Facing Error in the Church | Voddie Baucham Sermon 2024

Handling Error in the Church

Why do old heresies persist today? Why do men possessed of fine intellectual gifts end up embracing and believing significant theological errors?

Heresy is the product of the mind of “the natural man,” as Paul puts it in 1 Corinthians 2:14, that is, “the unrenewed man” (Charles Hodge), who must necessarily receive and understand Christian truth without the illumination of the Holy Spirit and without a renewed mind. As a stranger to “the wisdom of God” revealed in the gospel, he must also consult and depend on “the wisdom of this world” (1 Cor. 1:19–24). Compounding the problem is the vanity of his mind, his darkened understanding, his ignorance and blindness of heart (Eph. 4:17–18). Such a man can have at best only a shallow, imperfect, distorted view of the truth, and it is not surprising that he conceives and propagates a multitude of errors and falsehoods.

The root of our English word “heresy” is the Greek word hairesis, meaning “choice” or “opinion.” Note that the word implies the activity of both the mind and the will of man. Having come to a misunderstanding of the truth or having concocted or embraced a falsehood in its place, the natural man cleaves to his errors and zealously asserts and advances them precisely because they are his own opinions.

Nor is it surprising that when a false prophet or teacher begins to proclaim his erroneous views to others, there are many willing to receive and embrace them. Fallen men are hostile to the truth of God and prefer to believe a falsehood rather than submit to that truth. The wonder is not that there are many heretics, but that there are not many, many more.

Because the mind of the natural man is finite, there are only so many erroneous or heretical views it can conceive or embrace. Because that mind is corrupt and the corruption is inherited by succeeding generations, there is a tendency to resurrect or reproduce the errors of the past. After 2000 years, it is only to be expected that the errors and heresies of the present day all seem to have their historical antecedents, often reaching back to the earliest history and experience of the ancient church.

Ignorance always serves the cause of error. Christians who do not know what the Bible says and have no knowledge of the history of Christian doctrine find themselves unequipped to detect and refute these resurrected errors and heresies of the past. As a result, it is all too easy for false teachers “to creep in unawares” (Jude 4) and launch campaigns to subvert congregations and denominations that historically embraced the apostolic Christian faith.