The Nature and Causes of Apostasy – Part 13

Remedy for Apostasy

By John Fast

For in the case of those who have once been enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, it is impossible to renew them again to repentance, since they again crucify to themselves the Son of God, and put Him to open shame. – Hebrews 6:4-6 (NASB)

Before a disease can be cured it must first be accurately diagnosed. To merely treat the symptoms while ignoring or denying the cause only makes the disease grow worse and worse. To merely treat the undesirable effects of apostacy, yet ignore and deny its causes, only makes the apostasy grow worse and worse, until, “There is no relief for your breakdown, your wound is incurable” (Na 3:19). Natural, unregenerate men and women have their principles and values debased and polluted, their faculties of reason and thinking darkened by sin, so that they cannot understand spiritual things until God grants and implants in them a new understanding which enables them to see the glory of God. This spiritual blindness does not prevent a natural, theoretical, academic, intellectual, or speculative knowledge of the words and doctrines of Scripture; rather it blinds the mind to the spiritual light and beauty of the Word. No unregenerate person, as long as they remain in that state, is any more capable of spiritual perception than a blind man is capable of perceiving colors. The blind man may have his own ideas about colors, he may imagine what color is, and understand in theory the various relations of colors to each other, and all the laws of physics which govern the reflection and refraction of light, just as well as those who see, yet remain totally blind to the reality of colors. In the same way, an unregenerate person may be able to write books on all the various points of theology, he may have great natural gifts of communication and be able to preach powerful sermons, and even lead others to a saving knowledge of the gospel, and yet be utterly blind to the beauty and glory of those truths of which they are so knowledgeable. They learn and receive the truths of the gospel merely by their own natural intellectual abilities, just as we would learn any other subject. They are blind to the fact they are spiritually blind (Jn 9:40). The light that is in them is darkness (Mt 6:23). They are “always learning and never able to come to a knowledge of the truth” (2 Tm 3:7).

Despite all their theological knowledge, they are utterly destitute of a true, experiential understanding of the nature and fruit of regeneration and what it means to be Christian, because they themselves are strangers to the power and efficacy of the gospel. This is why they will affirm and represent as Christian what is obviously not Christian, nor are they willing or able to make any clear distinction between them, especially if making such a distinction may be detrimental to their own self-interests. They will advise and encourage other professing Christians, all under the cloak of a false love, compassion, and tolerance, and under the pretext of evangelism, to compromise the clear and unambiguous moral and/or doctrinal teachings of Scripture, violate the clear commands of God, participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness, thereby denying by their actions what they profess to believe in principle. It is a strange kind of reasoning indeed to imagine that we demonstrate Christian love to sinners by a flagrant disregard for the commands, doctrines, and principles of Scripture, and by blessing, condoning, celebrating, approving, and participating in things that God has promised to judge with eternal torment in hell. It is a strange kind of reasoning indeed to think that corrupting, correcting, ignoring, and disbelieving the teachings, doctrines, commands, truths, and principles of God’s Word which cannot be reconciled with human reason or the culture is an effective method of evangelism. It is a strange kind of reasoning indeed to expect anyone to believe truths which we ourselves are ashamed of and which we deny by our lives and actions. A Christ and Christianity for which we are not required to deny self, and which permits and encourages us to love mother, father, brother, sister, son, daughter, friends, family, and the world more than Christ and His Word, is not the Christ or Christianity of the Bible (Mt 10:37).

It is easy to teach and profess the truth just so long as we are not required to live it and suffer for it, but when truth becomes too costly to self-interests, when it runs counter to the prevailing opinions of the culture, then the unregenerate mind will busy itself inventing and justifying all sorts of plausible and pragmatic excuses and pretexts for neglecting, redefining, correcting, undermining, and rejecting the truths, doctrines, commands, and principles of Scripture, and redefining what it is to be Christian. A person can be very religious, knowledgeable, humanitarian, and spiritual without being regenerate, but they cannot be a Christian. They remain a natural man, therefore, their mind remains blinded to a true understanding of spiritual truth. They still walk in darkness. Their mind is still under the dominion of sin. Today it is rare to find a professing Christian, even after they have attended a church for years, who knows the way of salvation and what it means to be Christian. Their ideas of Christian are drawn not from the Bible, but from how it is portrayed by so-called ‘Christian’ entertainment, radio, music, parachurch organizations, charlatan preachers, the internet and social media, book publishers that are only interested in what is popular, trendy, and profitable, not in what is true, and the man-centered theology which characterizes modern evangelicalism.

Scripture represents all unregenerate people as ignorant of those truths which they profess to know, and utterly destitute of the true knowledge of God (Mt 22:29; 1 Tm 1:7; Tit 1:16; 2 Pt 2:1-3; Jude 4). As long as unregenerate men and women tamper with Scripture, they are out of their element; they are a fish out of water. They will always be working to conform God, His Word, His gospel, His commands, and His doctrines to their own ideas of God, and to make them compatible with their own lusts and desires, their own human reason, their own ideas of Christian, and the prevailing opinions of the culture. They reveal their ignorance of God’s greatness, holiness, and perfection by attributing to Him thoughts, actions, values, priorities, and motives which are utterly inconsistent with His divine holiness, nature, and sovereignty. They find fault with God’s laws, His wisdom, His commands, His doctrines, and His judgments, thereby setting themselves up as judges over the Most High. They profess to know God, but by their deeds they deny Him (Tit 1:16). They honor Him with their lips, but their heart is far from Him (Mt 15:8). They call Jesus ‘Lord’, but do not do what He says; rather, they practice lawlessness (Lk 6:46; Mt 7:21-23). They profess to love Jesus, but they do not obey His commandments (Jn 14:15; 1Jn 5:3). They cloak their worldly, carnal, and man-centered thoughts and desires with virtuous and spiritual-sounding names and motives, and hide their hostility to God and His Word under plausible pretexts of making Jesus and His gospel more attractive to the modern world. They disguise their hostility to God’s clear Word with a false humility that in reality is nothing more than an attempt to undermine the trustworthiness, authority, and sufficiency of all of Scripture. They label, identify, market, and affirm as ‘Christian’ what is obviously not Christian. The lament of one faithful nineteenth century British pastor, Richard Hobson, is even more true today,

“How difficult it is to shield the flock from false teachers who pose as true shepherds: and like many well-known Ritualists, preach evangelical truth, up to a certain point, in order to catch their hearers, and then plausibly bring in deadly error. That is neither straightforward, truthful, Apostolic, nor Christ-like; but false, deceptive … it is the half-truth which is even more dangerous than a lie.”[1]

There are many ways by which the gospel of Jesus Christ, His person, and what it means to be Christian can be marred, misrepresented, corrupted, and abused while still maintaining a profession and reputation of being Christian. This is why most of what professes to be Christian today is not Christian, but a different religion altogether. The modern mind has come to expect and demand a wide selection of choices. Virtually anything can now be customized to suit anyone’s particular tastes, preferences, and personality, even the license plate on your car. Not to be outdone or outdated, modern Christianity has provided the modern world with no shortage of customized Jesuses, different gospels, and specialized ministries from which to choose. There is one to fit virtually any taste, preference, belief, lifestyle, and view of Jesus. One thing all these different Jesuses and gospels have in common is they are all man-centered. The means and motives used to effect any change in the lives of people, and to influence their behavior, are all of them suited either to their own natural human reason, or to their fears, superstitions, pride, self-serving felt needs, carnal and worldly lusts and desires, and other depraved ideas and affections. The only Jesus which most find intolerable is the person of Jesus who has revealed Himself only in the Bible, the Jesus who is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hb 13:8), because He is so unlike, and so opposed to the man-centered and malleable Jesuses which modern Christianity has invented for itself. He refuses to change or update His truths, His nature, His demands, His gospel, His worship, or His Word to accommodate the modern mind, modern culture, modern ideologies, or modern ‘scholarship’, just because they happen not to like them. This is because unregenerate people cannot honor God as God (Rm 1:21); therefore, they will invent various forms of godliness, different gospels, different doctrines, and different Jesuses’ which are more to their liking, call them ‘Christian’, then substitute those ideas for the Christianity of the Bible, all under the plausible pretext of making Jesus, His gospel, His doctrines, His Word, and His worship more attractive to the modern world. They may continue to use biblical terminology, but they give it different meanings.

