1 Thessalonians 2:13...for this reason we also thank God without ceasing, because when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you welcomed it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which also effectively works in you who believe...
In my mind I can feel the excitement that Paul and his cohorts felt when the believers in Thessalonica gladly received (accepted as truth) the word of God that Paul, Timothy, and Silvanius brought to them on Paul's second missionary journey. I don't know if there is any greater excitement that can be experienced on earth than when someone hears the word of God and receives it as truth. The result is that you begin to see an immediate impact upon their lives as they are exposed to the truth of the word of God. To receive the word of God is to believe the word of God which ultimately manifests itself through a changed, and continuously changing life. Paul confirms this at the end of the verse when he says ...which effectively works in you who believe... That's what the word of God does to those who believe it - it works within them and it has an effect upon and within them. Heb 4:12...for the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and the intents of the heart...
But Paul warned the Ephesians of a time that would come in which after he had departed from them that savage wolves would come in and not spare the flock. And how often it is that we are on the look out for those who blatantly deny hell or the death burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ, but Paul followed up that warning by saying in Acts 20:30...also from among yourselves men will rise up, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after themselves. So then in order to to protect ourselves from that we try and look to see if there might be any perversions of the word of God within our midst. These things we must do, let's make that clear, but sometimes what happens is that we fail to recognize where some of these things have their beginnings.
I would inject at this point that quite often the culprit where the perverting of the faith happens is under a term we call "liberalism". Now depending on what angle you come from you might certainly have a better definition of what we mean when we speak of liberalism with regards to Christianity.
But for now allow me to ask this, how does liberalism find it's way into the church? It starts in a very small unnoticed way. It starts by rejecting what the Bible says in small ways and escalates from there. Liberalism at it's roots, rejects the word of God. But how does this happen? It happens when we take the word of God and instead of receiving it, we question it by subjecting it to our own faulty human philosophies developed through our sin tainted experiences, when we exalt our physical experiences over and above the spiritual reality the Bible proclaims. When what is proclaimed in scripture does not agree with my sin tainted experience, I reject it, no matter how small the matter might be or what the Bible might say about it. That is the root of liberalism. Much false teaching starts by rejecting even the small things the Bible says because I esteem my philosophies higher then God's truth. So we must start by keeping our eyes on ourselves and asking, what truth of scripture do I struggle to accept because it doesn't fit into my philosophy?
Let us be on guard looking first at ourselves lest the word of God does not effectively work within us and we are left with a "form" of godliness yet denying it's power, and find within ourselves the seed liberalism.
