T he teaching you are about to read is radical. At least it will seem radical to you if you have never heard this teaching before. It seemed extremely radical to me the first time I heard it.
However, being radical was not new to me. Growing up in a conservative Anabaptist church, I had always been taught that as Christians, it was our duty to obey the commands of Christ even if doing so made us stick out from the people around us. We were taught especially that Christ’s Sermon on the Mount was meant to be practiced today, and not to be put on hold until some future era. This sermon was the basis for our distinctive teachings about divorce and remarriage, nonswearing of oaths, and nonresistance. We were not afraid to stand out from the people around us, both Christians and non-Christians alike, on these issues. This belief in the necessity of obedience for salvation and the place of the Sermon on the Mount in our present day lives is the foundation for believing in the doctrine of nonaccumulation.
If, however, you are a Christian who believes that salvation is by “faith alone,” and that obedience is not a necessary part of it, please allow yourself to be challenged by skipping forward and reading chapter 4: Thoughts on Interpreting Scripture. Perhaps you won’t change your mind after reading this one chapter. But I ask you at least to open the door of your heart, especially where God’s Word is quoted, and to examine the things you have always believed to be true. And, as in every controversy, “let God be true, but every man a liar.”
A servant of Jesus,
Roger Hertzler
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