WHY DEFEND THE FLOCK AGAINST LIES ABOUT GOD?

WHY DEFEND THE FLOCK AGAINST LIES ABOUT GOD?

THE TOLERANT ATTITUDE OF OUR CULTURE INFLUENCES THE CHURCH
DOES THIS REALLY MATTER?
WHAT IS WORTH FIGHTING ABOUT: CATEGORIES OF TRUTH
FOCUSING THE BATTLE
JESUS TEST OF A TRUE SHEPHERD
ISN’T IT UNLOVING TO FIGHT HERESY?
WHAT ABOUT FREE SPEECH?
THE BATTLE FOR TRUTH IN CHURCH HISTORY
FROM HISTORY TO TODAY

Should we tolerate Christians teaching whatever they want to or should churches set boundaries on what we will allow?

THE TOLERANT ATTITUDE OF OUR CULTURE INFLUENCES THE CHURCH

The attitude of our culture is to let people say just about whatever they want provided they don’t expect me to believe it. Christians influenced by postmodern culture will argue: Isn’t that’s free speech - our Constitutional right – a freedom people fought and died for. So are we in the church going to throw that away by dogmatically demanding that people can’t teach contrary to our church’s beliefs? Do we want to go back to the Middle ages where people were burned at the stake for what they believed? Do we want to be like the Taliban or some sect of narrow minded fundamentalist bigots? Or will we promote free thinking, enquiry, conversation and debate? If we try to silence teaching with which we disagree aren’t we being unloving? What harm do people do just by sharing their ideas – even if wrong? Surely we should give them space in the free market of ideas? Is it not okay to allow publication and preaching of incorrect teachings so long as the truth also gets a voice? That is what most of our culture says. But is that what we should practice - and what does the Bible say?

The biggest debate in the church today is not about what is true, but what teaching should be allowed. We believe a lot of different things. People in the same local church congregation often have different views on lots of things. There is even more diversity in the same denomination. People grow up in churches and adopt different beliefs to their parents. Should they be thrown out or silenced? Who should be allowed in the pulpit? Who should be allowed to publish in church magazines and newspapers? If we hear something with which we don’t agree in the pulpit should we keep quiet or object? And does this really all matter?

DOES THIS REALLY MATTER?

Yes it does matter. Why? Firstly because ideas have consequences. What people believe influences what they do – and people get ideas from teaching. In the most serious instances, false teaching can result in people going to hell. Secondly because false teaching spreads. It spreads especially fast when it tells people what they want to hear (1 Timothy 4:3). This is usually whatever is most popular with worldly culture at the time. Thirdly, because false teaching must be stopped first if we are to maintain moral discipline in the church. If people are allowed teach falsely on ethics, then we can’t later take disciplinary action against others who follow their teaching on those issues. Thus we have to control what is taught. But how much do we control it?

WHAT IS WORTH FIGHTING ABOUT: CATEGORIES OF TRUTH

It is helpful to divide what we believe into three categories of truth. Firstly the essentials we need to believe and practice to be a Christian avoid risking our eternal salvation. Secondly, the distinctive beliefs of our church group, which make us who we are. Thirdly, other debatable matters. When someone comes with a teaching we don’t agree with, we must discern which category their teaching fits into before we decide how tolerant we will be. Sometimes an issue is not simple to place in one of these three categories. Then we must ask how that teaching affects other teachings and practices and what categories those fit into. The more significant issues a false teaching affects, the more significant it is.

When someone teaches something that undermines the essential truths of the gospel needed to be a Christian, then we have to be intolerant and fight them – otherwise people may go to hell as a consequence of the false teaching. When someone teaches against the distinctives of our church group, then they can’t be tolerated inside our church group, but we can still have Christian fellowship as a friend in another group. Local churches need statements of faith to define and make clear what teachings are non-negotiable for them. For example, for Baptists, believers baptism and congregational accountability of leadership are non-negotiable distinctives. People who don’t believe in these are brother Christians, but can’t join a Baptist church. It is not enough to just say ‘we believe the Bible’, because most erroneous cults also say that but interpret it differently. Other debatable issues, we have to tolerate differences of opinion even inside our local church.

