their fathers who have nurtured them must then feel the sore bereavement of the hen who has had the misfortune to hatch a brood of ducklings, when they forsake her to take to the water, and will not be recalled for all her clucking. This is the hen’s misfortune, but I fear that when our spiritual children forsake us, due to their fancied superior understanding, this is generally our fault. We have labored to teach them, but failed to form their character. We have used the word to impart doctrine, but have failed to administer reproof, correction, or instruction in righteousness. We have filled the heads of the people with knowledge, but left their hearts empty of love and humility and gratitude. It is our own defective ministry which has made them what they are. It may be we have taught them well, so far as doctrine is concerned, but if we have not taught them love and humility and gratitude, we have taught them ill. If we have filled them with knowledge, even of the truth, and made them conceited and contentious, we have taught them ill indeed.
Knowledge is necessary, but knowledge, we fear, has altogether too large a place in the modern ministry. The fact is, most men have knowledge enough already to be and do as they ought, but they neither feel nor act upon what they know. It seems to me that one of the primary ends of our ministry ought to be to move men to feel what they know, and to act upon it. This is one of the excellencies of the old English Bible. It does not merely teach us. It makes us feel. But the prevailing intellectualism of the present day has moved some to contend that the reason for the existence of an English translation is to impart understanding, and so they labor to refine and re-refine the old version according to their passion for what they call accuracy, bringing it into conformity in every scintilla to the last dictates of scholastic and grammatical exactitude, and the final product is as cold and dry as its refiners.
So also with preaching. We ought to preach to move men to feel and act. In order to do this we must impart some knowledge, of course, but it is immeasurably better to move a man to feel what he knows, than to teach him what he doesn’t. John Wesley said of the doctrinally hardened nation of the Scotch in his day, that they knew everything and felt nothing. The same is true in America today, and yet the preachers come to them to give them more knowledge!
Ah, but it is easy to impart knowledge. It is hard to impart character and spirituality. Preachers therefore take the easy way, not necessarily deliberately or consciously, but only because they know nothing else and are capable of nothing more. How can they make others feel what they do not feel themselves? How can they make others weep, when they do not weep themselves? How can they impart sobriety and earnestness and devotedness when they are lukewarm themselves? How can they impart humility when they are puffed up themselves, or love when they are contentious themselves? All such preachers can impart knowledge, though they are really unfit to be preaching at all, and though the knowledge which they impart is more bane than benefit.
But all knowledge is not of the same character. Though it may all tend to puff up a race which is naturally inclined to pride, some kinds of knowledge are more dangerous than others. That knowledge which assumes an air of superiority—-which says, All others are wrong, and I am right—-that knowledge is of all kinds the most dangerous. Every work of God, therefore, which consists of a recovery of lost truth, or of an advance upon the truth held by our fathers, is in peculiar danger at this point, and this is so whether the recovery or advance is real, or purely imaginary. Pride, therefore, has been the prevailing sin of Plymouth Brethrenism almost from its inception, the movement itself being what some of its adherents have called “a great recovery.” The pride of the Brethren, however, has been surpassed by that of the Church of Christ, or Campbellites, who suppose themselves the sole possessors of the truth.
Now observe. A good part of the Brethren’s claims to the truth are legitimate, while the claims of the Campbellites are mostly imaginary, and yet the effect is the same in both. “Knowledge puffs up.” If the pride of the Campbellites has exceeded that of the Brethren, this is precisely because there has been more of vital godliness among the Brethren. This is the only thing that can keep the possessors of knowledge from pride.
The pride which has characterized the Brethren for a century and a half might have been prevented. Knowledge they have had, and a good deal of true knowledge, but they lacked the wisdom to put knowledge in its place. The movement has always been primarily a doctrinal one. Its ministry has existed primarily to impart knowledge. This has had its natural effect, and the more so because that knowledge has almost always been presented as something superior to that held by Christians in general.
Take, by contrast, the Methodist movement. I am neither Methodist nor Brethren, but I know both of these movements well, can appreciate the good and deplore the bad in both of them, and suppose myself competent to make an objective comparison of them. There is such a thing as Methodist pride, for the whole race is prone to pride, but the Methodist movement has never been characterized by pride as the Brethren movement has. I believe there are two reasons for this. The first lies in the fact that Methodism was from its inception a spiritual movement, rather than a doctrinal one. Its ministry was not designed to proselyte men to any set of doctrinal peculiarities, but to save souls, and to build them up in holiness. Its class meetings, band meetings, and love feasts were all designed to advance spiritual growth and experience—-to exercise the conscience before God, and to promote holiness of heart and life.
The second reason lies in the fact that the main emphases of the Methodist ministry were always those spiritual truths which are held in common by all saints and all denominations. Methodism had its distinctives, both true and false, as all denominations do, but these were not made the center of the hub, around which all else must revolve.
The Brethren failed in both of these particulars. The movement was primarily doctrinal, being more concerned to impart doctrinal understanding than to secure holiness of heart and life, and always exalting to the place of pre-eminence its own distinctive doctrines, rather than those which are held in common by all the saints of God. Who cannot see that such a ministry must inevitably produce a great deal of pride? The claim of superior knowledge is as conducive to pride as the claim to superior spirituality or superior holiness. It may be that we actually possess superior knowledge, and there may be no help for that, but if so, our greater knowledge lays us under greater obligation to guard against pride. Our higher knowledge ought to constrain us to be the more careful to cultivate holiness. Our superior knowledge ought to inspire us with fear, and compel us to cultivate above all things love and humility. And not mere abstract love and humility, but concrete appreciation for the spiritual good in those who lack our superior knowledge, and actual esteeming of others better than ourselves.
Further, we ought by all means to avoid the folly of comparing ourselves with each other, or the greater folly of comparing ourselves with our inferiors. Suppose I do have knowledge which is superior to that of my brother, what does that make me before God? My fellow-Christian and myself are both blind worms, grovelling in the earth, neither of us yet knowing anything as we ought to know. If the one worm happens to be a millimeter longer than the other, shall he be proud of it? Let him look up to God, and confess his nothingness. And this we ought to preach, diligently, earnestly, and continually, if we are to save our hearers from pride. When the wisest of preachers has delivered his most brilliant discourse, let him then say, I have given you a penny today, but there yet remain a thousand dollars in this book, much of which I have never yet understood; and above and beyond this book, a billion billion dollars which God has never given to any man alive. We are all worms of the dust, who know nothing. Let us labor to feel and to live what little we know.
Glenn Conjurske
Alas, we fear one of the most obvious reasons why the ministry of the word puffs up the people is that the preachers are puffed up themselves. They have little sense of their ignorance. They preach as though they know all. They think the dime in their pocket is a hundred dollar bill, and they present it to their hearers as such. A spirit of pride pervades their preaching, and how can their hearers escape the bane?
Alas again, we fear that one of the principle reasons that preachers do so little to form the character of their hearers is that they have so little character themselves. I have known preachers who boast and exaggerate, waste their time and money, fail to keep their engagements, arrive late to their appointments, write checks which they have no money to cover, borrow things and never return them, or return them late or broken. How can such preachers impart any character to their hearers? Indeed, what business do they have preaching?
To conclude, since it is a fact that knowledge puffs up, it is another fact that the ministry which aims primarily at imparting knowledge is almost sure to impart pride. The more so if that knowledge is presented as superior or peculiar. The only cure for this is a ministry which, while it imparts knowledge, diligently inculcates love, humility, holiness, and all moral virtue.