Gnostic Influence and Error in Relation to Redemption: Chief Elements of Many False Gospels

Vast multitudes of professors of faith in Christ see the grace of God in Him as an excuse for sin and disobedience. The influence of Gnosticism in this cannot be dismissed. Though many who are influenced by Gnosticism likely don’t discern its influence on their beliefs, it is there all the same. The idea that we can be good at heart while committing sin at the same time is a concept from Gnosticism which the Apostles of Christ constantly contended with that many still attempt to mix with Christianity.

Lack of understanding of Biblical redemption is also a major stumbling block in itself. It is also a chief reason why there is so much susceptibility to Gnostic influence. Those who don’t adequately account for the principles of redemption established in the Law of Moses are chief candidates to embrace false gospels. The things said in the Law of Moses in relation to the children of Israel’s redemption from Egypt are foundational to everything that the Bible teaches about redemption afterwards.

Consider the following:

Leviticus 22:31-33: “Therefore shall ye keep my commandments, and do them: I am the Lord.Neither shall ye profane my holy name; but I will be hallowed among the children of Israel: I am the Lord which hallow you,That brought you out of the land of Egypt, to be your God: I am the Lord.”

Leviticus 20:26: “And ye shall be holy unto me: for I the Lord am holy, and have severed you from other people, that ye should be mine.”

Leviticus 19:2: “Speak unto all the congregation of the children of Israel, and say unto them, Ye shall be holy: for I the Lord your God am holy.”

Those who are so foolish to think that these principles don’t apply to Christians are rebuked in a straightforward manner about this in the New Testament. Peter even references Leviticus 19 quoted above and applies it to how we are obligated to respond to the Gospel of Christ (1 Peter 1:10-19).

Romans 3:9-20 is a key example of a Bible passage which many teachers wrongly apply to all people in their present spiritual state when it is spoken specifically of the wicked. It is not describing the righteous who are presently in the grace of God through Christ. This error is a chief error which fosters a Gnostic mindset in those who embrace it. Look at the contrast between the wicked described in Romans 3:9-20 and the present state of those whom the Bible defines as righteous who have indeed turned from going their own way to be subject to the true God.

Romans 3:9-10: ‘What then? are we better than they? No, in no wise (in no way): for we have before proved both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin; As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one:”

Now consider the righteous:

Ephesians 5:8-11: “For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light: (For the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth;) Proving (Testing) what is acceptable unto the Lord. And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.”

Romans 6:17-20 (later in the very same book): “But God be thanked, that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you. Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness. I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh: for as ye have yielded your members servants to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity (lawless deeds unto lawless deeds); even so now yield your members servants to righteousness unto holiness. For when ye were the servants of sin, ye were free from righteousness.”

Romans 3:11-12: “There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.”

Now look at the righteous:

Philemon 10-11: “I beseech thee for my son Onesimus, whom I have begotten in my bonds: Which in time past was to thee unprofitable, but now profitable to thee and to me.”

3 John 11: “Beloved, follow not that which is evil, but that which is good. He that doeth good is of God: but he that doeth evil hath not seen God.”

Romans 3:13-14: “Their throat is an open sepulcher; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps (referring to venomous snakes) is under their lips: Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness:”

Now consider the righteous:

Psalm 19:13-14: “Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me: then shall I be upright, and I shall be innocent from the great transgression. Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength, and my redeemer.”

Proverbs 10:11: “The mouth of a righteous man is a well of life: but violence covereth the mouth of the wicked.”

Proverbs 12:22: “Lying lips are abomination to the Lord: but they that deal truly are his delight.”

Proverbs 13:5: “A righteous man hateth lying: but a wicked man is loathsome, and cometh to shame.”

Romans 15:14: “And I myself also am persuaded of you, my brethren, that ye also are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, able also to admonish one another.”

Romans 3:15-17: “Their feet are swift to shed blood: Destruction and misery are in their ways: And the way of peace have they not known:”

Now look at the righteous:

Luke 1:79 (in its context this is descriptive of the call to repentance through John the Baptist which we must heed to really turn to Jesus Christ): “To give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

Romans 14:17-18: “For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink (food and drink); but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. For he that in these things serveth Christ is acceptable to God, and approved of men.”

Romans 3:18: “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

Now consider the righteous:

Proverbs 14:2: “He that walketh in his uprightness feareth the Lord: but he that is perverse in his ways despiseth him.”

Acts 9:31: “Then had the churches rest throughout all Judaea and Galilee and Samaria, and were edified; and walking in the fear of the Lord, and in the comfort of the Holy Ghost, were multiplied.”

