It is a sad sight, a shipwreck! 

A total loss of the cargo. A few survivors plucked from the waters. Shipwreck in earthly life is devastating. Oftentimes, the result of negligence or incompetence on the part of the captain and the crew. But in things spiritual it is particularly sobering to behold a shipwreck. Did not the apostle warn about this in 1 Timothy 1:18–20?

18. This charge I commit unto thee, son Timothy, according to the prophecies which went before on thee, that thou by them mightest war a good warfare;

19. Holding faith, and a good conscience; which some having put away concerning faith have made shipwreck:

20. Of whom is Hymenaeus and Alexander; whom I have delivered unto Satan, that they may learn not to blaspheme.

Who were Hymenaeus and Alexander?

Maybe the men were friends of the apostle Paul. Perhaps they were his former students. Surely, they were fellow ministers at one time and former church members. Those men suffered shipwreck, and others followed. Yes, according to 2 Timothy 2:17, their words ate like a canker. Their words were false doctrine. The specific form of their false doctrine was that the resurrection was past. But they erred concerning the truth, so they are examples of all who depart from the words of sound doctrine. And they overthrew the faith of some. Their false words and evil doctrines ate in the churches and devoured many, who with them also made shipwreck concerning the faith.

Sobering sight it was to behold.

A warning to the church.

So also in Ephesians 4 there is a warning. Church history is littered with the shipwrecks of churches, denominations, and individuals who did not heed this warning of the apostle Paul. Perhaps when doctrinal controversy came to their churches, the false teachers even quoted these words of the apostle. Perhaps they preached a sermon about these words, exhorting the congregation to speak the truth in love. But they handled the word of God deceitfully and misused the word to denigrate, to silence, and to shame those who were speaking the truth in love. They were like useless sailors aboard a ship who had neither the skill nor the willingness to keep the ship on course in a storm. Their ship was tossed to and fro on the mighty waves; and by the fierce and relentless winds of doctrine, the ship and all who were on it were shipwrecked on the rocks of apostasy. Or the false teachers were like the negligent captain, who drunkenly steered his ship onto the rocks; and the ship, crew, and passengers perished; so they, being drunken on man, smashed their ship on the shores of false doctrine.

Oh, it is certain that the church of Christ never comes to shipwreck. Whatever happens to this church or that church, to this denomination or that denomination, or to this individual or that individual, the church is never lost, and none of her members perish. She is the church of Christ! Like the ship in the fierce winds that troubled Galilee’s waters, the church is absolutely safe with Christ. He brings her to the harbor: the unity of the faith, the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. That is heaven. Christ perfectly guides his church in every age to heaven through the raging storms, towering waves, and fierce winds of doctrine that blow. The gates of hell cannot prevail against Christ’s church.

So the apostle tells the church to grow up into Christ. The church is safe with Christ. If a church departs from him, she cannot but end up shipwrecked. Approving of the error of common grace, within a few generations she will approve of sodomy. Approving of the false doctrine that displaces Christ, in a generation or two, she will join with the antichrist. She goes shipwreck, tossed on the winds and storms of doctrine that blow.

Grow up into Christ because there are fierce storms that constantly blow upon the church through the sea of time. The ship on the ocean observes clouds gathering ominously on the horizon, the winds pick up and begin to swirl, and the waves rise higher and higher. The ship is headed straight into a typhoon! It is time to prepare for a storm! On the sea of time, there are ferocious winds that constantly blow terrible storms that raise capsizing waves. Those winds are winds of doctrine. Winds of doctrine are not gentle zephyrs but are black storms of false doctrine. So it has always been for the church, and so it always will be.

Is it not true? In the Old Testament there were always the false prophets. There were more false prophets than true. Sometimes it was four hundred against one. What was true of the Old Testament continued in the New Testament. Already in the apostolic age, false teachers and false apostles crept into the church to privily bring in damnable heresies. They taught righteousness by faith and works, denied the resurrection of saints, and taught the church to live as the world, along with many other heresies. John said that many antichrists have gone out into the world!

