Unity Starts With Defining True Doctrine, Pt 1

Quoting Martyn Lloyd-Jones . . .

	The majority-view today holds that the way to produce unity is not to discuss and consider doctrine, but rather to work together and pray together. The slogans include 'doctrine divides'. This becomes serious when applied to the question of evangelism. The most common argument used is that evangelism is impossible apart from this unity, that a divided church is an offense to the world, and that while we are divided the world will not listen to us. During an evangelistic campaign in London, a Christian newspaper carried the headline: "Let us have a theological truce during the Campaign". A well-known theological leader had also committed himself to this: "We can all at any rate be ecumenical in evangelism". That it is only after the stage of evangelism that you begin to consider doctrine is a very common and prevailing view. All of this makes it of vital importance that we should be clear in our thinking on these questions which I have raised with regard to the basis of Christian unity. ... The New Testament everywhere insists upon true doctrine. I emphasize this because, as we have seen, the whole tendency today is to discourage talk about doctrine and to urge that we work together, because 'doctrine divides'. Doctrine is being discounted in the interests of supposed unity. The fact is, however, that there is no unity apart from truth and doctrine, and it is departure from this that causes division and breaks unity. The first thing the New Testament emphasizes is that doctrine can be defined. If this were not so Paul would never have written his Epistle to the Romans. ... He had been unable to visit them, so he writes to them a summary of his teaching. It is a great doctrinal statement in which the cardinal doctrines of justification, atonement, union with Christ, assurance, the final perseverance of the saints, and so on, are set forth. Let us remind ourselves again of 1 Corinthians 3:11: "Other foundation can no man lay than is laid". The apostle had already laid it: Jesus Christ and Him crucified; there is no other. That is an absolute. What is the purpose of 1Corinthians 15? Is it not to say just this: that belief or disbelief in the literal physical resurrection is not an immaterial or unimportant point? The apostle says that it is as important as this, that if it had not happened, "then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain...ye are yet in your sins" (verses 14,17). But the whole tendency today is to say that it does not matter whether a man believes in the literal physical resurrection or not. The apostle Paul says that it is an absolute and that there is no gospel apart from it: 'Ye are yet in your sins'! The same argument is found in 2 Tim. 2. Nowhere, perhaps is it stated more clearly than in the first chapter to the Epistle to the Galatians. He 'marvels' that they are so soon turned away from the gospel which he had preached to them: "I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel; which is not another..." (Gal. 1:6-7) How can he say that if you do not define the gospel? But that is far removed from the modern attitude, and the way in which the subject of unity is being presented today.
From:	The Basis of Christian Unity (1962)