Holy Scripture, theology, and life

The Pharisees and scribes were teaching wrong (Matthew 15:16). They contradicted the Scriptures and led people astray. Jesus called them blind guides (15:14). Isaiah nailed it. He prophesied well when he said, “This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me, in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men” (Isa. 29:13).

There is a relationship between their vain worship and the subsequent participle of them teaching the commandments of men to be the doctrine of God. Doctrine is directive preeminently in that it shows us the way of true worship. The Pharisees ordered their lives around the wrong stuff. We can learn something important about doctrine here, namely, the commandments of men propped up as the doctrine of God is a miserable endeavor that results in the worse kind of vanity.

Doctrine is holy because it is derived from God, it is of God. It is the Spirit-empowered exposition and articulation of the Holy Scriptures in the midst of life.  It leads us in all truth because it is the repetition of the gospel– it is sang, prayed, preached, taught, cried… generating, ordering, validating, refining true worship of the triune God.