The aim of this arti­cle

In the fol­low­ing arti­cle we dis­cuss why we believe and how we under­stand that Jesus’ teach­ing is God’s truth. Who­ev­er holds to false teach­ings does not wor­ship God. False doc­trines have a “yeast-effect” and lead peo­ple astray.

1 Introductory Thoughts About the Importance of the Right Teaching

Chris­tian­i­ty is defined in the per­son of Jesus Christ. What Chris­tians believe and what they hope for hinges on him. Who­ev­er teach­es some­thing dif­fer­ent to what Jesus taught dis­re­gards his author­i­ty and thus also author­i­ty of God. From this point of view, the arro­gance of false teach­ers becomes obvi­ous and it becomes under­stand­able why the New Tes­ta­ment uses such severe words against them.

Nowa­days a lot of the­olo­gians hold the opin­ion that many accounts about Jesus bear the char­ac­ter of a leg­end and that the main part of the words hand­ed down as his words grew out of the pious fan­ta­sy of his adher­ents. So they have a “good” rea­son for not tak­ing the New Tes­ta­ment seri­ous­ly, for not obey­ing the words of the Holy Scrip­ture and so they make up their own reli­gion.

Despite the fact that the so-called lib­er­al the­olo­gians reject self-evi­dent­ly the Pas­toral let­ters (Pas­toral let­ters: The Pauline let­ters deal­ing with the prac­ti­cal life of the Church: 1–2 Tim­o­thy, Titus) as non-authen­tic the truth of Paul’s words against false teach­ers in those very let­ters will cer­tain­ly prove right in their case, as well as what he says in Gala­tians:

But even if we or an angel from heav­en should preach to you a gospel con­trary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again: If any­one is preach­ing to you a gospel con­trary to the one you received, let him be accursed. (Gala­tians 1:8–9)

Many peo­ple do not regard the teach­ing as some­thing impor­tant, often because they do not want to assess nei­ther them­selves nor oth­ers and so the argu­ment goes that we should tol­er­ate the oth­er ones think­ing and we can­not recog­nise the truth alto­geth­er. How­ev­er, Jesus said in the gospel of John:

If you abide in my word, you are tru­ly my dis­ci­ples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. (John 8:31–32)

How impor­tant the right teach­ing real­ly is will hope­ful­ly become under­stand­able through the fol­low­ing thoughts.

2 Jesus’ Teaching Is God’s Truth

So Jesus answered them, “My teach­ing is not mine, but his who sent me. If any­one’s will is to do God’s will, he will know whether the teach­ing is from God or whether I am speak­ing on my own author­i­ty.” (John 7:16–17)

Here in these words Jesus empha­sizes that God him­self is the ori­gin of his teach­ing. So what he said is what God says, through Jesus’ words we can get to know what God wants and who he is. Yet the most impor­tant pre­req­ui­site is the will­ing­ness to do the will of God.

3 Whoever Holds to False Doctrines Does Not Worship God

Jesus warned his dis­ci­ples to be on guard against the yeast of the Phar­isees and Sad­ducees. (Matthew 16:6,12) He also declares:

…in vain do they wor­ship me, teach­ing as doc­trines the com­mand­ments of men. (Matthew 15:9)

He does not only call it a use­less wor­ship, he even calls them hyp­ocrites and says:

You hyp­ocrites! Well did Isa­iah proph­esy of you, when he said: “This peo­ple hon­ours me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.” (Matthew 15:7–8)

Every teach­ing that departs from the bib­li­cal fun­da­ment is a human com­mand­ment, thought up and cre­at­ed by peo­ple pur­su­ing aims oth­er than serv­ing God. So false teach­ings are the result of dis­obe­di­ence and pre­vent a per­son from hav­ing a rela­tion­ship with God or will cer­tain­ly destroy it.

4 Teaching and Life Are Closely Connected

We can see this from var­i­ous exam­ples.

When the Son of Man comes in his glo­ry, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glo­ri­ous throne. Before him will be gath­ered all the nations, and he will sep­a­rate peo­ple one from anoth­er as a shep­herd sep­a­rates the sheep from the goats. And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left. Then the King will say to those on his right, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inher­it the king­dom pre­pared for you from the foun­da­tion of the world. For I was hun­gry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you wel­comed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you vis­it­ed me, I was in prison and you came to me.” Then the right­eous will answer him, say­ing, “Lord, when did we see you hun­gry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and wel­come you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and vis­it you?” And the King will answer them, “Tru­ly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my broth­ers, you did it to me.” Then he will say to those on his left, “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eter­nal fire pre­pared for the dev­il and his angels. For I was hun­gry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink,  I was a stranger and you did not wel­come me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not vis­it me.” Then they also will answer, say­ing, “Lord, when did we see you hun­gry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not min­is­ter to you?” Then he will answer them, say­ing, “Tru­ly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.” And these will go away into eter­nal pun­ish­ment, but the right­eous into eter­nal life. (Matthew 25:31–46)

If, for exam­ple, some­one under­stands the para­ble above as refer­ring to Chris­tians, as it is usu­al nowa­days, his con­cept of being a Chris­t­ian will be restrict­ed more or less to social activ­i­ties. But this para­ble actu­al­ly speaks about peo­ple who did not know Jesus, who are sur­prised that the good they did, they did for Jesus. Chris­tians know that they serve Jesus with every­thing they do. Here Jesus par­tial­ly also answers the ques­tion of what will hap­pen in eter­ni­ty to those who do not get to know him here, on earth. The Greek word eth­noi (nations) in verse 32 also con­tributes to this inter­pre­ta­tion. The Jews made a dis­tinc­tion when speak­ing about them­selves or their own nation (Greek: laos) and about the nations (Greek: eth­noi), that is every non-Jew. This can be seen from Acts 26:17 as well.

