2nd John 7 DECEIVERS. How do we determine if people who have "entered into" our "world" of fellowship are true teachers of the word of God, or if they are "deceivers?" Deceivers are usually nice people who have attractive personalities, seem sincere, and quite likely are. They seem like believable people who are friendly and approachable. In that way they can get the attention they seek and gather people, usually Christians or professing Christians, to themselves. They will use Bible terms and illustrations and words that are familiar to Bible-believing Christians. However, they will often avoid easily understood teaching about our Lord Jesus Christ. "His teaching was good," they say. "He was one of the most influential people in human history," may be another comment. "O yes, we believe He was a god, or like God," is another comment false-teachers make. Not only are some fundamental words missing that describe our Lord who has come "to seek and to save that which was lost," but the way they live is an important test of what they believe and teach.
Evasive words about their past and also about who they know, where they have been and with whom they have been in fellowship, are reasons to be on our guard. Good and evil are often mixed in the way they look at life and the world around. Long explanations about what God is like and how we approach Him are quite common. The attitude toward spiritual things and how we approach the truth of God is a sign of who they are. Anyone who tries to make God into a human-like person is to be questioned. We human are the ones who must be change to be like God. That is what "godly" means and is what God wants of us. In John's day a popular false teaching that was troubling God's people was that Jesus was God, but that He was not a true man. He was a spirit-form that looked and acted like a man. In our day a popular false teaching is that Jesus is only a man. They do not believe that He is God. Their teaching is that He was a good and remarkable man with lofty teaching, but He was just a man.
Any teaching that is not right about our Lord Jesus Christ must be emphatically rejected. False teachers today promote a non-biblical understanding of our Lord. Others have a compromising teaching about the Bible. Some parts of the Bible they will accept and others they reject because it does not suit their purpose and/or lifestyle. True, for most of us who do not know Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic, we read the scriptures in the language we normally speak. The truth that is contained in scripture does transfer to the language we speak with all the fundamentals of divine wisdom passed on to us through reliable translators. There are some who deliberately mistranslate words to suit their religious bias, but most Christian and Jewish translators are seriously committed to making sure they are passing on the meaning of the text from one language to another with accuracy. The point of translations is to make the unchangeable truths of the word of God understandable without compromising the doctrine and its original intent. False teachers manipulate scripture verses, and often isolate them to suit their own goal and avoid the context in which the Spirit of God gave them to us.
The word "deceivers" describes those people as "vagabonds" who have "gone forth" as on a mission and "are entered" among God's people to fulfill that mission. Not only do they not give a true understanding of Jesus, but they distort and undermine those truths that "are most surely believed among us." Often, they quote writers of books as those who give us the right meaning of things, but actually they change the meaning of biblical words to suit their opinion. To quote writers of books instead of passages of scripture is a signal that danger is near.
Deceivers are also "imposters" who seek to lead others to forsake what they have learned to be true from the Bible, and follow their interpretations. Most who deceive the people of God are very believable and seem (and may be are) to be sincere. But to be sincere doesn't make a thing right. It is not hard to be sincerely wrong. Open, honest and frank discussion with teachers is the best way to find out who they are and what they believe. Begin with determining what they think of Jesus and what they think regarding His Person, His life, death burial resurrection and His coming again.
The teaching we call "church truth," also needs to be examined because many today believe and teach that Christians who are in the church are spiritual Jews. The church of today is the Israel of the Old Testament continued under a new covenant. To false teachers, the ordinances of the Old Testament have been adapted to suit the universal church. The "local ecclesia" to many is a part of the whole dispensational church and is not an autonomous group of believers who gather in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ unto the Person of our Lord. Their "headquarters" tells them what to believe and practice. They gather "one the grounds (basic teaching) of the one body."
We know any believer in the Lord Jesus Christ as their personal Savior is a member of the one body of believers that was formed on the Day of Pentecost and is being "added to daily" by those who are born again all over the world. Christ is the Head and every believer saved by God's grace is "body of Christ" in the sense of basic material. The uniqueness of an assembly of believers in a community is they are all "body of Christ" and "members in particular." As a functioning organism similar to the universal church, all the parts needed for public testimony has been provided for by divine Persons who give gifts for the proper working of that local body of believers. Some would teach that every believer in an area is part of the local assembly whether they know it or not. We have been given church epistles and pastoral epistles to clarify the distinction between the dispensational church and the local assembly. A right understanding of those letters gives us the guidance we need.
When believers have some different opinions, we can still have a degree of fellowship in the things of God. When a person rejects teaching regarding our Lord Jesus Christ, we know who they really are and avoid them. Deceivers act against the people of God - against men. We can seek to correct them if they are willing to listen and pay heed to God's word. An anti-christ acts against God and we must reject both the teaching and the person lest we be a partaker of the evil they promote. If we are found in the presence of one who is against God, we must remove ourselves and by so-doing disassociate ourselves with them and what they are teaching and doing. We "go forth to preach the Gospel." They go forth to preach lies and false doctrine and are spokes-persons for the devil. They do not usually look for unbelievers to capture but for Christians to deceive. Pay attention to both what a person does and what they say.
How would I know truth or what is its meaning? Is there as test to apply that falsehood would be revealing? Yes, there is one major proof that is easy to apply – Is Jesus Christ, God in the flesh – did He really come to die For sinners and in His sacrifice for sin the way alone That God will accept for sinners that He might their sins atone And bring life to sinners that is eternal in its nature Is it that simple, without a lot of nomenclature?
Yes, the doctrine of Christ has been made very clear – He alone put away sin when on earth He did appear. Any one coming with some strange or other way – Is a deceiver and I must not to them attention pay. To say, “God bless you,” to one with a false message – Would be to a wrong teaching or evil spirit pay my homage. Christ, and Christ alone is the message men must bring, And by teaching and life, I pass on what is the right thing.
“Holy God, I know there are those around here who are trying to lead some of the younger Christians away from the plain teaching of Thy word to emotional and other kinds of experiences. I pray that there will be help given to those who oversee the flock of God to know what to say and how to say it, to keep these young lambs from the deceivers will devour them. The false teachers seem to major on how a person feels about things rather than what Thy Word teaches. Preserve the young I pray in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.”