It’s crucial for the pastor to maintain doctrinal purity while also exercising discernment against misleading teachings. Both are fundamental to nurturing and protecting the flock.

The introduction to this series explored the role of the pastoral apologist. We explored Paul’s charge to Timothy, highlighting the responsibilities and the profound calling of pastors to serve both as nurturers and defenders of faith. As I said in that article, the second and third articles will consider four facets of the pastoral apologist’s role: doctrine, discernment, defence, and discipleship. This article will explore the first two facets.
By closely examining these two aspects, we aim to understand how Timothy—and, by extension, pastoral apologists today—ought to undertake their task. This discussion will help us appreciate how doctrinal accuracy and discernment are essential in nurturing the flock, while also protecting them from false teachings and guiding them in truth.
Prioritising Doctrine
Paul’s instruction to Timothy is crucial. He commands him to “charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine” (1 Timothy 1:3b). This verse will guide our discussion.
As J. Gresham Machen commented on it, “It never occurred to Paul that a gospel might be true for one man and not for another; the blight of pragmatism had never fallen upon his soul. Paul was convinced of the objective truth of the gospel message, and devotion to that truth was the great passion of his life. Christianity for Paul was not only a life, but also a doctrine, and logically the doctrine came first.”
So Paul instructs Timothy to remain in Ephesus, specifically to prevent others from teaching different doctrines. This calls attention to the importance Paul placed on doctrinal consistency and purity. The gospel isn’t subjective or flexible. For Paul, the gospel was a singular truth, applicable to all. The gospel isn’t some practical guideline that varies from person to person.
Christian doctrine, as Paul understood it, has an absolute nature. It’s more than thoughts or tips. For Paul, Christianity wasn’t merely a lifestyle or a set of practices; it was founded on definitive, core truths. His directive to Timothy wasn’t just about maintaining order; it’s about preserving the integrity of the gospel against distortions. Paul was dedicated to these truths. Pastors must be too. They’re essential for the life and health of the church.
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Misconstruing God’s love begins by misapprehending human love and then projecting that defective notion onto God. To ascribe our character qualities to God, as if we were the model after which God is patterned, is idolatry. Such reasoning inverts reality by fashioning a god after our human likeness. Thus, John Calvin rightly observes, “Man’s nature, so to speak, is a perpetual factory of idols.”[8] 

Proponents of the sexual revolution of the 1960s glommed onto Freudian psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich’s designation “free love.” Reich reasoned that sexual liberation would destroy the morality inherent to capitalism. Others, especially Herbert Marcuse, embraced the notion and capitalized on it in Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud. As the sexual revolution’s new intellectual, he coined the slogan: “Make love, not war.”[1] “Free love” practitioners engaged in casual sex without commitments, reflecting the contemporary expression, “friends with benefits.” Love, lacking self-governance, a moral compass, and boundaries, became eroticized. This only led to bondage, enslaving and ruining individuals, families, churches, governments, and whole societies. Witness the tragic and predictable collapse of the American society that has reached every level of our culture.
“Free love,” a euphemism for “morally unrestrained conduct,” takes root and flourishes wherever belief in the fullness of God’s character revealed in Scripture is compromised. Where theological mischief occurs, there you will find behavioral mischief. When God’s love is preached and believed apart from his holiness and justice, the erasure of moral boundaries invariably follows. When people imagine that God bestows his love without moral commands, sin-corrupted reasoning justifies their immoral conduct. Distorted notions concerning God always lead to distorted human behavior.
“Free love” does not acknowledge any external morality as it ignores boundaries of right and wrong and is covetous, self-absorbed, impulsive, heedless, and amorphous. Unlike “free love,” true love patterns itself after God’s love. It embraces what his character establishes as right versus wrong and is self-giving, others-oriented, unchanging, kind, and structured.
It is fitting for this essay to feature two parts: (1) a short accounting of our society’s spurning of God and its abandonment of the true nature of love for others; and (2) a consideration of God’s love and our Christian role in calling our society to repentance concerning love for others.
Government-Sponsored Erotic Love
Since the 1960s, “free love’s” calculated evisceration of public and private morality has taken its long march through the institutions, ensconcing itself in the Clinton White House and attaining critical mass with presidential candidate Barack Obama who declared, “Change will not come if we wait for some other person or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.”[2] Five days before the election of 2008, he announced his mission, “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” At first, he and Vice President Joe Biden feigned opposition to same-sex so-called “marriage.”[3] Yet, transformation of America began in earnest near the end of President Obama’s first term.[4]

On May 6, 2012, VP Biden goes rogue, strongly endorsing “gay marriage” on NBC’s Meet the Press.
On May 9, 2012, Obama, in an interview on ABC News says, “I think same-sex couples should be able to get married.” That evening, rainbow colors bedecked the White House.

Peter Jones of TruthXChange aptly wondered, “May 9, 2012: The Official End of Christendom?”
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God didn’t create another man, he created a woman—and yet she’s taken from the man. So there is a likeness and yet a fundamental difference and distinction. And everything about God’s design in this world must keep in mind this sexual differentiation between men and women, which is not an accident of creation, but from the very beginning, was God’s good, glorious plan.

We all recognize, if we have our eyes open or pull up the internet on our phones, that we live in a day where there is great confusion about men and women—confusion down to the very foundations. Is there such a thing as a man and a woman? And you’ve probably seen the clips that get passed around. High ranking, very intelligent people don’t know how—or at least they pretend not to know how—to answer the question, “What is a woman?” And as Christians, we have the Bible and we have what the world needs to hear, whether it wants to hear it or not. And we, of course, want to present it in a way that is most robust in truth, and also so that people can hear and can listen. But it’s really important that we’re clear about “What are men and women?”

What are Men and Women?

I mean, the etymology actually helps us in English. And in Hebrew, it’s ishah, for she comes out of ish. Even there in the Hebrew, the two words are connected. And it’s like that in English: A “womb man,” that a woman, biologically, is the person of God’s design in creation who—if all of the the plumbing, shall we say, is working correctly—gives birth to human life. That’s the latent possibility. Of course, we know that some people are are called to singleness and sometimes our bodies, because of the fall, don’t work in the ways that we would like. But there are those latent possibilities, that a woman is that person whom God has designed to incubate, to nurture, to nourish, and to give birth to life.

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