3 Beloved, being extremely eager to write to you concerning our common salvation, I found it necessary to write to you encouraging you to contend for the faith delivered once for all to the saints. (Jude 1:3 Translated from the NA28 Greek text)
One of the topics of contention that I often deal with “commenters” whom I screen and block and with those who contact me via email is that “doctrine” is different from the truth given to the Church by our Lord through the Apostles. These are the same people who contend that there is a separation between truth and the revealed truth the Church has in God’s Word.
13 Until I come attend to the public reading, the exhortation, and the teaching of scripture. (1 Timothy 4:13 translated from the NA28 Greek text)
In this passage, the Apostle Paul commands Timothy to attend to handling God’s Word diligently in a certain way. He is to read it publicly, that is, read it to his flock to exhort them. The last part of that command τῇ διδασκαλίᾳ or literally, “the teaching” or “the doctrine” or “the instruction.” Timothy was being commanded to impart “doctrine” to his flock. That is what Biblical teaching is. A Pastor’s primary function is this very thing. He is not to be an entertainer or entrepreneur nor even is he to place his love for his flock above the necessity to teach them the truth from God’s Word.
Those who disagree with me and most of you in our doctrinal stand within our Orthodoxy are usually about just being Jesus followers with no doctrinal boundaries while they and those they set as the foundational teachers of the Church teach us the very opposite. Go back to the passage I placed at the top of this post, which is Jude 1:3. I ask, how can we contend for the faith if we do not know the truth? If your truth is different than my truth then how can we do that?