But can’t things get really complicated in deciding where an issue fits? Yes, they do. That is why we have to think critically about the popular teachings of our day in the light of scripture. In New Testament times, there was a massive controversy over circumcision. At a superficial reading, the apostle seems inconsistent on this issue. In some instances he seems to be arguing that the issue doesn’t matter all that much, other times in favour and other times against. Was he just fickle? No. Paul wasn’t too concerned about the issue of circumcision itself, but rather how it affected the gospel. When, for example, people came to Galatia and taught that circumcision was necessary to be a Christian, then he came out strongly against them (Galatians 5:2 and Acts 15:1). In another situation, however Paul himself circumcised Timothy (Acts 16:3) to avoid offending people. Paul was not wanting to fight about circumcision itself, but to protect the gospel. Today, similarly we have Christians who peacefully disagree on the issue of whether one should baptise children as infants or only when they are old enough to decide what they believe. But when people teach that one must be baptised in order to be saved, then such people we have to fight with, because that affects the gospel.

FOCUSING THE BATTLE

Since there is so much we could fight about – and arguing causes division and pain in the church - we need to focus most of our attention on the first category: defending the essentials where false belief or practice can put a person’s eternal salvation at risk. The Bible has very harsh words about these kinds of teachers. It calls them ‘false prophets’ and ‘wolves in sheeps clothing’ (Matthew 7:15; Acts 20:29; 2 Peter 2:1). We should never use such harsh labels casually against brother believers with whom we disagree in the second category (of denominational distinctives) or the third category (of debatable issues). Such wolves must be silenced (Titus 1:10-11) and disciplined by excommunication (1 Timothy 1:19-20) until they repent. We do not give them equal space in the pulpit or our magazines or web sites or lecture halls. It does not matter how nice they are, how many good works they have done, how many theological degrees they have, how popular or senior they are or how many friends they have. If their teaching or behaviour is undermining the gospel, then we have to be intolerant. If they repent, they may be accepted back, but otherwise not. Usually such false teachers will have found the protection of some group of deceived followers that protects them from any such discipline. In these cases, we have to simply speak up against them to warn people and to disassociate with them.

JESUS TEST OF A TRUE SHEPHERD

Now always there will be some nice Christians who will say that this is unloving and will criticise the pastor who does this. How do we answer this? Firstly, the word ‘pastor’ means ‘shepherd’. Part of the job of a shepherd is to defend the flock from wild animals that might harm them. It isn’t the nicest part of his job, but Jesus defines it as the test between a true shepherd and one who is just in it for worldly reward “JN 10:11 "I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. 12 The hired hand is not the shepherd who owns the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. 13 The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep.” The pastor who defends the flock will risk serious counter-attack. He might lose his job. He might lose his reputation. But he is a true genuine servant of God. We must not forget that Jesus crucifixion was triggered by his public attack earlier that week against the false Jewish religious leaders (Matthew 23). Sadly, today such people are a minority in church leadership which is the main reason the church is in such a mess.

Jesus introduces a third category who are neither wolves nor true shepherds. He calls them ‘hired hands’. They will not do anything scandalous or teach falsely themselves, but they will happily tolerate those who do. Such people often enter ministry full of zeal for the gospel, but somewhere along the line they lose focus and forget their mission for the gospel. Some just go into ministry with a vague desire to ‘spread the love of Jesus’ and help people. Maybe they never understood the requirement of a pastor/elder to defend the flock in the first place (Titus 1:9). Some maybe don’t understand the truth clearly enough to be able to defend it. Such people won’t risk their jobs or their denominational pensions or their reputations to defend the gospel. They want to be popular in the community and rationalize that being so helps them do their ministry work in contradiction to Jesus warning that we would be persecuted (Matthew 5:11-12). Sadly, they will often fight to defend the organisation and its power and hierarchy, but not to defend truth. Probably in the life of every Christian leader our loyalty to the truth of the gospel will be tested at least once – will we be true defenders of the gospel or will we be passive ‘hired hands’. The Lord in his sovereignty allows false teachers to test our loyalty to him (Deuteronomy 13:2-3). Will we pass the test?

The number of ‘wolves in sheep’s clothing’ within true biblical churches who teach things that undermine the essentials of salvation tends to be very small. This is because either the biblical denominations discipline and remove them or their teaching will spread and the biblical denomination will soon cease to be biblical. In the Western world in the last hundred years, such people have usually been called ‘liberals’. But the number of ‘hired hands’ who will tolerate such people is often very large. Such people often call themselves ‘moderates’. When challenged, they protest that they are doctrinally orthodox on every point – and they are. But they will happily leave the door open for the wolves to prey on the sheep. They are pacifists in the war of theology and our culture. This makes the fight complicated, because the true shepherd and those believers who support him – who are often called ‘conservatives’ are up against not only ‘liberal’ wolves – who cast doubt on the essentials of the gospel, but also often an army of ‘moderates’ who can’t discern wolves and think it is unloving to fight wolves. In church history, thus usually the main conflict has not been between wolves (liberals regarding the Bible) and shepherds (biblical conservatives), but between ‘hired hands’ (biblical moderates) and ‘shepherds’ (biblical conservatives).

