Building Bridges or Walls?
“Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment” (John 7:24).
Within this past month a husband and wife who have of necessity had to conduct worship in their own home for a number of years received a visit from another couple who still attend the congregation they felt compelled to leave. The purpose was to try to get them to return. Claude, who was still a member (not his real name), in the course of the discussion reacted to a complaint about the congregation by saying, “We’re here to build bridges, not walls.”
No, he did not mean that we should speak the truth in love and kindness (Eph. 4:15); he meant we should speak the truth seldom—and make it a point not to offend anyone. Perhaps Claude should take a look at Jesus, the greatest bridge-builder of all time. Through His sacrifice on the cross He made it possible for man to return to God. Through the cleansing of His blood, we have the forgiveness of sins and access to the Father—if we obey the gospel.
God is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance (2 Peter 3:9). God our Savior wants everyone to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth (1 Tim. 2:3-4). Sin had destroyed the bridge between God and man, but Jesus rebuilt it at great cost to Himself; so no one can deny His architectural credentials. He even gave the command for all of His followers to be bridge-builders, although we usually refer to it as evangelism (Mat. 28:20).
But, did Jesus also forbid the building of walls? What does the New Testament teach on this subject? If we read carefully, we are able to discern that not everyone gets to travel on the bridge that leads to heaven. Those who are too proud to humble themselves before God cannot enter that highway (Matt. 5:3). Those who refuse to obey Christ in all things do not get to make the trip (Heb. 5:9; Mat. 7:21). Those who have no interest in truth will never find the entrance to the heavenly kingdom (2 Thess. 2:10).
Jesus Built Walls
What do people like Claude mean when they lament wall-building? They mean that they want no barriers between themselves and others (close adherence to various doctrines) so that the gospel can be heard by all. Although this attitude is optimistic, it is not very realistic. The reason is that Satan does not want people to hear, understand, or obey the gospel; so walls are erected by the very fact that the Truth is preached.
Consider the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus immediately built several walls that would prevent people from entering His bridge. Only the poor in spirit can find the on-ramp. The proud are excluded. Also blocked by walls are those who are corrupt in heart instead of pure in heart, those who do not have a spiritual appetite, etc. Jesus made it plain that the majority of people never make it across to the other side.
And what does the Lord mean by, “Beware of false teachers who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves”? How many walls are erected by that warning? Walls actually serve a useful function—especially when building a house. Their purpose is to keep out unwanted critters of all shapes and sizes. No one wants thieves or murderers to have access to his dwelling place. Four walls and a roof will block inclement weather from entering in, also.
Walls exist for a purpose—for protection. Members of the body of Christ need spiritual protection—from Satan and his emissaries. In Matthew 16:6 Jesus warned His disciples to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. At first the disciples did not understand His meaning, but they finally realized he was speaking of their doctrine (v. 12). What? Can we not fellowship any and every doctrine known to man? No, God expects us to do some wall-building—to keep out teachings that are spiritually destructive.
What Cannot Be Fellowshipped
What were the doctrines of the Pharisees and the Sadducees? Acts 23:8 declares: “For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection—and no angel or spirit; but the Pharisees confess both.” Both groups held to erroneous doctrines but not the same ones. The Sadducees were essentially materialists. If the theory of evolution were around back then, they would have been zealous advocates of it. Imagine not believing in the spirit world. God is a Spirit. One wonders how they could believe in God and how they would have defined God. Or was He the one exception to their anti-spirit belief? Some do not see their inconsistencies. Evidently, a few in Corinth thought that, although Jesus was raised from the dead, no one else would be. In 1 Corinthians 15 Paul uses logic to show them that if the dead are not raised, then neither can Christ be (v. 16). Similarly, if there are no spirits, then God cannot exist. A wall must be built to keep Sadducean doctrine out; it is harmful and will lead to death.
Although the Pharisees taught a great deal of truth, they counted their traditions as equal to (and even higher than) the doctrine of God. This elevation of their man-made doctrines made their worship vain. They had designed a way to circumvent (they thought) the fifth commandment. As a result, Jesus quotes what Isaiah said and applied it to them:
These people draw near to Me with their mouth, and honor Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me. And in vain they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men (Matt. 15:8-9).
