The Danger Of Drifting Away From The Bible Series

There is real danger to the Christian that drifts away from the teachings (doctrines) of the Bible. Paul continues to instruct the followers of Christ to adhere to the doctrines they have been taught.

1 Timothy 4:16 (NKJV) Take heed to yourself and to the doctrine. Continue in them, for in doing this you will save both yourself and those who hear you.

Here is the basic problem: Many do not continue in the doctrines (teachings) of the Bible. Why? Because of the temptations of the world. As we had discussed before, the Bible is our authority for all our faith and practice and the overall conduct of our lives. It is sufficient to meet all our truth needs so we do not have to look for divine truth anywhere else. Everything we encounter in life and in the world must be evaluated against the teachings (or the doctrines) of Scripture.

But whenever we make one little exception, we have opened the door to greater deviations from the word. Drs Draper and Keathley in their book “Biblical Authority,” give this example:

"In recent times, many people who advocate women as pastors are nonetheless strongly opposed to recognition of homosexual unions. Yet the arguments used by evangelical feminists to justify female pastors are in turn used by some activists to rationalize gay and lesbian marriages." [1]

Once he has shifted from divine revelation [in the Scriptures] to human reason as the basis of authority, he can go as far as desired from historic Christian conviction, and only personal choice will determine where to stop. Thus, even those who have themselves stopped relatively close to orthodoxy are still damaging to the faith because they have opened the door to as much defection as anyone wants to engage in. Those who are coming after them will go further still. Ultimately, historic, biblical Christianity will be in shambles. [2]

The warning is given over and over in Scripture. Much of the NT teachings concerns warnings against false teachings. Today’s scripture passage is one of those warnings.

Read Colossians 2:1–10

We do not have to live very long to know that it is easy to fool people, and that it is very easy to be fooled ourselves. Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse, the great preacher and writer, used to illustrate this by telling of a practical joke which he and his teenaged friends played on some unsuspecting passersby in a large city.

His group stood on a busy street corner and stared intently into the air. One of them pointed, while another said (loudly enough to be overheard), “It is not.” A third friend argued, “It is so!” At this, one or two people stopped and began to look up in the same direction as Barnhouse and his friends. As the argument grew more heated, others stopped to gaze fixedly at the point his group discussed. Then, one by one, Barnhouse and his friends quietly slipped out of the crowd and gathered a few yards away to watch the results. By this time, some fifteen people were looking into the air. The crowd changed as new passersby came along and joined the group and those who had been staring longest left. Twenty minutes later several people were still looking upward. Several others had gone off to the side and were leaning against a building, looking up for something that was not there and never had been.

About his childhood trick, Barnhouse observed: That little incident is a good illustration of all the earth-born religions. People talk about having faith; they tell you to look in a direction where there is absolutely nothing. Some people are so desperately in need of seeing something that they will look till they are almost blind, yet they never catch a glimpse of anything real. [3]

In our passage today, Paul warns those in the church of Colosse as well as the church at Laodicea to:

Colossians 2:8 (NKJV) Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ.

The heresies they were encountering were the beginnings of Gnosticism. Gnostic means “knowledge” in the Greek and Gnosticism was a secret knowledge one had to have to be saved. Like knowing the secret handshake to get entry to a secret club. What was happening, there were teachers who would combine Christian teaching with the philosophies of the current culture. They would equate good and evil and they question Jesus’ divinity saying he did not have a real body or that his divinity came and left. There were many variations.

Do not be fooled, Gnosticism is very much alive and well today, it is just under different labels. For example, beware of anything the labels itself as progressive Christianity. They have embraced all the politically correct norms of our current godless culture and with silver tongues, explained away the clear teaching of the Bible. Paul knew the devastating effect the heresy of Gnosticism could have on the church.