Saved Heretics?

ALL – Psalm 38:1-22
ALL – Proverbs 21:28-29
OT – Job 8:1-11:20
NT – 1 Corinthians 15:1-28

Interesting passage for the day: But tell me this! Since you believe what we preach, that Christ rose from the dead, why are some of you saying that dead people will never come back to life again? – 1 Corinthians 15:12, The Living Bible

Thought: Let’s get past the main point of this verse quickly, because there’s a related issue that I think we need to talk about a bit. The main point of this verse is that it is precisely because Christ rose from the dead that we can know that people rise from the dead—that we can have a legitimate hope of our own resurrections.

But what intrigues me about this verse was that Paul was writing these truths to Christians—Christians who didn’t believe in their own coming resurrection! He was correcting a falsehood that they were teaching. We would call that falsehood a heresy. And as he corrected it, he did so without making the assumption that these heretics were not Christians.

These heretics believed that Jesus had died for them and had risen from the dead—an orthodox teaching, the central teaching of Christianity and the core of the gospel. And yet they mistakenly denied the coming resurrection of anyone else.

We are right to focus on teaching the truth. Paul certainly took the time to correct falsehood. But I think that we often assume that people with serious false beliefs like the one mentioned here are unbelievers destined for hell. Perhaps we should continue to view them as brothers so long as their false beliefs do not compromise the heart of the gospel. I’m not saying that we should not worry about them or that we should leave them to keep believing and promoting lies (unknowingly, perhaps, but still lies). But perhaps we should not be so quick to view them as outsiders to our faith.

It would require discernment. As some point a refusal to accept the godly and plain truth of the Scriptures becomes a reason for concern and even discipline among those in the church. But this perspective is also a reason for hope. Christ’s grace is enough not only to cover our sins, but even some of our stupidities, misunderstandings, poor thinking and misguided stubbornness. We’ll probably see more Christian heretics in heaven than we expect.

Question: If not every false belief will keep a believer out of heaven (these Christians who didn’t believe in their resurrection would still experience it, for instance), how should we deal with the false beliefs we encounter among brothers and sisters?

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