Today is the 44th anniversary of the two-hour dinner at Lüchow’s on Manhattan’s 14th Street to which Otis Q. Sellers treated his students, yours truly included, during his visit to my city. I was fortunate to be seated next to him for this first meeting. Sam Marrone told me (April 26, 2023) that I had sat at Sellers’s left, Sam at his right. I’d love to hear from anyone else who was there that day! See the photo (from the year before, 1978) at the end of this post. A.G.F.
When entertaining a proposition, Otis Q. Sellers’s first question was: Is it true? It guided all subsequent questions. Not: “Is it the scientific, scholarly, or ecclesiastical consensus?” Consensus be damned.
He took his cue from the apostle John who, carried by the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:21), wrote that he had no greater joy (χαρά, chara) than hearing that his children walk in the truth (τῇ ἀλήθεια, tē alētheia) (3 John 1:4). This confession invites the sure inference that John’s pleasure was analogous to God’s.
That is, seeing His children walk in the truth is a divine delight second to none.
But what is truth? That’s what Pilate asked Jesus, his divine prisoner (John 18:39).
Jesus had just affirmed to Pilate the coming of His Kingdom and therefore His Kingship (vv. 36-37) to whom he’d soon intimate the heavenly source of the earthly authority (ἐξουσίαν, exousian) he had over Him (19:11).
During His ministry Jesus had told others that He is (among other things) the truth (ἡ ἀλήθεια, hē alētheia) (John 14:6); there’s no reason to think He’d have withheld that answer from Pilate—had he but stayed for it. The challenge, however, of placating a bloodthirsty mob and keeping the office he held at Caesar’s pleasure had concentrated his mind wonderfully, and so off to the balcony of his residence he repaired.
Hours earlier, Jesus had prayed that by the truth (ἐν τῇ ἀλήθεια, en tē alētheia) the Father would set Jesus’ disciples apart for special service (ἁγίασον, hagioson, i.e., “sanctify”) (John 17:17).
Did Jesus mean “by His own person”? Or did He mean “by the truths collected in the Hebrew Scriptures plus the truths the Holy Spirit will bring to their remembrance, which Spirit “the Father will send (πέμψει, pempsei) in My name” (John 14:26)?
In that prayer Jesus identified His Father’s Word (ὁ λόγος ὁ σος, ho logos ho sos, i.e., “the word of You”) as truth (ἀλήθεια, alētheia) (John 17:17).
In that instance, Jesus was trading on a distinction between the truth of God Incarnate (the Truth that Jesus claimed to be) and the many inscripturated truths that God would have its believing readers know.
“Have you not read (ἀνέγνωτε, anegnōte) what was spoken (ῥηθὲν, rhethen) to you?” (Matthew 22:31), Jesus rhetorically asked his wicked audience, alluding to passages in Genesis and Exodus.
Not written, but spoken. To read Scripture is to hear God.
Ordinarily, truth is a “property” of propositions, not of persons, but Jesus includes both when referring to His primordial relationship to His Father. He is the true expression (ὁ Λόγος , ho Logos) of God (John 1:1): Whoever sees Him, sees the Father (John 14:9) with Whom He is one (John 10:30), even if the Father is greater than the Son (John 14:28).
Today, we’re epistemologically restricted to those Scriptures (“shut up to them,” as an earlier parlance had it). They provide the context for understanding the salvation-bringing message of John’s Gospel, believing which we have life in Jesus’ name. We don’t need a divinely commissioned herald to share it with us, nor need we ourselves be commissioned to herald it ourselves.
No one is “out-called” for that (or any other) position today, except prospectively: the right message or evangelion is no longer addressed to the Jew exclusively or to the Jew first. That was true during Christ’s earthly ministry and in the Acts dispensation, but in the present one of the grace of God (Ephesians 3:2), it is freely available (ἀπεστάλη, apostale) to all nations (Acts 28:28).
That is, the Scriptures constitute our sole apostolic authority today. We believe them even though we haven’t seen the realities they refer to, and for for taking God at His Word we will be favorably positioned in the Kingdom.
Many (most?) Christians, however, believe there’s a “lens” of personal ecclesiastical authority through which we have access to truths of God that can’t be found in Scripture, and through them we must qualify our reception of Scripture. Since those believers also cordially affirm that the Scriptures are God-breathed (θεόπνευστος, theopneustos) (2 Timothy 3:16), they have the burden of showing that the Scriptures do not make the man (ἄνθρωπος, anthrōpos) of God perfect, complete (ἄρτιος, artios), fully equipped (ἐξηρτισμένος exērtismenos) for every good work he undertakes (v. 17).
It would seem to follow that Christians who deny the need for such a lens must settle for being somewhat less than complete, somewhat less than fully equipped. To reject that inference, however, they do not need to find the Hebrew or Greek equivalent of Reformation-era symbol sola Scriptura in the Bible. Again, the burden’s on the lens-affirmers.
