Defining Church: Reviewing the Gospel, Part 8(E)

Defining Church, Part 8(E): Reviewing the Gospel

Considerations and Context for Church Building

1) Understanding the “whole counsel” of God

2) The Issue of Leadership

3) The Issue of Vision

4) Reviewing the Gospel (Part 8E)

Guarding against a “different” Gospel

Jude 3

3 Dear friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt I had to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints. NIV

There is an issue we all must be engaged in, the issue of contending for the faith or the gospel we have received from the Lord. This is the gospel that is reflected plainly in the scriptures. We read that it was first announced to Abraham, that Moses proclaimed it in the form of law to Israel, the Prophets also proclaimed it to Israel and the nations of the world. Moses and the Prophets laid the foundation upon which Apostles came on stage in the New Testament to proclaim the Gospel of the kingdom of God. We therefore saw that the gospel is not a New Testament phenomenon. As a matter of fact, if we only take it from New Testament writings, we will not walk in the full understanding of God’s intentions for human life.

2 Corinthians 11:3-4

3 But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent's cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ. 4 For if someone comes to you and preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it easily enough. NIV

In the early church, there were already erroneous positions that were emerging right inside the church. Paul here talks about the concept of “a different gospel”. This communicates the idea of error that was proclaimed by some self-confessed apostles to a gullible audience. The scripture in 2 Cor 11 clearly delivers to us certain principles and patterns we are to be mindful of.

Components of a False Gospel:

· Firstly, the false gospel is not necessarily that clearly heretic message that proclaims some other false god. Paul says here that those who proclaim the false gospel use the same language used in the scriptures. They come proclaiming “…a gospel, a Jesus, a spirit…”

· Those proclaiming a false gospel operate right inside the ranks of the church and they are received by the church or believers as “super-apostles” (vs.5), i.e. they are well respected leaders with positions of influence in the church. Moreover, what this really means is that they are then received as fellow believers in the church.

· …Jude puts it this way: “certain men whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped (the word in the Greek means: to settle alongside; to enter in craftily, secretly, without notice, like a thief) in among you…they change the grace of God into a licence for immorality…shepherds who feed only themselves” (Jude vv.4&12). Interestingly, even though Jude says “they secretly slip in” he also says these men have become shepherds in the house of God. That is, they are the ones feeding the sheep. We are therefore looking not at some false prophet or false Messiah leading some cult out there. We are looking at respected leaders right inside the house of God. Jude continues to say they change the grace of God into a licence for immorality. This is Jude’s way of saying they change the very essence of the Gospel. The apostle Paul wrote the following with tears, warning the Philippians of such leaders who were clearly operating within the church: Philippians 3:18 For, as I have often told you before and now say again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. 19 Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is on earthly things. NIV

· Paul talks about the minds of believers being led astray. The word “led astray” (NIV) or “corrupted” (NKJV) means the ff. “to spoil, to destroy, to bring to a worse state, to corrupt opinions”. Those proclaiming this different gospel somehow corrupt the minds of believers by developing opinions or perspective about God and life that is not consistent with the scriptures. The emphasis therefore in the proclamation of the false gospel is not necessarily “wrong content” but “wrong mentality” being promoted inside the church. It’s a combination of right content (scripture) and wrong mentality.

For example, those who preach “the gospel of prosperity” (as known today) use scripture to support their message. However, in preaching this gospel, they would have us believe that God looks at our individual needs as opposed to our collective need. This mentality position is not Biblical; God always looks at our collective need. God can therefore not give me 10 cars and leave my neighbour (my fellow brother in Christ) unattended. If He does give me 10 cars He then expects that I will be sensible enough to step into the principle of redistribution, which is proclaimed generally in the scriptures. As it says, he who has two tunics must share with the one who does not have (Luke 3:10&11). The word does not say, “he who has two tunics must pray and seek the Lord to see if he is perhaps led by the Spirit to give to the one who does not have”. If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him (1 John 3:17)? The preachers of prosperity have not proclaimed the principle of love in the church and the communal obligation we have to one another as fellow believers. The gospel of prosperity has allowed us to step into realms of greed and materialism in the name of blessing. In this sense, the church is no different to greedy Capitalists who are squandering the earth’s resources and robbing their fellow humans in the name of “survival of the fittest”. Those proclaiming prosperity have always promoted the idea of raising offering for some man. We hardly hear of instances where monies are raised because we want to set up a bursary fund for children of widows inside our churches. The raising of monies must somehow be about buying a 3^rd or 4^th expensive and luxurious car for the pastor (really, the church has enough money to make significant impact in the world today). All of this then fits well within the definition of what a false gospel is. The strange thing is that the very believers who will give their last to buy an additional luxurious car for the pastor will be quick to complain when politicians use taxpayers’ money to buy themselves luxurious cars. This means that there is a lot of hypocrisy in how we approach life as believers. We will complain if it’s a politician but give if it’s a pastor because we believe God Himself is backing and financing these things; and because we believe that in giving to the pastor’s fourth luxurious car, we ourselves will get our own luxurious car. If such is our belief system then what about those in our ranks or churches who cannot afford to contribute or give when such “opportunities of blessing” come up in the church to give to the luxurious life of the pastor. Essentially what we are saying is that you can only access spiritual blessing if you have money. Such a gospel is not different to Roman Catholicism, meaning that we need the spirit of Martin Luther again in the church; a Spirit of Reformation, to blast this wrong system of church.