All this is done under various plausible pretexts, such as Christian ‘unity’, ‘love’, ‘humility’, or of removing any ‘stumbling block’ to the gospel. Such pretexts, they imagine, justify their twisting, distorting, correcting, redefining, ignoring, and undermining the infallibility, inerrancy, historical accuracy, trustworthiness, and authority of all of Scripture. It is a great spiritual deception to imagine that a person can be Christian yet reject the inerrancy, infallibility, historicity, and authority of Scripture. Such a Christianity may seem to please the world for a time; it may fill buildings with people who profess to be Christian; it may be very lucrative, spawn mega-churches, sell lots of books, create an entire entertainment industry that bears the name Christian, give birth to a host of parachurch organizations and specialized ministries which have morphed into their own cottage industries, form powerful political coalitions, gratify those who are in search of excitement, entertainment, and self-fulfillment more than truth and edification, flatter our pride and give us a sense of self-empowerment and self-importance, create a cottage industry of ‘Christian’ conferences with their own elite cast of celebrity preachers and celebrity “Christians’, and have the appearance of being humble, scholarly, and open-minded. All this, however, is, as one nineteenth century pastor astutely observed, the mark of a superficial Christianity,

“He who desires to strengthen his virtue and purify his principles, will always prefer the solid to the specious; will be more disposed to contemplate an example of the unostentatious piety and goodness which all men may obtain, than of those extraordinary achievements which few can aspire; nor is it the mark of a superior, but rather a vulgar and superficial taste, to consider nothing as great or excellent but that which glitters with titles, or is elevated by rank.”[2]

In short, this Christianity may have the appearance of wisdom because it is so numerically and commercially “successful”, but it never conforms anyone to the image of Christ; rather, it conforms Christ and Christianity to the image of the modern world. All the doctrinal knowledge which we have of Jesus and His gospel that is not accompanied by this transforming power, conforming us to the image of Christ, is useless; all the ideas we have of His glory are nothing but fantasy, imagination, or superstition without this transforming power. Growth in grace, holiness, and obedience, is a growing into the image of Christ as He is revealed in Scripture, and nothing else is. The only Jesus we have is the one revealed in Scripture. All others are different Jesuses, and those who teach and trust in them are all under a curse (GaL 1:8, 9). This attempt by modern Christianity to reconcile biblical Christianity with the modern mind, modern tastes, modern beliefs, modern biases, modern scholarship, and modern culture has really resulted in surrendering everything distinctive of Christianity, so that what remains bears no relation to the Christianity taught by the New Testament; rather it marks the return to a pagan, man-centered, sub-Christian, pseudo-Christian, and un-Christian way of life. In other words, by seeking to make Christianity more appealing to the modern world, modern Christianity has ceased to be Christian. What J. Gresham Machen said one-hundred years ago concerning liberalism in particular can now be said of modern Christianity in general,

“In trying to remove from Christianity everything that could possibly be objected to in the name of science, in trying to bribe off the enemy by those concessions which the enemy most desires, the apologist has really abandoned what he started out to defend.”[3]

Modern Christianity has not only sought to remove “everything that could possibly be objected to in the name of science”, such as the biblical doctrine of creation, a global flood that destroyed all but eight persons, or any other teaching that cannot be reconciled with human reason, it has also sought to remove, explain away, redefine, compromise, undermine, correct, and abandon virtually every biblical truth, doctrine, command, or principle that could possibly be objected to by anyone, even conceding the most basic, fundamental, and self-evident truths to the enemies of Christ, His Word, and His gospel. Today, anything that even hints of being inconsistent with modern Christianity’s man-centered ideas of Jesus or the culture’s self-centered and twisted ideas of ‘love’, ‘grace’, and ‘compassion’ are scoffed at, ridiculed, denounced, and labeled as un-Christian. It is the clearest evidence of a mind that is still hostile against God, His Word, and all the effects of His wisdom, in that He has given us such a glorious image and representation of Himself in the person of Jesus Christ, and we do not like it, but either corrupt, misrepresent, neglect, or despise Him, and please ourselves by inventing Jesuses that correspond to our own depraved, carnal, and self-centered imaginations, and ascribing to Him what is infinitely beneath Him.

Whatever knowledge of God such people may have, it will always, sooner or later, show itself to be defective. This is because the only way to know God as He is, is in, by, and through the person of Jesus Christ; “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God” is seen only in the face of Jesus Christ, and in Him alone (2 Cor 4:6). He alone is the exact image of the nature of God (Hb 1:3). All who have truly seen Him by faith, as Jesus Himself declared, have seen the Father (Jn 14:9), that is, they have seen the nature and character of God, because He is God incarnate. All other Jesuses are the product of someone’s own imagination. If the minds of men and women are unaffected with the truth they know, and if it does not produce in them the fruits of true regeneration, conforming them to the image of Christ, it must be because they do not know it aright; neither can they perceive and understand it in its true nature until they are regenerated. The Jesus to which they are being conformed is the Jesus of their own imagination, not Jesus Christ as He is revealed in Scripture alone. Multitudes of people who profess to be Christian and to believe the Bible have never seen nor understood its spiritual glory because of the darkness of their minds, and therefore, have no experience of its transforming power and efficacy, nor are their hearts and lives influenced or governed by it, nor are they conformed to it. The holiness which the gospel requires and produces in all who truly believe is the transforming of our whole mind, heart, soul, and life into the image and likeness of Christ who is the image of God. This Jesus is seen only by faith in the revelation He has given of Himself in Scripture alone – by faith, I say – not by imagination.

The Second Cause of Apostasy

This is the second cause of apostasy; people remaining blind and hostile to spiritual truth under a profession of faith in the gospel. The faith they profess is not the fruit of regeneration; it is not the gift of God, but a deceptive counterfeit, which can never bear the fruit of true saving faith, namely, a sincere and whole-hearted love for Jesus Christ as He is revealed in Scripture. It is a love which supersedes and overrules love for self, family, friends, possessions, reputation, sin, and our life in this world, resulting in obedience to His commands (Jn 14:15; 1 Jn 5:3), and a sincere desire and endeavor to be conformed to His image and live a life of holiness, self-denial, humble dependence on and submission to the authority and infallibility of all of God’s Word, because it is the Word of Him who is the source of all truth, and is more certain than any truth ‘proved’ or ‘discovered’ by mere natural human reason.

Most who profess to be Christian have no authority for what they believe and how they live other than their own lusts, desires, feelings, experiences, imagination, opinions, the opinions of other people, and their corrupted interpretations and paraphrases of Scripture which they twist to their own destruction. All those who profess to be Christian, by that profession, also profess to love Jesus Christ as He is revealed in Scripture. Faith in Jesus is faith in Him as He is described in the Scripture, not in a Jesus of our own or someone else’s imagination. To profess to be Christian, yet have no love for Jesus as He is revealed in Scripture, or no love for His Word, is a contradiction. It is impossible to love who we do not know; rather we will love what we imagine them to be. It is this pretended love which modern Christianity professes to have for Jesus, and under the pretext of, seeks to reconcile Jesus and His Word with the modern mind and modern world.

