The Bible tells us to not be ignorant of the devil's tactics. First of all, we need to learn the truths in God's word for ourselves, then we can, more easily, separate the truths from the lies.
I'm involved in large Christian circles made up of people all over the world. In my opinion, it seems like at least 75% of what I hear from other Christians as they communicate over the internet, is about false teachers. I am not going to go into too much detail here about this topic, but will cover it on another blog later. Christians seem to be onto this 'false teacher', 'false prophet', and 'false convert' hunt today. More and more names come up every day on this, indicating that so and so is a false teacher. So and so is a false prophet, etc. While we need to expose false teachings, and those who clearly teach false doctrine, this seems to have taken more priority than preaching the Gospel!
I said all that simply to say that, while the church seems to notice who the false teachers are, there is a category that seems to have been totally overlooked.
It is subtle. That person who made the post I am reading certainly can't be implying that we are saved by keeping the Commandments, could he? I can't tell you how many questionable posts and blogs I have seen lately, and I'm sure some of them are just miscommunication. But I have done research now and found that there is a sect in Christianity, that does teach that a person is saved by faith in Christ and by keeping the Commandments.
You are probably thinking, as I was, that certainly isn't true. Nobody that I personally know, who knows the Lord believes that part of our salvation depends upon our keeping the Commandments. We have been well taught that we are saved by grace, through faith, nothing of ourselves because it is a gift of God. Everyone knows that, right? Wrong.
You see, the Bible tells us we are saved by God's grace as provided in the Cross of Jesus Christ. Our good works do not atone for our sins. We also must repent in order to respond to God. We turn away from living for ourselves and our sinful desires, and trust in Jesus because of what He did on the Cross for us.
Repentance involves turning away from our sins and turning toward God. The belief system that concerns me tells us that repentance means to 'stop sinning'.
Also, this strange belief system being embraced by many believes that original sin is a lie. Original sin is the sin that is in all of our hearts because of Adam's fall. This belief system says that Adam was responsible for his sin, and his sin does not get passed onto his descendants. It also teaches that people are able to keep the Commandments. As one of them recently said, Jesus wouldn't give us a Commandment if we weren't able to keep it. "Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.”
John 14:20-22 ESV
So far, I have found 4 different things they believe in that are contrary to Scripture. 1. Doctrine of Original Sin 2. Doctrine of man 3. Doctrine of Salvation 4. Doctrine of Sin (Definition of sin).
These people are the ones, for the most part, that are giving evangelism a bad name. They are the ones who are yelling at people to repent. They are the ones who come down hard on people. Also, they never, ever talk or tell people about God's love, only His judgment to come. Plus, when they tell people to 'repent' they explain that as 'stop sinning'.
A couple of months ago, I was working on some blogs based on the concept, 'Jesus Friend of Sinners'. I studied this topic and wrote about it. But while on Facebook, I saw a post that had to do with the song from 'Casting Crowns' It was a video done by an open air preacher criticizing the song, and showing its errors. It was interesting to watch the video, for whenever this preacher was giving his critique, people in the audience were making nasty comments about Casting Crowns. 'I turn the radio off when they come on' says one man. These people really do believe that they are without sin. They remind me of the Pharisee in Luke 18 who was thankful to God because he wasn't like others. According to this teaching, Jesus was not a friend of sinners, but only to those who were His disciples.
I think we need to be on the lookout for this kind of teaching. The main way we can guard ourselves from becoming deceived is by learning and knowing the truth. The truth is the only thing that can keep us from being deceived.
Good works and commandment keeping are the results of a work done in the heart by God. We don't do good works in order to receive God's favor, but if we don't understand the doctrine of Original Sin, or if we are ignorant of our indwelling sin, we will be deceived. We will have logs in our own eyes, and not be able to see our sins as they truly are. Neither will we be able to help other people come out of their sins and repent. We will be like the Rich Young Ruler who came to Jesus asking Him how one inherits the kingdom of God. Jesus told him that he knew the commandments, to which the Rich Young Ruler replied that he had kept them. Then Jesus said something startling. He told the Rich Young Ruler that he lacked one thing, and told him to sell everything he had so he could give his money to the poor.
The Rich Young Man went away very sad. He kept the commandments. Why would he be sad? Because he missed the Great commandment which says to 'love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and strength' and 'love your neighbor as yourself'. The Rich Young Ruler was challenged to love his neighbor, and wasn't ready to meet the demands of the challenge. So, what was the Rich Young Ruler Missing? It was a 4 letter word called, 'love'.
I didn't think it would matter if you knew or didn't know the name of this belief system, but in case you are curious or want to do your own research, the name of this belief system is:
Pelagian
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