“…we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine…” Ephesians 4:14 (NASB)
A few weeks ago, a group of us took a look at Ephesians 4. We were studying how the body of Christ functions; what it looks like in the passage. When we came across verse 14, the phrase “carried about by every wind of doctrine” really stuck with me and I’ve been thinking about it ever since.
What is a “wind of doctrine”? I started thinking about charismatic circles in particular. It appears that they are constantly shifting from one focus to the next – I call it the ‘flavour of the month’. In my experience, I’ve seen the focus shift from spiritual warfare to worship to First Nations healing/reconciliation to Jewish roots to the prophetic to the apostolic to discipleship to covering and authority. Are these ‘winds of doctrine’? They don’t go directly against God’s word, but is that where our focus should be?
The way I view it, these things are on the periphery of what the heart of the gospel is – to love one another, to love God, and in loving God and each other, we choose to die daily to our old sinful nature. Almost all the things I mentioned above never address the change God wants to work in each of us, to become more like Christ (the only one that would speak to this would be discipleship). Why does it seem people spend so much time focusing on the issues on the periphery and not what is at the heart?