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Non-Essential Doctrines: The Test of Obedience

September 11, 2012 17 comments

In response to the many compromisers, who want to pick and choose which doctrines to believe – or even to rank the doctrines in importance by tiers, finding the “essential” things a person must believe in order to be saved — comes this great answer from Charles Spurgeon.  Such unbelief is nothing new, the same today as in Spurgeon’s day, and still so relevant and true in every area of biblical doctrines, where professing Christians sin in unbelief by rejecting “part” of what God says.  So the next time a liberal-minded preacher uses the line that “not all Christians believe this” or “it isn’t essential to believe this” in regards to what the Bible reveals to us (including such things as the Genesis 1 creation, and many other doctrinal points), remember this point and illustration from Spurgeon.

From sermon #359, “The Tabernacle—Outside the Camp”:

Some will say, “You make too much of non-essentials.” That is a thing I frequently hear—non-essentials! There are certain things in Scripture, they tell us, that are non-essentials, and therefore they are not to be taken any notice of. Doctrinal views, and the Baptism of Believers, for instance—these are non-essential to salvation, and therefore, is the inference which follows according to the theory of some—we may be very careless about them!

Do you know, Believer in Christ, that you are a servant? And what would you think if a servant should first wittingly neglect her duty, and then come to you and tell you that it is non-essential? If she should not light the fire tomorrow morning, and when you came down, she were to say, “Well, Sir, it is non-essential; you won’t die though the fire is not lit”—or if, when she spread the breakfast, there was no provision there but a crust of bread, and nothing for you to drink; what if she should say, “Well, Sir, it is non-essential, you know? There is a glass of water for you and a piece of bread—the rest is non-essential.” If you came home and found that the rooms had never been swept, and the dust was upon them, or that the bed had not been made, and that you could not take an easy night’s rest, and the servant should say, “Oh, it is non-essential, Sir; it is quite nonessential.”

I think you would find it to be non-essential for you to keep her any longer, but extremely essential that you should discharge her! And what shall we say of those men who put aside the words of Christ, and say, “His precepts are quite non-essential”? Why, I think because they are non-essential, they therefore become the test of your obedience! If you could be saved by them, and if they were necessary to your salvation, your selfishness would lead you to observe them; but inasmuch as they are not necessary to your salvation, they become tests of your willingness to obey Christ!