The Truth War

by John MacArthur

  JUDE TAKES A CONDENSED,

  FISH-EYE VIEW OF ALL

  HISTORY, STARTING FROM

  THE BEGINNING OF TIME.

  HE SHOWS THAT THE TRUTH

  WAR HAS BEEN A PERPETUAL

  REALITY EVER SINCE SIN

  FIRST ENTERED THE

  UNIVERSE. THE LONG

  STRUGGLE BETWEEN TRUTH

  AND FALSEHOOD IS ONE OF

  THE CENTRAL THEMES OF

  ALL HISTORY.

  Jude mentions, for example, the fall of Satan and the angels who followed him (v. 6). He refers to Adam by name (v. 14). He speaks of the error of Cain (v. 11). He alludes to the preaching of Enoch, and hence the apostasy of that generation (v. 14–15) .He recounts the immorality of Sodom and Gomorrah (v.7), the false teaching of Balaam (v. 11), and the rebellion of Korah (v. 11). The spiritual war as he describes it covers the whole course of human history.

  The big-picture perspective is deliberately designed to help us understand the sweeping saga of what God is doing. What Jude lays out in a few words is a CliffsNotes perspective on the long war against truth. The point is that we are still embroiled in that conflict today, and we cannot afford to lay down our arms. There is a good and valid reason that the church on earth has always been known as “the church militant.” Our generation has by no means been granted an exemption from the necessary conflict. As a matter of fact, Christianity in our time is besieged with spiritual pretenders, and their lies are as subtle and as dangerous as ever. Some of them are even the same old lies simply recycled for a new generation.

  Sabellianism, for instance, has made a strong comeback. The hallmark of “Oneness Pentecostalism” is a denial of the Trinity and a view of the Godhead that is indistinguishable from ancient Sabellianism. Yet many—perhaps most—in the evangelical movement today are perfectly willing to ignore the lessons of Scripture and history, set aside the whole disagreement as something entirely nonessential, and embrace contemporary Sabellianism as a legitimate expression of authentic Christian faith. For at least a decade now, evangelical best-seller lists have included a steady stream of works by authors and musicians who deny the doctrine of the Trinity. They hold to a distinctive version of modalism. That is the official position of “Oneness Pentecostals” and the United Pentecostal Church International. As these groups and their popular spokespersons have found increasing acceptance in the evangelical mainstream, modalism is suddenly being accepted as if it were a valid evangelical option.

  In that regard, our era mirrors exactly what was happening in Athanasius’s time. Multitudes have blithely declared all conflict and strife over doctrine in the church a thing of the past—as if all the serious threats to the truth had already been vanquished and the church could now ignore the threat of ungodly false teachers who creep in unnoticed.

  The reality is quite different. The false church is growing. Waves of apostasy are rolling higher and higher and higher as we move ever closer to the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. Remember that in 2 Thessalonians 2:3, Paul indicates that the final cataclysmic earthly judgment (the day of the Lord) will be preceded by “the falling away”—an era of apostasy, and a time of “unrighteous deception” (v. 10, emphasis added) more widespread and more spiritually devastating than anything the world has ever seen.

  The ages-old war against truth is simply setting the stage for that final, desperate uprising. All of history has been one long, steady march to that goal. It is now closer than it has ever been.

  6

  THE EVIL OF FALSE TEACHING: HOW ERROR TURNS GRACE INTO LICENTIOUSNESS

  Certain men have crept in unnoticed, who long ago were

  marked out for this condemnation, ungodly men, who turn the

  grace of our God into lewdness.

  —Jude 4

  Why is it so vital to fight for the truth? Because truth is W the only thing that can liberate people from the bondage of sin and give them eternal life (John 8:32; 14:6). That is precisely what Paul meant when he said the gospel is the power of God unto salvation (Romans 1:16; 1 Corinthians 1:18).

  Truth (the simple truth of the gospel, to be specific) is necessary for salvation. “For ‘whoever calls on the name of the LORD shall be saved.’ [But how] shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher?” (Romans 10:13–14). Scripture is clear about this: there is no hope of salvation apart from hearing and believing the truth about Christ (cf. 1 Corinthians 1:21).

