The church’s biggest threats are on the inside
Most Christians would agree that we are in a state of spiritual warfare against our enemies. They may apply that truth to a wide array of adversaries, from political opponents to demons under every rock, but what those enemies have in common is that they’re external. They assault us from the outside.
However, while the Scriptures acknowledge those enemies, their most pressing warnings are about threats from the inside — people and ideas that dwell within the community of faith. Churchgoers. What makes these warnings so necessary is that they’re neglected by believers who keep their fear focused outward.
To be sure, we are under perpetual attack from the enemy of our souls. Peter writes to the church:
Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. (1 Peter 5:7)
But what methods of devouring does the breadth of Scripture tell us to be most vigilant about? Temptation. Corruption. Deception. That’s what the Lord wants us to be most on guard against, more than threats of persecution.
Jesus was big on this, starting at the Sermon on the Mount:
“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves.” (Matthew 7:15)
The core lesson: That which is false will appear to be true. It will sound like truth. The only reason a wolf would don sheep’s clothing is to infiltrate the pen, because then it’s much more dangerous. The devil doesn’t wear a name tag when he attacks us; he comes to us as something we want. He offers us what may be good in itself. He appears as an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:14).
Deception was a major theme in another of Jesus’ prominent monologues, on the Mount of Olives the week He died. He began with:
“Take heed that no one deceives you. For many will come in My name …” (Matthew 24:4-5)
And later on, verse 24:
“For false christs and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect.”
He said those who are false will come in His name. They will claim to be Christian. They will think God is on their side. And the fact that the Lord warns us about being deceived shows that the deceivers will be convincing. They won’t be easy to spot.
They will be among us. That truth is stated multiple times in the New Testament, such as Paul’s warning to the elders of Ephesus in Acts 20:
28 “Therefore take heed to yourselves and to all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood. 29 For I know this, that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. 30 Also from among yourselves men will rise up, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after themselves. 31 Therefore watch, and remember that for three years I did not cease to warn everyone night and day with tears.”
This also comes from John, in 1 John 2:
18 Little children, it is the last hour; and as you have heard that the Antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come, by which we know that it is the last hour. 19 They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us; but they went out that they might be made manifest, that none of them were of us.
And from Peter, in 2 Peter 2:
1 But there were also false prophets among the people, even as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Lord who bought them, and bring on themselves swift destruction. 2 And many will follow their destructive ways, because of whom the way of truth will be blasphemed. 3 By covetousness they will exploit you with deceptive words; for a long time their judgment has not been idle, and their destruction does not slumber.
That chapter is very similar to Jude’s letter, where we read:
For certain men have crept in unnoticed, who long ago were marked out for this condemnation, ungodly men, who turn the grace of our God into lewdness and deny the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ. (Jude 4)
They creep in unnoticed, because they look like us and sound like us. They mix their falsehoods with truth. They appeal to some of our good convictions — like, say, pro-life principles — so that we’ll focus on those things and disregard the subtle ways that the false believers are corrupting us.
Twenty-six of the New Testament’s 27 books include warnings of false Christianity (only Philemon doesn’t). In the final book, more than one of the Lord’s letters to the seven churches contain admonishments concerning false teachers and doctrines. To Pergamos He said:
But I have a few things against you, because you have there those who hold the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed to idols, and to commit sexual immorality. (Revelation 2:14).
Balaam is a prime example of the enemy’s tactics against God’s people. Balak, the king of the Moabites, wanted the pagan prophet to curse Israel, but God wouldn’t let him. But what Balaam could do was seduce the Israelites so that they “began to commit harlotry with the women of Moab” and “ate and bowed down to their gods” (Numbers 25:1-2). The adversary didn’t assault their camp; he poisoned it from the inside. His weapon wasn’t the sword or arrow, but a stumbling block.
Even when God’s people did go into battle in the Old Testament, the Lord warned them to “keep yourself from every wicked thing” (Deuteronomy 23:9), or else He wouldn’t give them victory. Their holiness was His priority.
Related: Holiness is more important to God than winning
This is not to say that we should be paranoid and keep a suspecting eye on every brother and sister. Nor does it deny the reality that the church has, in fact, been attacked in brutal ways for all of its history. The New Testament was written by and to persecuted Christians. But to them, the writers offer words of comfort and encouragement to endure such suffering, fleeing from it when possible but never fighting back. That’s a sharp contrast in tone to the many warnings of corruption from within; that’s where the church’s shepherds are to wield their staffs against the disguised wolves.
The best examples, you may know, were the noble Bereans of Acts 17, who didn’t consider even Paul the apostle to be above checking against Scripture to see whether the things he was saying were true (nor did he). We need to heed the wisdom of Charles Spurgeon, who said, “Discernment is not knowing the difference between right and wrong; it is knowing the difference between right and almost right.”
This is a time when even the full-time discerners are not discerning the almost right. But it’s not that hard when we turn from our obsession with the persecutors and notice the serpents that are already inside the house.
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