So much of the Christian life depends on balance or proportion. There are dangers on every side — we need to be zealous but zeal can become unwise or obnoxious; we need to be gracious but our grace can become weakness; we need to be courageous but not to be foolhardy; we must believe that God is capable of doing whatever he wishes but we must not tempt him by pre­suming that he is there to do our bidding.

As C. S. Lewis said:

Opposite evils, far from balancing, aggravate each other.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge made a similar observation:

Every reform, however necessary, will by weak minds be carried to an excess which will itself need reforming.

In the light of this, it is not surprising that the Scriptures so often warn us about the need for balance and getting the pro­portion right. We are told to speak the truth, but the fact that we are objectively accurate does not exhaust our responsibilities because we must speak the truth in love (Eph. 4:15).

Phillips Brooks said that preaching is “truth mediated through personality”. So, too, is the whole Christian life. We cannot build our ministries or our lives simply by pounding away at error. The result is less than lovely — hence Francis Schaeffer’s understandable disenchantment with the Bible Presbyterian Church in the 1950s. At the same time the demands of love cannot be an excuse to evade the claims of truth.

We are told to confront and, if possible, restore the sinning saint, but we must do so in a spirit of gentleness and humility (Gal. 6:1). In the 9^th century BC King Jehu carried out God’s judgment on the house of Ahab (2 Kings 9-10), but in Hosea 1:4 God calls the house of Jehu to account for the blood that was shed. There is no contradiction in this, despite what the biblical critics assume. It is true that Jehu carried out God’s righteous judgment, but he did not carry it out righteously. On the contrary, he was guilty of great cruelty. Jehu had zeal but no love.

Jonah too was lacking in this regard, although not to the same extent. He became angry that Nineveh repented at his preaching, and that God was so gra­cious and forgiving towards Israel’s fear­some enemies (Jonah 4:2).

Leaving aside the issue of whether the miraculous gifts can be confined to the time of the apostles, it is still noteworthy that in 1 Corinthians 12-14 Paul spends three chapters in seeking to curb the excesses of the Corinthians on the matter of tongue-speaking. However, he concludes by saying “do not forbid to speak with tongues” (1 Cor.14:39). Obviously, he feared that some at Corinth could swing from one extreme to the other.

 At Thessalonica too he feared that some were quenching the Spirit by despis­ing prophecies. The right response was not to reject all prophecies but to test all things, and to hold fast what is good (1 Thess. 5:19-21).

“Rabbi” Duncan used to say that it is a matter of “wheat and arsenic” — it depends on how much wheat and how much arsenic is in the mixture. Circumcision in order to evangelise Jews is fine (Acts 16:1­ 3); circumcision in order to be right with God is to fall from grace (Gal. 5:2-4). To see spiritual warfare primarily in terms of casting out demons is to distort Scripture, but to ignore the existence of Satan’s angels is also to distort the biblical message.

On secondary issues, the Christian tries to balance his freedom (Gal. 5:1) with the desire not to unduly offend others (1 Cor. 10:32). In one sense, we do not seek to please men (Gal. 1:10); in another sense, we do seek to please men (1 Cor. 10:33).

In fact, so great are the dangers that we can actually think that we are being bal­anced when we are compromising or con­fusing the truth. Professing Christians often tell me that they are neither Arminian nor Calvinistic. Ultimately, that does not make sense — either we choose God because he first chose us or he chooses us because we chose him. There are extremes on either side, but there is no logical middle ground.

Similarly, one often hears — for example, by Billy Graham and John Stott — that the social gospel and old-style evangelical­ism are both true in what they affirm but false in what they deny. One receives the impression that they are like the two wings on an aero-plane — both needed for the machine to fly. However, that picture is misleading. The gospel has serious social implications, but the social gospel is not just one-sided but heretical.

Arthur Pink used to warn that “error is not so much the denial of truth as the per­version of truth”. Get the balance wrong, and we are disobeying the Word of God. Often in life, it is as Charles Simeon said:

The truth is not in the middle, and not in one extreme; but in both extremes.