What is false doctrine?

Doctrinal evil is any teaching which touches the Person of Christ, anything which denies His full deity, His real, full, and sinless humanity, His perfect sacrificial work as being complete atonement and the only ground of salvation, His bodily resurrection, or coming glory. If any one teaches or holds that which denies these truths as to Christ's Person or work, or the truths of justification by faith and grace alone, or the necessity of regeneration, or the eternal punishment of the unsaved, and persists in such teachings, that one is guilty of doctrinal evil and has no place in the Assembly of God. His place is "without" and not "within." Any teaching that subverts the fundamentals of the Christian faith is evil doctrine and leaven that must be purged out of the Assembly. Behind all such teachings are seducing spirits and demons.

However, here we must exercise caution. We must not go to the extreme and call every erroneous teaching evil doctrine, or mark every interpretation or application of Scripture which differs from our view, as wicked teaching. Where no fundamental truth is in question, love and forbearance one with another is to be exercised and Philippians 3:15, 16 acted upon. "If in any thing ye be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this unto you. Nevertheless, whereto we have already attained, let us walk by the same rule, let us mind the same thing."

But a Christian may, as we have seen, be really such, and yet have to be judged and treated as an evil doer. He ceases then to be reckoned among the living, and, in the solemn language of another Scripture, he "remains in the congregation of the dead,"1 until the truth of his original profession is re-asserted. by a genuine repentance. And as with moral pravity, so also with erroneous teaching. God's inspired oracles are the standard of sound doctrine; whatever, therefore, is offered in His name to man, which does not harmonize with His written testimonies, is judged as a lie against His truth. But the objects of His discipline are persons, not abstractions. If men pervert His words, or substitute their own imaginations for His counsel, they are condemned as the adversaries of His truth. The leaven of false doctrine is even more dangerous in its effects than that of evil practice, and the warnings of Scripture against its toleration, whether publicly or privately among God's saints, are proportionately frequent. Yet in this case also men are to be judged upon distinct and positive evidence. A heretic who resists a second admonition is to be rejected, because self-condemned.2 Not every spirit is to be believed, but all are to be tried.3 The wish expressed by Paul, in writing to the Galatians, indicates the form also of the judgment which would fall on those who continued to molest the saints.4 So also as to private intercourse. A man who, while claiming Christian recognition, does not bring with him the faith of God's elect, is to be treated as an evil doer, and refused. If any receive him, they are included by the Spirit in his condemnation.5 For the faith once delivered to the saints is committed to the common and united keeping and defence of all who are themselves of God.6 Beyond this Scripture does not go. Beyond this, therefore, there is no room for the obedience of faith. What is looked for in God's people is truth and uprightness. None who are led by the spirit of error can be true, nor can any one who, while professing love for Christ, contends for what is false, be upright. Both alike fall, while remaining in that state, without the pale of God's true Church, and as such should be rejected by His saints.

But there is a class of evil even more dangerous, because more subtle, than immorality. Wicked doctrine may go in company with an outwardly blameless life; indeed, such is often the case: both Satan and his ministers are often transformed into angels of light. In all matters where there is no fundamental truth in question, love will allow the largest liberty. For instance, to make the question of baptism a test of fellowship, or views as to this or that text of Scripture, would be narrow and sectarian. The apostle rebukes it (Phil. 3:15). But when a doctrine is introduced that touches the person of our adorable Lord Jesus Christ His divinity, His true yet absolutely sinless humanity, the perfection of His atoning work, or His coming glory, there is no place for charity, falsely so called. In like manner, if the truth of justification by faith, freely by God's grace, be denied, or the necessity of regeneration, or the final and eternal doom of the impenitent be denied — whether by annihilation or restorationism we are in the presence of an evil more dangerous than drunkenness or immorality, for it is more deceptive. A man may hold and teach blasphemous doctrines, and withal seem pious in his language as the most devoted child of God. Let the beloved people of God be on their guard. The enemy has many forms of error with which to beguile the simple. With doctrinal, as well as moral evil, "a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump" (Gal. 5:9).

Defectiveness of doctrine does not make it to be heresy, nor is all error heresy. What constitutes heresy is, it is the fruit of "human mind and will having been at work in connection with doctrine." The word heresy means "a choice" (from "to choose"). If the evil is present in an upright mind, get the thing once clearly before his mind and he will be set free. If a second time the mind turns back to it, there is reason to fear that there is want of ingenuousness, his having turned away from it before (after the admonitions) condemns him, if he turns back to it. For he had admitted that the root out of which his doctrine flowed was a bad one. His will had been at work. Its reappearing looks as if he had changed his doctrine without giving up the root of it. "Reject, or pass by such;" that is, do not sanction with your authority, which is from Paul, any such as teachers.