Since most who profess to be Christian never had a love of the truth so as to be saved, they therefore never had any internal principle of love for God and His Word that would prevent their minds and affections from being led astray and enticed away from it into various forms of godliness, false gospels, false Christs, and erroneous beliefs and understandings of what it is to be Christian. The Jesus in which they believe and sing about is a figment of their own or someone else’s imagination, which is why they profess to ‘love’ him, because they invented him. This is why the Jesuses of modern Christianity are so marketable and commercially viable, because they are so man-centered. Whatever their views of the person of Jesus are based on, they do not arise from the revelation that is made of Him in Scripture. It is by means of this divine revelation alone that all true faith and love for Christ is created, regulated, measured, and is to be judged. All other Jesuses are idols of the mind, including those portrayed by some actor or children’s cartoon. The fact that such portrayals are now wildly popular and commercially successful simply proves that most professing Christian’s ideas of Jesus are not shaped and governed by Scripture, but by some satanically inspired man-made imitation. A Jesus who is popular, fashionable, marketable, and well-liked by the world is not the Jesus revealed in Scripture. A Jesus who is ‘so human’, and ‘so like us’, is not the Jesus of the Bible. The Jesus in which most professing Christians believe is not the Jesus revealed only in Scripture, but an imitation Jesus, one that is the product of the mind of man, not divine revelation. All of these attempts to portray the person of Jesus can only portray what can be depicted by a mere man, and nothing more, but Jesus was not a mere man. How absurd and blasphemous to imagine that any mere man can give an accurate representation of the only begotten Son of God; that a mere man can represent the union of Christ’s divine nature with His human nature in the same person who is full of grace and truth and has the Spirit without measure. The only Jesus such portrayals can possibly represent is one who is a mere man, perhaps the greatest man who ever lived, a man through whom God worked more than any other man, but a mere man nonetheless.

All these attempts to portray the person of Jesus simply instill a false image and conception of Him into the mind, so that people think Jesus is like the Jesus represented by a mere man, or by contemporary ‘Christian’ music, or by modern Christianity, or by someone’s mystical experience, or by their own or someone else’s imagination. All these false representations of Jesus are designed by Satan to satisfy and excite carnal and worldly affections and emotions which people then imagine is love for the person of Jesus. Satan is, as Iain Murry calls him, “the silent participant” in all apostasy from God and His truths.[4] Emotions that arise from false representations and depictions that people make of Jesus is not love for Jesus, but for some idol of the mind, and behind every idol is a demon (1 Cor 10:20). It is not Jesus Christ which they love and in whom they trust, but some figment of their own or someone else’s imagination by which their carnal, man-centered, and worldly minds are pleased and affected, as the great Puritan John Owen so aptly described,

“Many there are who, not comprehending, not being affected with, that divine, spiritual description of the person of Christ which is given us by the Holy Ghost in the Scripture, do feign unto themselves false representations of Him by images and pictures, so as to excite carnal and corrupt affections in their minds …. and so, by the working of their fancy, raise a commotion of mind in themselves, which they suppose to be love unto Christ. But all these idols are teachers of lies. The true beauty and amiableness of the person of Christ, which is the formal object and cause of divine love, is so far from being represented herein, as that the mind is thereby wholly diverted from the contemplation of it. For no more can be so pictured unto us but what may belong unto a mere man, and what is arbitrarily referred unto Christ, not by faith, but by corrupt imagination …. This transforming efficacy, from a spiritual view of Christ as proposed in the Gospel, being lost, as unto an experience of it, in the minds of men carnal and ignorant of the mystery of believing, … fancy and superstition provided various supplies in the room of it. …. By these things, their carnal affections being excited by their outward senses, they suppose themselves to be affected with him, and to be like unto him.”[5]

Such imaginary Jesuses simply reveal the hostility which unregenerate people have toward the nature of God, no matter what they profess to the contrary, particularly His attribute of holiness, as the great Puritan genius Steven Charnock wrote,

“The holiness of God is injured, in unworthy representations of God, and imaginations of him in our own minds. The heathen fell under this guilt, and ascribed to their idols those vices which their own sensuality inclined them to, unworthy of a man, much more unworthy of a God, that they might find a protection for their crimes in the practice of their idols. But is this only the notion of the heathens? May there not be many among us whose love to their lusts, and desires of sinning without control, move them to slander God in their thoughts, rather than reform their lives, and are ready to frame, by the power of their imaginative faculty, a God, not only winking, but smiling, at their impurities? …. It is too common for men to fancy God not as he is, but as they would have him; strip him of his excellency for their own security.”[6]

Every false notion concerning the person of Jesus, His work, His offices, what He is, has done, and is doing, only corrupts the love which people profess and pretend to have for Him, especially when that false conception is propagated under the pretext of love and devotion to Jesus. There can be no true evangelical love for a false Christ, or true love that in all things is not defined, regulated, and measured by Scripture. A man-centered Jesus requires a man-centered gospel, and a man-centered gospel requires a man-centered Jesus. One necessitates the other. They are mutually dependent. Both are designed by Satan to appeal to man-centered idols such as pride, self-importance, self-fulfillment, and pleasure. The means, instruments, and systems he uses to do this are so subtle that men and women are willing and unwitting participants, all carried out under the cloak of seemingly plausible, yet deceptive spiritual-sounding pretexts. If people can be so deceived so as to believe they are offering service to God when they kill and persecute His true people (Jn 16:2), then they can be deceived into believing they are serving God and His cause by making Jesus, His gospel, and Christianity more appealing to the modern world. All unregenerate men, because they are by nature enemies of God, want to do the desires of their father the devil (Jn 8:44). The New Testament teaches that Satan works primarily by means of counterfeits, imitations, by substituting almost true for true, and by mixing error with truth, because wrong belief, no matter how sincerely one believes it, no matter how much good they do under the pretext of it, is just as deadly as unbelief. Satan works primarily through doctrinal deception, corruption, error, imitation, and falsehood. His servants disguise themselves as servants of righteousness (2 Cor 11:15), consequently, they outwardly appear righteous to men (Mt 23:28). Concerning the danger posed by this “silent participant”, the great pastor and hymn writer John Newton once wrote,

“he is always dangerous, but never more than when he pleads for Gospel doctrines in order to abuse them, and when he tries to pass his counterfeit humility, zeal, and sanctity upon us for pure gold. No coiner (i.e. counterfeiter) can equal him for imitation. Where Christ has a church, he will have a synagogue; where the Spirit produces any graces, he, like the magicians of Egypt, will do something as like it, and yet as unlike it as possible. He has something that comes so near the Gospel, that it is called by St. Paul another gospel, and yet in reality it is no gospel at all. He deals much in half conviction, and almost Christians, but does not like thorough work. He will let people talk about grace as much as they please, and commend them for it, provided talk will satisfy them. He will preach free grace when he finds people willing to receive the notion, as an excuse and cloak for idleness …. he is never more a devil than when he looks most like an angel. Let us beware of him; for many wise have been deceived, and many strong have been cast down by him.”[7]

The third century Christian, Cyprian, wrote the following on this same subject,

“It is easy enough to be on one’s guard when the danger is obvious; one can stir up one’s courage for the fight when the enemy shows himself in his true colors. There is more need to fear and beware of the enemy when he creeps up secretly, when he beguiles us by a show of peace and steals forward by those hidden approaches which have earned him the name of the ‘Serpent’ …. the enemy devised a fresh deceit, using the Christian name itself to mislead the unwary.”[8]

Josiah Pratt, a nineteenth century British pastor who understood the danger and source of error, wrote,

“Let us consider well how much and plainly our Lord himself, and his holy apostles, especially St. Paul, speak of the devil’s working on men by error. We shall dread and hate error more than we do, and be more keen than we are in detecting it in its even distant approaches, when we rightly estimate its power as an instrument of evil.”[9]

Modern Christianity is so far from dreading and hating error that it ignores, defends, justifies, promotes, propagates, integrates, assimilates, and profits from it. It conceals its error by saying that it is a ‘gray area’ of Scripture. But gray is nothing but the mixing of black and white, light and dark, truth and error, and as Richard Hobson once stated,

“Error never seems so erroneous, nor truth so truthful, as when the two are placed in juxtaposition: just as black and white contrast most strongly when seen side by side: there cannot be, there is not, a more effective way of teaching and conveying the truth than by collating it with its own antithesis, error, either Romish, Ritualistic, or any other kind.”[10]

Yet error is what constitutes most of the ‘Christian’ books published and sold today, most of the teaching on ‘Christian’ radio, television, and the internet, most of the preaching that emanates from pulpits, most of what is taught in seminaries, most of modern theological scholarship, most parachurch organizations, and virtually all that makes up contemporary ‘Christian’ music and entertainment. In fact, were it not for error, modern Christianity could not be the multi-billion-dollar industry that it is. Modern Christianity reeks with error. Far from “detecting it in its even distant approaches”, most professing Christians are oblivious to it when it comes, sits in their lap, and stares them in the face. This is because error is not compared with truth, but with some other shade of gray, that is, with truth mixed with human wisdom, human reason, and human imagination. Today, the criteria set by Scripture for distinguishing the spirit of truth from the spirit of error is totally ignored, “They are from the world; therefore they speak as from the world, and the world listens to them. We are from God; he who knows God listens to us; he who is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error” (1 Jn 4:5, 6).

