In addition to valuing membership retention, evangelical churches should also value membership reduction. They should view the expulsion of the heretics in their midst as a divine kindness. The apostle John tells his audience in 1 John 2:19 that some church members “went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they have been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us.” In other words, churches can gain through subtraction.
Not All Leaving is Bad
This verse does not imply that everyone who leaves their local church has left the apostolic faith. Membership transfers between congregations are good and proper.
Local churches should encourage their members to to transfer to a new church when the said church is closer to the member’s home or to the member’s convictions over secondary doctrines. For example, if a member of a Baptist church find himself embracing infant baptism, the Baptist church he attends now should happily grant his request to become a Presbyterian. He has not left the faith.
Moreover, some members will leave their church because their church’s leaders rebuff the members’ call for biblical reform and repentance. In such cases, the members leaving prove more spiritual than the local church left behind. In other words, Christians can and often do leave a local church without turning their back on Jesus.
Don’t Keep the Heretics
Rather, John’s letter addresses those who abandon their local church because they have abandoned the essential doctrines of the Christian faith. The apostle writes in 1 John 2:22: “Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son.” The antichrist is not the one who prefers expository preaching over topical preaching or old hymns as opposed to more modern worship. The antichrist is the one who undermines the gospel through their denial of Jesus’ personhood or his work on the cross.
In other words, antichrists are those who deny either the divinity or the humanity of Jesus and thereby deny the very essence of the gospel. If Jesus was a created being and not God, he could not satisfy God’s wrath for our sins. He could perhaps exchange his life for another life, but Jesus could not atone for the sin of all his people. If he was not fully God, he also could not raise himself from the dead.
Similarly, if Jesus was not fully man but rather some kind of half-man and half-god evolutionary being or was purely a spirit, he could not be the perfect substitute for humanity. When an orange replaces an apple, you do not get a better apple. You get an orange. If Jesus was not fully a man, he could not fully die and atone for our sins. Only a Messiah who was both fully God and fully man could be the propitiation, the perfect sacrifice for sin of God’s elect. Defective Christology, as John Stott notes, “is not just defective; it is diabolical.” They who corrupt he doctrine of Christ are the liars…the antichrist…the messengers of Satan.
As such, they should feel unwelcomed in God’s house. When a church member embraces the Arian heresy of Mormonism and declares that God the Father created Jesus when the Father slept with the not-so-virgin Mary, she should feel disconnected from her ladies’ book club. The man who begins to argue on social media that Jesus was not God but was rather specially indwelt by the Father until his accidental death on the cross should feel out of place when singing “Are you washed in the blood?” And the Sunday school teacher who proclaims that Jesus was a spirit without a body should squirm in his seat as his pastor unpacks Matthew’s recounting of the Christmas story. Those who promote theological lies should feel uncomfortable in the halls of truth and flee them for the refuge of other heretical movements. To quote John, they “went out from us, but they were not of us.”
When They Stay
At times, false teachers will try to burrow deep under the church’s skin. They will start a Sunday school class or start posting Tik Tok videos to win other church members to their heretical ideas.
When false teachers seek to infect a local congregation, that congregation will have to firmly and yet loving take hold of the church discipline scapple and remove the false teacher from their midst. Left unchecked, false teaching will kill a local church. Paul warns 1 Corinthians 5:6-7: “Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump.” The church’s elders should lead the operation, showing the confused member the error of his ways and calling him to repentance. Hopefully, the elders’ loving correction will guide the person back to spiritual health and truth. But if the false teacher continues unabated, the elders must inform the church of the situation in accordance with Matthew 18. If the person still refuses to repent, then the congregation should vote the person out of membership. For the church to survive, it must be willing to remove its heretical members from the role.
The True Cost
Still, the removal hurts. Just as surgery often leaves a scar on our body, watching those who once visited us in the hospital, sang hymns with us, and prayed with us in our sorrow turn their backs on the Jesus will bring sorrow to our souls. We should grieve for their lost friendship and their error. But if they were allowed to stay in fellowship, they would even bring more sorrow and harm to our souls and the souls of our church family. As Martin Luther notes, “it is better to rescue some from the jaws of the devil than for all to perish.”
May the Lord give us the grace always needed to prefer truth over friendship and faithfulness of expediency. May we be willing to glorify God through reducing our membership.
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