“…just as Eve was deceived”

Paul then basically says that the principles that were at play in the deception of Eve are the same principles that we now see in the church.

Genesis 2:15-17

15 The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. 16 And the LORD God commanded the man, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die."

NIV

Genesis 3:1-7

1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?"

2 The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, 'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.'"

4 "You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman. 5 "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."

6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. NIV

Note: here we will look at Eve as representing the church and the snake (or Satan) as representing false leadership or those proclaiming a false gospel (we get this pattern of thought from 2 Cor 11).

· The serpent sought to remove all boundaries that God had put around Eve’s life: The gospel that we see today has a liberal spirit where personal opinion takes supremacy over the Word of God. There is no emphasis on what God wants out of our lives.

· The serpent preached a gospel that appealed to Eve’s “carnal desires”: In the same way, the materialistic gospel has appealed to many because material pursuit is man’s carnal default position. The word says we must seek first the kingdom (Matt 6:33), that the pursuit of material riches cannot supersede the quest for the kingdom (Matt 6:24-34).

· Although Eve had some understanding of what God had said, she had not become one with the message: She had not subjected her life desires under the authority of God’s instruction. She had not become the message or the letter. We, the believers find ourselves in a state where we know the demands of the Word of God but are not willing to fully align ourselves to such demands.

· Eve’s desire was to become something “higher” in life: the serpent came preaching the very same gospel of ascension (you will be like God). This is not to say that God does not want to bless us and improve the state of our lives but this is often linked to other equally important demands that we tend to neglect. In the end, we see God as “Father Christmas” who is waiting to dish out blessings.

Paul says that Eve was deceived (2 Cor 11:3). The word “deceived” means “to lead out of the right way into error, to mislead another, to seduce into error”. There are some things that we can note here:

· For deception to take place, the deceiver must be in a position of leadership and influence.

· The one being deceived must somehow trust the judgment and leadership of the deceiver.

· For one to be deceived, they must be in a position where they either do not know the truth or they themselves have wrong life motives and pursuit. In the case of Eve, she knew the truth but was too preoccupied with her wrong life motives that she was blinded from seeing the enemy deceive her. When believers pursue material riches, they become vulnerable to the false gospel (e.g. gospel of prosperity). They will give and continue giving not because they are honouring God but because it’s a way of “spiritually investing” with the hope that one day there will be a material return on investment. In the meantime, false leaders get very rich; buy expensive houses, luxurious cars even though they are ministering to poor middle-class communities. Some from overseas even own private jets but continue to come to Africa to raise offerings to sustain their lifestyles. Paul says to the Corinthians that when he came to preach the gospel to them, he raised no offering but depended upon already established churches to take care of his needs (2 Cor 11:7-9). This is not to discourage offerings; believers have a Biblical obligation to give toward the advance of the kingdom and the operational needs of their churches. However, we have to guard against abuses. For instance, the new practice of putting money at the feet of preachers has no Biblical basis. Here is what the scripture says in Acts 4: Acts 4:34 there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned lands or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales 35 and put it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to anyone as he had need NIV. Based on this verse, this then was the context of putting money at the apostle’s feet: (a) the context was the collective need of the church (they used the money to minister to those who were needy), (b) the money was not given to apostles to be squandered by apostles and to support luxurious life of leadership (c) the putting of money at apostle’s feet was probably their system of giving then, today money can in fact be deposited into the church’s bank account and God would still honour this. Depositing money into the church’s account is not less holy then giving it on Sunday (at the end of the day, it has to be the choice of each church). However, putting money at the feet of preachers is certainly not a Biblically sound practice. The honorarium of a visiting preacher needs to be decided upon by the resident eldership of the church, this practice is not only dignified but it safeguards against abuses. These wrong practices simply constitute the creativity of those who want to make more money.

· Basically, a good combination of deception is (a) deceptive leadership and (b) gullible Christians. Paul says to the Corinthians: “you put up with it easily enough” (2 Cor 11:4).

Galatians

Galatians 1:6-9

6 I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel- 7 which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. 8 But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned! 9 As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned!

NIV

Paul was obviously dealing with the same problem in the churches of Galatia.

