Sermon Tone Analysis

“I write these things to you about those who are trying to deceive you.

But the anointing that you received from him abides in you, and you have no need that anyone should teach you.

But as his anointing teaches you about everything—and is true and is no lie, just as it has taught you—abide in him.”

[1]

His promotion of a distorted theology necessitated pastoral intervention.

Nevertheless, he vigorously defended his aberrant position despite exposure of his errant thinking.

His rejoinder when he was privately confronted was astonishing.

“You teach ‘soul compete-ancy.’

I don’t need no teacher; I can think for myself.”

He had the King James Bible and a copy of Strong’s concordance, and that was all he needed (so he thought) to formulate doctrine.

It was but an additional egregious error to add to his already astounding catalogue of errors.

This man’s arrogance was breathtaking and his defence of the indefensible amazing.

Indeed, John does make the bold assertion, “The anointing that you received from Him abides in you, and you have no need that anyone should teach you” [1 JOHN 2:27].

Unquestionably, his statement is an argument presenting soul competency of the believer.

However, the old rule of biblical interpretation applies here, as it does in every instance: any text out of context is pretext.

To properly understand and apply John’s teaching, it is necessary to understand the context.

The context of John’s teaching is that the Apostle of Love is cautioning believers to be aware of their susceptibility to error.

John is neither rejecting teachers who have been gifted by the Spirit of God and appointed for the benefit of the people of God, nor is he discounting sound theology, nor advocating that we jettison the accumulated wisdom of godly people from past millennia; John is teaching all who follow the Master to rely on the Spirit of Christ to direct our thinking process and to guide us so that we avoid errant teachers and aberrant theology—we don’t need new or novel theologies.

Just as there are evil people in our world who seek to extirpate freedoms we take for granted, so there are evil people among the churches that are determined to destroy the freedom we enjoy in Christ.

The unwary may be snared, but if they stumble, it is despite red flags raised by the Spirit of God.

As we continue exploring our Baptist foundations, today we are considering application of the doctrine commonly referred to as “soul competency.”

Tragically, this teaching of competency in matters of the Faith is often misunderstood; or perhaps it is more accurate to state that it is frequently distorted to fit the preconceived notions of individuals who are intent on gaining their own desires.

Nevertheless, the Word is quite clear that each Christian has received an “anointing,” or “unction.”

The consequence of that “anointing” is that Christians are competent to recognise truth, and they are equipped to recognise error.

That Christians succumb to the siren allure of error is less a testimony to the tenacity of those promulgating error than it is to the lack of caution among the saints and their naïve character when they accept the philosophy of democratic government within the church.

EVIL DOES EXIST — Too many of the professed saints of the Most High are naïve at best, and woefully ignorant at worst.

Too many of God’s holy people assume that evil people really mean them no harm.

The tragic truth is that many “nice” people are spiritual predators.

There are people in the world who are intent on harming us just because we “claim to be Christians,” and there are people who are determined to prey on our innocence.

I do not advocate that we cease to be trusting in our approach to people; but I do encourage us as Christians to be aware of danger.

I know that many of the professed saints of God do not wish to hear about evil, and apparently, they are uncomfortable when evil is exposed.

A sizeable segment of Christendom has imbibed of the polluted waters drawn from post-modern wells of “tolerance,” and they feel it is wrong to detail openly the existence of spiritual error or to speak of the dangers that arise when we ignore error.

These individuals seem to be persuaded that if only Christians will make “nice,” and if they will avoid giving offence, they will fulfil an unspecified mandate of scriptural “niceness.”

It seems as if there is a far greater fear of what people may think than there is a fear of offending Holy God.

Consequently, churches tolerate some incredibly strange and aberrant teachings.

One example is witnessed in the recent actions of a major old-line denomination in the United States that decided that the biblical doctrine of the Triune God was overly exclusive.

Recently, they voted to change references to the Trinity to include such novel terms as “Mother, Beloved Child and Life-Giving Womb,” or “Lover, Beloved and Love.” [2] What a strange way to treat the One who is Master of the Church!

John, the Beloved Disciple, held God in awe, and he obviously feared the Lord more than he feared censure from any mere mortal.

As a precursor to the encouragement found in our text, John wrote: “Children, it is the last hour, and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come.

Therefore we know that it is the last hour.

They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us.

But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us.

But you have been anointed by the Holy One, and you all have knowledge.

I write to you, not because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and because no lie is of the truth.

Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ?

This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son.

No one who denies the Son has the Father.

Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also.

Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you.

If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, then you too will abide in the Son and in the Father.

And this is the promise that he made to us—eternal life” [1 JOHN 2:18-25].

At this early stage of development of the Faith, John attested that wicked men had infiltrated the churches and were even accepted as religious leaders among the churches!

These wicked men were intent on injuring the cause of Christ.

For this reason, John calls them “antichrists.”

