Who Needs Doctrine?

“When you say, ‘I don’t care about doctrine, it’s how you live that matters,’ you are ironically promoting the doctrine of justification by works. You are proposing that what God really wants is a good life. The response can be similar when someone claims that it doesn’t matter which religion you belong to, because all religions are alike and no one should be held to a particular doctrine of God. Yet that assumes that God is not holy, and that He does not hold people responsible for how they live. In other words, to say, ‘no one should be held to a particular view of God’ is to assume and promote a particular view of God. To say, ‘doctrine about God doesn’t matter’ is itself a statement of doctrine about God – and therefore it does matter! So Martyn Lloyd-Jones concludes: “It is no use your saying, ‘We are not interested in doctrine; we are concerned about life’; if your doctrine is wrong, your life will be wrong.“

... Tim Keller

H.T. Renewing Thoughts