The attempt to integrate, accommodate, and assimilate flawed human systems and man-centered ideologies – ideologies such as evolution, feminism, philosophy, Marxism, progressivism, and psychology, just to mention a few – with infallible divine revelation, has led to a drastic change in how most professing Christians approach and interpret the Bible. The deceptive secular maxim, “All truth is God’s truth”, has been repeated so often that one might think it is from the Bible. The same is true of its more recent counterpart, “Love is love”. Both are simply demonic attempts to corrupt biblical truth and love and substitute “something as like it, and yet as unlike it as possible” in their place, and to use “the Christian name itself to mislead the unwary”. The first has been used to justify the corruption and disbelief of those parts of Scripture which cannot be reconciled with fallible human wisdom, and as a pretext for the integration of flawed human systems, reason, theories, and ideologies with infallible Scripture, thereby “secretly introducing destructive heresies” (2 Pt 2:1), and then by making those flawed human ideologies the judge of Scripture. The second has been used to justify redefining the very nature of God, Jesus Christ, His gospel, and Christianity. As a result, the declaration of objective, infallible, and authoritative truth has been replaced by the search for subjective, mystical, and pragmatic human bias.

Consequently, the Christianity taught, professed, and practiced by modern Christianity is, in every respect, a man-centered, worldly form of Christianity, which is no Christianity at all, but a different religion altogether. This is evident in the way in which the priorities, tastes, values, ideologies, practices, and interests of the culture are now mirrored in the churches. Its worship is a man-centered, carnal worship; its message is a man-centered message; its evangelism is pragmatic and man-centered; its hermeneutics are subjective and man-centered; its programs, enticements, and practices are man-centered; its definition of ‘success’ is worldly and man-centered; its ideas of ‘love’ are carnal and man-centered; its conceptions of what it is to be Christian are man-centered and humanitarian; their ideas of heaven are carnal and worldly; they still walk according to the flesh, therefore they set their minds on the things of the flesh and this world, thereby giving the greatest possible evidence that their minds are governed not by Scripture, but are still under the dominion of sin and hostile to God and His Word (Rm 8:4-7). A man-centered Jesus, gospel, Christianity, evangelism, and ministry sets its mind on the interests of man, not on the interests of God (Mt 16:23). They are satanic imitations and misrepresentations of the real thing, invented by his servants who disguise themselves as servants of righteousness in order to blind “the minds of the unbelieving, that they may not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Cor 4:4), and to lead the minds of people “astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ” (2 Cor 11:3).

We are told that Satan’s servants disguise themselves as servants of righteousness (2 Cor 11:15). The whole purpose of a disguise is to hide who and what a person really is, and to convince others they are someone other than they truly are. A disguise which is easily noticed and seen through is no disguise at all, and those who are blind to what should be obvious are willfully blind. They are willfully blind because they want to believe someone really is who they pretend to be, despite all the evidence to the contrary, rather than admit they are not who and what they really are. They will justify their willful blindness, and gloss over the danger of false teachers and their teaching by telling themselves and others, “But they speak a lot of truth”; “I’ve benefited from their teaching”; “They just have some discernment issues”; “So many others cannot be wrong”; “They are endorsed by this famous preacher, that celebrity Christian”; “We must not be too narrow; too quick to judge”; “None of us are perfect”. However, the fact that they do speak a lot of truth is what makes their disguise so convincing, and which makes them all the more dangerous. Poison mixed with wholesome food administered in small doses is just as deadly as a single lethal dose. People typically do not abandon the truths and doctrines of the gospel all at once; rather, their minds are “led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ” (2 Cor 11:3); they “drift away” (Hb 2:1) from truth into error. One seemingly harmless compromise, one concession to pragmatism, one accommodation of error, all done of course under the pretext of ‘unity’, ‘love’, and ‘the gospel’, leads to others, until the mind is irretrievably led astray from the truth, evidenced by the fact that, “they refused to take correction. They have made their faces harder than rock; they have refused to repent;” and, “They hold fast to deceit, they refuse to return” (Jer 5:3; 8:5).

It is not overt, obvious, and outrageous false teaching and teachers that are so dangerous. They are simply blind guides of the blind, and any flimsy disguise will deceive a blind man. Isaac would not have been fooled by Jacob’s feeble disguise if he had not been blind (Gn 27:22). Rather, it is those who outwardly appear righteous to men, and who, like the church in Sardis, have gained a reputation for being alive but are really spiritually dead, and who, by their subtle man-centered teaching and example, over time, lead the minds of people astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ. These are the most dangerous, because they “have crept in unnoticed” (Ju 4), and “by their smooth and flattering speech they deceive the hearts of the unsuspecting” (Rm 16:18). No one ever noticed, no one ever suspected them of being a false teacher, yet they are. Today, this kind intolerance for and exposure of heresy and error is, for the most part, totally absent. It takes no discernment to expose the false teachers targeted by most so-called discernment ministries; they are obvious. Today, under the pretext of ‘love’, ‘unity’, ‘evangelism’, or for mere pragmatic reasons, such error is usually glossed over, if not totally overlooked, especially if the one teaching error, either by word or example, happens to be a popular celebrity preacher who generates a lot of money for book publishers, radio stations, and conferences. It is a device of Satan to deceive people into thinking that exposing, refuting, and rebuking error is somehow unloving, un-Christian, and harmful to the cause of Christ. This was not the mind of the Reformers, or of the Puritans, or of the Apostles, or of Jesus Christ.

A man-centered, self-pleasing, man-pleasing form of godliness that bears the name ‘Christian’, is the direct opposite of the faith and love taught and demanded by Jesus and the New Testament. A Christianity in which “all seek after their own interests, not those of Christ Jesus” (Phil 2:21), under a pretext of faith and love for Jesus and His gospel, is worse than no Christianity at all, because it “blinds the minds of the unbelieving, that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2Cor 4:4). True faith and love for Jesus Christ consists in denying self, and in preferring Christ, His truth, and His glory over and above ourselves and our own self-interests. John Owen stated the case well when he wrote,

“There is nothing so unbecoming a Christian as to have his mind always exercised about, always filled with thoughts of earthly things. And according as men’s thoughts are exercised about them, their affections are increased and inflamed towards them. These things mutually promote one another, and there is a kind of circulation in them. Multiplied thoughts inflame affections, and inflamed affections increase the number of thoughts concerning them. Nothing is more repugnant unto the whole life of faith, nothing more obstructive unto the exercise of all grace, than a prevalency of this frame of mind. And at this season, in an especial manner, it is visibly preying on the vitals of religion …. God will not take us into heaven, into the vision and possession of heavenly glory, with our heads and hearts reeking with the thoughts and affections of earthly things.”[11]