Many such people are thankfully only temporarily led astray into siding with the wrong camp. Once challenged, they realise they need to side with truth. In the early church circumcision controversy, Peter and Barnabas caved in to pressure from the circumcision lobby and withdrew associating with Gentiles (Galatians 2:11-13), but when Paul challenged them, they sided properly with the gospel. They may have still believed the truth, but like so many compromising ‘moderates’, they failed to take a stand for truth when under pressure. Doctrinally they took the right side, but politically in their associations they took the wrong side. This shows that any of us can fall into this trap if we are not careful – and we may need others to point this out to us.

ISN’T IT UNLOVING TO FIGHT HERESY?

What of the argument that it is unloving to fight heresy? If we truly love someone, will we not fight to defend their reputation and stop someone else telling lies about them? So when someone teaches falsely about God – such as trying redefine the nature of God - then if we truly love God will we not fight for the truth about him. People who use this argument show they love men more than God. But do they even love men with the right type of love? When we allow false teachers to tell people the wrong way to get to heaven, is not the result people going to hell? Is that loving to the deceived people? If we really love homosexuals, will we stand by idly while false teachers tell them they can continue to sin and go to heaven? Many Post-modern heretical teaches portray a God so different from that of the Bible (for example that in the popular novel ‘The Shack’, that one has to ask whether they worship the same God or an idol of their own carving?

WHAT ABOUT FREE SPEECH?

As for the free speech argument, this is not an absolute. Speech is not totally free anywhere or society would degenerate into chaos. Those who publish lies about other people get sued for defamation. Those who advertise falsely get taken to the Advertising Standards Authority. In the case of God, liars have some freedom in civil society because the state is not competent to judge what is true about God. But a biblical church is competent to judge truth about God and must do so. Those who teach heresy need to be thrown out of the church or marginalised into false churches, but don’t go to jail.

THE BATTLE FOR TRUTH IN CHURCH HISTORY

In the fourth century AD, there was a debate on the issue of whether Jesus was in fact God. False teachers called Arians argued he was not God (similar to today’s Jehovah’s Witnesses). The Council of Nicaea declared that Jesus was God, drew up a nice statement of faith http://www.creeds.net/ancient/nicene.htm and all thought the battle was over. But it wasn’t. The battle raged on for another hundred years led by a man named Athanasius of Alexandria. He wasn’t satisfied just to win on paper. He wanted the Arians pushed out of the church. Most Christian leaders saw him as a troublemaker. So did the Roman emperors, who saw him as someone causing division and disturbing the peace. His opponents brought numerous slanderous allegations against Athanasius. Many attempts were made to arrest and kill him, he was brought trial on various occasions and he was forced into banishment or hiding five times for a total of seventeen years. The Roman emperors decreed that all Christian bishops must excommunicate Athanasius or face banishment themselves. Tragically almost all did so. Even the bishop of Rome, Liberius was banished for two years and then caved in to pressure to disassociate with Athanasius. So, excommunicated by almost every Christian leader in the known world, alone and in hiding, being hunted by the imperial army – moving from cave to cave in the Egyptian desert – with his friends and supporters being tortured to try to get them reveal his location - Athanasius wrote a book ‘On the incarnation’, http://www.ccel.org/ccel/athanasius/incarnation.html . It won the debate and Arians were pushed out of the church. It is a classic and still regarded by many as the best book ever written on the subject.

In the Nineteenth, century when theological liberalism first made its appearance in Britain, its most outspoken opponent was Charles Spurgeon – pastor, evangelist, the founder of the first mega-church and an ongoing favourite source of quotations for sermons. But most who quote him, don’t know Spurgeon’s passion to defend the gospel against liberalism – how he sacrificed his friends, his popularity and his membership of the Baptist Union in Britain to fight it. Faced with the problem of liberalism, the Baptist Union drew up a new Statement of faith to affirm its evangelical commitment. Although he agreed with the statement, he realised that it left too much ‘wriggle room’ for liberals to interpret it in such a way that they could also sign it – and wanted a statement that would exclude the liberals. Most didn’t see or understand his objections and he was defeated in a vote of 2000 to 7 at the Baptist Union General Assembly. Moderate Baptists said he had just become a grumpy old man and his actions were a result of his illness of gout. But Spurgeon was right, and the liberal wolves stayed in the Baptist Union and continued to spread their false teaching – sending it into spiritual decline. (The best book on this is ‘Forgotten Spurgeon by Iain H Murray).

