| Home Page | Grace Baptist Church View related sermons Click here |
TEXT:
SUBJECT: John Bunyan on Christian Fellowship
Today's topic is John Bunyan on Christian Fellowship. The idea was gotten from a lecture given by Martyn Lloyd-Jones at the Westminster Conference in 1978. It can be read in his book, The Puritans: Their Origins and Successors. But please, don't get your Bunyan second-hand. Go back to the source: Read Bunyan himself. He'll do you good.
John Bunyan is best known for his book, Pilgrim's Progress, perhaps the most read book in English outside of the Bible. But Bunyan never thought of himself as a man of letters. He was a pastor. His sixty-eight books were written to help people with their spiritual problems.
One of the big problems he saw was disharmony among the Lord's people in 17th Century England. He wrote of it, "As for those factious titles of Anabaptists, Independents, Presbyterians, or the like, I conclude that they came neither from Jerusalem nor Antioch, but rather from hell and Babylon, for they naturally tend to divisions". Bunyan's goal was not religious uniformity. Far from it; he suffered twelve years in the Bedford gaol for opposing it! Like John Milton, Bunyan saw no benefit in exchanging one mandatory church for another, including his own.
When they shall read this clearly in your charge
New Presbyter is but Old Priest writ Large.
Bunyan didn't seek uniformity among the Lord's people. But something better and harder to achieve: charity.
He wrote often on the subject, but especially in four short books: A Reason for My Practice in Worship, Differences in Judgment About Water Baptism No Bar to Communion, Peaceable Principles and True, and An Exhortation to Peace and Unity.
Let's begin, though, with another book, A Holy Life: the Beauty of Christianity. It was written near the end of his life and displays real maturity of thought and feeling. He writes:
"It is strange to see at this day how notwithstanding all the threatening of God, men are wedded to their own opinions, beyond what the law of grace and love will admit. Here is a Presbyter, here is an Independent, and a Baptist, so joined each man to his own opinion that they cannot have that communion one with another, as by the testament of the Lord Jesus Christ they are commanded and enjoined. What is the cause? Is it the truth? No! God is the author of no confusion in the church of God. It is then because every man makes too much of his own opinion, abounds too much in his own sense, and takes not care to separate his opinion from the iniquity that cleaveth thereto. That this is what confusion is in the church of Christ, `I am of Paul, I am of Apollos, I am of Cephas, I am of Christ' is too manifest. But what unbecoming language is this for the children of the same Father, members of the same body, heirs of the same glory to be accustomed to?
"Whether it is pride, or hypocrisy, or ignorance, or self, or the devil, or the Jesuit, or all these jointly working with the church, it makes and maintains these names of distinction. This distance and want of love, this contempt of one another, these base and under-valuing thoughts of brethren, will be better seen, to the shame and confusion of some, in the Judgment".
This is what he's saying: Sectarianism with its isolation, self-pride, and contempt for other believers will send you to hell! Even if you're right and they're wrong!
Does this mean that he sought the fellowship of all professed believers--whatever their doctrine and practice? No. In his title, A Reason of My Practice and Worship, he begins thusly: "With whom I dare not hold communion".
To whom will he refuse Christian fellowship? He tells us: "I dare not have communion with those who profess not faith and holiness, or that are not visible saints by calling". He goes on to explain himself: "A visible saint must profess faith and repentance, and consequently, holiness of life; and with none else dare I commune".
Why not? He tells us:
1."Because God Himself hath so strictly put the difference".
2."Because it is so often commanded in the Scriptures".
3."Because the example of the New Testament churches before us have been a community of visible saints".
4."To hold communion with the open profane is most pernicious and destructive".
5."It provoketh God to punish with severe judgments".