As Chris­tians we are ambas­sadors for Christ (2 Corinthi­ans 5:20), active­ly mak­ing God known to the peo­ple by spread­ing Jesus’ teach­ing and liv­ing a holy life.

The para­ble of the wheat and the weeds is a fur­ther inter­est­ing exam­ple.

He put anoth­er para­ble before them, say­ing, “The king­dom of heav­en may be com­pared to a man who sowed good seed in his field, but while his men were sleep­ing, his ene­my came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also. And the ser­vants of the mas­ter of the house came and said to him, ‘Mas­ter, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds?’ He said to them, ‘An ene­my has done this.’ So the ser­vants said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gath­er them?’ But he said, ‘No, lest in gath­er­ing the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. Let both grow togeth­er until the har­vest, and at har­vest time I will tell the reapers, Gath­er the weeds first and bind them in bun­dles to be burned, but gath­er the wheat into my barn.’” (Matthew 13:24–30)

Nowa­days many peo­ple refer this para­ble to the church. They want to use it as an argu­ment that with­in the church there can be believ­ers and unbe­liev­ers togeth­er and only at the end of age, it will become clear who real­ly belongs to God. There­fore, they say that we need not keep dis­tance to unbe­liev­ers or even should not assess peo­ple because only at the very end God will decide. If you read a lit­tle fur­ther, you can see that this is not what Jesus spoke about.

He explains that the field is the world and in the world both good and evil peo­ple live side-by-side, although God cre­at­ed every­body for a good pur­pose. How­ev­er, God does not want to exter­mi­nate all those who do not obey him. He grants every­one a free will to live his life until he dies how­ev­er he decides. More­over, we can see from oth­er pas­sages in the New Tes­ta­ment that as Chris­tians we can­not have spir­i­tu­al fel­low­ship with unbe­liev­ers:

Do not be unequal­ly yoked with unbe­liev­ers. For what part­ner­ship has right­eous­ness with law­less­ness? Or what fel­low­ship has light with darkness?What accord has Christ with Belial?Or what por­tion does a believ­er share with an unbeliever?What agree­ment has the tem­ple of God with idols? For we are the tem­ple of the liv­ing God; as God said, I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my peo­ple. There­fore go out from their midst, and be sep­a­rate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing; then I will wel­come you, and I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daugh­ters to me, says the Lord Almighty. (2 Corinthi­ans 6:14–18)

4.1 False Doctrines Have a “Yeast-Effect”

That is why the Scrip­ture warns us to…

…watch out for those who cause divi­sions and cre­ate obsta­cles con­trary to the doc­trine that you have been taught; avoid them. (Romans 16:17)

In his let­ter to Titus Paul says:

As for a per­son who stirs up divi­sion, after warn­ing him once and then twice, have noth­ing more to do with him,  know­ing that such a per­son is warped and sin­ful; he is self-con­demned. (Titus 3:10–11)

4.2 False Doctrines Lead People Astray

The truth is adapt­ed to con­cepts that seem to be more pious, more attrac­tive or more com­fort­able to peo­ple, con­cepts that grant them more “secu­ri­ty” or allow them to make com­pro­mis­es.

For the time is com­ing when peo­ple will not endure sound teach­ing, but hav­ing itch­ing ears they will accu­mu­late for them­selves teach­ers to suit their own pas­sions, and will turn away from lis­ten­ing to the truth and wan­der off into myths. (2 Tim­o­thy 4:3–4)

False doc­trines spread quick­ly. The wide road is easy to go, but it leads to destruc­tion. In the New Tes­ta­ment we find a very strict rejec­tion of false teach­ers:

Every­one who goes on ahead and does not abide in the teach­ing of Christ, does not have God. Who­ev­er abides in the teach­ing has both the Father and the Son. If any­one comes to you and does not bring this teach­ing, do not receive him into your house or give him any greet­ing, for who­ev­er greets him takes part in his wicked works. (2 John 9–11)

In New Tes­ta­ment times, to wel­come some­body was con­nect­ed with receiv­ing this per­son into one’s house and hav­ing fel­low­ship by eat­ing and speak­ing togeth­er. This is what John wants to say: with a false teacher one can­not have fel­low­ship to show clear lim­its to all the things he teach­es falesly, for what can truth and the dis­tor­tion of the truth have in com­mon?

So every Chris­t­ian will be eager to get to know what the right teach­ing is which is an expres­sion that he loves the truth and the basis for going for­ward on the nar­row way, that is why Paul admon­ish­es the Chris­tians:

…so that we may no longer be chil­dren, tossed to and fro by the waves and car­ried about by every wind of doc­trine, by human cun­ning, by crafti­ness in deceit­ful schemes. (Eph­esians 4:14)

If some­one is not con­scious­ly led by God’s Word he ought not to be sur­prized if he is led astray. A lack of think­ing already opens the door for the decep­tion of false teach­ers.

Keep a close watch on your­self and on the teach­ing. Per­sist in this, for by so doing you will save both your­self and your hear­ers.

(1 Tim­o­thy 4:16)