IS CONTEMPORARY HERETICAL?

Hugo McCord

An article has been mailed to me entitled, “Is Contemporary Heretical?” The author writes “that change is very healthy.”

But sometimes change is sinful, as from the gospel which Paul preached, “let” the changer “be accursed” (Galatians 1:8-9).

On the other hand, sometimes change is commendable, as from “false teachers” back to “the truth of the gospel” (2 Peter 2:1; Galatians 2:5). Apollos changed his preaching from “John’s baptism” to “Christ’s” baptism (Acts 18:25-26; Matthew 28:18-20).

The author of the article gives Paul as an example of one ready to make any changes necessary to convert sinners: “I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some” (1 Corinthians 9:22).

But Paul’s fervent desire to convert his kinfolks led him into a sinful change, a change from “the blood of Christ” back to “the blood of goats and bulls” (Hebrews 9:13-14). He offered animal blood in a temple sacrifice in 58 A.D., 28 years after animal blood was out of date (Acts 21:26). He violated what he himself had written:

Do I seek the approval of men or God? Or do I seek to please men? If I were yet pleasing men, I would not be a slave of Christ (Galatians 1:10).

Four years after Paul’s sin he made it clear that he had done wrong as he wrote that Jesus had taken the law of Moses “out of the way, having nailed it to the cross” (Colossians 2:14).

Indeed, change is “very healthy” and required by the Lord if “worship” becomes “mindless and heartless routine.” Some people in Isaiah’s day engaged in “mindless and heartless routine,” honoring the Lord “with their mouth and with their lips,” but they had “removed their heart far from” him (Isaiah 29:13).

Similarly, Jesus called “mindless and heartless routine” in worship “vain” and hypocritical: “This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me” (Matthew 15:7-9).

No, “Contemporary” is not necessarily “Heretical.” Whether the songs sung in worship are old or new, or whether they be “psalms” or “hymns” or “spiritual songs” (Colossians 3:16), is not defined by the Lord. What he specifies is that the singing be “with grace in” the worshipers’ “hearts to God” (Colossians 3:16).

The “sacrifice of praise to God” is in two parts and is unchangeable: (1) external, “the fruit of lips” (Hebrews 13:15); and (2) internal, “plucking the strings of” the heart “to the Lord” (Ephesians 5:19).