Wednesday, October 21

By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thorn bushes, or figs from thistles?  Likewise every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit.  A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit.  Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.  Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.   – Matthew 7:16-20

It is not always easy to discern truth from error. The Bible tells us that Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light (2 Cor. 11:14-15). We must always be thoughtful and prayerful before we accept or reject the teaching of others. A former mentor of mine in ministry once told me that he used the following 3 simple questions whenever evaluating the truth of a teacher’s message:

1.    What do they say about Jesus?

2.    What do they say about the Gospel?

3.    How does their life match up to their own teaching?

In the passage above, Jesus says we should evaluate teaching by what it produces. That is, what is the outcome of this teaching? What happens in the lives of the people who follow this guide? (Not the results. Not just the immediate outcome, but the long-term outcome.) How would God judge it?

One of the key ways Jesus gives us to tell the difference between a teacher who is genuinely teaching God’s Word and one who is falsely claiming to teach God’s Word is by their “fruit”, their lifestyle. Does their life support their claim to follow Jesus? Do they themselves obey? Be wary of spiritual leaders who live by different rules than the rules that apply to everyone else. For those of us who teach and/or preach God’s Word, we should be continually asking ourselves this question: am I living the kind of life that I am teaching others to live?

Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly.  – James 3:1

Does this mean we must have perfect obedience to communicate God’s truth? Thankfully, no. No one is perfect. If this were the case, there would not be anyone left to speak truth.

However, this is why a significant moral failure often destroys a pastor’s or a leader’s ability to preach or lead a church. Almost anyone can put on a good act. But no one can hide forever. Someone’s true character eventually comes out in his or her actions.

Without a doubt, the best way to guard yourself against falsehood and false teachers is to know the truth! To spot a counterfeit, study the real thing. FBI agents who work in the counterfeit department spend countless hours studying genuine American currency before they can begin to spot the clever counterfeits. They become experts in spotting the fakes because they know the real thing so well. Any believer who “correctly handles the word of truth” (2 Tim. 2:15) and who makes a careful study of the Bible can begin to identify false teaching.

If you want to dig deeper on this issue, you might want to study those books of the Bible that were written specifically to combat false teaching within the early church: Galatians, 2 Peter, 1 John, 2 John, and Jude.

Father in heaven, you are the god of all truth and the author of our salvation. Help us to immerse ourselves in the truth of your word so that we can discern truth from error. May your truth be lamp to our feet and a light to our path – Amen.