The Bible and the Teacher - Glenn Conjurske

The Bible and the Teacher

by Glenn Conjurske

Great confusion, and a great deal of spiritual poverty, have arisen in the church of God from a failure to understand the distinct natures and the proper places of the written word of God and the preachers of it. Some put the teacher in the place of the written word. Others put the written word in the place of the teacher. Those who have high esteem for some particular teacher or teachers, past or present, are likely to put those teachers in the place of the Bible, ascribing to them the authority which rightly belongs to the Book alone. Those who have high views of the written word are likely to put the Bible in the place of the teacher, expecting from the Book itself the instruction which God has designed they should receive from the expounders of it, and which in fact they are not likely to receive at all in any other way. Many are in part guilty of both of these mistakes. Both are mistakes, and both are injurious.

The written word will never take the place of the preached word, any more than the preached word can take the place of the written word. In every department of the application of the word of God to the souls of men, from the awakening, conviction, and conversion of sinners, to the perfecting of the saints, there is generally no substitute for the voice, or the pen, of the preacher or teacher. Many have questioned this, or denied it, in a mistaken attempt to do honor to the written word. But it no more detracts from the written word to value the true teacher of it than it disparages the larder to praise the cook. The fact is, God has given both the written word and the preacher. He has given the written word to be the rule and standard of all things, and he has given the human preacher to expound it. Both are his gifts, and both are essential to the health of his people. To endeavor to put the Bible in the place of the teacher will generally be as unfruitful as it is pernicious to put the teacher in the place of the Bible. Each has its own God-appointed place to fill, and to thrust aside one of them in an attempt to exalt the other is to impugn the wisdom of the God who gave them both.

“When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men. … And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ.” (Eph. 4:8,11-12). The Lord gave these gifts because the church needed them. He did not give a pair of crutches to a man with two good legs, nor a pair of spectacles to a man with two good eyes. The giving of the gifts presumes the need for them.

But Scripture says also, “But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him.” (I Jn. 2:27). Multitudes have stumbled over this scripture, and fallen into the error of denying their need of human teachers, thus despising the gifts which Christ has given for their good. But observe:

1.This scripture says not one word about the Bible or its sufficiency. The issue here is not between the Scriptures and human teachers, but between the Holy Spirit and human teachers. The Holy Spirit was given to the church before any of the New Testament was written, and if his presence in them was actually sufficient to take the place of human teachers, that fact must have been as true before the New Testament was written as it is now. The question of the sufficiency of the written word is not even touched here.

2.Common sense, no less than faith, dictates that whatever may be meant by the all-sufficient teaching of the Holy Spirit in this text, it cannot mean that Christ’s gifts are of no value, or that there is no need of any kind for the teachers which he has given.

3.If John had believed that the anointing which they had received actually eliminated the need of all human teaching, he would never have penned the verse before us, nor the epistle which contains it, either, for he was certainly teaching them in the whole of it.

4.The passage is written particularly “concerning them that seduce you” (verse 26)—-that is, those who would seduce them, for the present tense expresses purpose or intent, as often in the Greek New Testament. He speaks (vs. 22) of antichrists, who deny the Father and the Son, the same as in Matt. 24:24, who “if it were possible, shall deceive the very elect.” “Deceive” there is the same word as “seduce” here. It does not speak of deceiving men about some point of doctrine, but of turning them away from Christ. Thus the expected result of the Spirit’s teaching in I Jn. 2:27 is not to be perfected in knowledge or anything else, but to “abide in him”—-to be kept from turning aside after false Christs and false prophets. That teaching which perfects the saints comes by the ministry of apostles, prophets, evangelists, and pastors and teachers.

The need for human teachers proceeds from two things: in the first place from the dullness of human hearts, but also from the nature of the Bible itself. First, “For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God.” (Heb. 5:12). Their need for a human teacher is explicitly stated: “Ye have need that one teach you.” The reason for the need is also stated: their own dullness and lack of spiritual exercise. For the time they ought to have been teachers themselves.

But let us be clear here that this does not imply that they would ever outgrow the need of teachers—-only that they would get beyond the need to be taught “the first principles of the oracles of God.” They ought to get beyond “milk,” and require “strong meat,” as the verse goes on to state. Yet when they have attained to that state, they will need teachers still.

