When Jesus first appeared on the scene, He chose 12 disciples to follow Him. They were of varying backgrounds and political persuasions. Some may have been known among the elite of the religious world but none were of the religious elite. They had some issues with pride, they struggled with anger and faith and confidence in the Lord, but the Lord was with them and seemed to nip in the bud their temptation to sin. After all, he knew their thoughts and they had the distinct advantage of being physically in His presence every day. They were a tight knit group and in spite of their differences they seemed to live fairly harmoniously. In Matthew 10:34-39 the Lord tells his followers that He has come to bring division. He isn’t referring to division between the disciples, instead it is a division between those who believe on Him and those who do not. This section of verses seems harsh and unloving but what it is really showing is that following the Lord wholeheartedly has a price. True discipleship often involves pain, loss and separation from sin and those who practice sin.
Later on, after the Lord ascends back into glory to go to His Father’s right hand, (on the day of Pentecost) the disciples are filled with the Spirit but they now must go on without Him physically in their presence. The Lord’s statements in Matthew 18 regarding how the church is supposed to function and the new power that He will give to those in the church when He is no longer with them bodily, the right to judge in the assembly and have their decisions binding not only on earth but also in heaven must have come back to them in force at this time. The new leader of the disciples and the church in general would be the Holy Spirit. This brand new entity (the Church) would now have the Spirit in them both collectively and individually, the Spirit would now speak through the actions of this new entity.
The new church goes on at first through the book of Acts with few issues, but then in the 5th chapter of Acts Ananias and Sapphire lie to the Holy Spirit and are killed by God. There was no need for the assembly to act because God Himself stepped in and removed the sinful person from the assembly.
As the young church moved on and became larger and larger, as the Lord added more and more believers to His church, the assemblies began to divide based on who they were following; this kind of division was not the division the Lord had in mind. Also we have the first mention of moral sin coming into the assembly in a very defiling way, a man had his father’s wife. This time the Lord does not step in. He wants his people, the ones He died for, the ones He “ever liveth to make intercession” for, to do the job of judging this man and Paul asks them to do so. In the last verse of chapter 5 Paul tells them, “But those without God judges. Remove the wicked person from amongst yourselves.” It was now time for the church to step up to the plate and do the work of judging and making the decision that would be bound in heaven. The church at this time was one body both spiritually and in reality. It would be the last days this wonderful truth would be seen in a tangible way. As with most great movements in history, the church was soon to be corrupted by its continued splintering and more bad doctrine and moral sin that would continue to pop up its ugly head. Even with all the disunity and divisiveness in the church in the days of Paul, he says to the Ephesians:
“*I*, the prisoner in [the] Lord, exhort you therefore to walk worthy of the calling wherewith ye have been called, with all lowliness and meekness, with long-suffering, bearing with one another in love;
using diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit in the uniting bond of peace. [There is] one body and one Spirit, as ye have been also called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all, and through all, and in us all.”
The body was fractured but the church was still responsible to “keep the unity of the Spirit”. So even with all her splitting, He still wants His church to function in a unified way as much as it is possible to do so. Later on in the same chapter he speaks of gifts, the function of which is to “edify the body of Christ”, to build it up. Verse 13 tells us that the result should be for us to become more unified in thought as we become more like our Head, Jesus Christ. At that point we are less likely to be thrown off by bad doctrine. We have words like “cunning craftiness” and “blown about by every wind of doctrine” in these verses. The church had moved from a situation where all were of one mind and shared everything to a point where more care needed to be taken in who was being listened to and taken into their company.
In Galatians chapter 5 we read of another bad teaching that had come into the church, that of adding keeping the law to being saved by grace. This was not a minor disagreement; this teaching made the work of Christ on the cross of no value. This is an example of a denial of the efficacy of the Lord’s death on the cross in other words the “work of Christ”. The Galatian believers were warned that to allow this wrong teaching in their assembly would “leaven the whole lump”. In other words, it would affect every person in that assembly. It was the same result as the moral sin condemned in 1 Corinthians 5. In fact both sections of Scripture use the same statement: “a little leaven leavens the whole lump”. (Gal. 5:9 and 1 Cor. 5:6). The moral sin and the doctrinal sin result in the same thing, both defile the people in the assembly if the assembly does not deal with the sin. That is the warning in these two sections. The people in the church need to separate themselves from unholy behavior or teaching, keeping in mind Matthew 18 and other scriptures that tells that all sin needs to be handled in a loving but firm way. The desire is always to turn the one who has sinned into the arms of the Savior.
