How Bible Principles Are Established
Eternal principles are established by the scriptures in three ways: by command, by approved example, by necessary inference. Where there is no command or example or necessary inference there can be no Bible principle.
Principles can be applied only to things analogous or parallel to the elements in the command, example or necessary inference that reveals and establishes the principle.
The command to penitent believers to be baptized for the remission of sins reveals and establishes a principle which applies to every alien sinner on earth who believes and repents. But the principle cannot apply to sinners who do not believe or whit do not repent, because they are not parallel to the penitent believers of the command.
The apostolic precedent of appointing qualified men to the eldership establishes a principle which has an application in every church with qualified men in it. But the principle cannot apply to the appointment of elders in churches that have no men qualified for the work. The qualified men in the divine examples (Acts 14:23; Titus 1:5) are not analogous with unqualified men in any church. To apply the principle of appointing qualified men, to appointing men without the qualifications is to wrest the scriptures.
II Cor. 8 and 9 and many other passages present an approved example of churches' sending contributions to congregations that were so poor that they were not able to provide the material necessities of their own destitute members. These examples reveal an eternal principle which applies wherever a church is not financially able to provide for its own poor. This principle can have no divine application whatever to a church's receiving donations from other churches, unless the receiving church is an object of charity; because a church that is not an object of charity is not parallel at all to the churches that are objects of charity.
A church or an individual may be poor, and yet not be an object of charity. The churches in Macedonia were poor (2 Cor. 8:1,2), but they still had "power" to give; they were not objects of charity. "For according to their power, I bear witness, yea and beyond their power, they gave of their own accord" to the destitute church in Jerusalem that not only had no "power" to give to others, but had not the "power" to provide for its own. (2 Cor. 8:3)
The condition of the Macedonian churches was not comparable to the condition of the Jerusalem church; therefore this principle of receiving from other churches could not apply to the Macedonian churches or to any other church that is not an object of charity.
Men today are wresting the scriptures to their own destruction (2 Peter 3:16) when they try to apply this principle to justify a strong church's receiving donations from other churches to pay for some evangelistic project or work which is assigned to all churches.
There is no command, approved example or necessary inference in all the Bible of any church's receiving donations from other churches, except when the receiving church was unable to provide the material needs of its own worthy indigent; therefore, there can be no principle, either temporal or eternal, to justify the modern "sponsoring church" projects which are dividing churches and destroying souls today. These sponsoring churches are not objects of charity.
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