How should Christians respond to Andy Stanley and other false teachers?

Before we begin Part II, the manner in which this writer and others are publicly and forcefully challenging Andy Stanley and his false teachings should be examined. Many Christians disagree with these actions and quickly quote Matthew 18:15-17 as the proper biblical way by which Christians ought to deal with such presumed errors.

If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over. But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that “every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.” If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church; and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector. [Matthew 18:15-17. NIV]

Matthew never meant these verses to be used in addressing and dealing with false teachers. First, these verses deal with fellow disciples (brothers and sisters in Christ). Second, these verses deal with personal offences, grievances, or misunderstandings between two Christians. Neither applies when dealing with false teachers.

False teachers are not brothers and sisters in Christ but wolves in sheep’s clothing, and the Bible is plain as to how these people are to be dealt with. The above verses are about personal disputes between two Christians, but false teachers attack the very Word of God with their teachings in the same way Satan deceived Eve in the Garden. The following verses should be applied when confronting false teachers.

But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God’s curse! [Galatians 1:8. NIV]

Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. [Ephesians 5:11. NIV]

If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not take them into your house or welcome them. Anyone who welcomes them shares in their wicked work. [2 John 1:10-11. NIV]

Jesus and His disciples dealt with heretics immediately, publicly, and severely. To do otherwise is to compromise the Word and accommodate the heretic and his teachings. Many in the modern evangelical church tolerate these false teachers and their work because they fly the flag of a false ecumenicalism. Therefore, false teachers are often accommodated and allowed to remain in the church.

Irresistible – Andy Stanley’s new covenant teachings[1]

Stanley spends the first thirteen chapters of his book denigrating the Old Testament and unhitching it from the New Testament.

Careless mixing and matching of old and new covenant values and imperatives make the current version of our faith unnecessarily resistible. This is why I insist that most of what makes us resistible are thing we should have been resisting all along. [p. 95] [emphasis in original]

According to Stanley, the rules and regulations (the Law and the Prophets) in the Old Testament are the things Christians must resist in order to make way for the irresistible Jesus of the New Testament. But Stanley also finds much in the New Testament that he thinks should be resisted.

He spends the last eleven chapters introducing “a new guiding ethical framework for the new covenant of Christ which has a new commandment that forms the new ethical framework for new covenant people. A framework that is far less complicated, but far more demanding.” [p. 170] [emphasis in original] Again, Stanley believes that those resistible parts of the Old Testament ways of doing things that have crept into the New Testament must be eliminated or at the least ignored.

Participants in the new covenant are not required to obey most of the commandments found in the first half of their Bibles (i.e., the Old Testament). Participants in the new covenant (i.e., the New Testament) are expected to obey the single command Jesus issued as part of his new covenant. Namely: As I have loved you, so you must love one another. [p. 196] [emphasis added]

Conspicuously absent from Jesus’ new-command instructions was an overt reference to his divine right to require such allegiance and obedience. [p. 198] [emphasis added]

Paraphrasing the words of another famous Church Growth movement leader,[2] Stanley is cutting the sinner some slack in the NT when it comes to that OT thing called sin. Stanley admits that Paul’s letters were often packed with exceedingly precise instructions as to how Christians should conduct themselves inside and outside the body of Christ, i.e., the Church. But according to Stanley, Paul explains away the importance of those instructions when writing to the Corinthian church. Paul supposedly admitted “that one of his applications is completely his idea. He goes out of his way to ensure nobody gives Jesus credit for what is his unique contribution.” [pp. 201-202] But Stanley’s interpretation is astounding when one considers the implications for the inerrancy of God’s Word. It would mean that Paul’s words in the NT have less standing than Christ’s words and needn’t be thought as constraining on the lifestyles of the Corinthians. Put another way, if the words of the NT are printed in red, they have greater authority and supposedly are more inspired than the words printed in black, especially if those words in black sound too much like those Old Testament “Thou shalt” and “thou shalt nots.”

Stanley’s justification of love over truth

Stanley justifies his teachings about the New Testament by calling Christians to a “horizontal morality” as opposed to the traditional “vertical morality.”

In the stream of Christianity I grew up in, sin avoidance was pretty much our guiding light…The whole thing was vertical. I was far more concerned about how my behavior affected my standing with God than I was about how my behavior affected anybody else. After all, the Bible says pleasing God is more important than pleasing people. [pp. 173-174]

At this point Stanley with a deft interpretational sleight of hand transforms the Old Testament vertical morality to a New Testament horizontal morality. He begins with Jesus’ discourse with the Pharisee regarding the greatest commandment.

