Free Educational Resources for the Public from Grace Communion Seminary

Introduction

“You do not need anyone to teach you,” the apostle John writes (1 John 2:27). You have been given the Holy Spirit, and “he will guide you into all truth” (John 16:13).  He “will teach you all things” (John 14:26). But if that is true, why was John bothering to write anything? If every Christian had a perfect pipeline to all truth, then we would not need any teachers, writers, and we would not even need Scripture itself — unless, of course, these are precisely the means the Holy Spirit uses to teach us and guide us.

When John said that “you” don’t need anyone to teach you, he was writing to a specific group of people — people he had already taught. You already know enough, he was saying – you do not need someone else to come along to teach you new and exotic ideas. We see this in the context: “I am writing these things to you about those who are trying to lead you astray” (1 John 2:26). John was writing to remind the people, to teach the people, of what was true.

False teachings have been around for all of human history. Moses fought against a variety of false teachings, and so did the prophets, and so did Jesus. Just as political history is marked by one war after another, much of church history is a series of struggles about doctrine – one heresy after another. This is both good and bad.

It’s a shame that the history of Christianity is marked by so many problems, but it’s good that these were eventually corrected (not that everything is perfect now, but we have faith that truth and love will win in the end). False teachings were not set straight in a day – it took a long time. People (not even people with the Holy Spirit) do not automatically discern the difference between false teachings and true teachings. The only way to counteract false teachings is to provide true teachings. That’s one reason we need to study the right way to study the Bible.

Christianity today is affected by various groups (popularly called cults) that teach various erroneous ideas about the Bible, God, and Jesus. Most of these are home-grown, do-it-yourself approaches to Christianity. Some leader studied the Bible on his (or her) own, had little formal training, claimed to be inspired, and went off in some odd direction. They had more enthusiasm than knowledge, more self-assurance than humility, better able to speak than to listen to what others were saying. They rejected various teachings of orthodox Christianity (often because they did not understand them) and taught some heresy instead.

The church has educational institutions and formal training programs because church leaders need training and guidance in what to teach and how to teach it, and this training should come from people who are devoted to careful study. James 3:1 tells us, “Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly.” When someone goes to teach, they have a duty to learn something about the subject.

Without centers of study and training, people go astray. They get their pet theories, and instead of teaching the truth, they end up focusing on something that turns out to be erroneous. They may convince thousands of people to follow them, but that means that thousands of people get hurt. “The truth shall set you free,” Jesus said – and the implication is that errors enslave us. They cause us to spend time and energy on something that doesn’t really help anyone.

This does not mean that training programs will lead everyone into all truth. There is no 100-percent guaranteed formula for teaching truth. Some training programs actually promote heresies. Some schools have major doctrinal disagreements with other schools, and even graduates of the same school can have major doctrinal disagreements.

But in general, it is better to be educated than not. If we go to a dentist, we prefer one who has formal training, who has some certification that he or she has completed that training, rather than someone who is self-taught. We may never check the validity of the diploma on the wall, but we do want that dentist to have a valid education. And in the same way, it is reasonable for people in a church to want leaders who have had formal training.