This assessment accords with the strong statement that Jude makes that “certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ” [JUDE 4].

This should not have been a great surprise to the people of God if they were familiar with the warnings either of Peter or of Paul.

Peter, in his second letter, warned, “False prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction.

And many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of truth will be blasphemed.

And in their greed they will exploit you with false words.

Their condemnation from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep” [2 PETER 2:1-3].

In his farewell address to the Ephesian elders, Paul had warned, “I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples after them” [ACTS 20:29, 30].

And in his final missive to Timothy, the young theologue of Ephesus, Paul wrote, “Before God and Christ Jesus, who is going to judge the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His kingdom, I solemnly charge you: proclaim the message; persist in it whether convenient or not; rebuke, correct, and encourage with great patience and teaching.

For the time will come when they will not tolerate sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, will accumulate teachers for themselves because they have an itch to hear something new.

They will turn away from hearing the truth and will turn aside to myths” [2 TIMOTHY 4:1-4].

[3]

Before Peter, Paul or John had written these warnings, the Master Himself warned that “false christs and false prophets will arise and perform signs and wonders, to lead astray, if possible, the elect” [MARK 13:22].

Knowing that false christs were coming, Jesus warned His disciples, “Be on guard.”

What Jesus warned of, and what the Apostles amplified, was already beginning to plague the churches even as John wrote.

The passage of time, and our distance from the events recorded in the Word of God should not be taken to mean that attempts (often successful) to infiltrate surreptitiously the Body of Christ have ceased.

Neither should we imagine that evil has become less insidious.

If anything, threats to the Body of Christ may be greater today than at anytime since the Day of Pentecost.

I consider that one of the gravest threats to contemporary churches is the general tendency to accommodate the spirit of the age.

To a disturbing extent, modern believers seek immunization from the consequences of sin, but they are not particularly eager to avoid sin.

They want to be able to play with sin, but they don’t want to experience any negative repercussions.

The warnings of the Word sound strange to our ears.

It is not at all evident that we believe the Apostle Paul when he cautions, “all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” [2 TIMOTHY 3:12].

The preacher who dares to warn fledgling Christians that it is only “through many tribulations [that] we must enter the Kingdom of God” [ACTS 14:22] is generally considered to be overly harsh by contemporary church-goers.

A significant truth that must be acknowledged is that evil does exist.

Moreover, individuals intent on deceiving the children of the Lord do infiltrate the churches.

The issue is not that the people of God are untaught, but that they can become unwary and thus susceptible to stumbling into error.

Whenever we begin to tolerate just a little bit of error, we are on the road to embracing that very error that at first appeared so appalling.

EQUIPPED TO DISTINGUISH BETWEEN GOOD AND EVIL — The contemporary world has redefined evil in the process usurping God’s position as final arbiter of sin.

Examples of moral schizophrenia abound in a review of modern society.

Consider that contemporary society demonises smoking while at the same time legitimatising the activity through collecting taxes on tobacco products.

Society considers it evil for anyone to contend openly that homosexuality is contrary to the laws of nature or to say that homosexual acts are against biblical morality; however, the same social standard does not apply when those refusing to salute the rainbow flag are compelled to accept this redefined morality.

Contemporary social standards conclude that it is evil to deny that all religions are morally equivalent; yet, it is not evil to oppress or ridicule worship of Christ Jesus.

Though as Christians we are commanded to respect government leaders, and though we are taught to seek peace with all people, we are honour bound to be very clear that God alone is able to declare what is good and what is evil.

Christians are responsible to “obey God rather than men” [ACTS 5:29].

Because we seek to honour God, we are responsible to know the will of God for our lives and to walk according to that will.

We are responsible to distinguish good from evil, doing what is good and eschewing evil.

Sin can be ever so subtle.

Most Christians agree that God condemns certain actions because they are sinful.

For instance, Paul specifically affirms that individuals “who strike their fathers and mothers … murderers, the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars [and] perjurers” [1 TIMOTHY 1:9, 10], are sinful.

What is too often overlooked is the plethora of sins that are otherwise unnamed under the broad heading, “whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine.”

It is the inclusive condition embraced by contemporary churches, the attitude that ignores the summary statement included at the conclusion of this dark list of sinful behaviours that permits a disturbing susceptibility to sin within the Community of Faith.

Intuitively, we know that some actions are sinful, but we tolerate them all the same.

We use a variety of subterfuges, but we are still uncomfortable with the wrong.

According to John, “sin is lawlessness” [1 JOHN 3:4].

Any action or teaching that ignores the leadership of the Holy Spirit, or that disregards the instruction of God’s Word, is sinful.

There is no such thing as “a little bit of sin.”

All sin is violation of the will of God, and as such is an offence to His Holy Name.

For this reason, I insist that anything that threatens the unity of the Body, any action that threatens the purity of the Faith, or any teaching that threatens the reign of Christ over His church, is sinful.