Introduction
1. IT BEGAN IN SCOTLAND
   
2. THOMAS CAMPBELL WRITES HIS DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
   
3. THE SPIRIT OF THE "DECLARATION AND ADDRESS"
   
4. PRINCIPLES OF THE DOCUMENT
   
5. HISTORIC NOTES ON OUR FIRST CHURCH
   
6. "LET CHRISTIAN UNITY BE OUR POLAR STAR"
   
7. THE NOBLEST ACT IN BARTON STONE'S LIFE
   
8. LEARNING FROM A BACKWOODS PREACHER
   
9. CHRISTIANS IN BABYLON
   
10. WHAT IS THE GOSPEL?
    
11. THE ESSENCE OF THE CAMPBELL PLEA
    
12. THE DEATH OF A DREAM
    
13. THE SAND CREEK ADDRESS
    
14. A MUDDLED MOVEMENT
    
15. THE AUTHORITY TOTEM
    
16. THE PARTY SPIRIT
    
17. THE BED OF PROCRUSTES
    
18. OUR COSTLIEST SIN: EXCLUSIVISM
    
19. RESTORATION OR REFORMATION
    
20. A BOY LEARNS THE MEANING OF BROTHERHOOD
    
21. THE BUTTING BRETHREN
    
22. ANALYSIS OF LEGALISM
    
23. THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIAN FELLOWSHIP
    
24. THOUGHTS ON FELLOWSHIP
    
25. ON THE ROCKS
    
26. WITHDRAWING FROM THE DISORDERLY
    
27. CAUSING DIVISIONS
    
28. TWO GREAT ERRORS
    
29. UNION IN TRUTH
    
30. ONE BODY IN CHRIST
    
31. UNITY AND IDENTITY
    
32. UNITY IN DIVERSITY
    
33. IS DOCTRINE IMPORTANT?
    
34. THE WEIGHTIER MATTERS
    
35. MUST WE GIVE UP OUR OPINIONS?
    
36. WHAT DIFFERENCES DO DIFFERENCES MAKE?
    
37. THE "ONE BAPTISM" AND FELLOWSHIP
    
38. ARE WE TO FELLOWSHIP THE UNIMMERSED?
    
39. OUR FATHERS ON "WHO IS A CHRISTIAN?"
    
40. "OUR BROTHERS IN THE DENOMINATIONS"
    
41. WHAT IS "OUR FELLOWSHIP"?
    
42. ARE WE TO FELLOWSHIP THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH?
    
43. I WOULD ABDICATE
    
44. A BASIC FALLACY TO OVERCOME
    
45. CAN WE BE UNITED AND NOT KNOW IT?
    
46. SEPARATED BUT NOT DIVIDED
    
47. THE ONE CHURCH INDIVISIBLE
    
48. UNITY WILL COME, BUT
    
49. IF NOT BROTHERHOOD, THEN CO-EXISTENCE
    
50. THIS IS OUR GLORY!
    
51. THE UNIFYING POWER OF THE CROSS
    

THE WEIGHTIER MATTERS

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faith; these you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. (Matt. 23:23)

The scribes and Pharisees were the doctors of the law and the official interpreters of the Scriptures. When it came to what the Scriptures meant they were "the Supreme Court." Jesus recognized this when he referred to them as those who "sit on Moses' seat." He even charged his disciples to "practice and observe whatever they tell you, but not what they do; for they preach but do not practice" (Mt. 23:2­3).

There was a fatal flaw in the way these "Ph.D.'s of the law" handled the Scriptures: they did not distinguish between matters of greater and lesser importance. This caused them to confuse mere details of the law with fundamental principles of the law. They were slow to see that while all truths are equally true all truths are not equally important.

Or to put it another way, they did not want to see what Jesus saw: that the Scriptures have "weightier matters" as well as matters not so weighty, even if important. It is a hazard in Biblical interpretation that has plagued God's people all these centuries-a failure to distinguish between vital truth and less important truth. Since greater and lesser truths are all equally true, there is the tendency to treat them as equally significant. Add to this the Pharisaical tendency to demand more of others than of oneself, which may plague us all, and we have an oppressive religion. There is thus Jesus' stinging rebuke: "They bind heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them upon men's shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers" (Mt. 23:2­4).

