I’m in the middle of a preaching series covering Philippians and one of the issues Paul has in mind is false teachers. Paul refers to these false teachers as “dogs” and “evil workers” in Philippians 3:2, which at the very least hints at the great concern for false teaching. Of course, false teaching should be a concern for every church, both locally and beyond.
In my own life, serving in ministry among the Churches of Christ, I can remember people slapping the labels of “false teacher” on anyone who taught anything that differed from the de facto creed at work among our tribe. Such overuse, a liberal usage, of an accusation like this was wrong and just seemed to have the same effect of repeatedly yelling fire when there isn’t any fire. Yet with twenty-plus years serving as a minister of the gospel, I am now concerned that Christians need to become more discerning about false teaching and false teachers. However, that raises the question of just who is a false teacher and how might we recognize false teaching.
I can’t even begin to fully answer the question of who is a false teacher and how we might recognize false teaching. So what I want to do is limit my answer to a couple of observations from Philippians 3 and the American society we live in today.
First of all, in Philippians 3, the false teachers Paul refers to are Jewish people who place their confidence in their ethnic identity, which includes circumcision. Paul warns against these false teachers, saying”
Beware of the dogs, beware of the evil workers, beware of those who mutilate the flesh! For it is we who are the circumcision, who worship in the Spirit of God and boast in Christ Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh (vv. 2-3).1
The danger of these false teachers is that they are leading, or at least attempting to lead, believers away from Jesus Christ. Therefore it makes sense why Paul would warn about such false teachers but we should dig a little deeper in our observation.
Now in our contemporary setting, it’s very unlikely that any would be able to lead believers away from Jesus Christ by promoting faith in the Law of Moses. So we don’t have to worry about the specific false teachers Paul was warning about. Also, we would easily recognize someone as a false teacher who came proclaiming another religion or telling us we could do whatever makes us happy. But Paul’s concern for false teaching seems to be anyone who would lead us away from knowing Christ.
This concern about being led away from knowing Christ is why Paul speaks of his own desire to know Christ through “the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death,” (v. 10). Yet not having fully arrived at such knowing yet, Paul says, “Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal, but I press on to lay how of that for which Christ has laid hold of me” (v. 12). What Paul says here also provides us with the key to identifying some false teachers we may overlook and therefore becoming more discerning about false teachers.
In v. 12 Paul uses the verb teleioõ which means “to finish” or “to accomplish”. This verb is related to the noun telos which means “goal” or “end” and refers to aim or a particular pursuit. For college students, the telos is to graduate, while the telos for an NFL team is to win the Super Bowl. Of importance here is the fact that whatever our telos is, that is what we strive for. For Paul, his telos is the heavenly call of crucifixion and resurrection life in Christ Jesus. This telos is why Paul’s pursuit is to know the resurrected Christ even though that means sharing in the sufferings of Christ.
So why does telos matter so much? Well, if a kind of false teacher is one that leads us away from Christ, then to recognize such false teachers we have to start asking what is the telos of their message. We would do well to keep this in mind in light of the growing influence of partisan politics today. Whether these voices are the politicians themselves or just some influences on Tik Tok, we ought to discern what their goal or end game really is. It doesn’t matter whether their right or wrong about the latest trending issue, what matters is the aim of their pursuit. If their aim is partisan ideology, whether from the right or left, they just might slowly distract us from our aim of the crucifixion and resurrection life in Christ Jesus (note: such people can cite scripture and co-opt Christian language but do so for the telos of partisan ideology).
If such false teachers can distract us from our goal of the crucifixion and resurrection life in Christ Jesus, then we lose our purpose as Christians. When that happens we give away our participation in the mission of God and we may just end up giving away our faith and losing other believers to the category of the “dones.” So maybe it’s time we become a little more discerning about the voices we give space in our hearts and minds, and whether some of those voices might be false teachers leading us away from Christ.
Unless otherwise noted, all scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition Bible, copyright © 1989, 2021 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., and are used by permission. All rights reserved.