When Love for a Doctrine Overshadows Love for Christ’s Body

When Love for a Doctrine Overshadows Love for Christ’s Body

It grieves me deeply to see how some Bible teachers, in their zeal for the King James Version (KJV) and the doctrine of Verbal Plenary Preservation (VPP), have elevated these things above the love of Christ and His Church. The very Scriptures they claim to defend tell us that the greatest commandment is to love God, and the second is like it: to love our neighbor as ourselves (Matt. 22:37–39). Yet their words and actions betray a heart that values a text and a doctrine more than the living Body of Christ—the very people for whom Christ shed His blood.

I must confess: I am hurt. I have been stumbled by the harshness, the divisions, and the cruelty that have come from those who exalt the KJV and VPP above Christian unity and compassion. It feels as though they love their doctrine more than the sheep, more than the Church, more than the heart of God. This is not zeal for truth—it is idolatry of a man-made system.

When teachers weaponize a Bible version or a preservation doctrine to condemn, divide, and crush others, they are not defending Christ—they are wounding Him. For Christ Himself is united with His Body. To hurt His people is to hurt Him (Acts 9:4). How then can this be anything but cruel? How can we call this anything but evil, when brothers and sisters are torn apart, churches are split, and the weak are trampled underfoot, all in the name of “truth”?

The irony is unbearable: they claim to guard God’s Word, yet by their lovelessness they deny its power. Paul writes that without love, even if I have all knowledge, I am nothing (1 Cor. 13:2). Without love, all our arguments about manuscripts, translations, and preservation are a noisy gong and a clanging cymbal.

I write not out of hatred, but out of deep sorrow. I feel the wounds for all these years. I see the pain in the Body of Christ. I hear the stumbling of many who no longer want to come near the Church because of such cruelty. And I cry out to God: How long will Your people be torn by those who say they are defending You, yet in truth they are hurting Your flock?

Dear teachers, if you love the KJV and VPP more than the sheep of Christ, more than the Body of Christ, then you have lost the heart of the Shepherd. Jesus did not say, “By your doctrine you will be known as My disciples,” but “By this all people will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35).

I am frustrated. I am hurt. I am angry. But most of all, I am heartbroken. Because the cruelty shown in the name of defending God is, in fact, grieving the very heart of God.

May the Lord heal His wounded Body. May He turn our eyes away from man-made idols of perfection and preservation, and back to the living Christ who alone is perfect, who alone preserves us, who alone is worthy of our total love.