How can ye believe

“How can ye believe, which receive honour one of another, and seek not the honour that cometh from God only?” (John 5:44) By these words our Lord indicates that we cannot at the same time seek man’s approbation and the approval of God. He also affirms that once we embark on a quest for human accreditation, we have dealt a body-blow to the life of faith. In similar vein the Apostle Paul expresses the moral inconsistency between coveting man’s praise and God’s: “…for if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ” (Gal. 1:10b). Let me illustrate. Here is a young believer who wants an advanced degree in some area of theology. But he wants the degree from an accredited university. It must be from an accredited institution. Unfortunately the only accredited universities offering that degree are ones that deny the great fundamental truths of the faith. To list that degree after his name means so much to him that he is willing to take it from men who, though known as scholars, are enemies of the Cross of Christ. Almost inevitably he becomes defiled in the process. He never again speaks with the same conviction. The desire to be known in the world as a scholar or a scientist has built-in hazards. There is the subtle danger to compromise, to sacrifice Biblical principles for a more liberal stance, to become more critical of fundamentalists than of modernists. Christian schools face an agonizing choice—whether or not to seek accreditation from a recognized agency in the educational world. The lust to be “accredited” often results in a watering down of their Bible emphasis and the adoption of carnal principles laid down by men who do not have the Spirit. The thing to be greatly desired is to be “approved unto God.” The alternative is too costly, for “on the coin for which we sell the truth, there is at all times, faint as it may be, the image of Anti-christ” (F. W. Grant)