Striving For Unity: Dont't Cross A Fence!

It has been almost 20 years since I last was there, but I still remember the best lesson I ever learned while hunting. My family and some friends leased some land in the hill country of Texas for over a decade. Besides the usual admonitions about gun safety and hunting regulations, there was one simple, unbreakable rule: Do not, under any circumstances, cross a fence.

There were good reasons for this rule. First, a hunter who was lost, if he refused to cross a fence, would eventually find his way to the road, and then to camp, simply by following the fence line. In addition, there were other hunters, some of whom we did not know, who hunted on the adjacent land on all sides of our lease. A hunter who crossed a fence could find himself in deep trouble, as Texas hunters tend to frown on poachers. I remember one inexperienced hunter who got lost, crossed a fence and was just about to be turned over to a game warden (if not worse) when he mentioned my father's name, which the other hunters recognized, and was returned to our camp.

"Anyone who goes too far and does not abide in the teaching of Christ, does not have God; the one who abides in the teaching, he has both the Father and the Son" (2 Jn. 9).

The apostle John would have well understood the phrase, "Don't cross a fence." His admonition about the teaching of Christ is similar to our old hunting lease rule, for it says there are boundaries which must be followed and observed, and anyone going beyond them will find trouble. This is the reason for our page on unity, for we cannot allow (much less participate in) the crossing of scriptural fences. We find our unity only in God's word and our adherence to it.

There are some who would say that when John uses the phrase "teaching of Christ" he is referring to either a)the teaching about Christ (i.e. His life story as told in the four gospels), or b)the teaching done by Christ. This narrows down the New Testament considerably, and that is the goal of this kind of teaching. The implications of such teaching are that having agreed on the most basic of teachings about/by Christ, we can then "agree to disagree" about the rest of the New Testament.

Unfortunately, this rather convenient set of beliefs creates anything but the unity it is supposedly designed to foster. It calls into question Paul's comments on women (1 Tim. 2:8-15; 1 Cor. 14). It causes us to have to throw out Peter's discussion of the end of the world (2 Pet. 3). And it puts an end to any teaching from the favorite book of many denominations, the Revelation.

Thus the teaching of Christ, in addition to being both the teaching about Him and by Him, is also the teaching done by His apostles, as they were commanded by Him to "make disciples . . . teaching them to observe all that I commanded you . . ." (Matt. 28:19-20).

For our discussion then, what is meant by "don't cross a fence"? John clearly means for us to avoid those whose teaching is not in line with Christ and His apostles. "Crossing a fence" occurs when someone either requires, as a condition of salvation, something not required by God (e.g. tithing, adherence to a man-made creed, etc.), or when someone refuses to accept a clear, Biblical teaching (baptism, women's roles, etc.) because it doesn't suit their beliefs. One further area of "fence-crossing" is when someone takes it upon themselves to introduce a teaching which is not a part of New Testament doctrine (instrumental music, for instance).

In all of these cases, "fence-crossing" cannot be tolerated by Christians who seek to follow the Bible as Christ intended. Crossing fences will cause one to be lost.