False teaching is usually convenient.
Consider the Judaizers. The greatest persecutors of the early church where not the pagan Romans. They couldn’t care less about some rumblings of a Jewish Messiah from some backwater town like Galilee. No, the greatest persecutors of the early Christians were the Jewish people.
Except the Judaizers. They didn’t get persecuted because they taught that Gentiles needed to be circumcised and become faithful Jews. Not much of a problem with that. I’m sure many of the Jews were quite alright with a splinter group teaching that this Nazarene was the promised Messiah. Of course, if you take it too far and teach that He is God in the flesh and that because of his sacrifice we are no longer under the guardian (the law), then you’ve pushed it too far. Then you get persecuted.
This is why Paul says what he does in Galatians 5:11, “But if I, brothers, still preach circumcision, why am I still being persecuted? In that case the offense of the cross has been removed.” If Paul had started teaching circumcision then he wouldn’t have been persecuted anymore. But to do such a thing would have removed the offense of the cross and Paul wasn’t willing to sell that out.
Compromise For Missions Strategy
Think through this with me.
Paul’s goal was to get the gospel to the ends of the earth. His aim seemed to be to get the gospel to Rome and then on to Spain. When you are in prison and being beaten within an inch of your life it is difficult to travel to the ends of the earth and proclaim the gospel to those that have never heard. Can you imagine how wonderful it would be to have a thumbs up from the Jewish community? They didn’t have to agree with everything he said—but to simply stop stirring up trouble in every community would have been a huge blessing.
And all Paul needs to do to make this happen is tell people to get circumcised. That’s it. That’s not such a big deal is it? Paul knows that getting circumcised counts for nothing, so shouldn’t that very truth propel him to make this a matter of indifference? Shouldn’t he just go ahead and have his cohorts and his disciples go through with this painful rite—shouldn’t he do this for the sake of the gospel and for reaching lost people?
And yet Paul doesn’t budge. He knew the gospel was at stake because our submission to the revealed truth of God was at stake. Yes, it would have been convenient for Paul to have cut a corner here and avoided persecution. But also would have made his mission pointless because he had botched the gospel.
Our Context
The same thing happens today with many churches. When you shave off inconvenient truths to make the gospel more palatable to our culture you might as well put an Under New Ownership sign on your church. You’ve sold out.
And let me say this—this isn’t about gay marriage. This is a moral revolution. This “conversation” will not stop until Christians celebrate homosexuality. This is about far more than equal rights. This is about taking the word sin out of sentences that include the word homosexuality.
I understand the intentions. Why make something like homosexuality such a big deal? Wouldn’t it be better for us to just cave on this issue so we can get busy doing gospel work? Why set ourselves up for such persecution and mockery and lose our seat at the cultural table over an issue like homosexuality? It’s not like people are asking us to deny the resurrection. Just allow two people that love each other, that just so happen to be of the same gender, to get married. What’s the big deal?
But it is a big deal! When you cut this corner here is what you have said:
- We know better than God what people need.
- Sin isn’t that big of a deal.
- It’s okay to twist Scripture to accommodate to our cultural climate
Paul knew that if he circumcised Timothy then he’d avoid persecution but he would also surrender the gospel. It’s not worth it, friends!
Surrendering the gospel is never a good missions strategy.
I’m convinced that some of the worst sermons that I’ve preached were terrible because I became a slave of alliteration. I used alliteration because I wanted people to remember the points of the sermon. But, here is where I went south—in order to make three points that all start with the letter P, I slightly altered the general thrust of the text. They might have remembered the three P’s but sadly the intention of the original author was lost.