One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” [Matthew 22:35-40. NIV]

Stanley explains that the second commandment was not subordinate to the first but merely second in sequence. He says that for first century Jews loving God meant obeying his commands, but in the new covenant, loving Jesus is loving your neighbor. He has essentially shifted vertical morality to horizontal morality. [pp. 182-183] However, in doing so, Stanley sweeps aside many of the moral attributes of God.

We get a better insight into the meaning of Stanley’s substitution of horizontal morality for vertical morality by understanding that morality is more than a list of do’s and don’ts. A few synonyms are helpful in understanding the meaning of morality: principles, standards, goodness, decency, honesty, integrity, virtue, and perhaps most important, godliness or godlikeness. Has Stanley’s shift from vertical morality to horizontal morality redefined the meaning of morality itself? In a word, yes. Quoting Stanley, “Jesus issued his new commandment as a replacement for everything in the existing list. Including the Big Ten. Just as his new covenant fulfilled and replaced the old covenant, Jesus’ new commandment fulfills and replaces the old commandments.” [p. 196] [emphasis in original]

Essentially, Stanley is saying that those Old Testament definitions of morality that reflect the nature of God are no longer valid and therefore God must have changed. However, James tells us that God is unchangeable with regard to His attributes, His perfection, or His purpose for humankind. “ Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” [James 1:17. NIV] [emphasis added]

To summarize, Stanley’s New Testament theology places love above truth and virtually everything else in the New Testament. To prove his point Stanley quotes 1 John 2:10 but let’s also include the preceding verse.

Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates a brother or sister is still in the darkness. Anyone who loves their brother and sister lives in the light, and there is nothing in them to make them stumble. [1 John 2:9-10. NIV]

Based on this verse Stanley says, “That is remarkable. According to John, who got it straight from Jesus, if we love well, all is well. Period. That’s it. Love well and you’re in the light.” [p. 227] But Stanley’s “Period” is misplaced. It dismisses or ignores verses 15 through17 which commands his disciples to not love the world.

Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them. For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever. [1 John 2:15-17. NIV] [emphasis added]

A complete reading of the 1 John 2 refutes Stanley’s statement that if Christians love well, all is well. The remaining verses of 1 John 2 show that other requirements (i.e., not loving the world) must be met in order to be in the light. Even though Christians love well, if they love the world the Father is not in them, they are not in the light, and all is not well. Once again Andy Stanley is revealed as being a false teacher.

Stanley’s gospel of cheap grace

Stanley’s dismisses vertical morality, but also substantially dismisses horizontal morality except for a Christian loving others well. Recall the excerpt from Stanley’s book quoted in Part I: “The new covenant would fulfill and replace the behavioral, sacrifice-based systems reflected in just about every religion of the ancient world. His new command would serve as the governing behavioral ethic for members of his new movement.” [p. 24] [emphasis added]

What is this new behavioral ethic? Stanley wrote that “Participants in the new covenant are expected to obey the single command Jesus issued as part of his new covenant. Namely: As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” [p. 196] [emphasis in original] Stanley is saying that love is of sole importance, but this essentially sweeps away all other behavioral admonishments found in both the OT and NT and replaces them with “if we love well, all is well. Period.” When one reads Stanley’s book from cover to cover, it is plain to see that his new covenant model is not new but merely the latest and most virulent mutation of cheap grace that substantially eliminates all of the “behavioral” commandments found in the New Testament.

In America many evangelical churches have become apostate by abandoning any pretense of adherence to the gospel message. Biblical truths are twisted, mocked, or dismissed altogether. Others champion a social gospel or preach a gospel of health, wealth, happiness, harmony, and cheap grace in place of the cross and death to self. Eighty years ago, Bonhoeffer described “cheap grace.”

Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church…In such a Church the world finds a cheap covering for its sins; no contrition is required, still less any real desire to be delivered from sin…Cheap grace means the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner…Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.[3]

Anyone who turns from his sinful way at the word of proclamation and repents, receives forgiveness. Anyone who perseveres in his sin receives judgment. The church cannot loose the penitent from sin without arresting and binding the impenitent in sin…For its own sake, for the sake of the sinner, and for the sake of the community, the Holy is to be protected from cheap surrender. The Gospel is protected by the preaching of repentance which calls sin sin and declares the sinner guilty…The preaching of grace can only be protected by the preaching of repentance.[4]

Cheap grace is the end product of preaching the world’s definition of nonjudgmental love which attempts to redefine, hide, or deny sin but does not eradicate it. Rather, it makes a mockery of Christ’s death on the cross to purchase forgiveness for mankind’s sin. Cheap grace makes the shedding of Christ’s blood at Calvary irrelevant for man’s redemption.