Christianity or Mysticism

The sad reality is that the Christianity believed and practiced today by most who profess to be Christian is a Christianity they have invented for themselves. It is a satanic imitation of the faith once for all delivered to the saints. It is a Christianity saturated with the thoughts, ideologies, desires, and love for earthly things. And how can it be otherwise, seeing that it is a product of the mind of man, not of divine revelation, which is why it is so incredibly and thoroughly man-centered. All religion invented by the mind of man will, by its very nature, be unavoidably man-centered. An unregenerate mind will always, without fail, and under the guise of all sorts of plausible pretexts, seek to turn Christianity into a man-centered, self-serving religion, therefore it must, to one degree or another, undermine or deny the infallibility, inerrancy, trustworthiness, and authority of all of Scripture. True Christianity however, in distinction from all other religions invented by the mind of man, is based solely on the authority of divine revelation found only in the Bible. All other religions are unrevealed religions. There is an element found in the one true revealed religion which is not found in any unrevealed religion, and this is the element of authority. Revealed religion comes to man from without; it is imposed upon him from a source superior to his own mind, intellect, and will. All unrevealed religions have no higher source than the human mind itself. They are all natural religions as opposed to the one true supernatural religion revealed by God. They all rest on human wisdom, experience, emotion, ambition, desires, and imagination as the primary source of knowledge of divine things. In other words, they are all pure mysticism, and, as B.B. Warfield once observed,

“It is characteristic of mysticism that it makes its appeal to the feelings as the sole, or at least as the normative, source of knowledge of divine things. That is to say, it is the religious sentiment which constitutes for it the source of religious knowledge. Of course mystics differ with one another in the consistency with which they apply their principle. And of course they differ with one another in the account they give of this religious sentiment to which they make their appeal. There are, therefore, many varieties of mystics,[12] pure and impure, consistent and inconsistent, naturalistic and supernaturalistic, pantheistic and theistic – even Christian. What is common to them all, and what makes them all mystics, is that they all rest on the religious sentiment as the source of knowledge of divine things …. This Christian mysticism, now, obviously differs in no essential respect from the parallel phenomena which are observed in other religions. It is only general mysticism manifesting itself on Christian ground and interpreting itself accordingly in the forms of Christian thought. It is mysticism which has learned to speak in Christian language.”[13]

This describes modern Christianity in all its various forms; it rests on no higher authority than human reason, human feelings, a person’s own subjective experiences, and the authority of the culture. In other words, virtually all of modern Christianity rests not on Scripture, but on the subjective “religious sentiment as the source of knowledge of divine things”. The distinction between true evangelical Christianity and mysticism is self-evident, as B.B. Warfield explained,

“Evangelical Christianity interprets all religious experience by the normative revelation of God recorded for us in the Holy Scriptures, and guides, directs, and corrects it from these Scriptures, and thus molds it into harmony with what God in His revealed Word lays down as the normal Christian life. The mystic, on the other hand, tends to substitute his religious experience for the objective revelation of God recorded in the written Word, as the source from which he derives his knowledge of God, or at least to subordinate the expressly revealed Word as the less direct and convincing source of knowledge of God to his own religious experience. The result is that the external revelation is relatively depressed in value, if not totally set aside.”[14]

It is self-evident that modern Christianity has devalued, and in many, if not most instances, totally set aside and abandoned the written and revealed Word of God as the sole source of authority for what it is to be Christian. As Dr. Robert Thomas stated in his book Evangelical Hermeneutics: The New Versus the Old, “the root difference between the new and old approaches to hermeneutics is the placement of the interpreter’s preunderstanding at the head of the exegetical process”.[15] In other words, a person’s own subjective religious beliefs, ideas, and experiences are the lens through which they view the Bible. The authority of human reason, feelings, presuppositions, subjective experiences, and a person’s own imagination are now the source of knowledge about the nature of God, the person of Jesus, and for what it is to be Christian. As a consequence, modern Christianity has abandoned, nor will it recognize, any objective biblical criteria for distinguishing true Christianity from what is obviously not Christian. It will not tolerate having its man-centered, idolatrous, and fanciful conceptions of Jesus, the gospel, and what it is to be Christian examined, corrected, regulated, and judged by Scripture alone. In other words, modern Christianity has “exchanged the truth of God for a lie,”(Rm 1:25); it has turned away from the truth and turned aside to myths (2 Tm 4:4), because myths and mysticism are all that are left once the truths of God’s Word are neglected and forsaken, as John Owen once observed,

“All true believers, in their several stations, by mutual watchfulness, preaching, or writing, according unto their calls and abilities, effectually used the outward means (i.e. Scripture) for the preservation and propagation of the faith of the church. And the same means are still sufficient unto the same ends, were they attended unto w/ the same conscience and diligence. The pretended defense of truth w/ arts and arms of another kind has been the bane of religion, and lost the peace of Christians beyond recovery. And it may be observed, that while this way alone for the preservation of the truth was insisted on and pursued, although innumerable heresies arose one after another, and sometimes many together, yet they never made any great progress … but the errors themselves, and their authors, were as vagrant meteors, which appeared for a little while and vanished away. Afterwards it was not so, when other ways and means for the suppression of heresies were judged convenient and needful … For thenceforth the faith of Christians began to be resolved into the authority of men, and as much, if not more weight to be laid on what was decreed by the [church] fathers … than on what was clearly taught in the Scriptures.”[16]

This is modern Christianity. It has abandoned the truths, doctrines, commands, and principles of Scripture as the sole means “for the preservation and propagation of the faith of the church”, and has instead turned to various other means, methods, and ideologies invented by the mind of man. When human authority, human wisdom, and human imagination supersedes and replaces the authority and wisdom of Scripture we are left with no objective and authoritative standard to distinguish between truth and error, and a person’s faith comes to rest on the wisdom of man not on the power of God (1 Cor 2:5). In other words, modern Christianity, with few exceptions, has become nothing more than one of the many and various kinds of mystical natural religions invented by the mind of man for himself. Its Jesus is a Jesus of their own or someone else’s imagination, not the Jesus of divine revelation. Their love for Jesus is for the Jesus of their own or someone else’s imagination. Their faith is a natural, intellectual, subjective, mystical faith. It is worse than the faith of demons, for their knowledge of God causes them to shudder (Jm 2:19). What it imagines to be Christian bears no relation to the revealed Christianity of the Bible other than continuing to use some of the same terminology redefined. We are all by nature selfish and self-centered creatures who look no farther than our own self-interests, so it is not surprising that unregenerate men and women should seek to substitute a man-centered religion for the Christianity of the Bible. What is surprising, however, is the insistence on calling this man-centered religion by the same name as the faith which they have despised and rejected, and which is so opposed to it. The fundamental principle of true faith, true love for Jesus, and true Christianity is to deny self, to love Jesus as He is revealed in Scripture above ourselves, and seek His interests above our own.

New Measures

This is how we can explain all the different and unbiblical notions of Christian – notions that are obviously inconsistent with the Christianity taught by the New Testament – which currently prevail among the majority of those who make a profession of being Christian. This is why a life of sin, worldliness, self-centeredness, immorality, profanity, gross ignorance of biblical truth and doctrine, absurd and blasphemous opinions of the nature of God and the person of Jesus, rejection of the sufficiency, inerrancy, historicity, and authority of Scripture, and almost any aberrant view of salvation are now considered to be consistent with being Christian. It is because the person of Jesus, His gospel, what it is to be Christian, are all now subjective. They are all defined in terms of a person’s own subjective and mystical ideas, biases, opinions, beliefs, experiences, and desires. Christianity has been made to conform to what people imagine it is to be Christian, and what they want Christianity to be, not what the Bible defines as Christian.