Does it mean that Bunyan thought doctrine and church policy is irrelevant? No it doesn't. He wrote a good deal on both. In A Confession of My Faith, he produced a careful exposition of Calvinism. Elsewhere, he chided the Quakers for preferring their "inner light" to "the sure light of Scripture". He wrote on the Sabbath, on the Law, on the Trinity, on Justification, and on many other doctrinal issues. On church policy, he has nothing to prove: he went to prison for his convictions.
Does it mean that some doctrines shouldn't be discussed? Or differences of opinion mustn't be aired? No it doesn't. Again, he writes:
"This unity and peace consists in our joining and agreeing to pray for, and to press after, those truths we do not know".
Ironically, Bunyan got himself into a fix with the second part of his book, A Reason for My practice. After telling us "With whom I dare not hold communion", he turns to "With whom I dare".
"I dare have communion, church communion, with those that are visible saints by calling; with those that are by the word of the Gospel have been brought over to faith and holiness".
He tells us why he "dare". "I am bold to hold communion with visible saints as afore, because God hath communion with them, whose example in the case we are straitly commanded to follow: `Receive ye one another, as Christ Jesus hath received you--saith Paul--"to the glory of God" (Romans 15:1-7).
He adds: "If we reject visible saints by calling, saints that have communion with God...as much as in us lieth we take from them their very privileges, and the blessings to which they are born of God". In other words, we're not at liberty to extend or withhold our fellowship to other saints. We owe it to them. As it is written: "Owe no man anything but to love one another".
What he says is not objectionable. What he doesn't say is. What he doesn't say is "I dare hold communion only with visible saints who are baptized by immersion". Bunyan taught that the church was open to all saints--even those who differed on baptism or other secondary issues.
William Kiffin was the leading Baptist of the day. He and others invited Bunyan to publicly debate the issue with them. John refused on the grounds that "I am slow-witted". They wrote against him; he answered them in print.
They asked: "How long is it since you were a Baptist? It is an ill bird that bewrayeth its nest".
John answered: "Since you would know by what name I would be distinguished from others, I tell you, I would be, and hope I am, a Christian; and choose, if God should count me worthy, to be called a Christian, a believer, or some other name which is approved by the Holy Ghost".
More seriously, they inquired: "Is baptism none of the laws of Christ?"
They needn't have asked. Bunyan had made it clear before. "That touching shadowish or figurative ordinances, I believe that Christ hath ordained two in His church, viz. water baptism and the supper of the Lord; both of which are of excellent use to the church in this world, they being to us representations of the death and resurrection of Christ, and are, as God shall make them, helps to our faith therein. But I count them not the fundamentals of our Christianity not grounds or rule of communion with saints. Servants they are, and mystical ministers, to teach and instruct us in the most weighty matters of the kingdom of God. I therefore, here declare my reverent esteem of them; yet dare not remove them, as some do, from the place and end, where by God they are set and appointed; nor ascribe to them more than they are ordered to have in their first and primitive institution. It is possible to commit idolatry even with God's own appointments."
Kiffin ups the ante: "We have now found an advocate for sin against God, in the breach of one of His holy commands".
The tinker replied:
"But Sir, who have I pleaded for in the denial of any one ordinance of God? Yea, or for their neglect of it either? What I say is, but that men must have light, that they may not do in darkness..."
Bunyan, therefore, was not arguing against baptism; he was arguing for charity to those who didn't understand it as well as he did.
In his An Exhortation to Peace and Unity, he said: "This unity and peace may consist in the ignorance of many truths and in the holding of some errors; or else this duty of peace and unity could not be practicable by any on this side perfection; but we must now `endeavor the unity of the Spirit...till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God'".
By saying this, Bunyan opens himself to the charge of caprice. "If we can dispense with baptism, why not repentance?" He tells us why by setting priorities or distinguishing what errors are consistent with fellowship and which are not.