The preaching of nonjudgmental love occurs because the world’s definitions of love and tolerance have invaded the church and compromised the gospel message. As a result, the message of many churches is that God’s nonjudgmental love is so vast that he will overlook sin for a season if not altogether ignore it if one will only acknowledge Him. The new definitions of love and tolerance require unconditional acceptance of the sinner and is presumed superior to the biblical approach that requires repentance and turning from sin.[5]

But the world’s definitions of love and tolerance are contrary to the very nature of God because he cannot tolerate sin. God is both loving and just, and if His love is conformed to the world’s definition of nonjudgmental love and tolerance, then he is cannot be both loving and just.

In this article the writer has attempted to expose Andy Stanley’s false teaching. If what has been written is correct, then Christians must follow Paul’s command written to the Ephesians and have nothing to do with his “fruitless deeds of darkness.” [Ephesians 5:11. NIV]

Larry G. Johnson

Sources

[1] All page numbers in this article refer to Andy Stanley’s book: Andy Stanley, Irresistible – Reclaiming the New that Jesus Unleashed for the World, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2018).
[2] Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Church, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 1995), p. 216.
[3] Erwin W. Lutzer, When a Nation Forgets God, (Chicago, Illinois: Moody Publishers, 2010), pp. 117- 118.
[4] Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer, (Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, 2010), pp. 292-293.
[5] Larry G. Johnson, “Strange Fire – The Church’s quest for cultural relevance – Part IV,” January 9, 2015, culturewarrior.net

Who is Andy Stanley?

Andy Stanley is the east coast representative of the American Church Growth trifecta whose other two representatives are Rick Warren (Saddleback Church on the west coast) and Bill Hybels (Willow Creek Church in the central U.S. until his recent forced retirement). Stanley’s personal website outlines his background and extensive influence on the American church and culture at large.

Communicator, author, and pastor, Andy Stanley founded Atlanta-based North Point Ministries in 1995. Today, NPM is comprised of six churches in the Atlanta area and a network of more than 70 churches around the globe that collectively serve nearly 118,000 people weekly. A survey of U.S. pastors in Outreach Magazine identified Andy Stanley as one of the top 10 most influential living pastors in America.

In the digital world, his success reaches well beyond the Atlanta area. Over 1.8 million of his messages, leadership videos, and podcasts are accessed from North Point’s website monthly.

In 2012, Your Move with Andy Stanley premiered on NBC after Saturday Night Live and on CBS after The Late, Late Show with James Corden in 2017, giving him an even wider audience with which to share his culturally relevant, practical insights for life and leadership. Currently, over seven million episodes are consumed each month through television and podcasts, underscoring his impact not only as a communicator but also as an influencer of culture.[1]

If the title of this article is correct, then he also qualifies as one of the top ten false teachers in America.

Irresistible – Reclaiming the New that Jesus Unleashed for the World[2]

In September 2018 Stanley published the above titled book. It is the culmination of his Church Growth, seeker-friendly journey that has led him and millions of Americans to the door of the post-modern apostate emergent church. The response to Stanley’s book has been swift from both his defenders and those that who recognize the heresy in his teachings. Two admirers of his book among others described their favorable impressions of Irresistible on the flyleaf endorsements at the beginning of the book.

John Maxwell – Writer, speaker and author of The 360 Degree Leader.

This book challenged me to rethink my thoughts about the Old Testament, discuss with fellow believers what I was learning, do more connecting and less correcting of others, and be salt and light, making things better and brighter. I love how Andy loves people…ALL of them.[3]

In Irresistible, Maxwell appears to have mistaken Stanley’s salt-free and light (i.e., lightweight) brand of Christianity for the real salt and light that Christians must be to the world.

Kara Powell, PhD. – Executive director of the Fuller Youth Institute and coauthor of Growing Young.

More than any other book I’ve read in years, Irresistible has stretched my view of Scripture. I can’t hear or read a passage from the Old or New Testaments without thinking about Andy’s provocative insights. If you and I take this book seriously, our lives and our churches will never be the same.[4]

I agree with Dr. Powell’s assessment that if people take this book seriously, the lives of Christians and their churches will never be the same…but not in the good way she meant.

