It’s easy to assume that the greatest battles for the truth Christ gave to the church are external. Many of the challenges the modern church faces do come from the materialistic and secular mindsets that permeate the classrooms, halls of government, and other institutions that have power and influence in our society.

Christ-followers must be careful to guard against internal challenges as well. If we are not carefully grounded in a clear understanding of the revelation of God in the Bible, we can find ourselves passionately preaching a ‘gospel’ that is different from the one Jesus entrusted to the disciples. The believers in the church in Galatia had fallen into this error. Paul emphatically denied the possibility of competing sets of core truth within the church. He states, “As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned!” (See Galatians 1:9.)

Paul is not advocating the establishment of a thought police designed to enforce conformity on secondary and tertiary issues. Legalistic Christians try to demand absolute agreement on all kinds of issues, both biblical and cultural, in order to preserve their flavor of Christianity. What Paul does argue for is conformity on the central doctrines of the scripture related to the person and work of Christ, his mission, the character of God, and the principles of living in the kingdom in obedience to Jesus. These are non-negotiable.

If our understanding of the Bible is vague and fragmented, we will not be able to distinguish between our own spiritual preferences and the eternal truth of God. We our biblical illiteracy may lead us to unwittingly abandon central teaching or embrace as absolute ideas that are not prescribed or taught in scripture.

In Acts 20 Paul meets with the Ephesian elders for the last time on his way to Jerusalem. The church in Ephesus was a joy to him, a place of great growth and spiritual transformation among many. But even that church is not exempt from the temptation to drift from the truth. The leaders in the church are to be watchful about the message. Paul predicts, “Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them.” (See Acts 20:30.) In a similar vein he warned Timothy to “guard the gospel.”

What does this mean for us? It reminds us that we must saturate ourselves with the scriptures so that we can clearly understand the timeless revelation of God. We must battle the trend toward sound-bite theology and study to learn the symphony of the Bible, in both its major and minor keys. No ripping verses from context. No proof-texting. No deconstruction of the text. No converting the direct teaching of the Bible into psychological reflections of inner struggles of the soul of the writer. No creation of doctrine from the white spaces between the lines. No neglect of the principles of sound hermeneutics and clear thinking.

Throughout history, those churches that have lost their appetite for truth as found in scripture have drifted into the foggy swamps of uselessness. No fellowship, denomination or movement we can name today is safe from that fate. As Christ-followers commit themselves to learning and teaching the Bible, they chart a healthier path for their churches and themselves. Devotion to the word is not an option—it is essential.