Old Heresies Still Around Today
Two Heresies That Are Quietly Shaping Your Faith
There is a particular kind of danger that does not announce itself. It does not knock on the front door or make a dramatic entrance. It simply settles in, quietly, over a long period of time, until it feels so familiar that no one thinks to question it. That is precisely the kind of threat facing believers today — not overt persecution or outright attacks on religious freedom, but something far more subtle and, in many ways, far more damaging.
Ancient heresies, some nearly two thousand years old, are alive and well inside congregations, on social media feeds, in bestselling books, and in the teaching of popular online theologians. They color the way we read Scripture. They distort our understanding of God. They leave believers spiritually stunted, standing on ground far shakier than they realize. And because these ideas have been circulating for so long, most people accept them without a second thought.
It is time to name them.
The First Heresy: Two Gods, Two Testaments
The first heresy goes something like this: the God of the Old Testament is harsh, demanding, and quick to punish. The God of the New Testament, on the other hand, is warm, loving, and full of grace. These are presented, whether explicitly or implicitly, as two different expressions of the divine — or in more extreme versions, as two entirely different beings.
This idea did not originate in modern progressive theology or on a YouTube channel. It has a name and a history. It traces back to a man named Marcion, who lived from approximately 85 to 160 AD. Marcion was a mariner and the son of a bishop, and after studying the Scriptures, he concluded that Yeshua (Jesus) was fundamentally at odds with the God of the Hebrew Bible. He taught that Christianity was entirely incompatible with Judaism, that the God of Genesis used the Law of Moses to trap humans into sin, and that the God Yeshua spoke of was a completely different deity — one of compassion and benevolence, entirely separate from the Creator God of the Old Testament.
Marcion's teachings were declared heresy by early church leaders. Irenaeus, writing in his landmark work "Against Heresies," specifically condemned Marcion's claim that the God proclaimed by the Law and the Prophets was not the Father of Messiah. And yet, if you listen carefully to sermons, read popular Christian literature, or scroll through faith-based social media content today, you will find Marcion's ideas alive and thriving.
When a prominent pastor suggests that the Old Testament needs to be "unhitched" from the New Testament, that is Marcionism. When seminaries treat the Hebrew Scriptures as elective rather than foundational, that is Marcionism. When believers casually describe the God of the Old Testament as wrathful and the God of the New Testament as loving, that is Marcionism. And it matters enormously, because Scripture is clear: Hebrews 13:8 affirms that Yeshua the Messiah is the same yesterday, today, and forever. From Nehemiah 9:5 to 1 Chronicles 16:36, the God of Israel is declared to be everlasting, unchanging, and consistent in character across all of Scripture.
The commandments God gave through Moses are not a trap. They are not a punishment mechanism. They are, as Deuteronomy frames them, wisdom and understanding — a self-revelation of a God who, unlike the small-g gods of the surrounding nations, made His character and expectations clearly known so that His people could flourish. That is not the behavior of a mean God. That is the behavior of a merciful one.
The Second Heresy: Secret Knowledge and the Great Escape
The second heresy is Gnosticism, and it is perhaps even more pervasive today than Marcionism. Gnosticism is not a single, tidy system of belief. It comes in many flavors. But its core ideas are recognizable: the physical, material world is corrupt and evil; salvation is essentially a ticket out of this corrupt existence; and the truly spiritual person gains access to special, hidden knowledge — through visions, dreams, numerology, mystical experiences, or esoteric insight — that elevates them to a higher spiritual level.
Sound familiar? It should. New Age spirituality, with its crystals, vibrational frequencies, and mystical oils blended with Christian vocabulary, is Gnosticism wearing contemporary clothing. The idea that the goal of the Christian life is to escape this evil world and go to heaven when you die — rather than to participate in the redemption and renewal of creation — carries a deeply Gnostic DNA. So does any theology that places special, private revelation above the plain teaching of Scripture.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer identified a related problem decades ago and called it cheap grace — grace that demands nothing, changes nothing, and costs nothing. A faith that says you can sign on the dotted line, secure your heavenly exit, and coast through the rest of your life without growing in knowledge of God, without serving, without making disciples, is not the faith of the apostles. It is a hollowed-out version of it.
Jude 10 offers a sobering word about those who speak confidently about things they do not actually understand, following instinct rather than truth, to their own destruction.
The Remedy: Bible Fluency
The antidote to both of these heresies is not complicated, but it is demanding. It is Bible fluency — not mere verse memorization, but a deep, culturally informed, contextually grounded knowledge of what Scripture actually says and means. Reading the Bible through an ancient Near Eastern lens rather than a modern Western one opens up layers of meaning that centuries of cultural distance have obscured.
When believers understand Mount Sinai as a marriage covenant and a divine self-revelation rather than a legal burden, everything changes. When they read the Hebrew Scriptures not as a relic replaced by the New Testament but as the essential foundation for understanding the Gospels and the apostolic writings, the whole Bible comes alive in a new way.
Deuteronomy 4:6 frames God's teachings as the very source of wisdom and understanding that makes a people remarkable in the eyes of the nations. That is not a description of a burden. That is a description of a gift.
The question worth sitting with before next week is this: there is a profound difference between being under the Law and living out the Law. One is bondage. The other is wisdom.
