Balance Is The Key Of Life (Part 3)

Thursday, Apr. 16, 2009 Posted: 7:47:30PM HKT

A PASTOR MUST PROTECT HIS FLOCK

Paul exhorts every pastor with a strong word:

Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God, which He bought with His own blood. I know that after I have,come in among you savage wolves will and will not spare the flock. Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them. (Acts 20:28-30 NIV)

Every shepherd has the awesome responsibility to guide, govern and guard the sheep in his flock. As pastor of City Harvest Church, I am not exempted from this responsibility. I also have the burden and responsibility of protecting my congregation whenever I see danger approaching. The truth is, in the last four to five years, there has been a rather erroneous seductive doctrine released into the body of Christ, an unbalanced teaching promoting an extreme, irresponsible brand of "grace." You and I need to see it for what it is and be careful not to be seduced into a distorted belief system.

At this point, I want to emphatically say that I have no intention whatsoever to discredit the ministry of any pastor or church. My wife and I love every pastor in Asia and appreciate them tremendously for the work they are doing for the kingdom of God. Besides, many who preach the following questionable teachings may have done so with the highest and noblest intentions. I believe they have been very sincere in sharing their beliefs, only that they are sincerely wrong in the substance of their beliefs.

Questionable Teaching #1: You Don't Have To Confess Your Sins To Be Forgiven!

This basically contradicts 2,000 years of mainstream evangelical Christian belief. If this doctrine is true, then everyone from Billy Graham, to Luis Palau, to Reinhard Bonkke, to Josh McDowell are all wrong! All the billions of evangelism tracts printed by Navigators, Campus Crusade for Christ and many others in the last century were all erroneous! What does the Bible say?

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1 Jn. 1:9)

Those advocating this brand of unbalanced grace say that we must never build a doctrine just from John's writings. Then, what about the words of Jesus Christ? Isn't this how He taught us to pray to heavenly Father,

And forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who is indebted to us ... (Lk 1:4)

Questionable Teaching #2: Being Taught The 10 Commandments Is Like Taking Poison!

Those who espoused this brand of extreme grace proclaimed that holding on to the 10 Commandments would cause a believer to lose his freedom in Christ. They preached that the teaching of the 10 Commandments has absolutely no place in new covenant church life, and that believers who have been taught them were, in a sense, actually given spiritual poison!

The common error here is the simplistic equating of the 10 Commandments as the whole Law of the old covenant. This is erroneous because the Law is really made up of three portions: civil, ceremonial, and moral. While the civil and ceremonial aspects of the Law are no longer relevant to us in the new covenant, the moral aspect still is. As such, with the exception of the Sabbath observance (Commandment #4), everyone of the 10 Commandments are still taught and recorded in the New Testament. For the brevity of space, I would give just one Scriptural reference for each one of them:

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The Rev Dr Kong Hee
The Christian Post (Singapore) Guest Columnist