"Therefore, I am for holding communion thus, because love, which above all things we are commanded to put on, is of much more worth than to break about baptism. `Love is the fulfilling of the law', but he fulfills it, not who judgeth and setteth at nought his brother that stumbleth, offendeth, and maketh weak his brother; and all for the sake of a circumstance, that to which he cannot consent, except he sin against his own soul, or Papist-like, live by an implicit faith. But to conclude this; when we attempt to force our brother beyond his light, or to break his heart with grief, to thrust him beyond his faith, or to bar him from his privilege, how can we say, `I love'? What shall I say? To make (baptism) the door of fellowship which God hath not; yea to make that the excluding and including charter, the bounds, bar, and rule of communion, when by the word of the everlasting testament there is no warrant for it; to speak charitably, if it not be for the want of love; it is for want of knowledge in the mysteries of the kingdom of Christ. Strange! Take two Christians equal in all points but this...yet this circumstance of water shall drown and sweep away all his excellencies, not counting him worthy of that reception with hand and heart shall be given a novice in religion, because he consents to water!"
He sharpens the rebuke:
"To divide into parties, or to shut each other from church communion, though from greater points, and upon higher pretenses than this of water baptism, hath heretofore been counted carnal, and the actors herein as babyish Christians".
The Baptists had argued for the glory of God, for the welfare of the church and for the purity of baptism. But they had forgotten something, hadn't they? Or, someone.
The Dreamer brings it to their attention:
"If we reject visible saints by calling...it tempteth the devil to fall upon those that are alone, and have none to help them".
What is the cause of this bitter in-fighting? And the cure? John knows:
"But here is our misery, that we no sooner receive anything for the truth but we presently ascend the chair of infallibility with it, as though in this, we could not err. Hence it is, we who are impatient of contradiction, and become uncharitable to those who are not of the same mind; but now a consciousness that we may mistake, or that if my brother err in one thing, I may err in another, this will unite us in affection, and engage us to press after perfection. Oh then, that we could but unite and agree to go to God for one another, in confidence that He will teach us; and that, if any one of us want wisdom--as who of us does not--we might agree to ask of God who giveth to all men liberally and upbraideth no man. Let us, like those people of spoken in the second of Isaiah, say one to another, `Come, let us go to the LORD, for He will teach us His ways, and we will walk in His paths".
Bunyan closes one work with these wholesome words:
"In the midst of your zeal for the Lord, remember that the visible saint is His, and is privileged in all those spiritual things that you have in the word. Quarrel not with him about things that are circumstantial, but receive him in the Lord, as becometh saints; if he will not have communion with you, the neglect is his, not yours."
"Brethren, close, close, be as one, as the Father and Christ are one.
1.This is the way to: Convince the world that you are Christ's and subjects of one Lord; whereas the contrary make them doubt it.
2.This is the way to increase love, that grace so much desired by some, and so little enjoyed by others.
3.This is the way to savor and to taste of the Spirit of God in each other's experience; for which, if you find it, cannot but bless.
4.This is the way to increase knowledge.
5.This is the way to remove secret jealousies and murmurings one against the other.
6.This is the way to bring them out of the world into fellowship, that now stand off from our Gospel privileges, for the sake of our vain janglings.
7.This is the way to hasten the work of Christ's kingdom in the world and to forward His coming..."
8.This is the way to obtain that "Well done, you good and faithful servant".
John Bunyan died in 1688. But "He being dead, yet speaks". The issue of baptism divided saints in the 17th Century--and no less today. We can add to the list: Church Government, the Sabbath, Eschatology, Bible translations, drinking, and a thousand more.
It's not that these things shouldn't be discussed. It's not that we're not permitted an opinion on them. It's just that they mustn't divide us. When they do--we're not contending for the truth--we're just sinning! We're "destroying those for whom Christ died"; we're unravelling the people whom Christ died to "knit together".
Let's close with Bunyan:
"Well, God banish bitterness out of the churches, and pardon them that are maintainers of schisms and divisions among the godly. `Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity'".
| Home Page |
Sermons provided by www.GraceBaptist.ws |