Fellowship with Vital Error is

Scripture: II Peter 2:1-9

The ministry of Charles Haddon Spurgeon began during a general spiritual decline in England. The evangelical churches had not escaped the tendencies of the times. The work of Whitefield and Wesley was admired, but it was little followed. The cutting edges of biblical truth had been gradually dulled. There seemed to be a prevailing feeling that a more refined and intellectual presentation of the gospel was needed in the Victorian Era.

The things that were true of the country in general were particularly true of London and of the Baptist Chapel at New Park Street, situated in a dim and dirty region close to the South bank of the Thames. This congregation had a great history stretching back into the seventeenth century. For some years it had been in a state of decline, and the large ornate building, built to seat about a thousand, was three quarters filled with empty pews. This was the scene confronting nineteen-year-old Spurgeon when he first stood in the pulpit of New Park Street Chapel on the cold, dull morning of December 18, 1853.¹ Spurgeon soon attacked this lifeless traditionalism in very direct language:

You think that because a thing is ancient, therefore it must be venerable. You are lovers of the antique. You would not have a road mended, because your grandfather drove his wagon along the rut that is there. "Let it always be there," you say, "let it always be knee deep. Did not your grandfather go through it when it was knee deep with mud, and why should you not do the same? It was good enough for him, and it is good enough for you. You always have taken an easy seat in the chapel. You never saw revival; you do not want to see it."²

We have previously noted that things soon changed under the ministry of Spurgeon, and on an ordinary Sunday, 1866, at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, morning and evening the congregation exceeded ten thousand people. But may we never forget that Spurgeon never forsook those fundamental principles of the faith that the Baptists always have stood upon in order to be accepted by his peers when many in the Baptist Union were departing those ancient landmarks. He identified the source of theological errors as "a want of adequate faith in the divine inspiration of the sacred Scriptures."³ Mischievous errors creep in where the full confidence in the Scripture is weak. In this struggle, the majority of the Baptists would not follow his leadership, even though many of them agreed with his theological position. They preferred unity above the maintenance of doctrinal purity. He attacked this position by saying, "First pure, then peaceable; if only one is attainable, choose the former. Fellowship with known and vital error is participation in sin. . . . To pursue union at the price of truth is treason to the Lord Jesus."⁴

May these principles be instilled into our consciences, and may God grant to us the character to stand on them and the ability to teach them to future generations.--EWT

[1]Iain H. Murray, The Forgotten Spurgeon (London: Banner of Truth Trust, 1966), pp. 30-31.

[2]lbid, p. 30.

[3]L. Russ Bush, and Tom I. Nettles, Baptists and the Bible (Chicago: Moody Press, 1980), p. 247.

[4]Ibid, p. 249.