The Truth War (26 page)

JESUS COMMANDED US
TO BE ON GUARD AGAINST
FALSE CHRISTS AND FALSE
PROPHETS. THE APOSTOLIC
ERA WAS FILLED WITH
EXAMPLES OF WOLVES
IN SHEEP'S CLOTHING.
CHURCH HISTORY IS
STREWN WITH MORE
EXAMPLES, ONE AFTER
ANOTHER. ONLY SINFUL
AND WILLFUL UNBELIEF
CAN ACCOUNT FOR THE
REFUSAL OF SO MANY IN
THE CHURCH TODAY TO
HEED THOSE WARNINGS.

Second, maintain your spiritual stability and equilibrium by “praying in the Holy Spirit.” Commune constantly with the Spirit of God, going before God in the power and the will of the Spirit to demonstrate your dependence on God and to cry out for His protection, His grace, His insight, and His power. The faithful life is kept steady through means of the spiritual disciplines of study and prayer.

Third, Jude says, “Keep yourselves in the love of God” (v. 21). That is a way of reminding us to be obedient. Jesus said, “He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him” (John 14:21). “Abide in My love,” He told the disciples. “
If you keep My commandments, you
will abide in My love,
just as I have kept My Father's commandments and abide in His love” (John 15:9–10, emphasis added). Jude 21 is simply echoing that commandment. It is a call for obedience.

Finally, Jude says, keep “looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.” That speaks of an eager expectation of Christ's second coming.

All of those are ways of reminding us to set our minds on heavenly things, not on the things of this world (Colossians 3:2). That is the only way to survive in a time of apostasy. Ultimately, only what is eternal really matters—and that means the truth matters infinitely more than any of the merely earthly things that tend to capture our attention and energies.

REACH

Jude mentions a way we ought to respond in an age of apostasy:
reach out.
Not only are there deceivers in the church; many have been deceived. As I noted early in this book, our duty in the Truth War is not only to oppose the false teachers but also to rescue those who have been led astray by them.

The language Jude uses is very picturesque: “And have mercy on some, who are doubting; save others, snatching them out of the fire; and on some have mercy with fear, hating even the garment polluted by the flesh” (vv. 22–23 NASB). His words convey the utmost urgency and sobriety, and he uses starkly vivid terminology to reflect exactly what God thinks of apostasy.

Notice that Jude describes three kinds of people who are affected by apostasy. The first group are the
confused.
They are doubters. They have been exposed to false teaching, and it has shaken their confidence in the truth. They aren't committed to the error yet, just doubting. Perhaps they aren't truly committed to the truth yet either. These may well be people who have never fully and savingly believed the gospel. On the other hand, they could be authentic believers—either young or spiritually feeble. Either way, exposure to false teachers has revealed a dangerous weakness in their faith by causing them to doubt.

Have mercy on them, Jude says. Don't write them off because they are weak and wavering. They are confused because they are absolutely open to any and every teacher, and they are utterly devoid of any discernment. They are the most accessible and the most vulnerable. They need truth, but they are being offered (and duped by) almost everything else.

Churches today are filled with people like that. They drift from church to church. They are often more concerned about whether they like the music than they are about whether they are hearing the truth. They are usually absorbed in religion for self-centered reasons. They want a better life. They are “recovering” sinners looking for fellowship. They are therefore susceptible to anyone who promises to meet their “felt needs.” They are the first-line victims of false religion.

Don't write them off or reject them. Show them mercy, Jude says.

And, of course, the chief mercy they need is the mercy of the gospel. Once they lay hold of that truth, they will have a foundation for true discernment and the endless cycle of confusion will be halted.

Group two are the
convinced.
They pose a more difficult problem. You have to snatch them out of the fire, Jude says—suggesting, of course, that they are already
in
the fire. He pictures apostasy as a burning, destructive, potentially lethal conflagration. The imagery underscores both the urgency of the need for rescue and the magnitude of the evil in the false teaching.