John’s Gospel is about the glory of believing the truth: it was written that the reader (“you”) might believe that Jesus Christ is Son of God and, believing, have life in His name (ὄνομα, onoma; His character, not forename) (John 20:31).
Do you wish to work a work that’s pleasing to God? Jesus said it’s to believe in the One God has sent (ἀπέστειλεν, apesteilen: “commissioned with authority”) (John 6:29).
In this dispensation of grace we who believe not having seen signs or miracles (John 20:29) will be favorably positioned (μακάριοι, makarioi; “blessed”) in God’s Kingdom where His righteous judgments will be in the earth (Isaiah 26:9). We have not known those judgements: we’ve experienced only the grace of God. That is, we have not gotten what we deserved, but have enjoyed blessings we have not deserved.
We’ve have been chosen before the founding of that kosmos to serve in the Kingdom as witnesses to His grace, and we will extol its riches (Ephesians 2:7). We will assume the position, not of divinely adopted “children,” but rather that of divinely adopted sons (υἱοθεσίαν, huiothesian)—that is, representatives of His majesty.
Nothing in the Bible obliges you to “join a church.” First of all, the ekklēsia wasn’t an outfit one joined after shopping around for one that “spoke to your needs”: it was the position to which believers in the Acts dispensation were called. When it came to an end, so did their calling and the gifts that marked that phase of God’s Kingdom purposes.
Those purposes were suspended (Acts 28:28; Philippians 1:6); He’ll take them up again when He reveals His glory, which all flesh will see together (Isaiah 40:6) because He will pour His spirit out on them (Joel 2:28; Acts 23:17). This will be Christ’s blazing forth (ἐπιφανείᾳ, epiphania) for which (not for His second advent) we are to live in expectation (1 Timothy 6:14; 2 Timothy 1:10, 4:1, 4:8).
Adam was an individual, as was Abel, Abram-Abraham, Jacob-Israel, David, Moses, Peter, Paul, John, Timothy and so forth. Today, God is dealing with individuals, like you and me, exclusively.
Yes, He had dealt with Israel as a nation and gave them the only religion He ever gave people. He will do so again when He establishes His global reign: Israel will serve as the mediatorial nation between God’s Throne in the heavens and that of His Prime Minister David in Jerusalem.
Until then, however, all nations are on an equal footing, joint bodies (σύσσωμα, sussōma: plural, therefore, not “joint members of one body”!) (Ephesians 3:6).
Christian Individualism is religionless Christianity. Whatever Dietrich Bonhoeffer intended by that term[1], here’s what Sellers meant:
It was sometime after A.D. 70 that a new alignment of religions appeared in the Roman Empire. This was called Christianity. It was an amalgam of Greek philosophy, Mithraic ritualism, and religious elements from many sources. It called itself the Christian Church, and it was far removed from the simple fellowship of the first followers of Jesus Christ. It did not come out of Him, since it was built by men who today are universally acknowledged to have been “the Church Fathers.” Fifteen of these are recognized in ecclesiastical history between 70 A.D. and 440 A.D. Ten of them are commonly called “the Greek fathers,” and five are called “the Latin fathers.” It was these men who produced from many sources the religion of Christendom, which today had developed into a thousand-and-one companies, a great myriad of ceremonies, rituals, acts of exterior worship, all of which together pass for Christianity today.
There are those who say that one is no part of Christ unless he is in some way a part of this conglomeration. This we repudiate. And in defense we would point to the truth declared by Paul in Colossians 2:8-23. This portion when honestly translated and understood sets forth religionless Christianity in all its splendor. It removes from the believer in Christ every vestige of religion both human and divine, and declares without equivocation: “And you are complete in Him.”[2]
Learn the truth and live it. Take God at His Word and act accordingly, but that means studying the Word of truth as a worker who has no reason to be ashamed because he or she rightly divides or “cuts” it (ὀρθοτομοῦντα, orthotomounta; 2 Timothy 2:15). The “ethics” of doing so will follow. That’s faith, and faithfulness is what is all that is required of us.
Notes
[1] Jeffrey C. Pugh, Religionless Christianity: Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Troubled Times,
[2] Otis Q. Sellers, “Religionless Christianity,” Seed & Bread, No. 140. Here’s the King James Version of the passage Sellers cited from Paul’s letter to the Colossians, which was written after the end of the Pentecostal Dispensation (“Acts period”): “Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. And ye are complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power: in whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ: buried with him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised him from the dead. And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses; blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross; and having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it. Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days: which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ. Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels, intruding into those things which he hath not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind, and not holding the Head, from which all the body by joints and bands having nourishment ministered, and knit together, increaseth with the increase of God. Wherefore if ye be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why, as though living in the world, are ye subject to ordinances, (touch not; taste not; handle not; which all are to perish with the using;) after the commandments and doctrines of men? Which things have indeed a shew of wisdom in will worship, and humility, and neglecting of the body; not in any honour to the satisfying of the flesh.” (Emphasis added.— A.G.F.)