Wolves in Sheep's Clothing

“Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? Likewise every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.” Matthew 7:15-20

Jesus seems to be crystal clear in his statement here. False preachers have and will come. We see them throughout our culture and our churches are continually assaulted by them. So we need to be prepared and we need to pray for our churches and their leadership that we will not come under the spell of false teachers.

Note that Jesus tells us in v. 15 that the false prophets are those who “come to you in sheep’s clothing.” In other words, they look just like sheep. These false teachers are not your standard heretics. The ones Jesus describes here are the ones’ whose teachings are extremely subtle. The ones’ whose messages that lack the narrow gate that Jesus referred to in the immediately preceding text. The false teacher may not say anything overtly untrue but the problem is often more in what he will not say. He says many right things, but he also leaves out some indispensable points of belief. And that is what makes him so very dangerous. His preaching also has another telltale characteristic – he says nothing that is offensive to the natural man. His message comforts and soothes and never warns of judgment. He wants everyone to speak well of him. He is like the false prophets in Jeremiah’s time of whom the prophet said, “They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. ‘Peace, peace,’ they say, when there is no peace” [Jeremiah 6:14; 8:11]. They speak, according to Isaiah, “smooth things” and “prophesy illusions” [Isaiah 30:10]. There is nothing to make anyone uneasy, but rather only things that make people feel good, content and falsely assured. They characterize anyone who preaches otherwise as negative.

The result of such preachers’ work is disastrous. Jesus says they are “ferocious wolves” – a horrific title. They are a shepherd’s and the Shepherd’s – worst nightmare. They would destroy every sheep in the flock if undetected. But Jesus gave us a way to discern the true v. the false teacher when he opened and closed his warning with “By their fruit you will recognize them.” Kent Hughes notes that the word for “recognize” [also translated as “know”, epignosis] means an exact or full knowledge of. One’s fruits provide an exact, unerring knowledge of what one really is. The teacher’s fruit is evident in two categories – what he says [his doctrine] and how he lives [his moral life].

There are certain doctrinal flaws common to the false teachers. First, the false teacher avoids speaking on things such as the holiness, righteousness, justice and wrath of God. He doesn’t usually overtly deny these characteristics but he just fails to ever mention them. Any exposition of these truths would be disconcerting, especially to the nonbelievers in the audience; so he avoids them, and thus keeps his people ignorant of these essential doctrines. On the contrary, his main emphasis is the love of God, which he fails to keep in balance with God’s justice and judgment. And as a corollary, he avoids at all costs preaching or teaching about God’s final judgment. The most recent of many examples of this is Rob Bell and his new book, Love Wins.

The false teachers also fail to emphasize the fallenness and depravity of mankind. The truth that man is sinful to the very core of his being and that he cannot save himself is consciously avoided. Instead, he tries to build men up trying vainly to make them see their potential. You won’t hear him use the word sin in his preaching. Prophets like this actually reject the Biblical assessment of man’s predicament. We preach what we believe. If we do not preach it, we don’t believe it.

And lastly, false prophets de-emphasize the substitutionary death and atonement of Christ. They may talk about Christ’s death on the cross, but they do not believe in the vicarious, substitutionary atonement. They may sentimentalize it, they may sing about it, but the do not truly believe it, because they do not believe they or we are bad enough to require it. Christ is more an example whom we should follow rather our true savior.

So much for the test of what they teach … there is also the test of how they live – the moral test. And it is here that we really get to the heart of the matter. The controlling realization here is that being a true Christian means there has been a radical change in the depth of the person through the grace of God. There is an incredibly deep connection between what comes out of us and what we are. As Jesus said, the essence of the tree determines the fruit that it produces. False teachers encourage us to try to make ourselves Christians by adding something to our lives instead of becoming something new, and somehow it never ends up quite ringing true. A wolf can wear a sheep’s clothing but it cannot grow a sheep’s coat. It is possible to subscribe to the qualities of the Beatitudes, and yet never truly own them from within. Appearances can only be kept for so long. Time will eventually reveal the true nature of the fruit. Sooner or later we will know where a man stands.

True believers have been radically altered, and though they are far from perfection and often stumble and may even backslide, they do manifest the character of God’s kingdom. There is a true ring to their poverty of spirit, their thirst after righteousness, their mercy, and their peacemaking. They also will show the fruit of the Spirit as Paul described in Galatians 5:22, 23 – “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.”

Lastly, I think Jesus includes this here as a gentle warning to each of us as well. We should not be superficial about our own lives either. Sheep, is the fleece we are wearing really ours? Did we really grow it, or is it just a uniform? Trees, what kind of fruit are we bearing? Is the fruit really ours? Does it really come from the life within, or is it just so many ornaments? The destinies of our souls depend on our answers.