On the road to Emmaus the Lord finds two disciples groping for light to understand the death of him whom they judged to be the Messiah. “Then he said unto them, O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken. Ought not Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into his glory? And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.” (Luke 24:25-27). The dullness of their hearts is the first thing that necessitates a teacher, and he gives them a reproof for that. And understand, he acts here as a teacher, not as a revelator. He gave them no new revelation. Whatever he taught them was contained “in the scriptures,” yet they had never seen it there. The things they had no doubt seen, but they had never seen their significance, never understood their connections, never seen their bearing on the question at hand. And here is the proper business of the teacher. The Lord did no more than “open the scriptures” to them (vs. 32). He imposed nothing upon them by his authority as a revelator, as he had done at other times. There was nothing here of “Ye have heard that it hath been said…, but I say unto you…” He merely “opened the Scriptures” to them—-merely pointed out to them what the Scriptures contained. But he did not merely point out to them what the Scriptures said. That were unnecessary, and an insult to their intelligence. He “expounded unto them” the bearing and significance of those things. He did not authoritatively impose those bearings upon them. Of this there was not the slightest need. The things which he expounded to them were in themselves so obvious, so unquestionably true, so gloriously true, when once pointed out to them, that their hearts burned within them while he thus taught them.

But more: under the existing circumstances it would have been impossible for him to have imposed any teaching upon them by authority, for at the time during which he was making their hearts to burn with those things, they did not know who he was. And this fact opens to us the true place of a teacher of the word of God. He must of course be a man of greater spiritual insight than those whom he teaches. He must see farther than they see. He must understand the Scriptures in a way that they do not. This is the main thing that qualifies him as a teacher. But this gives no authority to his message. If he is a true teacher of the truth of God, the things which he teaches will validate themselves to spiritual minds. They will be obviously right, in the light of the Bible itself, which remains the sole authority in settling every question of doctrine and duty.

Philip found the Ethiopian Eunuch reading the Scriptures, and asked him, “Understandest thou what thou readest? And he said, How can I, except some man guide me?” (Acts 8:30-31). A guide is someone who knows the ground, and can lead another man over it. The eunuch felt his need of such a guide. He can read the words of Isaiah, but is left wondering, “of whom speaketh the prophet this? of himself, or of some other man?” And this leads us to the second reason for the need of human teachers, which is found in the nature of the Book itself. The Bible says, “He was led as a sheep to the slaughter,” but it gives no indication that these words speak of the Messiah. This must be learned from the nature of what is said, and only can be learned by a man who already knows something of the Messiah. This is the ordinary way of the Bible. The Book itself is obscure and cryptic. It informs us of certain acts of many men, but often declines to tell us if those acts were right or wrong. This we must discover for ourselves, by study and experience. It tells what God does, but often tells us not why. This we must learn however we can. The most common words (and the most important), such as “world,” “love,” and “believe,” occur in different places with different significance, content, or application—-yet there is nothing in the Book to tell us this. This also must be learned. Such things are often learned by hard wrestling with doctrinal and practical difficulties, until we are forced (by what the Book says, and often against our prior thoughts or our will) to the proper and divinely intended conclusions. The Book prescribes a thousand duties without defining them, or telling us how to perform them. It tells us to “abide in him,” to “walk in the Spirit,”, but declines to tell us what these things consist of, or how to go about performing them. It tells us to “love not the world,” without defining what the world is. These things we must learn however we can. The answers are in the Book, but implicitly, not explicitly, as “hidden wisdom”—-not lying upon the surface, not explicitly spelled out. “If thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid treasures” (Prov. 2:4), then thou shalt find her. The nature of the Book is such that the proud, the self-sufficient, the prejudiced, will stumble and go astray at every turn. None but the humble, the God-fearing, the single-eyed, the faithful, and the diligent will find their way in it. It has often been truly remarked that every form of error has been taught from the Bible—-and very plausibly taught, too. The Book readily lends itself to this because of its very nature.

Now the fact that this is the nature of the Book leads us devoutly to believe that it is so by God’s design. He could, with perfect ease, have given to us a book which would have explicitly spelled out every doctrine and duty with the utmost plainness, and given us the reason of everything. This he could have done in a book very much smaller than the Bible. But the evident fact is, he has not chosen to do so. Why he has not done so, it may be idle for us to speculate, and I will say no more about it than to quote these few reasons suggested in the original preface to the King James Bible: “partly to exercise and whet our wits, partly to wean the curious from loathing of them for their every-where-plainness, partly also to stir up our devotion to crave the assistance of God’s Spirit by prayer, and lastly, that we might be forward to seek aid of our brethren by conference.”

