Ordained Crisis – The necessity of the Tares

The church today is in crisis, but this is a divinely ordained crisis.

This is what many Christians fail to see, although it was laid out so by not only our Lord, but His apostles.

Consider the parable of the tares told by our Lord: What did He teach here?

Matthew 13:24-29: Jesus presented another parable to them, saying, "The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field. 25 “But while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went away. 26 “But when the wheat sprouted and bore grain, then the tares became evident also. 27 “The slaves of the landowner came and said to him, 'Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have tares?' 28 “And he said to them, 'An enemy has done this!' The slaves *said to him, 'Do you want us, then, to go and gather them up?' 29 “But he *said, 'No; for while you are gathering up the tares, you may uproot the wheat with them. (NASB - * stands for an ongoing action with no terminus mentioned.)

Is this not teaching that there will be true confessors and false professors in the same assembly, and that as long as the false professors “act” like the wheat, we are not to uproot them?

Then, consider what the apostle Paul states in 1 Corinthians 11:17-19: But in giving this instruction, I do not praise you, because you come together not for the better but for the worse. 18 For, in the first place, when you come together as a church, I hear that divisions exist among you; and in part I believe it. 19 For there must also be factions among you, so that those who are approved may become evident among you.

It is a needful thing that there be factions among the assembled saints, so that those who are true in the faith (body of doctrine) may be shown as true by God, and those who are false are His means of showing those who are true. The KJV is not so kind in v. 19, for it uses the word “heresies,” which are what causes almost all, if not all, schisms in the first place. In the case of obvious heresies, or obvious sins brought about by sin that is visible and an affront to God, the offender is removed, as we have elsewhere in Scripture, until and unless repentance takes place, then restoration also takes place (1 Corinthians 5; cf. 2 Corinthians 7).

Finally, we see the reaction of many of those who are of the tares: “They went out from us, but they were not really of us; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us; but they went out, so that it would be shown that they all are not of us” (1 John 2:19). So, in many cases, we do not have to enact church discipline, as the Lord Himself ensures that such “go out from among us."

There is much more that can be written on these things (and perhaps will be), as it pertains to fellowship, true and false, among the company of those who in truth, or falsely, profess Christ, as well as the vital necessity of church discipline, which is largely a lost means of the restraint of false doctrine and moral impurity being among those who would call themselves the saints of the most High God.

To God’s glory alone – Bill Hier