Jesus Taught Intolerance

What Did Jesus Do?

If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching,
do not receive him.
2 John 10

I can picture them, the loose-leaf Bible crowd. You know, the folks who have abrogated and corrupted the Gospel to accommodate culture. They would stop in mid-chorus of Kum Ba Yah and challenge me, “What? He did no such thing, how dare you say that! Jesus taught nothing but love and tolerance.” Well, I, didn’t say it, Jesus did, to the church in Thyatira, “But I have this against you, that you TOLERATE that woman Jezebel…” (Revelation 2:20) You see, with Jesus, it has never been “anything goes.” In particular, Jesus will not tolerate those who would seduce his bride, the Church, and lead her into heresy and, inevitably, to destruction. The apostle John knew that Jesus taught intolerance of lies and wickedness, so John taught it too.

It might strike us as contradictory, for John to instruct the elect lady (the Church), whom he has just been exhorting to walk in truth and love (see WDJD for 2/8/12), to be inhospitable, even rude, to someone. But, when that someone would presumed to proclaim a different gospel, to teach that Jesus did not come in the flesh (As several itinerant Gnostic preachers were doing at the time John wrote his Second Letter), they could not be permitted to spew their seductive lies before the lady’s children, that is, members of the Church, particularly those new to the faith. The doors into the houses where the Church met had to be barred against such false teachers, they were not even to be extended a greeting.

We’re not talking about a simple “Hi, how ya’ doin’!” here. When Christians greeted one another, it was something quite formal, deeply personal, and, expressed the very truth and love John wrote about, the truth and love of Jesus Christ, and him come in the flesh. Consider the greeting John employed in this letter:

“Grace, mercy, and peace will be with us, from God the Father and from Jesus Christ the Father’s Son, in truth and love.” 2 John 3

To extend such a greeting to one who not only believed the heresy that Christ had not come in the flesh, but who taught and encouraged the Church to accept this as truth, carried the weight of an endorsement of a pernicious lie. It amounted to participating in their wicked works (2 John 11). Certainly, to expose new believers to such false and deadly teaching was not at all a loving thing to do. And encouraging those who believed such damnable lies to persist in their fatal error, with its terrible eternal consequences, well, how could that be understood to be a loving thing to do. One might as well invite someone to jump off a cliff, play in traffic, swim with sharks. No, for the good of everyone, there could and can be no tolerance of, nor welcome for, heretics and false teachers in the Church.

Here’s the challenge we face as believers today: do we, do the churches where we worship, tolerate heresy? Do we welcome and receive false teaching? Do we tacitly endorse wicked works in the name of love? We had better learn what the Bible tells us is intolerable, because, the truth is, Jesus taught intolerance. In the end, it is the loving thing to do.

S.D.G.

Jim
www.jimwilkenministries.org
Marion, NC
PS 37.4