“Better to have an enemy who slaps you in the face than a friend who stabs you in the back,” goes the old saying.
It’s true. And the worst part is it that when your friend stabs you, he’s stabbing from behind your defenses already. An enemy’s danger you can see coming; a friend’s you cannot. An enemy you can fight with all you’ve got. But when it’s a friend that one must fight, there’s grief, self-doubt, hesitancy, restraint and a profound sense of loss at every step. You hang on longer to hope of a reconciliation, of healing and of forgiveness, even when those things don’t appear. That’s why friends can hurt friends in ways no enemy can.
That’s not just cautionary advice about trusting people. It’s also cautionary advice about being a friend. A real friend is a great thing; but if you start out that way, and then you turn on somebody who trusts you, you’re going to be responsible for a whole lot more practical and psychological damage than if you’d just been an outright enemy from the get-go. Presenting as a friend is a moral responsibility; if you’re asking for a place of trust, a place on the inside of somebody else’s life, you’ve got a much bigger responsibility not to betray that. The sin of Judas is much greater than the sin of Pilate.
What is true of personal friendship is also true of our responsibilities when we self-present as faithful believers. We’re reminded of this in Revelation 2 in the message of Jesus Christ to his church in Thyatira. One thing we get from this message is that churches are not just susceptible to the attacks of enemies, but are often vulnerable as well to the betrayal of friends.
The Thyatira Three
There are three different groups of people identified as existing in the church at Thyatira. In the order they appear, they are:
- “my bondservants … led astray” (v20)
- “her children” (v23)
- “the rest who … overcome” (v24-26)
Jezebel’s Children
Let’s start with number 2, because that’s easy. These “children” are those who share the teachings and even the very nature of Jezebel, the false teacher. (We cannot help but remember the Lord saying to the Pharisees, “You are of your father the devil.”) Sold out to false teaching, and utterly uninterested in repenting even when a gracious God gives them time to repent, they are true children of adultery. The Head of the Church says of them that he will now only kill them. They cannot be brought to repentance because they simply won’t go. They’re too tightly allied with the false doctrines and perverted practices of the Jezebel among them. They can no longer be rescued.
And yet they are inside the church.
The Bondservants Led Astray
Then let’s go to number 1. Not satisfied with poisoning themselves and committing idolatry and adultery, including sexual perversions, the children of Jezebel delight in misleading and corrupting some of the true bondservants of the Lord. These are obviously real Christians, but weak and foolish ones, who have become overly impressed with the arguments and practices of the wicked among them, and thus are being led into perversion and idolatry. Among them are also those who do not perhaps participate in the worst of it all; but they are guilty because of their toleration of such things. They are passive participants in evil by not standing up to it, calling it out and stopping it.
They are in a very perilous position: like the cities of Admah and Zeboiim that were destroyed along with the city of Sodom, these are all too close to the fire by association. The call to them from the Head of the Church is “Get out now.” At best, these will suffer the loss of reward, and be saved only “as through fire”. Or they will be tested and found false, and will perish with the wicked if they do not repent.
They also are in the church. And they are true servants of the Lord — by right. But they are in a very bad way because of their cowardice and capitulation to the wicked among them.
The Overcomers
The third group is obvious: those who have not tolerated or participated in the evil, the idolatry, the adultery and the false teaching of the Jezebel sect. But they are clearly a disadvantaged minority because of that. They cannot bear even one more burden, and must prove to be overcomers, even among their fellow Christians. They are not well liked by the majority, it seems, or at least by those who control the church’s agenda. They are the beleaguered faithful, the ones who have stayed with principle and sound doctrine when the others went wrong.
And they haven’t exactly been appreciated for it.
The Implications
What do the Thyatira Three tell us?
Simple. That in times of apostasy, there are likely to be three types of people with whom we have to deal in the local church. First, there will be the obvious ones: the false Christians, the apostates. These are “Jezebel’s children”, who will promote false doctrine and bad morals even while operating as genuine members of the local congregation. Having sneaked in through the side door, so to speak, they’ve become familiar and accepted among the Lord’s people, even though they have a taste for strange and perverse doctrines and an obsession with spreading them.
