Did Christ Die for the False Church?
When our family lived in the United Kingdom, we marveled at the marketing and packaging scheme of some food product companies. Packages draped with the American flag would sport, “American Peanut Butter,” or “American Pizza,” or “American Hot Dogs.” We warned our friends there that these were false representations. These products were imposters, posing as authentic.
Is it any wonder that Satan has spawned a false church? Excellent deception is packaged as the real thing. The children of the devil (1 Jn 3:10), filled with the demonic spirit of antichrist (1 Jn 4:3), who poses as an angel of light (2 Cor 11:14), organize themselves to worship their lord, Lucifer, who sets himself up in the temple of God (2 Thess 2:4).
Contrast the false messiah, worshiped in the praise of lies and false doctrine, with God, the Father, worshiped in Spirit and truth (Jn 4:23–24). This is why right doctrine is utterly crucial for right worship of the right God.
There are “teachers” in the “church” who preach the “doctrine” that: God loves everyone head for head; Christ died for everyone; and that either everyone is saved or everyone has the free will choice to accept or reject Christ. These false ideas are legion in the “church.”
So, we see the false teachers of the false church evangelizing false believers with a false doctrine of a false Christ. Their motive is love of lies and love for their lord, the father of lies (Jn 8:44). Filled with his spirits, they do his bidding, which is to lead people away from the true Christ, by preaching a false gospel (2 Cor 11:3–4).
Does God love these false teachers and false believers? Did Christ, in love for those who would deny Him with delusion, shed His precious blood for those who worked their whole lives to discredit Him? The false teacher says, “yes, of course, Jesus loves the little children…all the little children of the world.”
The questions must be raised, “Who then does God hate?” and “Who then receives the wrath of God directed against the unrighteousness?” The Universalist (everyone is saved) simply denies these Bible doctrines. Other false teachers will claim that God loves deceivers and those deceived. Christ paid for all their sins, including their unbelief, but God has turned over His own sovereign free will and gracious choice to them (Ps 115:3; 135:6; Rom 11:5), along with the power to save themselves through their own choice.
Instead of God loving His own people, Christ dying for God’s own church, and the Holy Spirit regenerating God’s own adopted children, the false teacher creates a scenario where God loves everyone, Christ died for everyone, but the sovereign work of the Holy Spirit is held hostage by the supposed sovereign free will of man. God must wait, hoping and praying, that each man makes the right decision.
By teaching false doctrine, which calls the Spirit of truth — a liar, the false teacher of universal love, universal redemption, and universal human choice blasphemes against the preacher of the true Gospel. Who is the true preacher of the Gospel other than the Holy Spirit? Show me the “man of God” who does not have the Spirit of Christ (Rom 8:9), and I will show you a false teacher posing as a man of God. You will know him by his Holy Spirit-denying gospel lie. The false teacher not only believes his false doctrine; he is zealous to promote it.
The false teacher will tell you, “Doctrine divides,” and that what everyone needs is the Holy Spirit. Ironically, it is the Holy Spirit who brought us the Bible (2 Tim 3:16; 2 Pet 1:20–21), the written word of God, who is true. In denying the primacy of the Scriptures, for receiving right doctrine, the false teacher denies the very Holy Spirit he or she is supposedly promulgating.
The true Christian knows that God loves the people He has elected unto salvation (Eph 1:4–5). She knows that Christ died for His church (Rom 5:8; Eph 5:25; 1 Pet 2:24), who are gathered by the Holy Spirit in every generation — wheat among tares, sheep among goats, living branches among dead limbs, and the church of Christ among the synagogue of Satan.
Christ died for His people, His bride. He laid down His life for His sheep (Jn 10:11, 15). He came to save His people from their sins (Mt 1:21). He is the resurrection life, the true vine, into whom the Father grafts-in chosen branches, filled with the life-giving Spirit (Jn 6:63). The tares, goats, dead branches are cut off and cast into eternal fire because God hated them (Ps 5:5; 7:11; 11:5), Christ shed no blood for them, and the Spirit applied no salvation. Simply put, the children of the devil do not have the Spirit because they do not belong to Jesus Christ (Jn 10:26; Rom 8:9; 1 Jn 3:10) because they were never given to the Son of God by the Father (Jn 6:37; 17:2, 6, 24).
The true Gospel clearly defines these distinctions, and God’s people marvel at being called into the true church. The children of the devil scoff and scorn these distinctions because they are the false church, for whom Christ did not die because they are vessels of wrath prepared for destruction (Rom 9:22).
David Norczyk
Spokane Valley, Washington
March 22, 2022
