Thoughts on Christian Living Book #2 by Dr. W. A. Dillard - HTML preview

REDUCED TO COMMON DENOMINATORS

“They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us.” I John 2:19.

There is an acceptance in “Christianity” today that the Bible does not teach. It has to do with reducing the premise to the lowest common denominator. Please think about it for a moment.

From childhood’s earliest days of introduction to mathematics, instructions consistently emphasized reducing numbers, especially fractions, to the lowest common denominator. It made such problems so much easier to solve. It is still a great rule of business math. Such rules, including this one, are good and helpful in various avenues of life, but it is important that those rules not be bent to accommodate other disciplines where they do not belong. The results can be disastrous. In the field of Christianity, reducing tenants to the lowest common denominator, allows for blatant contradiction which makes the entire structure of it to be meaningless. If you are still with me, hang on!

The right standing of one’s spirit with God has always been by grace through faith since the first human sin in Eden. It is not new to the New Testament, but the New Testament is predicated upon it. The doctrines of our Lord in the New Testament is what creates Christians, as per Acts 11 in Antioch, where the disciples were first labeled. There was not then nor is there now any accommodations for lethargy, inertia, sluggishness, or stoppage of advancement following initial repentance and faith in Christ. The Bible has nothing good to say about those actions, and it is inappropriate to label those who embrace them as “Christian.” That is nothing more than employing the mathematical reduction to the lowest common denominator. The “fire escape” plan that the God of mercy provides from Eden to the end of the millennium does not a Christian make.

It is belief in and practice of the faith once delivered to the saints whereby one becomes a Christian. That term is peculiar to the New Testament, but it definitely denotes much more than initial faith in God which multitudes of Old Testament saints had, but were never known as Christians.

Modern times have seen a myriad of institutions spring up, all claiming to be Christian, and most all of them denying the fundamental Bible teachings by which Christianity has been known throughout the

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