Why I am no longer in the Church of Scotland (9)

Why I am no longer in the Church of Scotland (9)

In 1995 I produced a small booklet on biblical separation. This is the ninth extract from that booklet:

2 Peter 2:1 -3

But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction. 2 And many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of truth will be blasphemed. 3 And in their greed they will exploit you with false words. Their condemnation from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep.

Peter, like both Jesus and Paul, warns against false prophets and teachers.  Their heresies are “destructive”, leading to the condemnation of those who embrace them. Such teachers bring the truth into disrepute, especially if they are openly accepted or tolerated within the church. Such false teachers may gain for themselves many followers, but it does not mean their teaching is approved by God.

Is it conceivable that Peter warns against such false teachers, but expects the church to take no action against them?  Does he expect the church to grant formal recognition to such teachers, refusing to discipline them and willing to fellowship with them in the name of diversity and toleration? Of course not!  Peter warns Christians  in order that the church might recognise and remove such purveyors of error.

1 John 4:1

Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already.

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The church is not to be gullible in accepting the claims of false teachers to status and office. False teachers must be identified and excluded from the church. False teaching represents the spirit of antichrist.  One test to evaluate the claims of teachers, by no means the only one, is their doctrine of Christ. Those who reject orthodox christology, who deny his deity, who reject his virgin birth, who ridicule his body resurrection and ascension, represent the spirit of antichrist.

2 John 10, 11

If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your house or give him any greeting, for whoever greets him takes part in his wicked works.

The “house” here represents the church. It is not so much domestic hospitality as ecclesiastical recognition and welcome within the church that John is discussing. If someone does not receive and recognise apostolic teaching they are simply not to be received. If they do not hold to the fundamental truths of evangelical Christianity, but reject essential biblical truths, they are not to be welcomed by the church. 

John says that if we welcome such teachers, we in some measure share in their wicked work of undermining apostolic teaching. Guilt by association and acceptance is clearly indicated.

When any liberal preacher is welcomed in an evangelical church, even if his sermon on that occasion is outwardly orthodox, the very act of welcoming and receiving him is sinful – he is to be judged on the totality of what he believes and teaches, not on his deceptive dissimulation in a particular sermon. It is an unacceptable evasion to say that this text only refers to receiving, for example, a Mormon or a Jehovah Witness – it refers to those within the visible church who deny apostolic teaching and who do not abide in the teaching of Christ.

[To be continued.]