Many seem to think that the Bible has been given for the sole purpose of making us wise unto salvation by faith in Christ. Thank God, that is the primary purpose, but it is not the sole purpose. There is a higher purpose closely connected with it. It is that the man of God may be perfect thoroughly furnished unto all good works.
When God enjoins the “right-dividing” of His word, this is presupposing the possibility and danger of “wrong dividing” and of garbling the truth. Israel and the Church, Law and Grace, Kingdom and Body, earthly and heavenly things, these have been mixed and Galatianism was the result.
If a hungry man wants to cook a good meal, he does not put potatoes, sugar, syrup, salt, sausage, beets and bananas in one pot. What a potpourri that would be, and how useless and tasteless but this man picturizes some who try to feed the hungry souls that belong to Christ. Faith, and also stronger faith, comes not by PRAYING, but by the hearing, i.e. obeying the Word of God. Hear the Word as often as you can, act upon it and you will “grow up as calves of the stall.” Malachi 4:2.
Culpable ignorance! How we should dread it; for it brought Christ to the cross, it made Israel’s leaders misleaders (Matthew 22:24), it alienated from God (Romans 10:2); it made of a conscientious young student a blasphemer and persecutor (I Timothy 1:13).