Jesus further alienated them in Matthew 23 where He said that they say and do not (v. 3), practiced their religion to be seen of men (5) and described them (along with the scribes) as hypocrites, blind guides, serpents, and a brood of vipers! Jesus built a lot more walls than bridges that day. How does someone like Claude process what happened here, since it flies in the face of his philosophy? He cannot understand that people need the truth more than they need Pollyannaish pop psychology.
John the Baptizer prepared the way for Jesus. He did not model himself after Casper Milquetoast, either:
But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, “Brood of vipers! Who has warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” Therefore bear fruits worthy of repentance. (Matt. 3:7-8).
Claude would have never said those words for fear that he might offend someone and build a wall. Nevertheless, John was so successful that “Jerusalem, all Judea, and all the region around the Jordan went out to him and were baptized by him in the Jordan, confessing their sins” (Matt. 3:5-6). Do we actually have the nerve to accuse people of sinning today?
Not only did John and Jesus construct a few walls, the apostles followed in their footsteps. Peter on the Day of Pentecost did not shy away from declaring that the Jews had crucified Jesus, whom God had made both Lord and Christ (Acts 2:36). During his next recorded opportunity to preach the gospel, he told the crowd that they “killed the Prince of Life, whom God raised from the dead” (Acts 3:15), although he did mitigate their actions somewhat by saying that they did it in ignorance (v. 17).
Paul did not hesitate to contend with the Judaizing teachers and their insistence that Gentiles be circumcised and keep the Law of Moses when they became Christians. He told them they had fallen from grace (Gal. 5:4). Paul sounds as though he built a huge wall there. In Jerusalem, the apostles decided against the Judaizers on these issues (Acts 15). Why didn’t the apostles determine to be more inclusive?
Claude said he did not have any trouble fellowshipping a missionary who said that he saw nothing wrong with the use of instruments of music. In fact, they receive him warmly each time he comes to report to the congregation. Seriously? No one with such a view needs to be a missionary! Someone should make it a point to ask Claude if he would build a bridge to or a wall in front of Hymenaeus and Philetus. They were only teaching that the resurrection was already past (2 Tim. 2:17-18). Does it matter if a doctrine overthrows the faith of some?
Shall we build a bridge to premillennialists and the Jehovah’s Witnesses, allowing people to believe devoutly in something that will never happen? Shall we build a bridge to those who believe in purgatory and let them be utterly disappointed later when they can do nothing about it? Perhaps we should build bridges to those who teach salvation by “faith only” and “once saved, always saved.” Would it be loving of us to let all of them be surprised as the rich man was in Luke 16? If we can build bridges to those who teach error on salvation and live in the shadows of false doctrine, then failing to condemn those who worship falsely should be a relatively easy step to take. Why didn’t Elijah build a bridge to the prophets of Baal in 1 Kings 18 instead of killing them?
One wonders if Claude has ever given serious consideration to John 8:31-32: It is truth that makes men free from sin—not error. It is only obedience to the truth that enables the blood of Christ to remove one’s sins. Just thinking that one is saved will not bring it about. Believing and teaching the doctrines of the Sadducees and the Pharisees (or their modern-day equivalents) will not save anyone. For that reason Jesus warned against them and other false teachers. In other words, even though Jesus built THE BRIDGE from mankind back to the Father, He also saw the necessity of building walls. Jesus is the head of His body, the church (Eph. 1:22-23), and Christians need protection from the errors that abound and proceed from Satan, designed for our destruction.
A Great Wall-Builder
Nehemiah was one of the greatest wall-builders of all time—literally. The wall of the city of Jerusalem had been broken down when the Babylonians took the Israelites captive in 586 B.C. Although Cyrus released the Jews back to their own land in 536 B.C., it was not until twenty years later (516 B.C.) that they completed rebuilding the temple. Seventy years later, the city of Jerusalem still had no wall to protect the city.
Nehemiah, who was the cupbearer to King Artaxerxes, heard the report of conditions of Jerusalem: “The survivors who are left from the captivity in the province are there in great distress and reproach. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates are burned with fire” (Neh. 1:3). Nehemiah immediately planned to do something about it. Receiving permission from the king, he traveled to Jerusalem. Under cover of darkness, he took a few men and surveyed the condition of the walls and gates (2:12-15).