  That is why nothing is more destructive than false religion. Mere ignorance is devastating enough: “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge” (Hosea 4:6). But gospel-corrupting apostasy is the most sinister of all evils. It not only conceals the very core of all truth from those who most desperately need it, but it also breeds more and more iniquity.

  APOSTATE FALSE TEACHERS

  WHO REMAIN IN THE

  CHURCH AND UNDERMINE

  TRUE FAITH ARE OFTEN

  EXTREMELY SUBTLE, BUT

  THEY ARE NEVER HARMLESS.

  HERESY ALWAYS BREEDS

  MORE EVIL, AND THE CLOSER

  ANY LIE COMES TO THE

  HEART OF THE GOSPEL, THE

  MORE DIABOLICAL IS THE

  FRUIT IT BEARS.

  As a matter of fact, apostate religion is dynamic in the same way gospel truth is—but it produces exactly the opposite results. It intensifies sin’s bondage, multiplies sin’s pollutions, and magnifies sin’s consequences. In every way imaginable, false religion makes the calamity of sin worse than ever.

  In other words, teaching gospel-corrupting error as if it were biblical truth is no insignificant sin. Apostasy is always portrayed in Scripture as a deadly danger. Apostate false teachers who remain in the church and undermine true faith are often extremely subtle, but they are never harmless. Heresy always breeds more evil, and the closer any lie comes to the heart of the gospel, the more diabolical is the fruit it bears.

  Furthermore, the evil borne by false doctrine is no incidental or unintentional side effect. The actual goal—and the inevitable result—of all false doctrine is to “turn the grace of our God into lewdness” (Jude 4). That is also the true aim and ambition of every apostate. According to Jude, in the mix of the evil motives behind every heresy, you will always discover an appetite for evil things. The driving passion of all false teachers is their lust (vv. 18–19). It may be a craving for carnal pleasure (v. 7), greed for money and material things (v. 11), or a rebellious hankering after power (v.11). Many times it is all of the above. Look closely at any false teacher and you will see corruption caused by lust—manifest not only in the love of money and power but also in an inability to control the flesh.

  Peter said exactly the same thing. Scoffers are driven by “their own lusts” (2 Peter 3:3). In fact, Peter says that one of the primary objectives of every apostate teacher is to lure people back into the bondage of immorality after they have been exposed to the liberating truth of the gospel: “When they speak great swelling words of emptiness, they allure through the lusts of the flesh, through lewdness, the ones who have actually escaped from those who live in error. While they promise them liberty, they themselves are slaves of corruption” (2:18–19).

  The many striking parallels between 2 Peter and Jude indicate that both epistles were most likely written to deal with the same outbreak of apostasy. Although neither epistle can be definitively dated, it appears 2 Peter was written before Jude, because as pointed out in chapter 3, Peter was prophesying that false teachers would come, and Jude was warning that they were already there. Like Jude, Peter warned that heretics would originate within the church: “There will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Lord who bought them, and bring on themselves swift destruction. And many will follow their destructive ways, because of whom the way of truth will be blasphemed” (2:1–2).

  And don’t forget that the apostles Paul and
John frequently gave similar warnings about the imminent danger of apostates within the visible church (Acts 20:28–31; 2 Timothy 3:1–9; 1 John 2:18–19). So did Jesus (Matthew 7:15; 24:23–25). It is surely significant that the Holy Spirit gave us so many reminders to remain constantly on guard. False teachers abound, and they are playing a devious charade that is a serious and perpetual threat to unwary Christians in every age and every place.

  But don’t imagine for a moment that God is fooled or His plans are really thwarted by the subtleties of lying, false teachers. In fact, consider the implications of all the various biblical warnings and prophecies declaring that false teachers will arise from the church. In Jesus’ words, “Take heed; see, I have told you all things beforehand” (Mark 13:23). These are not merely warnings designed to make us fearful; they are also prophecies that prove God knows what He is doing. He has a plan for the false teachers too. He will accomplish all His good pleasure despite their best efforts. And because Christ Himself is building His church, the gates of hell will not prevail against it. The powers of darkness cannot win the Truth War.

