Every generation struggles for truth, and struggles against untruth. The parents of the first human generation, before they had generated anyone, struggled and failed. The snake spoke lies, and the Man and Woman bought in. Noah competed with lies that God wouldn’t flood the world in judgment. The tower builders competed with lies that they could reach heaven and put their name on the top of their skyscraper. Abraham competed with lies that his old wife couldn’t have a baby. Isaac competed with lies that one son was actually the other son. Jacob competed with lies from his tricky father-in-law twice over. Jospeh competed with lies against the promise of his birthright. Some of these patriarchs struggled for truth and won, some rolled over without much of a fight, and lost. Or both. And we haven’t even gotten out of Genesis.
Every generation struggles for truth, and competes against untruth. Spiritual lies spoken by spiritual liars threaten the people of God, without relent. So we must struggle for the truth. We must learn to identify spiritual lies and spiritual liars. The Bible trains us for this responsibility all over the place. It matters. For example, Jude the younger half-brother of Jesus got one chapter in the Bible, one small letter; and he focused on this theme. He wanted to write about something else, but the moment required a specific form of pastoral warning and writing: “Dear friends, although I was eager to write you about the salvation we share, I found it necessary to write, appealing to you to contend for the faith that was delivered to the saints once for all” (Jude 3).
For some, this verse compels an entire life-calling and ministry-vision. Maybe that’s their place. One body and many members, after all. But I think some belligerent Christians simply love to argue. As folks like Albert Mohler and Gavin Ortlund have show us, we must practice theological triage, discerning which issues are which:
We die before we deny the first-level issues. If someone were to put a gun to our head and say, “Deny that Jesus is God”—we would take the bullet.
We divide before we deny the second-level issues. For example, if someone were to demand that I baptize their infant child at our church, I would say, “I love you, but we don’t practice infant baptism.” If they believed strongly in this second-tier issue, I would point them to any number of faithful and healthy churches that agree with them on that point.
We debate before we disagree on the third-level issues. We might view the Millennium of Revelation 20 differently, or any number of things. We can discuss and even debate in good-faith, but we don’t let such things test our fellowship.
Triage, though, doesn’t fully help us figure out who the spiritual liars are, or how to spot them. Jude knew that, and explained why he had to write his contentious vision for the church he addressed: “For some people, who were designated for this judgment long ago, have come in by stealth; they are ungodly, turning the grace of our God into sensuality and denying Jesus Christ, our only Master and Lord” (Jude 4). In this explanation, we find at least six descriptions of spiritual liars, and their created content: spiritual lies.
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