Secondly, and even more problematically, there will be some of our genuine brothers and sisters — true Christians, even — who are unfortunately blinded by their wickedness or enfeebled by a spirit of toleration. These will wander down the pathway where Jezebel’s children are leading. They may even mobilize against the faithful, especially if the false teachers have achieved a fair level of power and prominence in the congregation.
This will be a very bitter pill for the true Christians to swallow: that some of their beloved brothers, genuine bondservants of the Lord, will turn against them and side with the false teachers — either actively by joining in the apostasy, or more passively by approving and tolerating their continued activities. And they may look down on and harass the faithful, with the goal of compelling unity and conformity to things that are contrary to the will of Christ.
The third set are the faithful Christians, of course … those who remain, and are not willing to participate in the increasingly-popular false doctrine and perverted practices that have invaded the church. They stand out and object. They do not tolerate. When harassed, they endure and overcome. They do not give in.
These faithful few are the hope of the local church. If they capitulate — either to the popular false teachers or to their errant brethren — then the church is a write-off, and the Head of the Church will come in judgment against that congregation, and its testimony and status as a true church of Christ will be taken away from it.
Tense Dynamics
What we can expect, then, are tense dynamics. Three factions within the local church that simply cannot remain balanced with each other. Of these, the middle one, the “bondservants led astray” will be the most problematic to the true Christians. To call out, defy, reject and eliminate the false teachers is comparatively a clear task: they’re evil people who are clearly doing evil — the word of God is against them, and while they are likely to prove very intransigent and hostile, the believers can feel quite free in their consciences about silencing them and driving them out.
Not so the misled believers. This is the group that ends up undermining the confidence of the faithful. True Christians cannot feel good about striking blows against brothers and sisters. Moreover, the discouragement, bad examples, and even abuse that such may heap on the faithful are much harder to bear than the slanders of the wicked. It also becomes impossible for the righteous to know whether they are dealing with an unrepentant false teacher or an errant but correctable brother, since the former can look just like the latter. So misled believers in the congregation can confuse and distress the consciences of their faithful brothers and sisters, and can blunt the edge of their confidence in standing for the truth.
The Misled Middle
The point? Whatever you do, don’t be part of the misled middle. They’re the most harmful faction to the local church. The wicked use them to abuse the faithful, and to prevent opposition to their lies, false doctrine and evil practices. They are the Achilles heel of the local church. And the Lord puts it 100% on the shoulders of the bondservants who have wandered into the misled middle to take responsibility to make sure they are not part of it, and to repent now if they have been.
How do you avoid being one? Simple. Know your doctrine. Read your Bible. Believe it, and stick to it. Walk with Christ continuously, every day. Pray plenty. Take your obedience upon yourself.
Do not walk with the pack. Do not let idolatrous distractions such as political factionalism, the developments of the larger culture, corrupting permissive practices from the world, and so on, enter the local church. If you have been living in the faction of the misled, leave it now, and join the faithful. Become discerning. Become mature. Be willing to take stands for truth, especially against the larger currents of society and against errant teaching from any source. Follow the Lord and you will not be misled; follow men and you surely will.
Factions and Distinctions
Make no mistake, strife and trouble within local congregations are bound to happen from time to time. As Paul writes, “For there also have to be factions among you, so that those who are approved may become evident among you.” We could also understand this statement ironically: that false teachers create factions in order to distinguish themselves. This too is true. But what the verse really seems to signal is that the Lord himself sometimes allows factions to develop within the local church to separate out the sheep from the goats and to make manifest who is his true servant and who is not.
That being so, be very careful which of the Thyatira Three you choose to belong to. As our days darken, as false teachers and false doctrines proliferate, don’t just take for granted that the dangers all end at the church door. And be aware that allowing yourself to be a misled brother can be even more dangerous than being one of the declared enemies of the truth.
He who has an ear, let him hear.
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