It is difficult to respond to every error written and promoted in the 334 pages of Stanley’s book, but in this response to Stanley’s aberrant theology an attempt will be made to fairly present the essence of Stanley’s teachings by using his own words. This will be followed by a refutation of his false teachings through reliance on God’s inerrant Word and other scholarly resources.

Stanley relegates the Old Testament to being old wine-skins of Judaism and paganism

The following are excerpts from Stanley’s book:

Churches gravitate toward the people who are already there. From day one I’ve insisted that reaching people far from God is more important than keeping folks who have already crossed the line of faith. [p. 9]

Jesus stepped into history to introduce something new. He didn’t come to Jerusalem offering a new version or an update to an existing thing. He didn’t come to make something better. Jesus was sent by the Father to introduce something entirely new. [p. 20] [emphasis in original]

Jesus was new wine. Judaism and paganism were old wine-skins. The new Jesus offered was a departure from the traditions of both…Specifically, Jesus came to establish a new covenant, a new command and a new movement. His new movement would be international. The new covenant would fulfill and replace the behavioral, sacrifice-based systems reflected in just about every religion of the ancient world. His new command would serve as the governing behavioral ethic for members of his new movement. [pp. 23-24] [emphasis in original] [Note the word “behavioral” mentioned twice in this quotation. Its importance will become evident in Part II.]

…we find the people of Israel camping at the foot of Mount Sinai watching Moses descend with God’s instructions for the nation. We call it the Ten Commandments. But before it was over, it was more like the 600 commandments. Those famous first ten functioned a bit like the table of contents–the Cliff Notes version. [p. 29] [emphasis in original]

Careless mixing and matching of old and new covenant values and imperatives make the current version of our faith unnecessarily resistible. This is why I insist that most of what makes us resistible are things we should have been resisting all along…While Jesus was foreshadowed in the old covenant, he did not come to extend it. He came to fulfill it, put a bow on it, and establish something new. [pp. 95-96]

According to Paul (referring to Romans 7:4), Jesus followers are dead to the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments have no authority over you. None. To be clear: Thou shalt not obey the Ten Commandments. If that makes you uncomfortable, it’s because you have unwittingly embraced the version of Christianity the Jerusalem Council declared unnecessary—the version Paul spent his ministry warning against. You are attempting to straddle two incompatible covenants…The Ten Commandments didn’t even offer to rent you, much less buy you. The Ten Commandments never lifted a finger to help you. Worse, the Ten Commandments sat back and waited for you to screw up. And when you did, they finally spoke up not to defend you but to condemn you. [p.136] [emphasis added]

Last I Googled, there were 929 chapters in our English Old Testament. Abraham shows up in chapter eleven and the rest is history—Jewish history. The Old Testament is not a comprehensive book about God. The Old Testament does not tell us everything God was doing everywhere in the world. It’s not a biography of God’s early years. The Jewish Scriptures describe God’s activity in connection to one particular people group. [pp. 160-161]

The Old Testament is great for inspiration but not application. Don‘t do anything the Old Testament tells you to do because someone in the Old Testament tells you to do it or because they did it themselves. [pp. 166-167]

…I’m not sitting around and praying for revival either. I grew up in the pray for revival culture. It’s often a cover for an unwillingness to put the low rungs back on the ladder. Instead of doing what needs to be done, the revival crowd prays for God to do what he’s already done. First-century Christians prayed for boldness, not revival. [p.275] [emphasis in original] [5]

These quotations exemplify Stanley’s total rejection of the Old Testament’s importance in knowing God. However, the grand meta-narrative of the Bible encompasses the creation of the universe and all therein, the Fall, and the means of man’s redemption. Stanley’s blithe dismissal of the Old Testament eviscerates much of God’s revelation to mankind by rejection of the creation story and the fall of mankind as being immaterial to redemption and the faith walk of Christians. Stanley may believe he has effectively placed the Old Testament into a religious dumpster along with paganism and other ancient religions, but Isaiah wrote the real end of the story, “The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God endures forever.” [Isaiah 40:8. NIV]

J. I. Packer asked a question and then answered it with regard to the purpose of mankind: “What were we made for? To know God.”[6] John the Apostle gives the answer as to “why” knowing God is the most important quest of one’s life. “And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.” [John 17:3. KJV] It is through both the Old and New Testaments and the continuing work of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of men that we can know God.

In rebutting Stanley’s false teaching we turn to Paul’s second letter to Timothy.

