But They Preach Jesus!

What this is about

The author of this site often hears this question, and wanted to test the assumption behind it: that the name of Jesus is enough, whatever is said around it. He listed what he sees in some ministries that use the name. Beliefs that differ from what the Church has confessed for two thousand years. Being “born again” measured by how sincere you were. New teachings from private revelations nobody can check. A message centred on “me,” or on the minister. Leaders growing rich on gifts from the poorest of the poor, promised a return. Healing promised, and the sick blamed when it does not come. Prophecies that fail. Crude language from the pulpit. Violence or hatred in Christ’s name. Threats of death on anyone who disagrees. “If none of this matters,” he asked, “why does the Bible warn again and again about false prophets?”

His thesis: “Naming Jesus is not the same as preaching Christ. Scripture and the historic Church have always tested a message by what it says about Christ and what it produces, not by whether it uses his name.”

The short answer

The case for “who are we to judge,” fairly stated

The other side has real arguments, and the full dossier gives them first. Paul said of rivals who preached “of envy and strife”: “every way, whether in pretence, or in truth, Christ is preached; and I therein do rejoice” (Philippians 1:15–18). When the disciples stopped a stranger casting out demons in Jesus’ name, Jesus said, “Forbid him not” (Mark 9:39). Gamaliel advised leaving the apostles alone: if their work was of God, “ye cannot overthrow it” (Acts 5:39). Jesus said, “Judge not” (Matthew 7:1). Many people first heard of Jesus in these ministries. And the historic churches have their own scandals.

Read in context, each point is true but proves less than it seems. In Philippians, the rivals preach the same Christ with bad motives, and the person they hurt is Paul. When others preached a different gospel to the Galatians, the same Paul wrote: “let him be accursed” (Galatians 1:8). In Mark 9 the complaint was that the man “followeth not us,” not that he taught something false. Gamaliel was not an apostle, and the apostles never used his “wait and see” rule; they tested teachers openly. And the sermon that says “judge not” goes on to say “Beware of false prophets … Ye shall know them by their fruits” (Matthew 7:15–16). Judging someone’s heart belongs to God. Testing what is preached is something every believer is told to do.

Same Christ, or another?

Six people or groups in the New Testament used Jesus’ name or preached Christ in some form. For each, what was wrong?

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A feast to the LORD, and the worship of men

When the golden calf was finished, the people said, “These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt,” and Aaron announced, “To morrow is a feast to the LORD” (Exodus 32:4–5). They thought they were worshipping the God of the exodus. What made it false was not the name. It was a visible substitute for an absent leader (“as for this Moses … we wot not what is become of him,” 32:1), a form of worship God had not commanded, and a god they could manage.

The New Testament is consistent about honour. When Cornelius fell at Peter’s feet, Peter said, “Stand up; I myself also am a man” (Acts 10:26). When the crowd at Lystra tried to sacrifice to Paul and Barnabas, they tore their clothes: “We also are men of like passions with you” (Acts 14:15). An angel twice refused John’s worship: “See thou do it not: I am thy fellowservant” (Revelation 19:10). John the Baptist said, “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30). The one man who accepted the crowd’s cry, “It is the voice of a god, and not of a man,” was Herod, and he was struck down “because he gave not God the glory” (Acts 12:22–23).

So the author’s question is a fair one. A ministry built around its minister, his name, his photograph and his anointing, where questioning him is treated as questioning God, has the features of the calf except the gold. Whether any particular ministry is like that is for its hearers to test.

The same stones, a different picture

The early Church met this problem in its first two centuries. The teachers it rejected used the name of Jesus and quoted the apostles. Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons, wrote about 180 that “error, indeed, is never set forth in its naked deformity”; it is “craftily decked out in an attractive dress.” He compared such teachers to someone who takes a beautiful portrait of a king made of jewels, rearranges the same jewels into “the form of a dog or of a fox,” and then insists that this is the king. Same stones, different picture.

The Church’s defence was to know the original picture well. It kept it in the creeds, above all the Nicene Creed, which Orthodox, Catholics, Lutherans, Anglicans and the Reformed have confessed for more than sixteen hundred years. Around 434 Vincent of Lérins gave a simple test for a new teaching: is it the faith “which has been believed everywhere, always, by all”?