The "burdens" that the Pharisees imposed upon their people were their own interpretations of what it meant to keep the law, such as observing the Sabbath. These are preserved in the Mishnah, and when one reads these regulations today he may be tempted to laugh at such legalistic hairsplitting, but he is to remember that they were serious business to the Jews of Jesus' time since they spelled out in minute detail how the law was to be observed. Take, for example, some of the rules on what constituted work on the Sabbath day:

A knot could be tied if it could be untied with one hand.

A bucket may be tied to a belt but not to a rope.

One may spit if he spits on a smooth surface but not on a rough surface.

If a woman wore drawers and took aught out therein either in front of her or behind her, she is culpable, since it is likely to move around.

If one man bears a loaf of bread he is culpable, but if two men bear it they are not.

A woman may not go out with a needle that has an eye, or with a ring that bears a seal, or with a cochlea brooch, or with a spice­box or a perfume­flask.

A cripple may go out with his wooden stump. But if it has a cavity for pads it is susceptible to uncleanness.

On and on it goes. The Mishnah is more than twice the size of the New Testament and it is filled with such minute legalisms as these. The scribes often debated at length on what violated the Sabbath and what did not. May a man write letters of the alphabet on the Sabbath? If he forgets it is the Sabbath and writes as many as two letters he is guilty so long as it makes a lasting mark. May he scratch letters on his skin, such as write in the palm of the hand as students like to do on examination day? Rabbi Eliezer insisted that such would violate the Sabbath while Rabbi Joshua declared that was allowable.

This is what our Lord had to put up with in his dealings with the scribes and Pharisees. To them "the law" was not only what was written in the Scriptures but all the traditions as well. The tithing of mint, dill, and cumin was part of the minutiae of rabbinic tradition. These were spices and were not specifically named in the law as things to be tithed, but the rabbis advised that they be tithed, for it would make one more righteous. And so Jesus is saying that they were sticklers for the law as to tithe even spices and yet they ignored the laws that really matter.

We can better understand Jesus calling them hypocrites when he could see them examining a wooden leg in search for a cavity or a needle to see if it had an eye, while wholly indifferent to their own neglect of mercy and justice. It must have raised his ire to see the Pharisees examine a woman suspected of having something stuffed in her underwear, for if the object slipped from front to back it would be work and a violation of the Sabbath! Or to see them watch where a man expectorated, for if his spittle fell on something porous the absorption would require nature to work and the Sabbath would be violated! And yet they would turn their backs to "the sinners," however needy they might be. And so he blasted them as hypocrites!

A Look At Ourselves

Before we join our Lord in excoriating the Pharisees we would do well to look at ourselves. We draw lines on each other over whether "the cup" is one or multiple, whether it contains fermented or unfermented liquid, or whether it is served by a woman. We have argued over round and shaped notes, lesson leaves, graded classes, tuning forks, melodeons, organs, societies, kitchens, fellowship halls. We reject "those for whom Christ died" when they divorce, speak in tongues, think a different thought, entertain a new idea, drink wine, associate with "brothers in error," communicate with Carl Ketcherside or read Integrity or Restoration Review. Our colleges have fired people for attending a Full Gospel Men's Fellowship, going to the wrong church, speaking in tongues, assigning the wrong book, and for being "liberal." Many a teacher has had his class taken from him because he suggested that the Church of Christ is also a denomination, that we are not the only Christians, that instrumental music is not necessarily a sin, or just for being different. I know, for I have talked to scores of them by phone. We are as watchful over our unwritten creeds as the Pharisees ever were of their traditions. Moreover, we are often downright discourteous, rude, and unfair toward those "in error," and these are sometimes missionaries who dare to cross party lines and are forthwith abandoned on a foreign field with no support. Often our ethics is that "heretics" and "liberals" have no rights. How merciful, loving, and just are we in all these things? Are we too hypocrites?