  Jude hints at this in verse 4 when he refers to the false teachers as “certain men . . . who long ago were marked out for this condemnation.” That phrase is an implicit affirmation of God’s sovereignty over the efforts of the false teachers. Try as they might, they cannot overthrow or even slightly derail the eternal purposes of God. In fact, His eternal plan included their ultimate condemnation! Jude simply states this truth without any further explanation or argument, but because so many people find the topic of God’s sovereignty so difficult—especially when we consider God’s sovereignty with respect to evildoers—it is worth some effort to try to gain a better understanding of the biblical perspective on a dilemma all of us find troublesome from time to time: Is God really sovereign over evil? If so, why hasn’t He already put a stop to it?

  Those are some of the hardest questions in all theology. Let’s try to simplify them as much as possible.

  FALSE TEACHERS CANNOT

  THWART GOD’S SOVEREIGNTY

  God is absolutely sovereign, even over false teachers. That is the main truth Jude wants to emphasize when he declares that the damnation of false teachers has been planned and prepared by God already. Their judgment was “marked out” long ago. The Greek word Jude employs is prographo—literally, “written out in advance.” Their condemnation is preprogrammed and prerecorded in the eternal decrees of God.

  Jude’s statement clearly suggests, first of all, that God’s ultimate judgment against the false teachers is unavoidable. Their apostasy marks them as men who are past any hope of redemption (Philippians 3:18–19; Hebrews 6:4–6; 10:26–27; 2 Peter 2:20; cf. Matthew 12:31–32; 1 John 5:16). Thus he takes a very hard line against them. There is no point in trying to persuade them, appeal to them, or rescue them from their own heresy. We do seek to rescue their victims from a similar fate, of course (Jude 22–23), but the false teachers themselves are people who have already seen the truth and rejected it. They are deadly, children of destruction, sons of wrath marked out for judgment.

  The text also plainly means that God Himself decreed their destruction as part of His original plan. Their end was predetermined “long ago.” (“Ages ago” might capture more of the true sense of the Greek expression. It is very similar to the language of 2 Kings 19:25, where God says to Hezekiah, “Did you not hear long ago how I [ordained judgment], from ancient times that I formed it? Now I have brought it to pass” [emphasis added].) In other words, the verdict concerning these apostates is not something God decided just recently. It was decreed before time began, in eternity past. It is still in effect even now—with full, infallible, divine authority.

  This, of course, is an unqualified affirmation of the absolute sovereignty of God. Every tiny detail of His eternal plan will be fulfilled to absolute perfection. His grand design has always included both the false teachers and their inevitable destruction. So their evil work never disrupts any component of His plan or derails even one aspect of His good intentions. On the contrary, long ago, in God’s own perfect wisdom and eternal purpose, the apostates themselves were an integral part of the original plan—and even their final doom was forever settled by God’s eternal decree.

  SCRIPTURE PUTS NO LIMITS

  ON GOD’S SOVEREIGNTY.

  HE EXERCISES SOVEREIGN

  CONTROL EVEN OVER FALSE

  TEACHERS AND EVERYTHING

  THEY DO. HE SETS THE

  LIMITS OF THEIR APOSTASY

  AND CIRCUMSCRIBES THE

  BOUNDARIES OF THEIR

  INFLUENCE. LIKE SATAN IN

  THE TEMPTATION OF JOB,

  THEY CAN DO NOTHING

  MORE THAN WHAT GOD

  SOVEREIGNLY PERMITS.

  Jude is declaring the same thing Peter affirms in 1 Peter 2. These men were “appointed” by God to doom and thus ordained to judgment (v. 8). “For a long time their judgment has not been idle, and their destruction does not slumber” (2 Peter 2:3). In other words, the condemnation of these false teachers has always been operating. Their ultimate destruction is an absolute certainty, ordained from the beginning in the immutable plan of God.

  Do not misunderstand the implications of this. Scripture puts no limits on God’s sovereignty. He exercises sovereign control even over false teachers and everything they do. He sets the limits of their apostasy and circumscribes the boundaries of their influence. Like Satan in the temptation of Job, they can do nothing more than what God sovereignly permits.

  That does not mean, however, that God is the agent or the direct cause of any evil. We are not to imagine that God actively makes wicked people diabolical in the same sense that He sovereignly conforms true believers to the image of Christ. “Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am tempted by God’; for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He Himself tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed” (James 1:13–14).