The same tests run through the rest of the full dossier:

• Who acts in the new birth? In every text, God does: “according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost” (Titus 3:5). A new birth that depends on how sincere you were keeps the words and changes who is doing the work, and leaves you nowhere to look on a bad day.
• Can the revelation be checked? Even a prophet whose sign comes true is to be refused if he leads people elsewhere (Deuteronomy 13:1–3). In the second century the Church tested a “new prophecy” by what had been handed down, and by whether its predictions of war came true. They didn’t.
• Where does the money go? “Through covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you” (2 Peter 2:3). The earliest Christian church manual says: if a preacher “says in the Spirit, Give me money … you shall not listen to him” (Didache 11.12).
• Who is blamed when healing does not come? Paul left Trophimus sick (2 Timothy 4:20), told Timothy to take wine for his stomach, and was told about his own thorn, “My grace is sufficient for thee.” No unhealed believer in the New Testament is blamed for weak faith.
• Do the prophecies come true? If not, “the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously: thou shalt not be afraid of him” (Deuteronomy 18:22).
• What is the fruit? Corrupt speech (Ephesians 4:29), violence (“put up again thy sword,” Matthew 26:52), hatred (“love your enemies,” Matthew 5:44), and threats of death: when two disciples wanted fire on a village that rejected Jesus, “he turned, and rebuked them” (Luke 9:55).

How much error is too much?

Not every difference is “another gospel.” Paul told the Romans not to quarrel over food and holy days (Romans 14). The Augsburg Confession (1530) says unity does not require “human traditions, rites, or ceremonies” to be the same everywhere, and that the Word and Sacraments are still “effectual” even when “delivered by evil men.” The line falls where a difference changes who Christ is, what he has done, how God gives his gifts, or who gets the glory. Sort these eight.

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The same tests for every church

The historic churches have failed these tests too, and this page says so. In 1517 indulgences were preached in Germany, in Christ’s name and with the Church’s full authority, to raise money for a basilica in Rome. Martin Luther, a priest who recited the creed every week, objected: “They preach only human doctrines who say that as soon as the money clinks into the money chest, the soul flies out of purgatory” (Thesis 27). “The true treasure of the church is the most holy gospel of the glory and grace of God” (Thesis 62). The Reformation began when the tests on this page were applied to the historic Church itself. “Judgment must begin at the house of God” (1 Peter 4:17). Start with your own church.

Twelve questions you can ask of any ministry, starting with your own:

1. Who is at the centre: Christ, the hearer, or the preacher?
2. What is the problem, and what is the promise? Sin and forgiveness, or lack and breakthrough?
3. Does it agree with the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds?
4. Does your assurance rest on what God has done, or on your sincerity?
5. Does any teaching rest on revelation no one else can check?
6. Where does the money go, and who checks?
7. Have the prophecies come true?
8. When healing does not come, who is blamed?
9. Does the minister accept honour that belongs to Christ?
10. Is there anyone the minister answers to?
11. What does the pulpit say about enemies, and about people who disagree?
12. Is the language from the pulpit fit to repeat in front of children?

What does this prove?

It is easy to claim too much for this argument, and easy to dismiss it too quickly. Six claims. Does the argument show each one?

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Check it yourself

Five things. The first takes ten minutes. The last is the one that matters.

1. 1. Read Philippians 1:12–18 and then Galatians 1:6–9. What is wrong in each case, and what does Paul do?
2. 2. Read Exodus 32:1–8. Count how often God’s name or his exodus is connected to the calf.
3. 3. Read Matthew 7:1–23 as one passage. “Judge not” and “beware of false prophets” are in the same sermon.
4. 4. Read the Didache, chapter 11. It is short and free online. It is a church’s handbook for testing visiting preachers.
5. 5. One sermon. Do this one. Take the last sermon you heard, in your own church. Write one sentence each: who was at its centre, what was the problem, what was promised? Then read 1 Corinthians 15:1–4 and compare.