In 2 Timothy chapter 2, Paul speaking to his son in the faith, Timothy, starts out in verses 1 and 2 with the exhortation: “You therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And the things that you have heard from me among many witnesses, commit these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.”
The need to hold to what the apostle had presented in the epistles was becoming more and more necessary. The apostasy that had been warned of in other epistles had become more prevalent necessitating a more careful watchfulness. Later in the chapter we are introduced to a pair of men who were in the assembly at one time (maybe still were) who had let their thoughts go to places they shouldn’t have and got to the point where they were denying the resurrection. Paul warns Timothy not to put up with this kind of teaching because it was overthrowing the faith of some. The statement in verse 19 seems to indicate that it is not our place to say if a person is saved or not (the Lord knows), instead we are to make our decisions regarding fellowship based on the actions of a person. If they are bringing in wrong teaching, we should depart from these men. If we don’t, the result is the same as we saw in Galatians 5:9, we become a leavened lump.
Verses 20-26 introduce us to something completely foreign to the church that began at Pentecost. In these verses, sadly, the church is compared to a “great house” with good and bad in it, useful and not useful, all mixed together. In 1 Corinthians when speaking of members of the body, everyone is useful, we can’t say we have no need of anyone. In these verses we are introduced to people who, although in the great house, need to be separated from.
In the 3rd chapter Paul warns “perilous times” will come. This apostasy in the church was just beginning at the time this was written. It is prevalent in the church today. Verse 5 gives instruction to us to turn away from some people who are part of this “great house”. Are these people true believers? We don’t know and we can’t positively know (see 2:19); all we can do is go by how the person acts morally and who they are linked with doctrinally. Whether they are a believer or not, we need to turn away from them because of their actions or who they are associated with in the “great house”. Verse 13 informs us that things will grow worse and worse. Is there any doubt this has happened? How should we respond? Should we show less care in the reception of people into our assemblies or should we be taking a step back and be even more careful as these imposters grow worse and worse? As a side note, it seems like as the apostasy grows worse, our teaching of faithful men (2 Tim 2:2) should become a priority in our assemblies. We should not be separated from our brothers any more than is absolutely necessary. How are we supposed to teach faithful men if those men are not with us and if they don’t want to hear what we have to say about the Word of God, are they truly “faithful men”? As we move along in this world, Satan is going to test us on the truths we have learned. He wants us to question everything we have learned and he will attempt to take it from us. Is it good to question things? Yes, to an extent but at some point those things we have been taught that are indeed truths need to be taught to faithful men and we disqualify ourselves as teachers of those truths when we have doubts as to their validity in our minds. We need to stop being children who are blown about by every wind of doctrine and hold to those things we know from scripture. Evil men and deceivers are growing worse and worse; the line between the follower of truths and those who are “always learning but never able to come to the knowledge of the truth” should be more clear today than it has ever been before. Truths that we have learned, that have become a part of us need to be held to more firmly than ever. We need to be teaching them to others because of the apostasy that is so prevalent today. Also, our practice of reception needs to be handled even more carefully than it ever has in the past.
Paul wrote about 2000 years ago that the apostasy was growing worse and worse. Where is the Christian church today? Rainbow flags, women pastors, saying scripture is time bound, picking and choosing what passages of scripture we can stand by and which are just too difficult to keep, men putting themselves in the place of the Holy Spirit, people “heaping to themselves teachers” that give them what they want to hear so the pastor won’t lose his income, Hymenaeus’s and Philetus’s by the scores. In fact Christian colleges are dominated by people who overthink the Word of God (ever learning but never able to come to the knowledge of the truth has become institutionalized). We don’t need to be paranoid, God is still able to protect us but He has given us a responsibility to guard His assembly from sin and to gather with people who are calling on Him out of a pure (undivided) heart. Shouldn’t we be careful to carry out what He has asked us to do after all He has done for us?