The winds did not die down with the end of the apostolic age but continued blowing on down to the present age. There were those who tried to take Christ away from the church by denying his Godhead and those who denied that he was a truly righteous man, the seed of Mary and David. The winds of doctrine blew, denying the total depravity and utter wretchedness of the natural man. Whenever total depravity is under assault, behind that is always lurking the hurricane of denying the absolute sovereignty of God in salvation and the attempt for man to take some credit for salvation. So Pelagius came; later came Rome with her free will and works-righteousness; then came Erasmus to try to overthrow the Reformation; soon Sadoleto with his honeyed words attacked Geneva; and later the arch-heretic James Arminius sought to overthrow the Reformed faith. The Afscheiding was corrupted almost from the beginning by the introduction of conditional covenant theology, and common grace came to sweep away the Christian Reformed Church and the Reformed church world. Federal vision sweeps like a violent storm through Reformed denominations, destroying churches and making shipwreck the confession of many. We ourselves faced and are facing doctrinal winds as a denomination. These and many other winds are examples of the terrible storms of false doctrine that blow on the sea of history, through which the ship of the church must be steered by a sure hand toward her everlasting habitation and the safe harbor of heaven.

What makes these winds different from the winds of the creation is the devilishly clever way in which they come. The creation wind states its presence clearly. These doctrinal winds come with sleight of hand and cunning craftiness, whereby those who bring them lie in wait to deceive! False teachers come in. Rather, false teachers slip into the church undetected. Some are born there, some join later in life, some call from outside.

And what is to be our evaluation of false teachers who maintain their errors and who seek to lead the church away from Christ her head, to tear her out of him and to make her shipwreck on the rocks of apostasy? Is it that they suffer from a mere error in judgment? I suppose that we could say that about the rise of some errors. Men are liars. Men are vanity. Men may be deceived, teaching for truth the doctrines of men. We are not to follow men but Christ and his truth.

Grow up into him!

Here we speak of false teachers. There are those who sneak into the church, who love the darkness rather than the light, and who are of the darkness and of the devil.

They use sleight of hand. According to the original Greek of Ephesians 4:14, they are dice players, magicians who are expert in card tricks and other deceptive arts. They are capable and practiced in the arts of theological legerdemain. They play games with the truth.

Teaching and preaching the truth in the church is deadly serious. In the preaching of the truth, Jesus Christ comes to speak to his church, and we must not refuse him who ever speaks in the house of God. The issues are the glory of God, the honor of Jesus Christ, and the salvation and damnation of men.

But not with these false teachers. Preaching in the church is a game to them. New words and phrases are injected into the teaching of the church. Confusion is introduced, so that the church does not know what to think. Old words and phrases are redefined. Distinctions upon distinctions are piled up like a stack of cards in order that the dealer may draw from it what he pleases. The false doctrine is dressed up in the most appealing language and defended with the most reasonable arguments. Then we must know that false teachers are playing games in the church. They are rolling the dice in their preaching. They are shuffling cards in their teaching. They are playing tricks. At stake in this game are the souls and salvation of the whole church and the very existence of that church as a church of Jesus Christ in the world.

The false teachers work by cunning craftiness, and their mode of operation is deceit. Cunning deceivers! They do not love the truth; they hate it. They ravish the truth and fight against it. But, oh, so cunningly. The men who bring the false teachings are personally pleasing, well-spoken, or of impeccable pedigree. You would say that they only want what is best for the church; they profess great love for Jesus Christ, for his church, and for his truth. So, cunningly with deceit, they subtly substitute the lie for the truth. A little here and a little there, bit by bit, they substitute the lie for the truth. And the ship is off course, heading for shipwreck.

And this is of the devil. Whenever false teachers arise in the church and when—through their games, cunning craftiness, and deceit—false doctrine arises in the church, know for certain that you have to do with the devil. He beguiled Eve through his subtilty. He operates in the winds of doctrine that blow and in the dice that are thrown by the false teacher.

Be not children!

Jesus Christ gives the gift of ministers to his church to edify the body of Christ. The church is the body of Jesus Christ, and it grows and matures in him till the saints in the church come in the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. Christ is the fullness. The church is always growing up into Christ. On this side of the grave, she never attains to that perfection. That perfection is in heaven. To attain to that perfection, she must depart this world. So in this world she must be ever learning, ever growing, ever listening to what the Spirit says to the churches, and ever receiving him whose voice is ever heard in the church of God.

She may not stay a child in the truth. In malice? Yes. As a baby receiving the kingdom? Yes. As a newborn babe, desiring the sincere milk of the word? Yes. But she must never remain a child in the truth. If she stays a child in the truth, she will be tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine and by every trick of the false teacher and every crafty and deceitful ploy of the spiritual magician.

A child is ignorant. The child’s soul and mind are impressionable. The child is of extremely limited knowledge. The child is of limited experience. The child, perhaps above all, takes you at your word. And the child is easily led astray. This is at least one of the reasons for the Christian schools. To turn our children over to the false church and her schools or to the wickedness of the world in the public schools would be to murder their souls and ensure their apostasy from the truth. Children are so vulnerable. That is a child in the natural sense.