  God’s sovereignty in no way makes Him responsible for the evil that corrupts the hearts of apostates. The fact that He has already decreed their condemnation in no way absolves them of their own guilt. Their willful renunciation of the truth is a sin for which they and they alone are entirely responsible. God does not compel them or entice them to sin. Scripture is absolutely clear about that. Guilty sinners will not be able to plead in the judgment that they are somehow “victims” of God’s sovereignty, or that God is in any way to blame for their transgressions. God does not make anyone sin.

  Nevertheless, God often exercises His sovereignty over the minds and wills of sinners for judicial purposes in a way that actually seals their doom and hastens their condemnation. For example, the apostle John, paraphrasing Isaiah 29:10, wrote, “He has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts, lest they should see with their eyes, lest they should understand with their hearts and turn, so that I should heal them” (John 12:40).

  Even that does not suggest that God ever coerces anyone to do evil. Consider these three main ways Scripture says God brings His sovereign influence to bear on the sinner’s will: He turns stubborn hearts to stone. God sometimes hardens the hearts of evildoers (Romans 9:18). He does this the same way the sun hardens a lump of clay; not by sovereignly injecting an alien evil motive into an otherwise pure heart. In a classic sermon on Romans 9 and the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart, Jonathan Edwards said this:

  When God is here spoken of as hardening some of the children of men, it is not to be understood that God by any positive efficiency hardens any man’s heart. There is no positive act in God, as though he put forth any power to harden the heart. To suppose any such thing would be to make God the immediate author of sin. God is said to harden men in two ways: by withholding the powerful influences of his Spirit, without which their hearts will remain hardened, and grow harder and harder; in this sense he hardens them, as he leaves them to hardness. And again, by ordering those things in his providence which, through the abuse of their corruption, be
come the occasion of their hardening.1

  God doesn’t need to infuse evil intentions into a false teacher’s heart to seal that person’s apostasy and thus fulfill the divine decree. God simply withdraws the light of His truth, the influence of His Spirit, and the mercy of His grace—and the evildoer’s own evil motives are sufficient to guarantee his own doom. He confounds unbelievers’ vision. God also sometimes withholds or obscures the truth from those who hate truth anyway. In effect, He “blinds” them (John 9:39; 2 Thessalonians 2:11–12).

  Of course, bright light can be as blinding as utter darkness. “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it” (John 1:5). When God sovereignly blinds someone who already loves darkness more than light (John 3:19), it certainly doesn’t mean God Himself is operating in the realm of darkness or that there is any darkness in Him (1 Timothy 6:16).

  He employs evil agents for His own good purposes. Sometimes the Lord will engage Satan or other “second causes” to provoke actions that stem from evil motives in the heart of a sinner (compare, for example, 2 Samuel 24:1 and 1 Chronicles 21:1; see also Ezekiel 14:7–9). But again, every evil motive behind every sinful act stems from the fallen creature, never from God.

  Of course, God’s own motives, purposes, and actions are emphati cally pure and holy all the time (Genesis 50:20). He accomplishes good in and through all things (Romans 8:28)—and that includes all the evil done by all the powers of darkness. So while God may properly be said to “foreordain,” “predetermine,” or “decree” the actions of evildoers (2 Samuel 12:11; 16:10; Acts 2:23; 4:27–28), He does not approve the evil in the act. “God is light and in Him is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5). The will to sin always stems from the sinner’s own heart, not from God. He is never the author or efficient cause of evil.

  UNDERSTANDING GOD’S SOVEREIGNTY

  AND THE FACT OF EVIL

  Whenever we consider God’s sovereignty and the reality of evil alongside each other, it poses some difficult doctrinal and philosophical dilemmas. We might get sidetracked discussing those questions for a long time. But it is not necessary to trace and untangle every thread in the tapestry to see the big picture. Jude makes the main idea stand out as boldly as possible when he says the false teachers are marked out for condemnation. Here, in simple terms, is the whole point of the matter as Scripture lays it out for us: God will ultimately overthrow every wicked deed and every malicious intention of every evildoer. In the meantime, He is free to use every evil deed done by fallen creatures to bring about ultimate good. In fact, He does so without fail. But in no case does God ever do evil so that good may come.