If someone came up to you and shared some cool and interesting facts about Jesus, how would you respond? What if they shared their belief in Jesus, how the Gospel had changed their life, and how their life has been fueled by the grace of God? These would all be great items to hear from a stranger you had just recently met.
However, what if they started asking you questions and making points about the Gospel that wasn’t completely biblical and true? If they started challenging mainstream and popular verses and taking them out of context, would you be able to notice? I ask you these questions because I recently had an encounter with someone who claimed to be a Christian and follower of Christ, but now I fear they have been led astray and led to believe in a completely different gospel. And when this person started talking with me about their beliefs and “biblical truths”, the alarms in my head began to go off.
You see, while they did grab my attention with the Gospel, the life of Jesus, and the things to come, they started to lead me astray when they added to the Gospel of Jesus. They argued “yes Jesus is God’s Son and had to pay for our sins, but the evil work of Satan was able to come into the church and alter the direction of the church many years ago.” This person continued to give me evidence and “biblical support” for this notion that the proper teaching of the Scriptures had been lost and someone had to come along to fix it.
Unfortunately, this story has been created and shared by many other people and cults. If anyone would come to challenge the authority of Scripture and implement an understanding that proper truth has been lost, then they can write and orchestrate whatever kind of “religion” and “salvation” they want. They can infiltrate the biblical truth and corrupt the Gospel to twist it however they would selfishly like.
This is evil and this is an attack on the true Gospel. You see, I write my article this month to encourage my readers to know and study the TRUE GOSPEL. There will be many attempts in our lives where Satan or others would try and lead us astray by explaining to us: “gospel plus works”, “Jesus wasn’t actually God but this person is”, or “you just need to live and work well and for good in the world and God will save those who try hard enough”. Dear reader, it is imperative that we know the true Gospel of Jesus Christ so we can know when someone would try and trick us into believing in something else.
Want my advice? Study the Gospel. Study the theology of the Gospel. Open your Bible and ask questions of: “why did Jesus have to die for sins” or “who is Jesus and what makes Him better than David, Abraham, Moses, etc”. When you study the Gospel, you grow in your relationship with God and you also strengthen your foundation for biblical truth. Study the Word so much that you can immediately distinguish the truth from the lies. In case you haven’t heard it before, pastor Bryan has shared a story before that relates well to this situation. While he was in college, he worked for a bank and handled cash often. The way his team would combat fraud money was to work with the real deal actual cash instead of the fake cash. Why? Because there could be thousands of ways someone can try and create their own fake money. It can even look really good, true, and correct. But, if you study and work with the real deal for many hours and extended periods of time, you begin to live and breathe the real and true cash. So when someone on his team ran into fake cash, they would immediately know it to be fraudulent and would throw it away.
This is a great example for us to follow. Study, live, and breathe the true Gospel and the true Scriptures. So when someone comes to you with a false Gospel, you would not be enticed by what tickles the ear or seems logical to you. You would see their information for the lies it is and remain grounded in the truths found in the Bible. This is my goal as I continue to have conversations with people that share false truths. I hope this can help you as well.
His Glory Alone