And the same holds in the spiritual sense with the truth. A child in the spiritual sense has no clear, profound knowledge of the truth. He has no steadfastness of conviction in that truth. He is therefore receptive, easily receptive, to outside impressions. He listens to every teacher who comes along with his cunning craftiness, is sucked into the false teacher’s game with the truth, and very soon finds himself playing that game in his own mind. The deceit of teachers playing dice with the truth escapes him. And thus he is tossed to and fro by the winds of doctrine, duped by the cunning craftiness of the false teacher, who lies in wait to deceive. So that child in the truth is one day defending the truth and speaking what you think he believes and what should guide his every move and decision. The next day he turns around and says the opposite, or his decisions in life bear no resemblance to his confession. He is tossed about like a ship without a rudder on a storm-driven sea. There are those who are born and grow up and learn a little doctrine, and they never move past that. The doctrine never sinks into their souls. They never grow any more. They are forty, fifty, and even eighty years old; and they are children in the truth. And when the cunning false teacher comes, he quickly blows them off course.

But it is worse!

For the ascended Lord gave his church pastors and teachers, and through them he ever speaks in the church; by them he is ever edifying his church, perfecting the saints for the work of the ministry to cause his church to grow up into him. So that one is growing up into Christ under the preaching of his truth or is being driven away by the winds of false doctrine. There is no neutral ground on the sea of time blown by the winds of false doctrine. It is not the will of Christ to see his church tossed to and fro on every wind of doctrine. He keeps his church and guides her through every wind of doctrine by a sure and true course to everlasting glory. To that end he gave pastors and teachers. It is impossible to sit under Christ’s ministration and remain a child.

That the church grows up into Christ is also the purpose of his death and resurrection. He who ascended and gave pastors and teachers first descended into the lower parts of the earth. He came and gave himself as the gift to his church. He who is very high and above all things; he who thought it not robbery to be equal with God; and he who also had astounding glory in the counsel of God as the firstborn of every creature—he descended into the lower parts of the earth. He entered Mary’s womb in order shortly to enter the agonies of hell upon the tree of the cross and to enter death and the corruption of the grave.

In that coming down God found Christ in fashion as a man; and God imputed all our sins, filth, guilt, and wickedness to him. Christ descended into the torments and anguish of hell to accomplish all of God’s will for our salvation.

That same one who descended also ascended far above all heavens. He ascended because in his descent he had taken away guilt and accomplished salvation and fulfilled the will and counsel of God for our salvation. He ascended, and his people with him, because he was righteous with the very righteousness of God. He, and his people with him, went up far above all heavens to sit down on the right hand of the majesty on high. He willed that where he is his people might be also—the perfect man.

So he gave some pastors and teachers. We do not receive Christ without them. We are not filled by Christ apart from them. He fills us with himself by that means; so that all his grace, mercy, wisdom, glory, righteousness, holiness, and goodness become ours. By that means he causes us constantly to grow. To sit under that preaching of Christ and remain a child is really to reject that preaching and to fight against it and to refuse it as the food that causes us to grow.

That is impossible for the people of God. Those who are not growing up into Christ are being swept away from him by the stormy winds of false doctrine and by the dice-playing with the truth of cunning, crafty, and deceptive teachers, and that according to the eternal will of God for their destruction.

It is as the apostle says regarding the perilous times during the New Testament age. Perilous times will come: the winds of doctrine will blow with increasing ferocity; men will be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, unthankful, and unholy; despisers of those who are good; lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God; having a form of godliness but denying the power thereof; ever learning are they and never coming to the knowledge of the truth. These also resist the truth! They know the truth, but they do not take their stand in it, they are not rooted in it, and they easily forsake it. There is no love of the truth in them; that truth never has laid hold on their hearts, and they do not thereby grow up into Christ but remain spiritual children. And being adults in malice and refusing to receive the kingdom as a little child and not desiring the sincere milk of the word as a newborn babe, they resist the truth and are swept away by the winds of doctrine, tossed to and fro, wrecked on a spiritual Scylla and Charybdis!

Grow up into Christ!

Urgent exhortation!

Christ is the fullness. He is perfection. He is the head. We constantly grow. Grow up spiritually. Grow stronger, grow richer, grow in the grace and knowledge of the Son of God.

To grow is to become stronger in the power of faith, so that more and more we live in the knowledge and assurance that Christ is our all in all, that we are nothing apart from him, and that all our blessedness is in him alone. We more and more live in the reality that we are not our own but belong to our faithful savior; that we are his property, his precious possession, in body and soul and in life and death. We more and more understand that with his precious blood he has fully satisfied for all our sins and that everlasting righteousness, salvation, and eternal life are ours in him. We know more and more that we have been delivered from all the power of the devil; that we have the victory over sin, the world, Satan, and the powers of darkness; that we have this in Christ our head!