The word “pervert” that Paul uses means the ff. “to turn about from one direction to another, to turn into something else, to change”. A question does need to be asked as to the current direction of the church. Where are we going? If we maintain the current route then where are we going to be 20 years from now? God has called us to a life of Christ, a life of representation of the kingdom of God in all sectors of life and before the nations of the world. We are taking a wrong route of individualistic Christianity that emphasises issues of material blessing. We have lost our saltiness and have been thrown out to be trampled by men (Matt 5:13). Nobody wants to hear from church because we have lost the substance of Christ (His wisdom and character). We however think that people do not want Christ. It is our fault; we have failed to represent Him correctly before the nations.

Characteristics of a False Gospel

· The false gospel overemphasises human need and desire at the expense of God’s purpose and demands, just as we saw the serpent do in Gen 3.

· The false gospel thrives in materialistic-spirituality. This is spirituality that is measured by one’s economic success. The idea is that we are blessed if we have material riches and we are cursed if we do not have material riches. I have not found any scripture that supports this reasoning.

· The false gospel thrives in an environment of gullible Christians who are using their spiritual process to gain good material standing in life (The Eve Factor).

· The false gospel promises life but produces death. The snake (Satan) said to Eve that she would be like God but in the end she died spiritually as God had initially proclaimed. So the Devil promised life but produced death. Jude describes these shepherds who feed only themselves as “clouds without rain”. This metaphor describes a situation where one promises to have life but in the end produces nothing. This is a leadership system that keeps believers in a state of hoping for something better without the actual realisation of such promises. How many believers come out of Sunday meetings “inspired” by teachings and hoping for the better only to go back to collapsing lives, families and marriages? How many believers attend the so-called dynamic church services and yet are dying on the inside every day because they know deep down in their hearts that they are somehow missing the mark in as far as touching God and His purpose. These are church systems that inspire by sermon but lack systems to actually usher people to new and better positions of life. They operate by “altar-call” and there are no systems outside of the service designed to lead and or bring people to the character and promises of God. This is the kind of faith James confronted: James 2:15 suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. 16 If one of you says to him, "Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed," but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? Proclamation of a good message without the building of systems and provision of resources to help the saints walk into the realities of Christ helps nobody. Psalms 11:3 When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do?" If Noah only preached righteousness and about the coming flood without building the ark, he was still going to die. That is, life cannot be built only by sermons and inspiring preaching.

Solution to Deception

What measures can we put in place to deal with this different false gospel?

Re-establishing the Berean spirit: Acts 17:11 Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true (NIV). We all own Bibles and so we should not receive something that we have not examined and confirmed in the scriptures. This does not mean that we must develop an unhealthy critical spirit of challenging those who are preaching but we have to still examine what we are hearing. We have to note that Bereans were not critics, they started by receiving the message with eagerness and then they went to examine. The word “examine” means the ff: “to scrutinize, investigate, ask, question, discern, judge, search, to question in order to pass a judicial sentence”. Every individual has the responsibility to scrutinize doctrine shaping his or her life. Every father of a family has a responsibility to scrutinise doctrine that is shaping his family. We can not develop perspective from something that comes from pulpit without checking it out in the scriptures. How many churches today allow their believers to ask questions in order to clarify what “was said from the pulpit”? Even Jesus was asked questions by His own disciples (see Matt 13:36). Paul reasoned with those He taught (Acts 17:1-3, 16&17). The word reason used in Acts 17:2 (NIV) means the ff. “to speak back and forth or alternately, to converse with, reason, present intelligent discourse”. Paul did not only use monologue as a means of transmitting truth but also dialogue.

Moving into positions of Maturity: Ephesians 4:13 until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

14 Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming (NIV). We have to grow in the faith, in Christ and in our understanding of God’s kingdom and purpose. The more we grow the more we save ourselves from deception. Growing means that we have to invest in our spiritual development. We have to look out for knowledge so we may increase our understanding.

The Issue of Simplicity: 2 Corinthians 11:3 But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent's cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ (NIV). The NKJV uses the phrase: “simplicity that is in Christ”. We therefore have to maintain spiritual simplicity in our lives. Simplicity here does not mean shallowness, naivety or immaturity. The word “simplicity” is defined as: “singleness, i.e. not having ulterior or double motive; sincerity; that which is without dissimulation (i.e. pretence) or that which is not self-seeking; purity; faithfulness”. In other words, it is the complication of our motives and lack of contentment in our hearts that make us vulnerable to deceivers. Just as the serpent knew what appealed to Eve, deceivers know what appeals to believers’ carnal ambitions. Part of maintaining “simplicity” is to not be “self-seeking”. When we get driven by our own self-ambitions; we look for churches the best meet our self-needs instead of looking for churches that help equip us so we can meet God’s needs. We therefore have to keep simplicity of heart in our pursuit of God, in this way we will be building a very strong defence mechanism against a deceptive materialistic gospel.