This does not concern the dullness of our hearts, but the nature of the Book. The Bible is not a creed or a book of systematic theology. It bears no resemblance to a museum of natural history, where a man may go and in one hour view a hundred completed skeletons of prehistoric animals. The Bible is rather a field of fossils, forty acres in extent. Most of the bones are not lying on the surface. We must dig for them, and dig very deep in many cases. When we do dig, we shall not find complete skeletons, but only scattered bones, one here, two there, and another yonder. Moreover, the bones of a thousand distinct animals lie there, all mingled together, and scattered in the most haphazard fashion. The bones which we unearth will not be labelled “mammoth” or “mastodon.” We must learn the nature and proper place of those bones by studying them, and so, little by little, we may piece together the various skeletons.

Such a picture exactly represents the actual nature of the Bible, and this is obviously so by God’s design and choice. He has given to us to wrestle with a thousand unanswered questions, and to puzzle over the real significance of a thousand facts of Scripture. The more we search out and meditate upon those things, the more answers we are likely to find. But to sound the depths of Scripture is the work of a millennium, and most of us pass through a large share of the little vapor of our lives not even knowing what the questions are, to say nothing of the answers. Most of the doctrines which most of us hold are partial skeletons at best. In one sense, all of the doctrines which all of us hold are partial. “We know in part.” The whole of things is not yet revealed. But I refer to those things which are revealed—-those things which we can know—-those things which are contained in the Scriptures. Even in those we generally know only in part. The skeletons which we have constructed are incomplete. We have not yet discovered every bone which belongs to them. We may not feel this if we have all of the major bones in place, but it is yet a fact that as we go deeper and deeper into the word and ways of God, by study and by Christian experience, we will find pieces that we have never found before—-even pieces which we had walked over and handled before, without ever seeing their nature or their place. If we have constructed our skeletons with care and accuracy (with a single eye, a spiritual mind, and a faithful heart), the new pieces which we find will not undo what we have built already, but will add to it.

I am not speaking of any new revelation, but only of what has been present in the Bible from the beginning, but which we had never seen before. The teacher’s business is merely to point out to us what is there—-to point out to us things which we may see just as plainly as he does, when once they are pointed out to us. This assumes, of course, that we have the mental and spiritual capacity to understand those things. If our minds and hearts are dull, we may be unable to see plain truths even when they are pointed out to us. When I was first introduced to Old Testament types, I was but a babe in Christ, and I had no ability to appreciate them. I supposed them to rest upon nothing more substantial than the imagination of the teachers, whom I thought to be trifling with the word of God. Now those same types appear to me as among the most profound and beautiful things in the Bible, and as one of the strongest proofs of its inspiration. Then I had no capacity to see them at all. And so it is with all of the truth of the Bible. In just the measure of our own spiritual experience—-in just the measure that our spiritual senses are exercised—-in just the measure that we are “engaged” in the cause of Christ (to use a common term of olden days)—-in just the measure that we love the truth as such, without regard to party feeling or prejudice—-in just that measure we shall be able to plainly see the truth when it is pointed out to us.

And it is just here that we see both the place and the value of God-given teachers. They have no business to usurp the place of the Scriptures, by assuming to themselves authority to prescribe what men must believe. This is papal, and pernicious. The teacher’s place is to explain and point out the truth, so that men may see it for themselves, and embrace it on that basis. Men who are in the proper spiritual state may easily see for themselves, when it is pointed out to them, truth which they may never see by themselves.

The novice who first enters the forty-acre field of fossils will make but slow progress on his own, and he may have many a horse’s tooth in the mammoth’s mouth, and make serpents enough of tigers’ tails. What he wants is a guide, and a man who has studied those bones for half a century already will be of inestimable service to him. It is an indisputable fact that most of God’s saints discover but little of the truth on their own account. This may be in part because of their lack of diligence, and the dullness of their hearts, but even the diligent and the spiritual make slow progress without a teacher. This is because of the cryptic nature of the Book of God.

And beyond that, we may affirm with all confidence that it is not the design of God to teach every man individually and independently. His design is that they should be built up “by that which every joint supplies.” (Eph. 4:16). His design is that the truth should be passed on from man to man. “And the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also.” (II Tim. 2:2). It is thus that God designs that men should learn the truth. The Bible alone will not suffice them. They need the teacher, who knows the Bible.