Precious knowledge!

That we become richer in the knowledge of Christ, that we may know him and the power of his resurrection and the communion of his sufferings. That we know and taste his love more and more in our hearts; that by the power of his Spirit in us, we might more and more reveal the love of God in us through a walk in the light in communion with him and with one another. That we may continue in sanctification of life, hate sin more and more, and love righteousness more and more; that we may utterly humble ourselves before God as the God of our salvation, becoming nothing before him; so that all that we do, think, and say may be of Christ Jesus our Lord.

That we become more steadfast in hope; that we may keep an eye on the blessed future coming at the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, seeking the things above, walking steadfastly toward the new and heavenly Jerusalem. To become stronger in the fight of faith, that we may have on the full armor of God and may fight the good fight to the end, lest any man take our crown.

If I can summarize what it means to grow into Christ: it means that in all our lives we become more and more like our head in everything. By nature we are from a wicked and evil head, from a sinful and guilty head. Christ has cut us out of that evil head and grafted us into himself. And constantly he speaks that we might grow up into him and be made more and more like him in all things. His fullness must be revealed in us to the glory of the Father. Until we arrive at that perfection proposed to us in life eternal!

And that explains why the church must speak the truth in love. The truth of Christ is everything in the church. By the truth everyone is kept in order, all things are moved forward according to the word of Christ, and the ship of the church is guided by a sure hand toward eternal glory.

Oh, do not believe those who twist Ephesians 4:15 to make the church complacent and silent when the winds of doctrine blow against the church. They make “speaking the truth in love” to mean speaking the truth inoffensively, with the right tone, never rebuking or calling out false doctrine and false teachers. So they adorn themselves with the name of love and give themselves a convenient excuse for their lack of faith and lack of growth, by which they are exposed as remaining spiritual children beneath the ministration of Christ.

Speaking the truth in love does not mean speaking the truth inoffensively!

Can one speak the truth inoffensively?

Is it possible to speak the truth without the truth’s seeking out and destroying the lie and all who teach it and believe it? Regardless of the intentions of the speaker, the truth—which is Christ—has its own purpose. The truth attacks the preacher of the lie and calls him a liar, a deceiver, and a deadly magician. The word attacks the wisdom of the false teacher and calls it earthly, sensual, and devilish. The truth shuts the door of the kingdom of heaven to the unbeliever and will give him no peace. There is no peace and concord between the truth and false doctrine. They are bitter and implacable enemies. The truth roots out every lie in us. The truth exposes the very thoughts and intents of our hearts. When a man comes under the truth and has a lie in his heart, the truth opposes that lie with the very might of the living God. The truth seeks out and destroys the unbeliever and his deadness and lack of faith. The truth pricks the unbeliever, makes him angry, hardens him; and finally, being enraged, he stops his ears and rushes on the truth to gnash on it with his teeth, to stone it, or to nail it to a cross. That is why the truth from a negative viewpoint unifies the church, for the truth cuts off the ungodly and the unbeliever. And positively, the truth gathers God’s people to himself and unites them to Christ, keeps them in Christ, and causes them to grow up into Christ.

Thus the only speaking that may be heard in the church is the speaking of the truth in love.

Speaking the truth means the whole word of God as it reveals God in the face of Jesus Christ as the God of our salvation. Speaking the truth is to speak Christ!

In love means being rooted in Christ in the love of the truth. Speaking the truth is simply the manifestation of what is in the heart. In the heart the church loves the truth. The truth has laid hold on her. The truth is the beating heart of the body of Christ and all her members. Her whole life comes out of that truth.

Many diverse people can be united together in an outward agreement if they talk about the weather, their businesses, their houses, their cars, their shared likes and dislikes, or their shared hobbies and experiences. But as soon as one opens his mouth to speak the truth in love, he speaks what lives in his heart and what his convictions are, based on the word of God. Then divisions come.

The truth cannot be blamed for that. That truth exposes what is in men’s hearts.

But another and heavenly unity is wrought by the speaking of the truth. Christ’s speaking his truth in the church bears fruit in the closer and closer unity of his people with Christ; so that they grow up into him, and they speak the truth as that which they love in their hearts. They cleave to that truth and are joined together in that truth. They would rather abandon every friendship in the world and gain for themselves the hatred of the whole world, rather than to depart from the truth one iota.

Let the truth ever be spoken in the church, as by means of it we grow up into Christ and are no more children tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine.