It wasn’t that long ago that I preferred a 1990s existence to a 2020 world. No wifi. No smartphone. For the better part of five years I stayed as unplugged as possible. COVID lockdowns invited me to put off my Luddite ways and put on virtual modernity. I got a smartphone. I joined Twitter, that modern Areopagus where people “spen[d] their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas” (Acts 17:21). (Yes, I like it).
It’s been a steep learning curve to adapt to the tenor and reactivity of online conversation, and, as a writer, it’s been interesting to consider how and when to engage. Here’s how it sometimes goes in Christian spaces: provocative and inflammatory content (sometimes markedly intended to stir up controversy and buzz in order to sell books or other resources) quakes through the conversation. This sets off a tsunami of righteous (and often understandable!) outrage and protest. Aftershocks of discussion follow: has the author been unfairly canceled by an online mob? Opinions and responses to responses whirl through the air. Critics contend that public content needs to be publicly engaged, especially if it is blasphemous, heterodox, or harmful. Others call critiques an unfair tribalistic pile-on. Occasionally, people will wield distorted interpretations of Matthew 18, suggesting that teachers, especially nice pastors, ought to be first addressed privately. Like Paul’s listeners in the Areopagus, some people sneer while others want to talk more about it. Endlessly.
In many ways, it’s only the speed of the conversation and the amount of content that’s new. History reminds me that believers have killed each other over doctrinal disputes, all while the church continued to schism. Not only this, but manifold present day crises reveal what happens when problematic teaching runs unchecked. Chart topping docuseries and books like the recently released “Disobedient Women” remind me that applied theology is no theoretical enterprise. Young Christians exit the church, citing as key reasons the hypocrisy of Christians and failed response to abuse—fruit born from unsound teaching. Add to this the fall of trusted leaders, and it’s no wonder that many Christians experience a sense of betrayal, including moral injury and grief.
This long list speaks a clear word: distorted teaching has exponential real-life impact.
Perhaps that’s why nearly every New Testament epistle instructs believers to be wary of deception. In fact, most of the letters were written specifically as correctives for local problems that resulted from incorrect or incomplete teaching. Yet we find that not all false teachers are dealt with in the same way and that even faithful people can get it wrong. Let’s take a closer look.
When the apostle Peter caves to the requests of the Judaizers, Paul opposes Peter to his face. We know this, because Paul told the entire church in Galatia (and every Christian up to this present moment) about it (Gal 2:11-14). No keeping things private there. Compare this to Paul’s seeming indifference toward others whose preaching was motivated by greed and self-interest. “What does it matter? Christ is still preached,” Paul writes (Phil 1:18).
In other words, while Paul might be willing to ignore grifters who managed to communicate the Gospel accurately, he refuses to tolerate the teaching of those he calls “pseudo-brothers” and the hypocrisy of Peter. Why? Because they threaten the integrity of the Gospel.
Something different happens with Apollos, a powerful preacher who was able to teach the facts about Jesus accurately but had incomplete knowledge. Priscilla and Aquila take Apollos aside privately to instruct him, and Paul addresses the people who were impacted by Apollos’ ignorance (Acts 18:24-19:7). We see that “good” guys can still propagate incorrect teaching which requires both reproof and repair.
But what about the not-good-guys? There are plenty of those on the pages of the New Testament.
For instance, Paul sends Timothy to Ephesus, a church rife with quarrels. This chaotic context leaves people especially vulnerable to bad actors like the heretical Hymenaeus, who is called out by name (1 Tim 1:20; 2 Tim 2:17). But this doesn’t mean that every Christian is always responsible to personally correct everyone else.
Paul tells Roman believers to avoid divisive people with contrary teachings, and the apostle John warns against interacting with false teachers in ways that could signal endorsement (Rom 16:17; 2 Jn 1:8-11). It seems Timothy himself may have been tempted to get in on the arguments in Ephesus, because Paul writes to tell him to keep away (1 Tim 6:11). Instead, Timothy is instructed to cultivate his own faith, root himself in sound doctrine, and pass that down to the church. It’s not only the apostles who are on the lookout for problems. Christians in Chloe’s household recognize something amiss in the local church (1 Cor 1:11) and instead of keeping quiet, they draw Paul’s attention to it. Paul doesn’t muffle or shame these whistleblowers. He listens and responds.
We repeatedly see this. The goal in addressing problematic teaching isn’t to encourage Christians to engage with dangerous people via some distorted application of Matthew 18. The goal is to help Christians cultivate discernment so that they avoid harmful teaching and become mature in the faith (Heb 5:14). Perhaps this is why Peter and Jude use the harshest of words for the malicious false teachers infiltrating the church, because they know what’s at stake: how people come to know and understand Jesus Christ Himself (2 Peter 2-3; Jd 1:4-16). Strengthening the good and the true is what will safeguard against the harmful and erroneous.
Indeed, identifying what’s out of step with the Gospel requires a functional knowledge of what’s in alignment with it. Paul told people to evaluate a teaching’s merit by how it compared to what he had taught and lived among them (Phil 3:17, 4:9). This seems to be John’s approach too; his epistles equip people to test teaching for its soundness by being acquainted with Jesus (1 Jn 2:24; 4:1-3).
It’s important to note that there’s a difference between identifying problematic teaching and experiencing conflicts or differences of opinion. Sometimes early church leaders simply didn’t agree with each other.
Paul and Barnabas fought so sharply that these close friends parted ways right after planning their reunion missionary tour (Acts 15:36). Euodia and Syntyche disagreed so hard that everybody in the church knew about it, even far away imprisoned Paul who encouraged the entire Philippian congregation to help them resolve it (Phil 4:2). Christians will experience conflict and need to sort it out. We might be able to find workable solutions. Perhaps it’s a “weaker brother” issue which offers an opportunity to cultivate charity (1 Cor 8-10). Or it may be a doctrinal stance about which faithful Christians disagree. Sometimes we end up parting ways.
Paul himself was contested. He stood by his teaching and defended it to opponents, trotting out impressive Jewish credentials and his Roman citizenship when it served to advance the proclamation of the Gospel. Disagreeing with a teacher is not sinning against them, and the Areopagus, whatever its form, isn’t a coddling place. In fact James warns Christians that not everybody should be teachers, because it’s a role subject to increased judgment (Jas 3:1). It’s short-sighted to think that public teachers—including pastors, writers, or influencers—should be publicly untouchable, because today’s connectivity and reach means the impact of any individual’s teaching extends well beyond their community accountability. If we equate public critiques of books or sermons with cancel-culture and mob attack, or name thoughtful objections to be sinful slander, we platform unchallengeable people. This leaves everyone vulnerable.
I think about this a great deal as I review various Christian parenting resources and imagine how it was applied in family life. Parents trusted various pastors, teachers, and platformed “experts” who claimed to know God’s Way. Sometimes the trust was well placed. Other times, the harmful teaching, bolstered by spiritual authority and done in God’s name, added spiritual abuse to all manner of evil and resulted in exponential damage. It is devastating to think of the ways families were betrayed and thus robbed of attachment that could have been theirs.
But does such evil and the language used in passages like 2 Peter, Jude, and Paul’s infamous wish for Judaizers to castrate themselves give us license to demean people with rapid-fire insults? No. We all must reckon with how accustomed we’ve become to contempt, and I continue to be astonished at the ways online spaces enable us to maliciously excoriate others with whom we disagree for any reason. James would not have us cursing and blessing with the same tongue (Jas 3:1-12). What should mark all Christian discourse, public and private: truthfulness, all humility and patience, boldness, and the prioritization of those listening, that it might give grace to all who hear.
I contend that we can admonish and correct one another—and call out false teaching, whatever its source—without resorting to the insults with which we’ve become accustomed. We will give an accounting for every careless word, including hate-filled ones that call others fools or heretics or not-a-Christian (Matt 12:36). This should sober us and shape our approach, but it should not silence us. Communicating without malice, remembering that the people we engage are people for whom Christ died, does not mean we sugar-coat critiques of harmful ideas or placate dangerous people. No New Testament example sugar coats anything. We are to be people who tell the truth.
Truth-telling doesn’t happen in isolation, which also makes communal discussion a given. Consider how the leaders at the Jerusalem Council practiced discernment. They listened, discussed amongst themselves, looked for evidence of the Holy Spirit’s work, and determined whether things aligned with what they knew to be true from Scripture (Acts 15). When Peter writes to the scattered church, he spends a lot of ink on severe descriptions of false teachers and then offers two short verses of direct instruction as the antidote: be on your guard, do not get led astray (a reminder it’s always possible) and grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus (2 Peter 3:17-18).
Because knowing Jesus is the lodestar that’s going to get Christians through the storms of tumultuous teaching. It’s not going to be our favorite preacher who himself is subject to error. It’s not going to be our own imperfect analysis no matter how hard we study. It’s not going to be a Luddite existence that calms the flow of information. The apostle John consistently refers to all false teachers, prophets and ideas—whatever their source—as “antichrist.” 80’s kids like me have some baggage around that term, but John’s usage reminds me that Jesus is our hermeneutic. It’s by learning to know and recognize His shepherding voice that we will be able to discern any imposters (John 10:27).
The Church throughout the ages has needed to cultivate discernment through constant practice, and it has sometimes taken public debates, fights, councils, and confrontations to stay on course through each generation’s uncharted seas. My analogy of storm-tossed teaching comes straight from Paul’s letter to the church in Ephesus, an ancient port city. They also knew something about contention within: endless quarrels over meaningless things, pressure from outside opponents, tension from internal divisions, well-intentioned Apollos telling people incomplete facts, outside exorcists unsuccessfully co-opting the name of Jesus, malicious false teachers infiltrating their ranks, spiritual warfare coming from the heart of Artemis-worship, and angry pagan silversmiths who wanted to tear it all down. Talk about being blown around by winds of teaching and the cunning and craftiness of people in deceitful scheming (Eph 4:14)!
When Paul says goodbye to his friends there for the final time, he leaves them with words of warning and blessing:
Watch out for yourselves and for all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God that he obtained with the blood of his own Son. I know that after I am gone fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. Even from among your own group men will arise, teaching perversions of the truth to draw the disciples away after them. Therefore be alert, remembering that night and day for three years I did not stop warning each one of you with tears. And now I entrust you to God and the message of his grace. (Acts 20:25-32)
Paul warns that from their own group there will be false teachers. Even our own echo chambers can’t keep all false teaching at bay. Paul knows the danger is real. He’s planted countless small churches and has witnessed them beset by all kinds of problems. And what does he do?
He exhorts them, yes, but then he entrusts them to God and the message of God’s grace. And he gets into a boat and sails away.
I’m laughing as I write this, because it’s so counterintuitive and yet so in-line with the constant tension we find throughout the Christian life. We work out our salvation with fear and trembling, because it is God who is at work within us (Phil 2:12-13). We plant and water the seeds, but it’s God who makes them grow (1 Cor 3:6). We keep watch and stay alert for sound doctrine, even as we are entrusted to God and His grace.
Against all odds, the church at Ephesus found their way, protecting and preserving the faith they received. This is underscored by Jesus’s commendation to them: “I know your works as well as your labor and steadfast endurance, and that you cannot tolerate evil. You have even put to the test those who refer to themselves as apostles (but are not), and have discovered that they are false” (Rev 2:2).
It’s a tempest out there. From the maelstrom of social media to the floods of self-platformed teachers to broader partisan winds that stoke fear and outrage, we, too, are weathering storm-tossed seas. For the church, it’s all hands on deck. We need each other to stay the course, keeping alert because the days are short. We need to talk it out. We need the giftings of every single Spirit-filled individual to help us discern what’s in step with the Gospel and what’s not, until we come to maturity in the faith.
Together, we can stay alert and attune our ears to the instruction and example of Jesus. This will anchor our souls in God’s hope and set our compasses to the true north of Christ Himself, the only one who will see us safely home.
“Jesus is our hermeneutic.”
Some seem to think the pagan Roman paterfamilias and his absolute control over his human property (wife, children, and slaves), including his right to kill them, is central to the gospel. If Jesus really were our hermeneutic we would not come to that authoritarian conclusion.
Thank you, Marissa. I'm going to use some of your wisdom to improve my own writing about false teachers. https://godwords.org/what-is-a-false-teacher/