Hebrews Chapter Thirteen, Being Seduced By Corrupt Doctrine

 

Hebrews 13:9a Do not be carried about with various and strange doctrines.

 

Coming off of the heels of the previous verse, the author counsels the Hebrew Christians not to be carried about by various (a variety) and strange (contrary to Scripture’s revelation) doctrines. Backtracking a little further, we are reminded of the elders, who are appointed to rule over the church. Christians are counseled to “remember” them. If their doctrine and conduct align, we are to mimic the constancy of their faith.

But from where do the elders derive the constancy of their faith? Verse 8 answers this, putting forward the person of Jesus Christ, God incarnate, the Unchanging One. If the elders truly study and teach God’s word, then their conduct should reflect the person of the Lord they claim to serve. All such properly taught saints should in this instance look alike, so to speak, because they are raised by the same Father. Because our Lord is perfect and unchanging, those that sincerely follow in His steps reflect that character. The elders have an “elder sibling” role so younger saints admire them and aspire to be like them.

 

The saints are now cautioned not to be carried about with a multiplicity of strange teachings. This warning only makes sense if there were already a multiplicity of false teachings running rampant in the professing church. We know that Paul taught Titus to reject a divisive man (a man that causes divisions) after the first and second admonition, or warning. What kind of divisions? Doctrinal, of course. Doctrine impacts morality, which transforms how the church functions and what its congregants accept as normative and good. John writes of the divisive Diotrephes, “Beloved, do not imitate what is evil, but what is good. He who does good is of God, but he who does evil has not seen God,” 3 John 11.

 

How does one define what is good and what is evil? By sound doctrine, of course. The Bible is the Christian’s harmonious doctrinal pillar; outside of it everything is sinking sand. Worse, it is deadly miasma, and by breathing it in you consent to the stifling, suffocating death that it offers in place of the freedom that is in Christ. In chapter 5 of Hebrews, the writer chides the readership for being babes in Christ, and not having firm footing in sound doctrine; that is, they did not have exercised discernment to cleave to sound doctrine and practice it. Babes in Christ, spiritual infants, have need of a teacher to oversee them. This is the task of not only the elders of the church, but every older Christian that is sound in doctrine. The babes in Christ are in the most danger of being carried about, or led along, or carried away by every wind of doctrine, Ephesians 4:14.

 

Mind you, do not mistake physical age with spiritual immaturity. If a young person is born again and studious in the word, they may be pillars in their church early in life, having received spiritual maturity by walking with the Lord. Age is irrelevant. The blind man Jesus healed wasn’t concerned with various teachings; he was happy to know that though he was blind, now he saw, John 9:25. The guileless simplicity of this man’s faith in Christ should be mirrored by His disciples and children. The NIV renders the phrase “various and strange teachings,” as, “all kinds of strange teachings.” The HCSB agrees, describing it as, “various kinds of strange teachings.” Gnosticism was already an enemy of fundamental, orthodox Christianity. Other heresies abounded like proto-Arianism. The church of the first century was not without its share of opponents. But I do not mean enemies without the pail of Christendom. Rather, many enemies reared their heads within professing Christianity, trying to pervert the truth with their own distortion to fulfill what Paul warned would happen: “And men will rise up from your own number with deviant doctrines to lure the disciples into following them,” Acts 20:30, HCSB.

 

Today this message’s relevance is no less potent or necessary. The enemies within have only multiplied in quantity, and iterations of mutilating truth for religion’s sake. The Greek word for “carried” is “periphero,” and means to figuratively or literally carry one about. This term is employed in the current verse, in Ephesians 4:14 when Paul writes about being carried away by every wind of doctrine, and also in Jude 12. Jude 12 tells us, “They (the ungodly in the church) are clouds without water, carried about by the winds.” It is, as our Lord explained, a classic case of the blind leading the blind, Matthew 15:14. Paul says of such who turn aside from the faith, “understanding neither what they say nor the things which they affirm,” 1 Timothy 1:7. The fault Paul found with these aberrant teachers was that they strayed from the doctrine they were charged with, 1 Timothy 1:3. Then, having abandoned sound doctrine they paid heed to false teaching, and passed from student to teacher of heresy, verse 4.

 

The purpose of Paul’s commandment for sound doctrine is that one’s love would come from a pure heart, a good conscience and sincere faith. When one strays from sound doctrine, the rest is naturally jettisoned as well.