In the 1920’s and 30’s when liberalism reached America, the man who stood most strongly against it was Gresham Machen, a professor of theology at Princeton Seminary. At the time, Bible believers in the Presbyterian church were in the majority against the liberals, but sadly most of them were ‘moderates’ who sided politically with the liberals. Together, moderates and liberals signed the Auburn Affirmation promoting tolerance of liberal views. Upset by Machen’s divisive preaching against liberalism, when they heard Machen was to be promoted, the denominational authorities stepped to take over Princeton Seminary. In response, Machen founded Westminster Seminary, which continues the godly orthodox Biblical tradition that Princeton previously had. Machen, upset that church mission funds were being used to spread liberalism instead of the gospel, founded an Independent mission board to fund only true gospel based missions. At this, Machen and his supporters were brought to trial and expelled from the mainline Presbyterian Church in the USA. Many of those who expelled them were moderate Bible believers who simply thought that liberals should be tolerated as equals. Machen then founded the breakaway Orthodox Presbyterian Church. (The best book on Gresham Machen and his battle with liberalism is by Ned Stonehouse). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gresham_Machen

Mainline Presbyterianism continued to backslide into greater and greater error, while Westminster Seminary continued to produce a good crop of orthodox and influential Christian leaders. Just about every influential Christian leader promoting a Christian worldview in America is either a product of that seminary or has been influenced greatly by someone who is a graduate of that seminary. Students include Francis Schaeffer (worldviews), Gary North (economics), Wayne Mack (counselling). Lecturers include Cornelius van Til and Tim Keller. Those influenced by Schaeffer include Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Chuck Colson, Randall Terry, C. Everett Koop, Cal Thomas, and Tim and Beverly LaHaye; and scholars Os Guinness, Thomas Morris, Clark Pinnock, and Ronald Wells. http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/1997/march3/7t322a.html

Both Spurgeon and Machen died in their 50s mostly attributed to the extreme stress of the battles they fought against liberalism. Most couldn’t see the point of their fight, but their influence is lasting.

By the time liberalism had reached the Southern Baptist Convention in the 1970s, it had morphed into a different form called Neo-Orthodoxy. But again the same categories arose. ‘Liberals’ questioned the truth of scripture; ‘Moderates’ thought scripture was true, but we should allow people to teach otherwise and ‘Conservatives’ who thought the truth of scripture was worth fighting for. Two conservative leaders, Paige Patterson, a small Bible College professor and Paul Pressler, a lawyer fought first to appoint a conservative leader of the Southern Baptist Convention and then to appoint biblical conservatives to lead the seminaries that trained the ministers. While they faced much opposition and abuse from liberals and moderates who tried to stop them, the result was, with the Lord’s help, a return of the denomination to a belief in the reliability of the Bible. Unlike the most of the American mainline denominations which continued to decline, the Southern Baptist Convention has continued to grow and send missionaries around the world. (The best book on this battle is ‘A hill to die on’ by Paul Pressler.
A summary can be downloaded at: http://www.paigepatterson.info/documents/anatomy_of_a_reformation.pdf

FROM HISTORY TO TODAY

In all these four major controversies of church history, the main battle was not between ‘liberals’ and ‘conservatives’ but between ‘moderates’ and ‘conservatives’. It was between Bible believers who wished to tolerate wolves and those who did not. Such conflict between true believers is much more painful than conflict between those who are Bible believers and those who are false. But unfortunately, when those who truly believe the Bible decide to defend wolves and attack true shepherds who fight wolves, then they cause such division. The division can’t be blamed on the conservatives who fight to defend the truth of the gospel.

The apostle John says “2JN 1:10 If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not take him into your house or welcome him. 2JN 1:11 Anyone who welcomes him shares in his wicked work”. Thus according to the Bible, helping ungodly teachers is sharing in their work, which is wicked. That includes allowing them pulpit time or magazine space or broadcast air time.

Jesus rebuked the church at Thyatira for allowing the false teacher Jezebel REV 2:20 Nevertheless, I have this against you: You tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess. By her teaching she misleads my servants into sexual immorality and the eating of food sacrificed to idols.

Today, in the Western world, our main problem is false Postmodern teachers who promote acceptance of homosexuality and other sexual compromises, who question truths such as eternal punishment, the fact that Jesus died in our place, and the virgin birth of Christ. We cannot give them space. If we truly love God, we must speak up against lies about God and protect the flock from wolves. We must silence those who teach falsely on matters that put peoples eternal salvation at risk, even if as with Athanasius of Alexandria (4th Century), Charles Spurgeon (19th Century), Gresham Machen (early 20th Century Presbyterian battle), Paige Patterson and Paul Pressler (late 20th century Baptist battle) before us, we are slandered, threatened and suffer for our stand.