Every group of people, if they get together long enough, will naturally develop their own jargon: their unique insider language that they employ for the sake of identity, clarity, and summary. Lawyers, doctors, soldiers, etc. all have it.
The modern-day Church, too, has its own jargon: words that possess meanings different from everyday usage; (think “quiet time”, “charismatic”, “the Fall”, “the lost”, “tarry in prayer, etc.). There’s nothing wrong with this and is actually inevitable. Nevertheless, for us in the Church, a problem can arise when our “jargon” is an already existing word in the Bible. When this happens, we inadvertently transpose our modern-day meaning to the Bible word, resulting in scriptural misunderstanding. Examples of such church words are “Bishop”, “repent”, and one most of us easily forget is a jargon: “DOCTRINE”.
The term “doctrine” is lexically defined as a BODY OF IDEAS, held as being truthful or correct, and taught as the belief of the church. Or you can see “doctrine” as Truth statements drawn out of scripture.” Examples are “doctrine of Trinity”, “doctrine of prosperity”, and “doctrine of holiness”.
“Doctrine” in the Bible, however, is simply referring to any form of “instruction” or “manner of teaching”. As such we read of Jesus’ “doctrine” (Mat 7:28), “the doctrine of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees” (Mat 16:12), “the apostle’s doctrine” (Act 2:42) and even “doctrines of devils” (1Ti 4:1). As you can see, the modern restricted (‘theological’) meaning is not the same as the Bible meaning.
So, before we specifically explore the concept of doctrine, one lesson we can learn today is to be conscious while reading the words of scripture to take care not to impose our modern meanings into it. Because this will cause us to THINK we know what the Bible is saying, when in actual fact we’re the ones putting words into the mouth of the Bible authors.
AMEN.
More Blessings await you today; you’ll not miss them in Jesus’ Name.
GREG ELKAN