Part One

In the first post in this series, I started with the motivation for detecting and correcting doctrinal and practical error.  It needs to happen, but it won’t happen if you don’t know something’s wrong.  If you know something’s wrong, it’s probably because you know what’s right, so you also know the correction.  Scripture is clear that detection must occur.  The Apostle Paul in 1 Thessalonians 5:21-22 writes this:

21 Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. 22 Abstain from all appearance of evil.

There are three commands in these two verses and they all relate to this subject.  The first part is most important, because you can’t obey the other two without obeying the first one.  First you prove everything, which is to test everything, the Greek word, dokimazo, which is a metallurgical term.  Metals are tested for impurity and then purified.

I like to call the “testing,” “keeping my grid up.”  The grid portrays a kind of mesh that catches error.  Error can’t get through.  The grid represents some kind of criteria by which judgment is made.  Why would I think this “proving” relates to doctrinal or practical error?  The flow of the chapter indicates it, considering the previous verse, which says, “Despise not prophesyings.”  Prophesying or preaching, forthtelling of the Word of God, should not be despised.  It should be proved though.  It presents a balance for the listening to preaching.

Once something has been proven or tested, if you don’t despise it to begin with, you will hold fast that which is good.  Paul starts with the positive.  True doctrine and practice should be embraced.  It reminds me of the part of 1 Corinthians 13, “Love rejoiceth in the truth.”  “Good” is morally good.

The second command is what someone does with doctrinal and practical error.  He abstains from it.  The language is “all appearance of evil,” and “appearance” is not something that looks like something or appears like it.  The Greek word and the English word mean “form.”  It’s simple.  “Abstain from all form of evil.”  “Evil” is the opposite of “good,” so morally bad or wicked.

The Apostle Paul commands the members of the church at Thessalonica to do what this series is about.  Doctrinal and practical error is not good.  It is evil.  It first must be detected by having the grid up.  The good must be embraced and the evil jettisoned.

What is the standard for detection and correction?  Jesus in Matthew 22:29 said, “Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures.”  Error comes from not knowing the scriptures, according to Jesus.  The standard for detection and correction is scripture, and that is the grid that is kept up in order to prove all things.  When Paul spoke about the error in Jerusalem in Acts 13:27, he said the reason was that they knew not the voices of the prophets that they read every Sabbath.  In 2 Peter 3:16, Peter says that error comes when unstable and ignorant men wrest the scriptures to their own destruction.