by Ron Halbrook
Synopsis:
Hold fast the pattern of sound words which you have heard from me, in faith and love which are in Christ Jesus (2 Tim. 1:13, NKJV).
God’s love, care, and sovereignty are manifested in His patterns. His will, purposes, and commandments are expressed in propositions of truth. The patterns and propositions revealed in His Holy Word define God’s relationships with man. The church of Christ is based on the pattern prepared by God, the Father, from eternity. That pattern is revealed in the things that Christ commanded His apostles to preach and teach in order to bring salvation to the world (Matt. 28:18-20).
God is a God of patterns in the physical creation and the realm of spiritual redemption. “And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years” (Gen. 1:14). The heavenly bodies move in patterns that can be mapped so precisely that astronauts can safely travel among them and return to earth. The seasons come and go by rhythms under God’s constant care and control (Gen. 8:22). All of nature moves in cycles that are beautiful and essential to man’s well-being on earth (Ps. 147:8-9; Eccl. 1:4-7).
In ways that we cannot fathom, God’s redemptive plan—prepared from eternity—set in motion periods and events in human history that resulted in the Savior coming at precisely the right moment to save as many souls as possible. Nations rose and fell on God’s timetable until “the fulness of the time was come” when “God sent forth His Son...to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons” (Gal. 4:4-5). Even the genealogy of Jesus followed a path or pattern reflecting God’s plan and purpose (Matt. 1; Luke 3:23-38).
From God’s vantage point, history is not a stream of random chaotic events, but rather it is a series of events falling into a perfect pattern to produce a perfect result. God replicated the history of Israel in the life of Jesus as we see the child of promise, His rescue from a tyrant’s execution order, his preservation by a journey into Egypt, the wilderness temptation, and the dawning of a new kingdom under God’s guiding hand (Matt. 1-7).
God’s sovereignty and His unfathomable love are revealed in His patterns. The gift of language from the time of man’s creation provides an avenue of close fellowship between God and man. Love flourished as God communicated with man and man with God—until sin entered the world. Then, for the first time, man was terrorized by “the voice of the Lord” (Gen. 3:8). Male and female expressed their love through language, the vehicle of ideas and ideals (Gen. 2:23-24).
Language functioned by patterns and propositions in the form of direct statements, approved examples, and necessary implications. Even when men—intoxicated with sophistry—attempt to deny the hermeneutic of language, they do so by employing it! Man can no more escape the patterns by which language functions than the patterns by which nature functions.
Like it or not, believe it or not, God is a God of patterns.
The Bible is God’s wonderful gift of His patterns of truth that enable us to know Him and His love, and thus to live in fellowship with Him. Upon giving the patterns of truth necessary for Israel’s fellowship with Him, God strictly forbade adding “unto the word which I command you” or diminishing “ought from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the Lord your God” (Deut. 4:1-2). His unalterable truth for the Mosaic dispensation included Jerusalem as the city of God’s chosen King and of His holy temple, animal sacrifices along with food and drink offerings, a special priesthood with robes designed to convey important truths, burning incense and using musical instruments in worship, observance of the Sabbath and other holy days, and a host of other instructions.
All these practices served an immediate purpose of sustaining fellowship between God and His people and helped to prepare for the reign of a new High Priest, Jesus Christ: “But now hath he obtained a more excellent ministry, by how much also he is the mediator of a better covenant, which was established upon better promises.” Reasoning from the lesser to the greater, if it was necessary to “make all things according to the pattern” that God gave at Mt. Sinai, it is all the more important that we embrace without alteration the patterns and propositions of truth revealed in the New Covenant, if we hope to live in fellowship with God (Heb. 8:5-6).
The New Testament presents the pattern of truth in propositions made accessible to us in direct statements, approved examples, and necessary implications. God expects us to read, understand, believe, and obey His instructions. We are explicitly warned not to “add unto these things” and not to “take away from the words” that are revealed by God (Rev. 22:18-19).
These words of truth reveal the great love of God in sending His only begotten Son to be our only beloved Savior (John 3:16). Jesus offered the perfect sacrifice for our sins, conquered death on our behalf, and established His rule in the new kingdom of God for our salvation (Rom. 5:6-11; Acts 2:36; Col. 1:13-14). Penitent believers must yield to Him in water baptism for the remission of sins (Acts 2:38; 22:16). The instructions given for a Christian life conform us to the image of His Son, drawing us closer and closer to the heart of God (Col. 3:10).
Christ established only one true church composed of all who are saved by the gospel—all other religions will be rooted up at his return (Eph. 4:4-6; Matt. 15:13). As the only head of the church, He alone can instruct us in the new and true way of worship: sharing the Lord’s supper and the fellowship of giving every Sunday, praying, teaching His Word, and singing (Acts 20:7; 1 Cor. 16:2; Acts 2:42; Eph. 5:19). Men, rather than women, lead in worship (1 Tim. 2:12). His truth plants local churches which look directly to Him without added layers of human organization such as church councils, denominational organizations with their earthly boards and headquarters (Acts 14:23).
In 1825, Alexander Campbell wrote that before inquiring “what was the ancient order of worship . . . it may be expedient to consider whether there be any divinely authorized worship in the assembly of the saints.” He saw two irreconcilable answers: “Either there is a divinely authorized order of Christian worship in Christian assemblies, or there is not.” Campbell then reduced nopatternism to its logical absurdity, as follows:
Where there is no order established there can be no disorder, for disorder is acting contrary to established order; where there is no standard there can be no error, for error is a departure or a wandering from a standard; where there is nothing fixed there can be no innovation, for to innovate is to introduce new things amongst those already fixed and established; and where there is no law there can be no transgression, for a transgression is a leaping over or a violating of legal restraints. Those, then, who contend that there is no divinely authorized order for Christian worship in Christian assemblies, do at the same time, and must inevitably maintain, that there is no disorder, no error, no innovation, no transgression in the worship of the Christian Church—no, nor ever can be. This is reducing one side of the dilemma to what may be called a perfect absurdity (Christian Baptist, Vol. 2, 239-243).
If there is no pattern, Campbell pointed out that various assemblies of worship could be devoted to nothing but dancing, singing, shouting, running, lying prostrate on the ground, reading, listening to a speaker, sitting silently, waving palm branches, crying, or playing an organ. To exclude any act from worship, a person must refer to some fixed standard.
Knowing that the true God is a God of patterns, Paul wrote to Timothy, “Hold fast the pattern of sound words which you have heard from me, in faith and love which are in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim. 1:13, NKJV).
Author Bio: Ron has worked with the Hebron Lane church of Christ in Shepherdsville, KY since August of 1997. David Dann and Ron work together. Ron has made seventy-seven trips to the Philippines. He and Donna have three children and ten grandchildren. The church website is hebronlane.com. He can be reached at halbrook@twc.com.