The fact that these people are
in
the fire suggests that they have bought the lie. They have (to some degree) owned the false doctrine. They are already being singed by hell. They need something more than mere mercy; this is an urgent rescue operation. Jude is urging us to use any means—
every
legitimate means—to pull them from the fire. These circumstances call for aggressive action.

The principle here is important. When you meet someone who is a convinced follower of some false doctrine, don't automatically turn your back on that person. Don't instantly push such people away or shun them. Don't respond with hostility. They might be more deceived than deceiving.

At the same time, you cannot embrace someone as a part of the true fellowship who rejects essential aspects of gospel truth. You don't offer someone who is convinced of a serious falsehood unconditional acceptance as a believer. But Jude is very specific about how we
should
respond to such people: go after them in a very critical rescue operation. Try to snatch them out of the fire.

Again, snatching them from the fire means giving them the truth—but with accents of urgency befitting the serious danger such people are facing. You come with force. You don't toy with such error or invite the purveyors of it to a dispassionate discussion over tea and biscuits. You treat the situation with an urgency and sobriety that is commensurate with the evil of apostasy.

That is exactly how Jesus responded to the Pharisees. He was strongly confrontive, very blunt; His warnings to them were severe; He spoke to them of judgment, devastation, and hell. His warning was analogous to the kind of warning you would give a neighbor if his house caught fire and you knew he was still inside asleep.

PULLING PEOPLE
FROM THE FIRES OF
APOSTASY REQUIRES
US TO GET CLOSE
TO THEM. JUDE
SUGGESTS THERE IS
SEVERE DANGER IN THIS.
WE CAN'T ALWAYS TELL
THE DIFFERENCE
BETWEEN THE MERELY
CONVINCED AND THE
FULLY COMMITTED.
SOME ARE DECEIVED;
OTHERS ARE
DELIBERATE DECEIVERS.

In 2 Corinthians 10:4–5, Paul describes spiritual warfare as the demolishing of ideological fortresses: “The weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.” The language is deliberately militant. But notice that he is not talking about warfare against
people.
He is describing a battle against evil
ideas
—thoughts, arguments, fortresses made of satanic lies. People are basically victims of the ideas, trapped and imprisoned by false doctrines and evil systems of thought. The point of the warfare is to liberate people from those fortresses.

So there is a ministry of mercy to the confused. There's a more urgent and solemn ministry of rescue to the convinced. And then Jude speaks of a third group: the
committed.
Here Jude employs his strongest and most vivid language: “On some have mercy with fear, hating even the garment polluted by the flesh” (v. 23 NASB).

Obviously, pulling people from the fires of apostasy requires us to get close to them. Jude suggests there is severe danger in this. We can't always tell the difference between the merely convinced and the fully committed. Some are deceived; others are deliberate deceivers. Some are disciples of error; others are the propagators, the leaders—the false teachers themselves. Jude suggests that we ought to show even the false teachers themselves a kind of mercy (for sometimes even the deceivers themselves are, to a degree, deceived, and occasionally, by God's grace, even they can be pulled from the fire). So show them mercy, Jude says. But do it with fear, despising the defilement of their evil.

The expression Jude employs is shocking. It is as coarse as any expression in Scripture. Jude uses a Greek word for “garment” that signifies underwear and a word for “polluted” that means “stained in a filthy manner; spotted and stained by bodily functions.” He is comparing the defilement of false teaching to soiled underwear.

If you have ever questioned what God's own view of false religion and apostasy is, that is it. One of the most important aspects of Jude's entire message is this theme, which runs through the whole of it:
false teaching is the deadliest and most abhorrent of
evils
, because it is always an expression of unbelief, which is the distillation of pure evil.

The
deadliest? Most abhorrent?
What about pornography, abortion, sexual perversion, marital unfaithfulness? Those are all gross sins, of course, and they are eating away at the fabric of our society. It is certainly right for us to be morally repulsed and outraged at such monstrous evils. But heresy that undermines the gospel is a far more serious sin because it places souls in eternal peril under the darkness of the kind of lies that keep people in permanent bondage to their sin.