This shift in how people came to understand what it means to be Christian began, as does all error and apostasy, gradually. It began in the early nineteenth century with the emergence of revivalism and the introduction of what were termed ‘New Measures’. These ‘New Measures’ gradually changed how the gospel was presented, what constituted true conversion, and what it meant to be Christian. In other words, the minds of most were led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ by means, men, and methods that disguised themselves as servants of righteousness. Methods and practices not taught in Scripture were introduced and used with the sole purpose of inducing an emotional response in those hearing the message, then this response was equated with true conversion, thereby subtlety and slyly substituting a counterfeit conversion for the true. These ‘New Measures’ gradually changed the message and practices of the American church and people’s understanding of what it meant to be Christian. Most churches and preachers who had adopted these ‘New Measures’ refused to renounce them because they proved successful in terms of numbers. Success became the measure of what was right and true. Faithful men who warned that these ‘New Measures’ were not only unbiblical, but dangerous, were largely ignored or ridiculed or accused of being against revival. Concerning these New Measures, one nineteenth century theologian who witnessed them, Archibald Alexander, wrote,

“If I were to place myself on what is called an anxious seat, or kneel down before a whole congregation to be prayed for, I know that I should be strangely agitated, but I do not believe that it would be of any permanent usefulness. But if it should produce some good effect, am I at liberty to resort to any thing in the worship of God which I think would be useful? If such things are lawful and useful, why not add other circumstances and increase the effect? All these things come into the church upon this same principle, of devising new measures to do good; and if the anxious seat is so powerful a means of grace, it may soon become reckoned among the sacraments of the church.”[17]

These New Measures, introduced under the plausible pretext and appearance of doing good, soon infiltrated seminaries and were taught to generations of future pastors as being the best way to produce converts. To defend these New Measures, a new and different theology of conversion was invented, namely, that conversion consists in bringing someone to a decision of their will. Any method which moved a person’s will to ‘make a decision for Christ’ was regarded as legitimate, and any positive response to the gospel was affirmed and counted as genuine conversion. Conversion was reduced to a once-and-done act, that could be performed by any person at any given point in time. A different theology of conversion necessitated a different doctrine concerning the nature of man, as well as a different definition of Christian. This different theology of conversion rests on the assumption that the only problem with unregenerate people is their will, not the fact that their mind is darkened in its understanding, that they are hostile in mind and by nature enemies of God, and that their nature must first be changed and their mind must first be renewed before there can be any saving response to the gospel. In other words, it denied the reality of man’s fallen and ruined nature and the nature and necessity of regeneration, and a life of holiness, universal obedience to the law of God, and love for the person of Jesus Christ and His Word as evidence of, and the fruit of true regeneration. It was a theology which, in practice, became the national religion of America, and it remains so to this day. It is a theology conveyed by the statement displayed on the sign of a local Methodist Church, “God is ready, He is just waiting for you to come.” It is a theology which its adherents love to call a “whosoever will gospel”. Salvation is based on an act of the human will. God has done His part, now He is just waiting for us to do our part.

No doubt such a man-centered gospel is very flattering to human pride. It is very flattering to be told that the determining factor in salvation is our decision. It is very flattering to be told that God’s grace and forgiveness are at the disposal of anyone who, when they are good and ready, and with no sense of guilt for sin, or no recognition of their sinful and ruined nature, would deign to take it from His hand. This entire system of theology, however, was tailormade to promote false conversions, false hopes, and to propagate a false, man-centered, and apostate Christianity, ultimately corrupting the message and life of true Christianity, destroying the souls of those who were deceived by it, and bringing true Christianity into derision. William Weeks, a nineteenth century theologian who witnessed firsthand the effects of these New Measures, was prompted to write,

“I think the new measures are usually found connected with radical errors in relation to what true Christian experience is, and that the kind of experimental religion which these measures are adapted to produce, is not true Christian experience, but a dangerous delusion.”[18]

This describes the bulk of modern evangelicalism and the majority of what today professes to be Christian; it is not true Christianity, but a dangerous delusion, a mere form of godliness, a satanic imitation designed to set the mind on the interests of man, produce false Christians, and to blind “the minds of the unbelieving, that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Cor 4:4). It is nothing but mysticism that has learned to speak in Christian language. It is a Christianity that is all leaves and no fruit; all outward show without any inward change and transformation; all form and no power; all emotion and mysticism and very little if any truth. Its love is a counterfeit love; its hope is a false hope; the peace it promises is a false peace; its ideas of Christian are based on a false theology of conversion and on “radical errors in relation to what true Christian experience is”. A current observer of the drift of modern Christianity, David F. Wells, has recently written,

“As Evangelicalism has emptied itself out theologically, novelty, experimentation and cultural trendiness have overwhelmed many of the historic, bedrock affirmations that once characterized evangelical faith …. This is the cultural context in which the evangelical church finds itself at the beginning of the new millennium. It is a moment which cries out for a countercultural declaration that there is truth, that God has secured that truth in His Word, that it is this Word that He has given to the church for its instruction, nourishment, and encouragement, and that He still intends to use this biblical truth in regeneration and sanctification. This countercultural conviction is far too rare today. For many, the world seems too complex, the church too confused, to think that God still can accomplish His ends through these means. The church is, therefore, awash in strategies borrowed from psychology and business that, it is hoped, will make up for the apparent insufficiency of the Word and ensure more success in this postmodern culture …. The truth of the matter is that the fraying at the edges of the evangelical world has now turned into an unraveling at its center. First came the new definitions about who evangelicals were. Then the boundaries were shifted. Then they were crossed. And now the reality of God is redefined and made altogether more accommodating to our postmodern culture. It is for these reasons that I believe evangelicalism is now in a free fall.”[19]

A free fall indeed, and still falling deeper and deeper into apostasy. Having departed from the hard and narrow way it has walked off a cliff of apostasy. Modern Christianity, in seeking to serve two Masters – Christ and the world – has come to hate one and love the other, to despise one and serve the other. Which one it loves and serves is obvious, despite all attempts to cloak its hatred with pretended love for false Jesuses and plausible pretexts for corrupting and rejecting His Word. This is why so many who profess to be Christian and who profess to believe the Bible in all its purity and divine wisdom are oftentimes no less worldly-minded, self-centered, greedy, dishonest, profane, and immoral in their lives, no less enemies of holiness and the true nature of regeneration, no less hostile to the truths, doctrines, commands, and principles of Scripture, no less willfully ignorant and blind to spiritual truth, and no less barren and unfruitful in those marks of true regeneration, than are those who exhibit the greatest open hostility and aversion toward it, and whose minds are led and guided by erroneous, superstitious, and ungodly principles. Thus, the lives of most professing Christians are no better or different from those who make no profession of being Christian, nor are they to be compared with the lives of some Muslims, Hindus, Catholics, or Mormons, who, under the influence of false, mystical, and superstitious beliefs, lead lives of much greater devotion, self-denial, and morality than is to be found among most who profess to be under the influence and rule of truth.

Consequently, the lives of most professing Christians should not be regarded as a true and accurate representation of the doctrines they profess to believe. A false and dead faith can never produce a living, active, and sincere love for Christ. Where this is so, men and women will have no benefit by their profession, nor will they remain steadfast and immovable in it when tested by trials, hardships, temptations, oppositions, errors, and persecutions. It is only those truths which we are willing to live for, suffer for, and deny self for, that we really love and believe, and no more. When a person’s mind and life is really conformed by and to the authority of Scripture, then the actions of their life may be regarded as representing sincerely, but not perfectly, the truths they profess to believe.

When a person or church professes to believe in the authority, inerrancy, infallibility, and sufficiency of Scripture, but then denies that profession by their habitual practice, they then deny in practice what they profess to believe (Tit 1:16), thereby giving the clearest evidence possible that their mind and life are not really conformed by and to the truths they profess; rather, their minds are led, guided, and under the influence of other man-centered principles. People can do and have done many great works of charity and humanitarianism in the name of Jesus, but this does not mean they are Christian (Mt 7:21-23). They can travel about on sea and land to make one convert to their man-centered form of godliness, and when he becomes one, they make him twice as much a son of hell as they are (Mt 23:15). People can convert from one man-centered religion to another, such as if someone converts from Islam to its twin sister Catholicism, or from Mormonism to Arminianism, but this does not make them Christian. Whatever is of moral good in any false religion all proceeds from principles and motives which are suited to the reason and self-interests which are to be found in mankind in general. Atheists and cultists can engage in great acts of self-sacrifice, charity, and humanitarianism as well as professing Christians, but those acts are not produced or motivated by any truths and doctrines of the gospel or love for Jesus as He is revealed in the false Christian any more than in the atheist or cultist.

