Dancing to Doctrine: The Teaching of Life

“And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.”—Acts 2:42

In today’s world doctrine is about as popular as anchovies on pizza—some like it, but most don’t. Doctrine is seen as irrelevant and unnecessary, but that is to misunderstand doctrine and its impact. Doctrine is a set of beliefs, but they’re beliefs that affect, direct, and transform behavior. Doctrine can be a bit confusing with so many different churches and denominations vying for their corner in the Christian market of truth. Such division can be dizzying and overwhelming to any believer. And while doctrine can be confusing, it is important to not throw out the proverbial baby with the bathwater. To have no doctrine whatsoever is still to have doctrine—it is just an uninformed doctrine, one of our own making.

In an effort to pass through this doctrine minefield, some have proposed just focusing on Christ while overlooking or devaluing everything else that doesn’t focus exclusively on Him. And while such a view seems commendable on the surface it betrays a lack of understanding into who Christ is and what He did. Consider today’s passage—the early church devoted themselves to “the apostles’ teaching.” They didn’t choose what was acceptable or unacceptable for them to follow, but they looked at it as a unified whole. For them, all of the apostles’ teaching had to do with Christ, who He is, what He came to do, and how we might be participants in His mission. All of the teaching of the New Testament points to Christ and the establishment of His kingdom.

I hope that all of us might devote ourselves to the apostle’s teaching, that is doctrine, just as the early church did, because it is through knowing and performing doctrine that we learn how to delight in God. May we all learn doctrine so that we might experience the joy of delight and may God’s name be praised because of it. Amen.