That is why there is no more serious abomination than heresy. It is the worst and most loathsome kind of spiritual filth. Therefore, Jude says, we should no more risk being defiled by apostasy than we would want to clasp someone's filthy, stained underwear close to ourselves. Scripture employs this same shocking imagery in other places too. Isaiah 64:6, lamenting the apostasy of Israel, says, “But we are all like an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses [i.e., self-righteousness and false religion] are like filthy rags.” In that text, Isaiah uses a Hebrew expression that speaks of soiled menstrual cloths. In Revelation 3:4, Christ says to the church at Sardis, “You have a few names even in Sardis who have not defiled their garments.” That has a similar meaning, for He is referring to the defilement of heresy and apostasy.

These passages not only give insight into what God thinks of apostasy; they give us explicit instructions about how to deal with apostates. False doctrine and the wickedness of those who believe it stain the soul. Don't get close enough to be corrupted. Paul said something similar at the end of Romans: “I urge you, brethren, note those who cause divisions and offenses, contrary to the doctrine which you learned, and avoid them” (16:17). You can't build a real friendship with a false teacher. You cannot pretend to accept such a person as a fellow believer. You have to understand that people who buy into apostasy and damnable error are (either wittingly or unwittingly) agents of the kingdom of darkness and enemies of the truth. Don't risk being defiled by their corruption.

Nevertheless, there is a place for showing apostates mercy. It is a fearful mercy, and once again it involves giving them the light of truth. Confront their error with the truth, for that is the only hope of freeing them from the bondage and defilement of their own apostasy. But do it with the utmost care, always mindful of the dangers such an evil poses.

WHAT, AFTER ALL, IS TRUTH?

What is truth? We began this book with that question, and my earnest hope is that the answer is clear by now: Truth is not any individual's opinion or imagination.
Truth is what God decrees.
And He has given us an infallible source of saving truth in His revealed Word.

For the true Christian, this should not be a complex issue. God's Word is what all pastors and church leaders are commanded to proclaim, in season and out of season—when it is well received and even when it is not (2 Timothy 4:2). It is what every Christian is commanded to read, study, meditate on, and divide rightly. It is what we are called and commissioned by Christ to teach and proclaim to the uttermost parts of the earth.

Is there mystery even in the truth God has revealed? Of course. “‘For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,' says the LORD” (Isaiah 55:8). In 1 Corinthians 2:16, Paul paraphrased Isaiah 40:13–14: “Who has known the mind of the LORD that he may instruct Him?”

But then Paul immediately added this: “We have the mind of Christ.” Christ has graciously given us enough truth and enough understanding to equip us for every good deed—including the work of earnestly contending for the faith against deceivers who try to twist the truth of the gospel. Although we cannot know the mind of God
exhaustively
, we certainly can know it
sufficiently
to be warriors for the cause of truth against the lies of the kingdom of darkness.

And we are
commanded
to participate in that battle. God Himself sounded the call to battle when His Spirit moved Jude to write his short epistle and it permanently entered the canon of Scripture. This is not a duty any faithful Christian can shirk. Earthly life for the faithful Christian can never be a perpetual state of ease and peace. That's why the New Testament includes so many descriptions of the Christian life as nonstop warfare: Ephesians 6:11-18; 2 Timothy 2:1-4; 2 Timothy 4:7; 2 Corinthians 6:7; 10:35; 1 Thessalonians 5:8. I hope by now you understand that those unwilling to join the fight against untruth and false religion are no true friends of Christ.

The handful of vignettes from church history we have examined together in this book are only a brief introduction to how the Truth War has been fought over the past two millennia. I hope what we have examined here will provoke you to pursue the study further on your own. Look at any period of church history and you will discover this significant fact: Whenever the people of God have sought peace with the world or made alliances with false religions, it has meant a period of serious spiritual decline, even to the point where at times the truth seemed almost to be in total eclipse. But whenever Christians have contended earnestly for the faith, the church has grown and the cause of truth has prospered. May it be so in our time.