Religion, spirituality, and various forms of godliness we can, of course, have without the authority, sufficiency, and inerrancy of Scripture, but not Christianity. All that is Christian in Christianity rests solely on the authority of Scripture for the very good reason that it is not the product of man’s mind, reason, feelings, prejudices, biases, experiences, opinions, or imagination, but is the gift of God. To substitute human feelings, reason, imagination, and extra-biblical revelations for divine revelation is to abandon Christianity and revert to natural religion. No one can be a real Christian whose mind and life are not being transformed by the Holy Spirit (2 Cor 3:18) to receive the transforming power and love of evangelical truth, and in which truth exerts no power and influence to produce a life of increasing holiness and universal obedience, so that they are not unwilling to have the sincerity of what they profess to believe judged by how they habitually, but not perfectly, live. A tree, after all, is known by its fruit. “If you know that He is righteous, you know that everyone who practices righteousness is born of Him” (1 Jn 2:29); “Little children, let no one deceive you; the one who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous; the one who practices sin if of the devil;” (1Jn 3:7, 8).

When the truths of the Bible do not produce effects and fruit much more excellent in the life of all those who profess to believe them, than that which is seen in the life of those who make no profession of faith, there can only be one reason. It is because such professing Christians are just as barren in the true love and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they do not discern those truths in their spiritual beauty and nature, nor can they be influenced, governed, and transformed by their power upon their heart, mind, and souls. There is a Christ-centered holiness, love, obedience, and fruitfulness produced, preserved, and maintained by the truths of the gospel in those who are truly regenerate, and have known the transforming power of those truths on their heart, mind, and life, which are entirely different in kind and nature from anything which the self-centered principles and motives of any man-centered religion can produce. Satan has his counterfeit fruit of the Spirit, but they are all man-centered; they all set the mind on the interests of man, albeit under plausible and spiritual-sounding pretexts. It is not merely the outward show and profession of the truth, but the inward transforming power of it, conforming us to the image of Christ, that is useful either to the world or the souls of men.

This is why any teaching, preaching, or practices that principally dwells on and reasons from the things which the unregenerate mind can understand and comprehend, and that appeals to, justifies, and gratifies their man-centered desires, opinions, biases, and beliefs, is better accepted, and appears more useful and truthful to the vast majority of professing Christians, than does the teaching, preaching, and practice of sound doctrine. The reason Jesus gave for why the Jews did not believe Him was because He spoke the truth (Jn 8:45), which was opposed to all their man-centered beliefs, biases, and desires. In other words, because they never had a love of the truth so as to be saved (2 Th 2:10), and because they are unwilling and unable to endure sound doctrine, or to have their minds, lives, and actions corrected, regulated, and governed by the truths and doctrines of Scripture, most people will, under the cloak of innumerable plausible excuses and pretexts, “turn away their ears from the truth, and will turn aside to myths” (2 Tim 3:3, 4), because such myths are better suited to their own depraved human reason, and their own mystical and man-centered conceptions of Jesus Christ, His gospel, and what it is to be Christian. No wonder that people who have no spiritual light, no love of the truth so as to be saved, who prefer myths to truth, and who have never known the power of the gospel to transform their minds and life, are prone to apostasy from the truth.

Therefore, if we would be firmly established and steadfast in the faith, “and not moved away from the hope of the gospel which you have heard,” (Col 1:23), if we would not be shaken or moved away from our confidence in the truth of all of Scripture, if we would be preserved from the danger of that defection and apostasy that now characterizes and has infected the bulk of modern Christianity, we must make it our highest priority to “be on your guard lest, being carried away by the error of unprincipled men, you fall from your own steadfastness,” (2 Pt 3:17). The prescription to prevent this falling away is, “but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Pt 3:18). Not just an intellectual, theoretical, academic, mystical knowledge of Christ, but a true, spiritual, and experiential knowledge of those truths and doctrines of the gospel which we profess to believe, and to experience the transforming power of those truths on our own souls. Mere notions of truth, or the knowledge of its doctrines, enabling us to talk about them, teach and preach them, write books about them, or defend them, will not preserve us. Modern Christianity is littered with the carcasses of popular preachers, teachers, and professing Christians who did all this, yet have proven to be enemies of the cross of Christ (Phil 3:18, 19).

This spiritual perseverance and preservation are the grace, gift, and promise of God. We “are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed at the last time” (1 Pt 1:5). Nothing or no one is able to snatch us from His hand (Jn 10:28). It is “Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to make you stand in the presences of His glory blameless with great joy” (Ju 24). These promises are not given that we might presume upon them, but act on them in faith. We are to use the means which God has given to us for our perseverance and preservation in the faith. We are commanded to be on our guard, and to “Watch yourselves, that you might not lose what we have accomplished,” (2 Jn 8), and the reason for this is, “For many deceivers have gone out into the world,” (2 Jn 7). We are commanded to not “believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world” (1 Jn 4:1). The only means we have for testing the spirits to see whether they are from God is His infallible and authoritative Word, “To the law and to the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, it is because they have no dawn” (Is 8:20). We are commanded to grow in this grace and knowledge, just as we are commanded by Jesus Himself to “Strive to enter by the narrow door; (Lk 13:24), and to set our minds on things above, where Christ is (Col 3:1).

God-given Means for Perseverance

First, earnestly pray for the Spirit of truth to lead us into all truth. This is the purpose for which Jesus sent the Spirit into the world (Jn 16:13). The Spirit does not reveal any new truths not already revealed in Scripture. He does not give any new revelation, but He guides us into a true understanding of the truths already revealed in Scripture; truths which “the world cannot receive, because it does not behold Him, or know Him,” (Jn 14:17). The world will always receive and side with the spirit of error (1 Jn 4:5, 6). The true believer, however, has “received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God,” (1 Cor 2:12), and the purpose for which they have received the Spirit is so “that we might know the things freely given to us by God” (1 Cor 2:12); things which “a natural man does not accept …. for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised” (1 Cor 2:14). The natural man can learn, understand, and receive truths which are merely natural, civil, and moral, and which are compatible with human nature, but the things of God which are above the ability of the human mind, reason, and understanding, must be taught by the Spirit of God. If we learn and receive the truths of the gospel merely in and by the power of our own natural intellect and abilities, just as we would learn any other subject, we will never constantly abide in them, nor will we remain steadfast and immovable in those truths when tested by error, temptations, persecutions, or any spiritual trial. Spiritual truths which we learn and receive by our own natural abilities, we learn and receive only the notion and outward form of them, but what we are taught by the Spirit of God, we learn and receive in its power. Men may, by their own natural abilities and effort, attain a knowledge of doctrinal truths, so as to handle them with great dexterity and subtilty, but for all their knowledge, still be utterly blind to a true spiritual understanding of those truths which they know. The smallest spark of saving knowledge implanted in the minds of the simplest believers, by the illuminating power of the Holy Spirit, will be more effectual to their own sanctification, their own steadfastness in the truth, their own preservation against error, temptations, and persecutions, than the highest knowledge and most subtle pretexts and reasonings that some theologian has attained to by leaning on their own understanding. Modern Christianity bears ample evidence and abounds in living examples of this fact. In its idolatry of celebrityism, modern Christianity has forgotten that “God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things that are strong, and the base things of the world and the despised, God has chosen, the things that are not, that He might nullify the things that are, that no man should boast before God” (1 Cor 1:27-29). If we neglect the means which God has provided for our spiritual growth, protection, and preservation, we have no one but ourselves to blame if our minds are led astray by the error of unprincipled men. Without the enabling of the Holy Spirit in learning the truths, doctrines, and mysteries of the gospel, we cannot learn them as we should. It is impossible to believe and persevere in truths of which we are ignorant. It is foolish, wicked, rebellious, and demonic to persevere in error when it is exposed as error by the truth of Scripture.

