Last time I ended with these words: “God has given us His terminal purpose for all things and that includes the Church. He has also given the Church instrumental means on how to seek the terminal purpose. But the Church has taken His instrumental means and used them for Her own terminal purposes. This is humanism.” I would like to expand on this idea in this BLOG.
There are many conservatives that will take those within the liberal camp and knock them for replacing the instrumental means of God for humanistic ones. While they use differing language, I am using this type of language for illustrative purposes. They will wax eloquent on how liberals have replaced preaching with nice talks and have replaced Bible study with meetings which do nothing. While those things are true, we must also be careful not to miss something that many conservatives have done. They have replaced God’s terminal purpose with other things. While this is perhaps not as bad as the liberals, this is still using God’s instrumental means for other purposes. In other words, many conservatives and liberals do the same thing in different ways.
Let me use one example to set this out. Preaching is very important in the Bible and in true churches. Preaching the Bible is what should be preached. We are commanded to “preach the Word.” We are never commanded to preach something other than the Word. But what is God’s purpose in preaching and then in preaching the Word? Does He just want men to stand up and teach the Bible? There are many conservatives that thing that preaching the Word is nothing more than to take a text and teach it using what is in the text. That is one style of preaching, but does that kind of preaching really fit with the terminal purpose of God?
It is possible to think that preaching the Word is God’s terminal purpose in preaching, but in fact we know that God has an eternal purpose. If preaching does not have as its goal the glory of God, it misses God’s terminal goal in preaching. The terminal goal of Scripture is also to shine forth the glory of God and so preaching that does not use the text to set out the glory of God also misses the real purpose for preaching. A liberal might think that he or she is to preach in order to make the people feel good about themselves or to move people to social action. That person has missed the whole point of preaching. A conservative might think that he is to preach in order to inform people of the Word of God. Yet if the conservative misses the real purpose of the text he is in the same boat as the liberal. Both have missed the real issue and that is the glory of God.
We can now see clearly how the Church is using the instrumental means that God has given Her and yet is not using them for the terminal end that God has purposed. If the terminal end or purpose is not the goal and the reason that the instrumental means are being used, those means turn to legalism or humanism. The Pharisees used the means that God provided. They prayed, but their prayers were meant to be seen by men. They gave alms, but that was in order to be seen by men. They fasted, but again that was for the purpose of being seen. In the Old Testament God deals sternly with the Israelites because they did the outward actions but they had no love for Him in what they did. They would do the outward sacrifices and the outward forms of worship, but their hearts were far from Him. They had their own version of formalism. The modern Church has Her own formalism. We apply the means and do many activities, but we do not know God. We have replaced love for God to doing something for God. We have lost the true idea of worship and what it means to love and glorify God. We are an impoverished group continuing on with our outward forms of worship thinking we are doing well and yet God is not present.
God Loves... Himself 
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