There are times, however, when the truth would be lost altogether, and beyond recovery, if God did not teach certain men directly, individually, and personally. Such times have constantly recurred throughout history, through the lack of “faithful men” to carry on the testimony. At such times God will yet work to maintain his own testimony. Here and there, perhaps once in a generation, perhaps once in a century, he raises up men whom he leads directly into the truth which his people have lost, without the benefit of a human teacher. Such men are called prophets, but the book of First Samuel tells us that “he that is now called a prophet was beforetime called a seer.” (I Sam. 9:9). A seer is one who sees. He sees what other men do not, and this he does by the direct teaching of God. A prophet in the strictest sense sees by direct and immediate revelation from God. We need no such prophets today, and I believe we have none. We need no new revelation from God. Whatever the church of God needs is contained in the Scriptures, and yet because of the dullness of men’s hearts and the nature of the Book itself, most men will never find it there without the aid of a human teacher. Most of the truth is not explicitly spelled out in the Scriptures, but must be pieced together by deep and painstaking study—-here a precept, there an example—-here a parable, there a prayer—-here a principle, there a type—-here a historical fact, there a prophecy

—-here a plain didactic statement, there an incidental allusion (and usually more of the latter than the former). All of these lie scattered throughout the divine volume like the scattered bones in the fossil-field, and a thousand men may handle them every day without ever seeing their connections. When once those connections are pointed out to them, they may be as clear as the noon-day, so that they will go away saying, “Why didn’t I ever see that?”

A prophet, then, a seer, is one to whom God himself has “opened the Scriptures,” so that he sees what is in them. His business is to pass on to faithful men what he sees, explaining and expounding the Scriptures, so that they may see it also. In this respect a seer, who has been taught directly by God, is no different than a man who has learned the same truth through the medium of other men. The basis of the truth, the authority for it, lies in the Book, and not in their own persons, nor in the manner in which they have learned what they know.

The Bible and the teacher are both the gifts of God, and both are necessary for the good of his people. But the good which God designs in both of them is largely lost when their distinct natures are misapprehended, and their places confused. There has been a danger throughout the history of the church to put the teacher in the place of the Bible. This tendency was very strongly developed in some of the early fathers of the church, and is full-blown in the Church of Rome. A man may be a true prophet of God, and therefore very rightly esteemed in the church, but that esteem may take a wrong direction. The man may come to be regarded as practically infallible, and his utterances taken as authoritative—-not because men plainly see his doctrine to be the truth, but because their mentor teaches it. Thus we have the seeing leading the blind, and if the prophet himself is mistaken, the blind leading the blind, and there is no remedy. Such a state of things is not—-cannot be—-the fruit of the proper love and esteem which the disciple owes to his teacher, nor yet of the humility which rightly becomes the disciple. Such an evil consequence cannot flow from causes so good and proper. There is another root beneath such a state of things. That root is lukewarmness. It is spiritual laziness. It is the failure of men to think for themselves. Their love of the truth, which ought to be supreme, falls below their love for the teacher of it, or the sect or party to which he belongs, and the teacher practically replaces the Bible.

But the lukewarmness of which I speak is so often associated with so much of zeal that it is seldom recognized as lukewarmness. Men will cross and recross and crisscross the country to attend the seminars or conferences of their favorite teacher—-and follow him equally when he speaks the truth or when he speaks error. The zeal is commendable, but it is no excuse for the lukewarmness which fails to “prove all things, and hold fast that which is good.” It is no excuse for the lukewarmness which allows another man to do their thinking for them. The seer will not answer for them in the day of judgement, and it is inexcusable spiritual apathy and folly to allow him to see for them in this life.

The teacher also replaces the Bible whenever human creeds are imposed by ecclesiastical authority. The creed is presumed to be both complete and inerrant—-facts which are true of the Bible alone. The creed displaces the Bible as authority. Further inquiry is discouraged, if not forbidden and punished. The men who question the creed are tried for heresy, as were both Lyman Beecher and Albert Barnes among the Presbyterians. The Bible is to be studied, to be sure, but only to find support for the creed, which is the real authority.

But there is an error on the other side—-more subtle, and not so dangerous—-but still an error. That error is putting the Bible in the place of the teacher. Certain segments of the modern missionary endeavor have been guilty of this. Missionaries go to primitive tribes, not to preach, but to translate the Bible. Various movements in the church have supposed that to circulate the Bible will fulfill the great commission. But no: the terms of the great commission are to go and preach. Thus did the apostles of Christ. We are continually told that they preached Christ—-preached the word of the Lord—-preached the gospel in many villages—-preached in all the cities—-preached Christ in the synagogues—-preached the gospel to that city—-preached the word in Perga—-preached the word of the Lord—-preached unto them—-preached unto them. Not one reference do we find to the apostles going anywhere to supply copies of the Scriptures. Such a thing was altogether beyond their means, and it is certain that most of the converts of the apostolic church did not possess a copy of the Scriptures. Indeed, it is probable that the apostles themselves did not. Yet the spirituality and the success of the apostolic church far outshines that of the church of the present day, in which every Christian has a Bible, and many of them more Bibles than they know what to do with.