Secondly, do not depend on or be content with any notions of truth, unless you have learned the truth as it is in Christ Jesus. What it is to learn the truth as it is in Jesus is fully declared by the Apostle Paul in Ephesians 4:20-24, “But you did not learn Christ in this way, if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught in Him, just as truth is in Christ Jesus, that, in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit, and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.” This is what it means to learn the truth as it is in Jesus, namely, that along with the knowledge of it, to also have an experience of its transforming power in the mortification of sin, in the renewing of our nature, and transforming our whole soul, heart, mind, and life into the image of God in righteousness and holiness of the truth. When people have a mere intellectual knowledge of truth without an experience of its transforming power on their mind, they will believe, teach, and counsel others to believe and do what is totally contrary to the righteousness and holiness of God and His Word. When people learn merely for the sake of knowing so they may be regarded as a great ‘scholar’, or ‘theologian”, or just the star of the Sunday school class, without a sincere desire and effort to find the life and power of what they know in their own mind and life, then their knowledge is of little use, and their profession of the truth will have no stability, conviction, or perseverance. When people go to the Bible to defend and find support for their error and own opinion, they simply reveal that what they love is their error and own opinion, not the truth as it is in Jesus. Like the false prophets of Israel, they will counsel and preach rebellion against the Lord (Jer 28:16; 29:32). They will teach and counsel others to participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness under the specious pretext of a false compassion and evangelism. They will set the mind on the interests of man, not the interests of God. They will be like the false teachers described by Jude, “wandering stars” (Ju 13), that is, theologically they are all over the map; their theology changes with the culture, popular opinion, or their own personal experiences and circumstances. The whole purpose for which God has revealed His mind and will in the Scriptures is that it may exert a spiritual, practical, purifying, and transforming power on our heart, mind, and life, so that we might do and practice the will and Word of God, “Little children, let no one deceive you; the one who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous; the one who practices sin is of the devil;” (1 Jn 3:7, 8). God’s truth and His standard of righteousness do not change with the times. When people content themselves with a bare intellectual knowledge of spiritual truths, they do all that is in their power to frustrate the purpose for which God has revealed His mind and will in the Scripture, and reject all truth that they cannot reconcile with their own human reason, error, and sinful desires.

If, therefore, we would know truth as it is in Jesus, if we would have the evidence, conviction, steadfastness, and assurance of evangelical truths in our minds that would guard, protect, and preserve us against all the error, temptations, oppositions, and false reasoning which abounds today, let us not rest in any notions of truth whose power we have not known or experienced in our own hearts, minds, and lives. Nor let us think that we know any more of the mysteries of the gospel, or of the love of Christ, or of the truth that is in Christ, than we find working in us, producing sincere and universal, not perfect, obedience to the commands of God, holiness of life, transforming our minds, and conforming us more and more to the image of Christ as He is revealed in Scripture.

Third, learn to value and esteem a little true knowledge of spiritual truth which evidences itself by its effects to be sanctifying, transforming, purifying, and saving, more than the highest intellectual attainments and outward appearance of success, even though adorned with reputation, skillful natural gifts of communication, showmanship, marketing, wit, and celebrityism. We live in days when people of all sorts, sects, and beliefs are vying for a piece of the pie broadly known as Christianity. They are competing for the reputation of being “a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, a corrector of the foolish, a teacher of the immature,” (Rm 2:19, 20), yet all the while they speak as from the world, reason as from the world, thereby revealing they are really of the world. It is the one who has learned to be truly humble, lowly, patient, self-denying, holy, obedient, zealous, peaceable, and to glorify Jesus in this life, that is the person who is best acquainted with evangelical truth. Therefore, let us place a high value on a little truth as it is in Jesus, both in ourselves and others, above all the proud, self-promotional, presumptuous, man-centered, erroneous, puffing-up knowledge which sets itself up for a great reputation among men, and we will know the blessed fruit of growing “in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Pt 3:18), “in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col 2:3).

Fourth and finally, do not be satisfied unless there is a discovery of the goodness, excellence, superiority, value, and truthfulness of all spiritual truth, so that you love them, and are convicted of their being the very Word of God (1 Thes 2:13), so that you cling to them, even at the expense of all that is dear to you in this world, even your own life. Only those who have a love of the truth so as to be saved can have a conviction of the truth, and only those who have a conviction of the truth can truly teach, preach, and live the truth without compromise. Only those who have a love of the truth, not truth mixed with error, but the pure milk of the Word, will ever be preserved from falling away from the truth when tested by fire. This is the necessary and inseparable fruit of true faith, without which, it is no different than the faith of demons. Any knowledge, understanding, or profession of truth that is not accompanied by a love for and conviction of its being the very Word of God, are “clouds without water, carried along by the winds” (Ju 12). Every wind of error, trial, and temptation will scatter and blow them away. They will accommodate themselves to the prevailing views, opinions, and ideologies which characterize the times in which they live. Therefore, do not suppose that you have learned the truth as it is in Jesus unless, like the Thessalonians, you receive and accept the Word of God’s message, that is, all of Scripture, “not as the word of men, but for what it really is, the word of God, which also performs its work in you who believe” (1 Thes 2:13). When you see in Scripture such evidence of God’s infinite wisdom, goodness, holiness, justice, love, grace, all suited and designed to bring eternal glory to God and Jesus, and salvation to your own soul, so that you cling to them with a holy, persevering, uncompromising, and incorruptible love, then and only then, will you be established steadfast and immovable in the truth, and be enabled to stand against all the schemes of Satan, and all the seductions of his servants who disguise themselves as servants of righteousness so that they might lead your mind astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ.

In our next study we will consider a third occasion of apostasy from the truths and doctrines of the gospel, and that is ignorance of those truths. Not an absolute ignorance from never having heard these truths, but the lack of a right and true understanding of the truths and doctrines of the gospel, along with ignorance of the evidences that always accompany the things pertaining to salvation.

[1] Richard Hobson, Richard Hobson of Liverpool: The Autobiography of a Faithful Pastor (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2003), 120.

[2] Quoted in Steven Charnock, The Existence and Attributes of God (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2000), 10.

[3] J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing, 1923), 7, 8.

[4] Iain Murray, Evangelicalism Divided: A Record of Crucial Change in the Years 1950 to 2000 (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2000), 250.

[5] John Owen, Works of John Owen, Vol 1 (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1965), 159, 392-393.

[6] Steven Charnock, The Existence and Attributes of God Vol 2 (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1996), 172, 173.

[7] John Newton, Letters of John Newton (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2007), 64.

[8] St. Cyprian, trans. M. Bevenot (New York: Newman Press, 1956), 43, 45.

[9] J. Pratt and J.H. Pratt, Memoir of Rev. Josiah Pratt (London: Seeleys, 1849), 341.

[10] Richard Hobson, Richard Hobson of Liverpool: The Autobiography of a Faithful Pastor (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2003), 121.

[11] John Owen, Works, Vol 1 (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1965), 222, 223.

[12]  The New Testament calls them “forms of godliness” (2 Tm 3:5)

[13] B.B. Warfield, The Works of B.B. Warfield, Vol 9 (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2003), 651, 652.

[14] Ibid, 654-655.

[15] Dr. Robert T. Thomas, Evangelical Hermeneutics: The New Versus the Old (Grand Rapids: Kregel Publications, 2002), 31.

[16] John Owen, Works, Vol 1 (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1965), 9-10.

[17] Archibald Alexander, Thoughts on Religious Experience (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1967), 53-54.

[18] Quoted in Iain Murry, Revival and Revivalism: The Making and Marring of American Evangelicalism (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1994), 252.

[19] David F. Wells, The Eclipse of the Reformation in the Evangelical Church (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 2001), xv-xxviii.

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