It’s the political season, and as usual, there is a mix of unbiblical teaching going around that should be addressed around the dinner table, especially since a lot of it is being said by ministers of one sort of another.

Methodist Pastor Adam Hamilton, Democrat candidate in Kansas’s Senate race, has taught and preached that all faiths end up in heaven: “When it comes to other faiths, I believe as a Christian that…–when they get to heaven, they’re going to see Jesus and they’re going to say, ‘Ah, it was you all along that I was searching for,’ but I don’t fear that those folks will spend eternity in Hell,” (2022 sermon titled “Is the Bible True? Is Jesus the Only Way?”). Hamilton has stated that he does not believe that an individual must know or follow Jesus Christ in their lifetime in order to be saved and spend eternity with God.

This unbiblical position raises a lot of questions: “Why be a Christian minister?”, “Why evangelize people in the first place?”, “Why even be a Christian?”

This position is clearly against the Great Commission in Matthew 28, where Jesus commands his followers to teach all the nations about “him,” and not just leave them in darkness. It is directly against John 14:6: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” Jesus clearly says he is the only way to the Father in heaven. This positions is against this very Father’s command at his Transfiguration in Matthew 17, where the Father says from heaven, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased. Listen to him.” Not Buddha or Allah.

Finally, the Apostle Peter, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in Acts 4:8, says clearly in verse 12, “And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”

We often don’t take family and children advice from bachelors, but C.S. Lewis is an approved exception! In his article “The Sermon and the Lunch,” he gives several points of advice for familial living that still ring true today and will help us with our own families to honor Christ and his kingdom.

First, he reminds us that since the Fall, no organization or way of life whatever has a natural tendency to go right. The family can be offered to God, converted, redeemed, and offer a channel of blessings and graces. But like everything else that is human, the family needs redemption. Meaning, that the members must fight to put off temptations, corruptions, and miseries. He notes wisely, “Charity begins at home: so does uncharity.”

Second, while not against natural “affection,” it is not a cause of lasting happiness. “Love” in that sense can become greedy, solicitous, jealous, and exacting. There must be a deeper “love” to hold the family together, a “my life for yours” love, love based on the way of Christ: “we love, because he first loved us.”

Third, Lewis is very much against the supposed pro-family slogan “at home we can be our natural selves.” The lunch at the Vicar’s house destroyed that idea, for everyone in the Vicar’s family was rude to each other, and if those actions were practiced outside the family, they would simply be knocked down! Nowhere on this side of heaven can we simply “be ourselves.”

Finally, he asks, “must we not teach that if the home is to be a means of grace it must be a place of rules? There cannot be a common life without a regula.” The alternative to rule is not freedom but the unconstitutional (and often unconscious) tyranny of the most selfish member.

“…even denying the Master who bought them…” — from 2 Peter 2:1

This phrase, while a monumental theological brain teaser, is a great passage to encourage you to persevere in faithfulness and love for Jesus and his church.

How so? Well, it can’t be true that the decretally elect would deny Jesus who ransomed them on the cross. What good is the decree, then? It isn’t everlasting, because these people, by denying the Master who bought/ransomed them, bring destruction upon themselves three ways in the context: destructive heresies, which bring destruction upon these persons, a destruction which is not far away in time, v. 3. Most don’t believe the decretally elect are subjects of destruction.

So Peter must be talking about covenantal destruction, not decretal. About destruction of people who are in covenant with God but then who reject those covenantal blessings by being a false prophet and teacher among the church, teaching heresies that destroy people and cause them to fall away, heresies that even destroy themselves in the end, v. 1e. These are people in the church who have suffered shipwreck of their faith (1 Timothy 1:19), and have fallen away or are in the process as they prey on the sheep of the church. These are the Christians who haven’t been “diligent to confirm their calling and election…” (2 Peter 1:10). Like King Saul, like Judas (v. 20-22), like the guy in 1 Corinthians 5.

Peter is warning his audience, and you, to watch out for these false teachers, and to live by what is revealed (Deuteronomy 29:29), not by their false teachings. To live by what Peter the Apostle is teaching in chapter 1, versus their misleading beliefs.

In short, he doesn’t want you to deny Jesus your Lord who bought you with his ransoming death. He wants you to proclaim him, and live by His Word!