But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. [2 Timothy 3:14-17. NIV] [emphasis added]

In his commentary, Donald Stamps states that 2 Timothy 2:15 refers primarily to the Old Testament but at that same time there were some New Testament writings that were viewed as inspired by which is meant that those writings were given directly by God to people through inspiration by the Holy Spirit.[7]

For us today, Scripture refers to the authoritative (i.e., completely reliable, supported by solid evidence and established authority) writings of both the OT and NT (i.e., “the Bible”). They are God’s original message to humanity and the only infallible (i.e. incapable of mistake, never wrong, completely true and certain not to fail in its teaching) revelation of himself and his saving activity for all people.[8]

Stanley attempts to divert the meaning of these plain-spoken words by saying that Paul used the Jewish Scriptures to teach, rebuke, correct, and train but that he “never sets his application ball on an old covenant tee. When it comes to how believers are to live, he was quick to point to Jesus as the standard.” [p. 168] However, Stanley’s argument makes no sense. Why teach something if it is not applicable to one’s life, either as a warning to refrain/avoid or an encouragement to imitate? Why would Paul use the Old Testament as a means to teach, rebuke, correct, and train if it was not to be applied to the Christian’s life in light of the redeeming work of Christ on the cross? The only credible answer is that Paul wouldn’t.

But it gets worse. Recall Stanley’s words from above. “The Ten Commandments have no authority over you. None. To be clear: Thou shalt not obey the Ten Commandments.” [p. 136] If Stanley’s teaching is true, we must ask two obvious questions. When did the once inspired Old Testament become uninspired? When did truth become untruth?

Exodus 20:1 says that “God spoke all these words” which were followed by God’s spoken delivery of the Ten Commandments over the next sixteen verses. God not only spoke the Ten Commandments recorded in Exodus, Deuteronomy 5:6-20 repeats what God said and then follows in verse 21 by stating that He also wrote them on two stone tablets which He then gave to Moses. Did God change His mind and no longer consider the Ten Commandments a reflection of His divine character after Christ’s death on the cross, burial, and resurrection?

Stanley cannot deny that his teaching say that the revelation of God in the Old Testament is no longer God’s inspired Word and that it somehow had become dis-inspired, relegated to being called the “Jewish Scriptures,” and placed on a level with paganism? This is blatant false teaching of the highest magnitude and fails on a number of levels. Donald Stamps explains why Stanley’s teaching about the Old Testament is false.

• In both the Old and New Testaments, keeping God’s commands was a matter of trusting him, taking him as his word and loving him…

• The law emphasized the eternal truth that obeying God out of love results in a fulfilling life with blessing from the Lord.

• The law expressed God’s character, including his love, goodness, justice, and hatred of evil…

• Salvation in the OT was never based on the ability to keep all the commandments perfectly. That is why part of God’s relationship with Israel involved a system of sacrifices that provided a means of forgiveness for those who broke the law but sincerely repented and trusted God to have mercy on them.

• The law and covenant of the Old Testament were not complete in themselves or intended to be permanent. Rather, the old law temporarily guided and protected God’s people until Christ came and the old covenant was fulfilled by the new covenant. Through this new “agreement,” God has fully revealed his plan of salvation—to rescue people from the ultimate destruction of sin and restore them to a personal relationship with himself. This does not mean that the moral principles of the law are no longer necessary or important for us today. God’s standards of moral purity and truth still apply, and God’s Spirit now helps us live by these standards in a way we never could have done without him. Under the new covenant, God promised to put his laws in his people’s minds and hearts…[9] [emphasis added]

Not only does Stanley reject the relevance of the Old Testament to New Testament Christianity, his teaching of the New Testament is fundamentally-flawed because it follows the Church Growth, seeker-friendly model of Christianity which will be examined in Part II.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] “Communicator, Author, and Pastor,” Andy Stanley. https://andystanley.com/about/ (accessed November 13, 2018).
[2] All page numbers in this article refer to Andy Stanley’s book: Andy Stanley, Irresistible – Reclaiming the New that Jesus Unleashed for the World, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2018).
[3] Ibid., flyleaf endorsements.
[4] Ibid., See page numbers referenced.
[5] J. I. Packer, Knowing God, (Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP Books, 1973), p. 33.
[6] Donald C. Stamps, “The Inspiration and Authority of Scripture,” Fire Bible: Global Study Edition, New International Version, ed. Donald C. Stamps, (Springfield, Missouri: Life Publishers International, 1990), p. 2360.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Donald C. Stamps, “The Old Testament Law,” Fire Bible: Global Study Edition, New International Version, ed. Donald C. Stamps, (Springfield, Missouri: Life Publishers International, 1990), pp. 160-161.