William Taylor, who called himself “a Methodist preacher of the old school,” and who was an apostle of Methodist missions the world over till his death in 1902, was used of God “in bringing raw heathen to a saving acceptance of Christ under a single discourse.” —-and that while preaching through an interpreter. This was after the apostolic pattern. What would he have done if he had stopped to translate the Bible first—-or if he had translated the Bible instead of preaching? The Ethiopian eunuch had a Bible in his hands, but it availed him nothing until he found a man who knew that Bible, and could open it up to him. He was then converted on the spot.

I am aware that to convert the lost and to build up the saints are two different things, but the preached word is the ordinary means of accomplishing both. To the Ephesian elders Paul said, “And now, brethren, I commend you to God, and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up.” This is generally applied exclusively to the written word, as though what Paul were here recommending were merely Bible study. To Bible study I have not the slightest objection. Would to God there were more of it. Yet I doubt that that is all that Paul means here. When he writes elsewhere to those same Ephesians concerning the means of edification, he makes no mention of the written word at all, but only of the ministry of it. “And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ; till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ; that we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive; but speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love.” (Eph. 4:11-16). Here it is the preaching of men, the ministry of the gifts which Christ has given, the working of “every part” of the body, “that which every joint supplieth,” which is the means of edification. Those who think to dispense with all of this, and, under the mistaken notion of exalting the written word, put the Bible in the place of the teacher, are most likely to have spiritual poverty as the result.

But here a real difficulty arises. During much of the history of the church many of its teachers have been the bane of sound doctrine and spirituality. This is unquestionably so at the present time. From the nationally known figures who teach the multitudes in seminars or radio broadcasts, to the editors of religious papers, to the teachers at Bible colleges, down to the simple pastors of the small village and country churches, many of the teachers of the modern church do little more than lead the people astray, and the best of them seldom do more than perpetuate the shallow doctrines and worldly ways of modern Christianity. However sincere they may be, there are but few who are able to do more than this. Where is a hungry soul to be fed in such days as these?

It is easy enough to affirm that we need only ask the Lord for spiritual food, and he will feed us, but know this, that the Lord has not only promised to satisfy the hungry and the thirsty—-he has also promised to send a famine, “not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord: and they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east, they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the Lord, and shall not find it.” (Amos 8:11-12). The written word exists as always, but there is a famine of the hearing of it, a famine of the true teaching of it. This is a true description of our own times, in which men may cross the country to go to the seminars of the popular teachers, or spend their money to buy the Christian books which flood the market, and yet not find the word of the Lord, but only shallow stuff to starve their souls, or subtle sophistry to subvert the simple. This state of things exists as a judgement of God upon the worldliness and lukewarmness of the people. God, of course, is merciful, and willing to bestow his gifts, but he looks for some real repentance and some real hunger in his people. D. L. Moody, before the world had heard his name, crossed the continent and the ocean to sit at the feet of Henry Varley and George Müller and C. H. Spurgeon. But such hunger is just the thing usually lacking in the church today. I once heard an old man say of the church he was attending, “This place should be just like a restaurant. People should come here hungry, and go away full. But here they come in hungry, and go away hungry.” Yet that man continued to go there till the day of his death. If the people continue to come in hungry, and go out hungry, it is precisely because they are not hungry enough. They are lukewarm. The truly hungry will find food, though they may have to storm the gates of heaven for it, or cross a continent, or spend a fortune. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

The lukewarm and apathetic have no great desire for spiritual teachers of the word of God, being content without them. The proud and self-sufficient feel no great need for such teachers, supposing themselves capable of treading out the corn for themselves. But the humble and hungry soul, who is fervent and diligent in seeking spiritual food, will find food. The Lord will feed him. The Lord may even make of him one of those “seers,” who sees by the direct teaching of God, and can in turn lead others to the light. The Lord may provide for him a heaven-sent teacher. But the fact is, the Lord has already given abundance of such teachers to his church. They lie now in their graves, ’tis true, but they being dead yet speak. The truly hungry soul will find them out. He may not know where to look, or how to look, but he knows how to cry to God, and God knows how to answer him. Good books can be found by the diligent seeker. The humble and hungry soul today can sit at the feet of Menno Simons and Richard Baxter, of John Wesley and John Fletcher, of J. C. Ryle and J. N. Darby, of C. H. Spurgeon and C. H. Mackintosh, of R. A. Torrey and Gipsy Smith. But the same apathy which keeps men from the earnest and diligent study of the Bible will keep them from the books of these men. When men really love the Bible, they will of course love the men who open its treasures to them—-and value each in the place to which God has assigned it, neither putting the Bible in the place of the teacher, nor the teacher in the place of the Bible.

Glenn Conjurske