No one knew what Nehemiah’s purpose was until he announced it to the priests, the nobles, the officials, and others: “Come and let us build the wall of Jerusalem, that we may no longer be a reproach … Let us rise up and build” (2:17-18). What would Claude say about this? Would he insist that walls create barriers between people and that it sends the wrong message or that we want to be distinctive and set apart from others rather than sharing the city with everyone? He undoubtedly would take the part of Israel’s enemies.
No sooner had Nehemiah made his wondrous announcement that opposition emerged. Sanballat, Tobiah, and Geshem laughed at him and then accused him of rebellion. The cupbearer replied appropriately: “The God of heaven will prosper us; therefore we His servants will arise and build, but you have no heritage or right or memorial in Jerusalem” (2:20). Hmm. It sounds like Nehemiah was capable of building more than one kind of wall.
Sanballat and Tobiah tried ridicule to get the Israelites to quit (4:1-3). They threatened the Jews (by their physical presence). They tried to get Nehemiah to compromise and come out to the plains of Ono for a unity meeting (where they could attack and kill him), but the cupbearer had one goal in mind, and he was determined to finish it (6:2-4). Geshem accused Nehemiah of building the wall so that he could lead a rebellion against the king, but he told them they were just making it up (6:5-8). Then God’s enemies tried to make Nehemiah hide and look like a coward, but he did not fall for that ploy, either (6:10-13).
The wall was finished in only 52 days (6:15) despite all of the opposition because “the people had a mind to work” (4:6). What an amazing undertaking had been completed in a short period of time! What a great example is found here to inspire us more than two millennia later. Nehemiah, relying on God for strength and a cooperative people, rebuilt the wall.
Rebuilding the Wall Today
Satan uses the same techniques today against the Lord’s church that were used against Nehemiah. We are attempting to build the walls that are necessary—the ones that Jesus and His apostles established. We always are bombarded by statements of ridicule. Never mind the names that people call us, such as water dogs, mossbacks, Campbellites, and the ever-popular “legalist.” We also hear, “You think you are the only ones going to heaven,” or “You think only your church is going to be saved.” Nehemiah, in response to such tactics, simply prayed for God to turn their reproach upon their own heads (4:4). Those who use such tactics are not interested in a serious discussion of spiritual matters.
Neither can the children of God feel threatened by being in the minority and knowing that the armies of Satan would like very much to destroy us. We are soldiers who are constantly prepared for battle (Eph. 6:10-17). We are not the ones to be frightened since our only goal is to defend the Truth. Those who are opposed to it and who champion error are the ones who ought to feel weak-kneed. Just as Nehemiah never even contemplated rebelling against the king, such an idea is totally foreign to us, also. Jesus is the head of the army in which we serve; we are obedient to Him, not antagonistic. We leave it to Satan’s minions to fight against God.
We are not about to leave the work that we are doing in order to go out and meet (or compromise) with the enemy. If we learned anything from the Joplin Unity Meeting in 1984, it is that others have no intention of compromising; they only want us to do so. Incredibly, some brethren have and are still doing so. Even to say, “We’re into building bridges, not walls,” is a statement of compromise. The same missionary (mentioned previously) thought that Promise Keepers (now defunct) was a great thing because it brought people together. He did not mind the clapping during the singing, the applause for the various speakers, or even (apparently) the error taught concerning salvation. Christians ought to wall themselves off from such things.
Christians have boundaries in which they remain for safety. John said that Christians must abide in the doctrine of Christ and that we should not fellowship those who go outside those boundaries (2 John 9-11). Yet some desire to build bridges instead—ones that connect to those on the other side—to those outside the boundaries that the Lord set. Why do they want to travel over there? Why can they not be content to dwell within the limitations that our Lord and Savior gives us?
Some are never satisfied with God or His truth; it was the devil’s desire for something else that led him to rebel. Likewise, many have spiritual wanderlust today. Outside the confines of Jerusalem, however, are men like Tobiah, Sanballat, and Geshem—waiting to destroy through one means or another. We must recognize that God gave us walls for a reason—for our safety. Truly, we can trust the Bridge-Builder to get us to heaven—if we remain within the walls that He established.