The Licentiousness of False Teachers
I thought I had heard and seen the most horrific sins of licentiousness in the world of false teaching until I met a man we’ll call, “Chris.” He was a gracious and kind brother who picked me up from the airport when I arrived in a southern state for a ministry trip in the US almost ten years ago now. After a warm welcome and some small talk, “Chris” began to share his testimony. He had been active in the inner circle of a major prosperity gospel ministry and climbed the ladder of leadership. One day, upon being invited into one of the highest levels of leadership he was given the pre-requisites. To join the highest levels of leadership and thrive in the inner circle, he would be required to share his wife with other men, engage in homosexuality, and be a loyal leader at all costs.
For “Chris,” the cost was too high. He was not willing to engage in that type of lifestyle to be in leadership. Just like that, after years of building relationships, trusting his leaders, and nearing the moment when he would become one of them, he was out. Worst of all, this falling out caused major division in his marriage because his wife was unwilling to leave the church at that time. When he concluded the story during that car ride, all was not reconciled and there was deep heartache. Still, “Chris” was optimistic because Christ had saved him from the filthiness of what false teaching breeds. He was owned by Jesus now, no longer a slave to sin (Romans 6:1-7).
This story may be shocking for some of you, but it is all too common in the world of false teaching. This story is precisely why we can say that false teachers are not merely an abomination to Christ because they smear His message. They are also an abomination because they mock Him with their lifestyles of sin. In this article, I want to lay out some biblical truths to remind you that false teaching presents a variety of shady deceptions, namely, sins of licentiousness.
False teachers don’t only need to repent of their teaching, but their lifestyles of sin as well.
FALSE TEACHERS AND LICENTIOUSNESS
In Jude 4 we read a sobering description of not merely sinful teaching, but the sinful lifestyles of false teachers. Jude writes, “For certain people have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into indecent behavior and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.”
The word for licentiousness he uses also translates as “sensuality” and means “lack of self-constraint which involves one in conduct that violates all bounds of what is socially acceptable.”(1) False teachers don’t only go too far with their doctrine, they always go too far with their deeds. They are marked by sins of “self-love” which is precisely why Paul warns Timothy that in the last days, men will be “lovers of self” (2 Timothy 3:2).
When false teachers speak out of the sides of their mouths and try to appear orthodox, there is still one surefire way to discern their deceptive patterns. One must look at their lifestyle in the wake of their claim to orthodoxy. If they appear to repent of a certain false teaching or veer away from it, one must ask, did they also repent of their greed, sexual immorality, homosexuality, and patterns of falsehood?
It is entirely convenient for a false teacher to edit a book secretly, or to quietly distance themselves from other false teachers who are bad for business, but does the deceptive teacher openly repent of their lifestyle of sin? If not, they are much more akin to Adam and Eve trying to foolishly hide from God in the garden (Genesis 3:8), rather than the Publican who openly cried out for mercy and identified himself as a sinner (Luke 18:9-14).
THE SINS OF THOSE WHO LOVE THEMSELVES
In Ephesians 5:1-5, Paul the apostle is in the middle of instructing believers in the church to imitate God by walking in love and to put off the sins that pervert love. Nothing distorts God’s love and the Christian life like the selfish and sinful passions of self-love. No wonder the world is filled with self-love.
As I was recently studying this section in Ephesians, it was obvious that the sins Paul lists indicate the total darkness that all formerly lost sinners were enslaved to, and that repentance and faith in Christ have resulted in a total transformation. But what struck me is that three of those sins run rampant through the world of false teaching and the lifestyle of false teachers. We often focus on the need for false teachers to “repent of their teachings.” They ought to. But equally important is the need for sinful false teachers to repent of their sinful lifestyle. It is not only orthodoxy (right believing) that marks the believer, but orthopraxy (right living).
Here are just three of the sins of “self-love” listed in Ephesians 5:3-5 that contrast God’s love described in earlier verses. By way of application, I believe these help us remember that like all sinners, a false teacher who becomes genuinely converted will have a total lifestyle change. Each one of these sins is “not even to be named among you, as is proper among the saints” (Ephesians 5:3).
1: Immorality (Ephesians 5:3a)
Paul uses the Greek word porneia, which includes sexual immorality of all kinds, including fornication, adultery, prostitution, and sexual activity of any kind. It is not a stretch to say that if false teachers are willing to portray a false version of the gospel and of Christ, they are also going to live lifestyles that present a false picture of righteousness and morality. They live in falsehood, therefore, their lifestyles are shaded with lies. Homosexuality, adultery, open relationships, and sexual promiscuity are all prevalent in the life of false teachers to some degree. A true believer will repent and turn away from these.
2: Impurity (Ephesians 5:3b)
Next, Paul lists “any impurity” as that which is “filthy and morally corrupt.” This term is one that commentators say is more of a general term than porneia, and that it signifies a lack of self-control. This is totally opposite of what Christ calls the church to, and it’s the opposite of true Christian love and faith. A lack of self-control is a sign that your passions dominate you. When left to your own devices, you take what you want, do what you want, and have a problem with authority and control. This is not what the lifestyle of a believer looks like. A believer is under the control of the Spirit (Ephesians 5:18) and walks by the Spirit (Galatians 5:16-23).
3: Greed (Ephesians 5:3c)
Paul goes on to write that “greed must not even be named among you.” Greed is insatiable covetousness and lust for more. It’s not a stretch to think that Paul listed greed among sexual sins because, like those other licentious sins, a greedy person is selfish and will do whatever it takes to have what their wicked heart wants. The greedy heart has an insatiable lust for more that can never be quenched. The apostle uses a word for greed which means over-reaching. In other words, this is not a condemnation against hard work, success, wealth accumulation, or being blessed in material ways. Greed is selfishness. It characterizes the kind of people who would defraud, lie, steal, cheat, and twist any narrative to get what they want. You cannot imitate God’s love nor walk in God’s truth when you are greedy, therefore, this is one of the marks of a false teacher (2 Peter 2:1-3).
There are several other disturbing sins listed in chapters 4 and 5 of Ephesians that categorize those who love themselves, but as stories pour into our ministry and I think back to what I saw in my decades growing up in the prosperity gospel, these three tend to be the most difficult for a false teacher to repent of unless their repentance is genuinely a work of the Spirit of God.
When you are a new creation, God cleans everything out and cleans everything up (2 Corinthians 5:17). False teachers do not only need to confess their sin of false teaching, they must include their sin of licentious living.
References
William Arndt et al., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 141.