We have here another principle of hermeneutics: We are to interpret the Bible in terms of the weightier matters and the greater truths. And it is the Lord himself who lays down the rule. If he would speak of weightier matters it is evident that there are lighter matters.

At least twice in Scripture we find Jesus referring to this rule. When the Pharisees questioned his eating with sinners and tax collectors, he invited them to make a study of Hosea 6:6, "I desire mercy and not sacrifice." Jesus urged them to go and find out what the prophet meant (Mt. 9:13). It was an appeal to the weightier matters. When the Pharisees questioned him for allowing his disciples to pluck ears of grain on the Sabbath he again appealed to Hosea's great line, "I desire mercy and not sacrifice" (Mt. 12:7). This time he says to them, "If you had known what this means you would not have condemned the guiltless."

If you had known what this means gets to the heart of Biblical interpretation. We may know the letter of the Bible without knowing its spirit. Jesus is really pointing us to what the Bible is all about, the weightier matters of peace, mercy, grace, justice, and as Micah 6:8 adds, "walking humbly before God."

Another way of stating this principle is that the Bible, as well as all of life, must be seen in true perspective. An alarming characteristic of the human mind is that it can lose all sense of proportion. A person can see things of no importance alongside things of eternal importance, even in his own life, and make no distinction between them. William Barclay tells of the Scotsman who wrote in his diary on a given day that his wife had given birth to a son and he had received a green swallow from Jamaica. With an astonishing lack of perspective he placed the birth of a man child into the world, even his own son, and the arrival of a green swallow side by side.

We do this when we make the time and frequency of the Lord's Supper as important a the meaning of the Lord's Supper. It is a lack of perspective that causes us to consider the how of singing hymns, doing missions, or caring for the needy as much as the acts themselves. We sometimes get so lopsided that we will not do good things, and will even hinder others doing them, if the how is not our way. Jesus being the judge, it is safe to conclude that it is better to err on the side of being too merciful or too yielding than to be too exact and too demanding.

I am reminded of the preacher who insisted that the use of instrumental music is as serious a sin as adultery. I could not believe he really believed that. His approach to the Bible forced him to such a conclusion.

Paul had a sense of proportion when on the one hand he gladly circumcised Timothy but on the other hand adamantly refused to circumcise Titus. Difference in circumstance affect the way a matter is decided. The "necessary things" that the apostles imposed upon the Gentile churches in Acts 15 were crucial to their circumstance, but they have little importance to us. A man might fight in one war but be a protester in the next. This sense of perspective, which is balanced thinking, is to guide our study of the Bible. We will then no longer argue over unimportant details or over issues that do not matter. Many lives have been made miserable and many churches have been torn asunder over trifles.

The right perspective is ours-the proper balance-when we have our eye fixed upon the Cross and upon God's grace. When all things in life are measured in the light of the eternal verities, then life will be whole and eternity secure. This is what our Lord meant when he spoke of "If thine eye be single (sound), thy whole body shall be full of light" (Mt. 6:22). He had just said, "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." If our treasure is heavenly things, "the weightier matters," then the eye is sound and life will be rightly proportioned.

Another way to say all this is that religion can be bogus as well as real, false as well as true. False or bogus religion can have its prooftexts right out of the Bible. The Pharisees were testimony that religion can be bad and yet "scriptural." Jesus said they searched the Scriptures, but they missed the weightier matters.

I am persuaded that the one essential ingredient of true religion is humility before God. A religion that makes people arrogant and self­righteous cannot be true religion. The one thing that God requires along with justice and mercy is to walk humbly before God. "Trust in the Lord with all thine heart," Prov. 3:5 urges us, "and lean not upon thine own understanding." That says it all, and such humility comes only as we surrender our pride at the foot of the Cross and glory in the grace of God, and pray the sinner's prayer, "God, be merciful to me a sinner."

That prayer, which so impressed our Lord, is surely one of the weightier truths of the Bible. Grace and mercy along with humility and prayer is what true religion is all about.

(Restoration Review: Vol. 30, No. 3; March 1988)