And consider the call of the Gospel itself:

Revelation 14:6-7: “And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people, Saying with a loud voice, Fear God, and give glory to him; for the hour of his judgment is come: and worship him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters.”

Romans 3:19-20: “Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin.”

Consider then what would be stated by the time this very same chapter ends:

Romans 3:29-31: “Is he the God of the Jews only? is he not also of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also: Seeing it is one God, which shall justify the circumcision by faith, and uncircumcision through faith. Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law.”

Many also support their Gnostic-influenced belief that no one can ever, even under the grace of God, overcome sin in their mortal bodies by wrongly applying the Apostle Paul’s words in Romans chapter 7. They say, by what is written there in the first person, that the failure to overcome sin described there was Paul’s present experience as a Christian. Yet that is a ridiculous claim given the context of the Book of Romans.

Paul had also already spoken in Romans chapter 5 of the truth that those who’ve been reconciled to God through Christ are partakers of a salvation through His life which is an actual remedy for the damage caused by sin’s reign in them when they were enemies of God.

Romans 5:20-21: “Moreover the law entered, that the offense might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound: That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord.”

Paul would go on afterwards in Romans chapter 6 to show how God’s grace reigns through righteousness in people’s lives practically after warning that we cannot continue in sin that grace may abound.

It has been talked about in other studies that spiritual death is not a loss of all spiritual senses. It is rather a severed relationship with God wherein one is bound to carnality and in a state of condemnation before Him. Spiritual death is also not a lack of being able to appreciate the righteousness and goodness of the wisdom of God’s law. The deliverance of a true disciple of Christ abiding in Him is set forth in Romans chapter 8 to demonstrate how they are delivered from the death which the carnal man in Romans 7 came to see he was immersed in (through better understanding the requirements of God’s law).

These things obliterate any consideration that Romans chapter 7 was Paul’s experience in the present as he wrote Romans. This understanding is upheld and further proven by the Apostle Paul’s words in Galatians chapter 5:16-26. It is also confirmed by Paul’s own testimony in 1 Thessalonians 2:9-12 about the consistency and victory of his own life as a Christian (along with his co-laborers). This is utterly different from the defeated man of Romans chapter 7. The same victory was expected of the Christians whom Paul oversaw. It is surely not any different now.

The multitudes who are justifying and/or explaining their yieldings to sin by Romans 7 are admitting that they are enemies of the cross of Christ rather than believers under His authority walking in the way of redemption (that is, His narrow way to eternal life).

The false grace preachers love to quote Ephesians 2:8-9 (independent of its context): “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.”

They won’t say that the man who wrote this also, by his own testimony, preached a gospel which is utterly at odds with the gospel they preach.

Acts 26:19-21 (the Apostle Paul is testifying before King Agrippa): “Whereupon, O king Agrippa, I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision: But shewed first unto them of Damascus, and at Jerusalem, and throughout all the coasts of Judaea, and then to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, and do works meet for repentance. For these causes the Jews caught me in the temple, and went about to kill me.”

Christ offered up Himself to satisfy the necessary legal requirements in order to deliver us from both sin’s guilt and power. We are expected to repent, walk in truth under His authority (the authority of His Word), and continue therein until the end. Those who do not do so will be found as the enemies of Christ who are incompatible with His kingdom and will be cast into hell as workers of lawlessness. The redemption He purchased by His blood will be null and void in regard to these on an individual basis.

The Lord has a deep controversy with sinners which He is not going to relent from until they turn from sin to be under His authority and do works fitting for repentance. Jesus’ atonement was made in the context of seeking to make people faithful subjects of His kingdom. To say that the passages about the corruption of the wicked apply even to those who are properly related to Him is a denial of the victory of His mission and a denial of the true grace of God in Him. This is both demonic and Gnostic to the core. He is a King who died with the intent of winning people back to Himself out of the realm of the devil which is marked by servitude to sin. He only forgives in the context of wholehearted cooperation with that intention.

Colossians 1:13-14: “Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son: In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins…”

There is therefore nothing inconsistent with the the grace of God in Christ with passages such as the following:

James 1:12-15: “Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love him. Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man: But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.”

Ezekiel 7:3-4 (concerning the judgment which those who practice sin are heading towards): “Now is the end come upon thee, and I will send mine anger upon thee, and will judge thee according to thy ways, and will recompense upon thee all thine abominations. And mine eye shall not spare thee, neither will I have pity: but I will recompense thy ways upon thee, and thine abominations shall be in the midst of thee: and ye shall know that I am the Lord.”