Partial Credit

A good buddy of mine from Texas who graduated from LSU with his degree in mechanical engineering used to tell a story:

When he was in school, he had a professor walk into his engineering class and tell him in his best Chinese-American accent, "You engineer, you build bridge, bridge fall down, NO PARTIAL CREDIT!"

The message was simple. As an engineer, the structures you build, the planes you design, and the machinery you construct will be relied upon by hundreds of thousands of people. If you screw up the design, people will die. Your job is that important.

Look what Paul has to say about this.

1 Timothy 4:16
Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them, because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers.


What a very heavy passage. I often read this as Timothy would have read it. As the pastor of a church, Timothy must have felt an enormous burden to check his teachings. As an engineer, you have the ability to injure or kill people if there is a flaw in your design. As a doctor or nurse someone may suffer because you make the wrong call or give the wrong drug.

But as someone who teaches the Word of God. If you have a flaw in your doctrine, you have the ability to lead entire congregations away from God and ultimately into Hell. Now that is heavy.

But I don't want you to miss the application for all of the non-pastors as well. Paul urges Timothy to watch his life and his doctrine and to persevere in them, because if he does, he can find salvation.

What a stunning reminder that the gospel has the power to save. What a great reminder for all of us as Christians to read God's word for ourselves. To question what we are taught. To examine our beliefs. Because correct doctrine has the ability to save you, and flawed doctrine does not.

Do you know what you believe? Why do you believe it? What are you going to do about it?

The stakes are eternal, because if you're a "Christian" and you build a life on a faulty theology and then that theology fails, there is no partial credit.