There is a particular kind of danger that does not announce itself. It does not knock on the front door or make a dramatic entrance. It simply settles in, quietly, over a long period of time, until it feels so familiar that no one thinks to question it. That is precisely the kind of threat facing believers today — not overt persecution or outright attacks on religious freedom, but something far more subtle and, in many ways, far more damaging.
Ancient heresies, some nearly two thousand years old, are alive and well inside congregations, on social media feeds, in bestselling books, and in the teaching of popular online theologians. They color the way we read Scripture. They distort our understanding of God. They leave believers spiritually stunted, standing on ground far shakier than they realize. And because these ideas have been circulating for so long, most people accept them without a second thought.
It is time to name them.
The First Heresy: Two Gods, Two Testaments
The first heresy goes something like this: the God of the Old Testament is harsh, demanding, and quick to punish. The God of the New Testament, on the other hand, is warm, loving, and full of grace. These are presented, whether explicitly or implicitly, as two different expressions of the divine — or in more extreme versions, as two entirely different beings.
This idea did not originate in modern progressive theology or on a YouTube channel. It has a name and a history. It traces back to a man named Marcion, who lived from approximately 85 to 160 AD. Marcion was a mariner and the son of a bishop, and after studying the Scriptures, he concluded that Yeshua (Jesus) was fundamentally at odds with the God of the Hebrew Bible. He taught that Christianity was entirely incompatible with Judaism, that the God of Genesis used the Law of Moses to trap humans into sin, and that the God Yeshua spoke of was a completely different deity — one of compassion and benevolence, entirely separate from the Creator God of the Old Testament.
Marcion's teachings were declared heresy by early church leaders. Irenaeus, writing in his landmark work "Against Heresies," specifically condemned Marcion's claim that the God proclaimed by the Law and the Prophets was not the Father of Messiah. And yet, if you listen carefully to sermons, read popular Christian literature, or scroll through faith-based social media content today, you will find Marcion's ideas alive and thriving.
When a prominent pastor suggests that the Old Testament needs to be "unhitched" from the New Testament, that is Marcionism. When seminaries treat the Hebrew Scriptures as elective rather than foundational, that is Marcionism. When believers casually describe the God of the Old Testament as wrathful and the God of the New Testament as loving, that is Marcionism. And it matters enormously, because Scripture is clear: Hebrews 13:8 affirms that Yeshua the Messiah is the same yesterday, today, and forever. From Nehemiah 9:5 to 1 Chronicles 16:36, the God of Israel is declared to be everlasting, unchanging, and consistent in character across all of Scripture.
The commandments God gave through Moses are not a trap. They are not a punishment mechanism. They are, as Deuteronomy frames them, wisdom and understanding — a self-revelation of a God who, unlike the small-g gods of the surrounding nations, made His character and expectations clearly known so that His people could flourish. That is not the behavior of a mean God. That is the behavior of a merciful one.
The Second Heresy: Secret Knowledge and the Great Escape
The second heresy is Gnosticism, and it is perhaps even more pervasive today than Marcionism. Gnosticism is not a single, tidy system of belief. It comes in many flavors. But its core ideas are recognizable: the physical, material world is corrupt and evil; salvation is essentially a ticket out of this corrupt existence; and the truly spiritual person gains access to special, hidden knowledge — through visions, dreams, numerology, mystical experiences, or esoteric insight — that elevates them to a higher spiritual level.
Sound familiar? It should. New Age spirituality, with its crystals, vibrational frequencies, and mystical oils blended with Christian vocabulary, is Gnosticism wearing contemporary clothing. The idea that the goal of the Christian life is to escape this evil world and go to heaven when you die — rather than to participate in the redemption and renewal of creation — carries a deeply Gnostic DNA. So does any theology that places special, private revelation above the plain teaching of Scripture.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer identified a related problem decades ago and called it cheap grace — grace that demands nothing, changes nothing, and costs nothing. A faith that says you can sign on the dotted line, secure your heavenly exit, and coast through the rest of your life without growing in knowledge of God, without serving, without making disciples, is not the faith of the apostles. It is a hollowed-out version of it.
Jude 10 offers a sobering word about those who speak confidently about things they do not actually understand, following instinct rather than truth, to their own destruction.
The Remedy: Bible Fluency
The antidote to both of these heresies is not complicated, but it is demanding. It is Bible fluency — not mere verse memorization, but a deep, culturally informed, contextually grounded knowledge of what Scripture actually says and means. Reading the Bible through an ancient Near Eastern lens rather than a modern Western one opens up layers of meaning that centuries of cultural distance have obscured.
When believers understand Mount Sinai as a marriage covenant and a divine self-revelation rather than a legal burden, everything changes. When they read the Hebrew Scriptures not as a relic replaced by the New Testament but as the essential foundation for understanding the Gospels and the apostolic writings, the whole Bible comes alive in a new way.
Deuteronomy 4:6 frames God's teachings as the very source of wisdom and understanding that makes a people remarkable in the eyes of the nations. That is not a description of a burden. That is a description of a gift.
The question worth sitting with before next week is this: there is a profound difference between being under the Law and living out the Law. One is bondage. The other is wisdom.
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