The Worst Heresy Imaginable!

Wow, I’ve gotten a ton of feedback on the picture in my previous blog. (I still have forty or so e-mails to get through!) Almost all of the responses (so far) have been positive! I thank God for the folks at Heavenly Sanctuary for coming up with this fantastically edgy picture. I believe it is going to be used in powerful ways for the Kingdom in the future.

I’d like you to consider something.

The New Testament defines agape love by pointing us to Jesus Christ (I Jn 3:16). To love someone is treat them like Jesus has treated you — dying for you while you were yet a sinner.

The New Testament tells us that the command to love (= looking like Jesus Christ) is the greatest command, encompassing all others ( Lk 10:27; Rom. 13:8, 10; Ja 2:8). It tells us everything else in the law hangs on our fulfilling this law (Mt 22:27-40). It tells us that love is to be placed above all else (Col 3:14; I Pet 4:8). It tells us that everything we do is to be done in love (I Cor. 16:14). It tells us that nothing has any Kingdom value apart from love, however impressive things may be in and of themselves (I Cor. 13:1-3). It tells us that the only thing that ultimately matters is faith energized by love (Gal. 5:6). And it tells us that this love is to be given to all people at all times, including our enemies (Lk 6:27-35) . Indeed, Jesus makes loving our enemies the pre-condition for being considered “children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked” (Lk 6:35). We’re to “be merciful as your Father in heaven is merciful” (Lk 6:36).

This is simply what it means to look like Jesus Christ.

Now follow me: If love is to be placed above all else, if everything else is to be considered worthless apart from love and if everything hangs on fulfilling this one law, how can we avoid the conclusion that refusing to love even our enemies is the worst heresy imaginable? To miss this all important point renders whatever other truth we may possess worthless.

In this light, we have to ask, who is the worse heretic: Michael Servetus who was burned alive for denying that the Son of God was eternal, or Calvin who had him burned alive? Burning someone alive is not loving them, doing good to them or blessing them (Lk 6:27-28, 35). And without love, whatever other truth Calvin may have been defending becomes worthless. If we’re thinking biblically, how can we avoid concluding that Calvin was not only a worse heretic than Servetus, but that he committed the greatest heresy imaginable?

But I don’t mean to pick on Calvin. Throughout church history from the time of Augustine (who first justified persecution in Jesus’ name), millions of people were tortured and murdered for their alleged heresy. Yet, if we’re thinking biblically, how can we avoid the conclusion that the Church that carried out this barbarism in Jesus’ name was far more heretical than all the heretics it persecuted?

Ironically, while millions were tortured and murdered for having “heretical” views on things like baptism and communion, there’s not one episode I know of throughout church history of anyone so much as having their hand slapped because they lacked love.

Yet, everything hangs on this.

Finally, while we have an obligation to distinguish between what is and is not the Kingdom of God, we have to carefully guard against self-righteousness. Rather than feeling righteous by contrasting ourselves with Calvin or any other Christian persecutors from the past, we have to ask ourselves: Are we guilty of the worst heresy imaginable? Do we do everything in love? Do we place love above all other considerations?

Do we love Osama Bin Laden?

Think about it.

Live in love, as Christ loved you and gave his life for you (Eph 5:1-2).

Greg