But there is no "must be" in reference to heterodoxy. People might remain, and like to remain, with their heterodoxy, but heresy does not mean bad doctrine, although this might go along with it. It means that people might get too hot in their zeal, and, being reproved for their party spirit, they refuse to stand it any longer, and they get away. They break loose from fellowship and form some new thing which has not the sanction of the word of God. That is what, in scripture, is called heresy. The doctrine might be sound enough in a general way. There might be no blasphemies, nor heterodoxy, strictly speaking, but there is the heart entirely wrong and seeking its own things instead of the things of Jesus Christ.

For let me explain further, that there are two ways, in one or other of which you will find heterodoxy to indulge, and you may know teachers to be false by their indulgence in them. One of these ways of error is the effort to give a spurious, groundless comfort to those who rather need warning and conviction. The other feature of false doctrine is, that it seeks to rob of comfort those whom God fills with peace and joy in believing. In short, false teachers either strive to comfort those that are of the world as such while they still remain worldly, and are really unbelievers and unquickened by the Spirit of God; or, on the other hand, they endeavour to alarm and shake the confidence of those that have unfeigned faith in the Lord Jesus. It is for you to make the application; but to you it will soon appear, unless I am greatly mistaken, and the more it is examined with the fuller evidence, that into one or other of these two ditches false teachers habitually fall. Thus there never is the distinctness of revealed truth; there never is the sense of the authority of the Lord over the soul; there is never confidence in God for eternal life. Uncertainty Godward there is, and this on principle, which makes it so mischievous. There is the endeavour that, on the one hand, the believer should not be confident, happy, or thoroughly at rest in the Lord, which is surely of the devil. On the other hand, there is the endeavour that the worldly person should not be too much cast down, or really alarmed about his soul. "We must have charity. You do not know but that the Lord is dealing with that soul. Perhaps, after all, he may be a Christian: how can you tell? Be not presumptuous in believing yourself or in doubting him." Now all such thoughts flow from the same kind of deceivers as the apostle Paul was dealing with in his day; and the truth of God is clean contrary to the ways of the enemy in both respects.

The same, it is predicted, would be repeated in this Christian age, only with this difference, that not false prophets should appear, but "false teachers." And as this dispensation draws to its close apostasy would set in. (Consult annotations on 2 Thess. 2.) These false teachers, like the false prophets, reject first of all the Word of God; they, too, speak out of their own hearts, that is, vanities and lies. As a result they bring in "privily destructive heresies." All heresies have but one goal, and that is the denial of Christ and the gospel. Therefore Peter predicts "denying even the Master, who bought them."

And it is to be much observed, that false doctrine, and false doctrine concerning the person of Christ, is the special snare he has in view. "Whoever goes forward, and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God." The meaning of the words "goes forward" has been well said to be development. That is, starting from the scriptural teaching of the person of Christ, and reasoning from the truth, new thoughts or inferences are developed and presented in the attractive guise of profounder insight and of a more exalted spirituality, so that unwary souls are readily entangled. John meets the snare by saying that whoever does this "hath not God"; and that, on the other hand, he that ABIDETH in the doctrine of Christ, he hath both the Father and the Son. To maintain the truth therefore will be to incur the charge of not "going forward"; but what a recompense lies in adhering to the teaching of the Christ - "he hath both the Father and the Son"! Well for us is it that the Lord in His tender care has given such plain and weighty instructions - instructions which can be understood even by the feeblest.

The spirits, then, which are not of God refuse (save when divine power bent and broke them) to own the personal glory of Christ, while the Holy Spirit of God loves to own it. Such is the test. If therefore any doctrine undermine the glory of Christ, you have an unequivocal proof that it is of Satan as certainly: whatever exalts Christ, according to the word, is of God.

To use the law is for the believer a denial of grace. He continues: "And if any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine, according to the gospel of the glory of the blessed God, which was committed to my trust." Here we see the contrast between law and gospel. The law is for condemnation, but the gospel proclaims the glory of the blessed God; and this gospel, committed to the apostle, unfolding God's counsels of glory for us in Christ, tolerates no evil. Sound doctrine is therefore not only a correct belief in the gospel of the glory of the blessed God, what is accomplished in that gospel to the glory of God, and the glory it puts on our side; but sound doctrine means also practical godliness. (See 1 Tim. 6:3, "The doctrine which is according to godliness.") A holy life is produced by sound doctrine, and sound doctrine must lead to a holy life. Unsound doctrines, profane and vain babblings, all the unscriptural teachings, the destructive criticism, and the cults "will increase unto more ungodliness" (2 Tim. 2:17) and eat like a canker.