And so there are all these deceivers out there.
And the goal of these deceivers is
to get you off of God's plan for your life,
to get you out of the will of God and serving God.
And they want to get you off that path.
And you've got to look to yourself
and make sure that you don't let that happen.
Now, when the Bible says, "Whosoever transgresseth,"
what does transgressing mean?
Transgress basically means to cross a line, OK?
If we just break down that English word,
trans means cross.
Gress means go.
So transgress is like to go across.
It's like you're crossing a line.
For example, if we said regress, we're
talking about going backwards, right?
If we're talking about digressing,
we're talking about going off course there.
So when the Bible says, "Whosoever transgresseth
and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God,"
you see, even if you're saved, even if you have the Holy
Spirit living inside of you, you can get into false doctrine.
You can get into even heresy.
You can dabble in some even pretty bad stuff if you don't
know the Bible, if you're not grounded in what you believe.
But there's a point where when somebody crosses a line where
you notice that somebody just, they get so off on their
doctrine where you're like, "This guy's not even abiding
in the doctrine of Christ anymore."
It's not that he's just a little off doctrinally.
He's transgressed, and no longer is he even abiding in the
doctrine of Christ.
You look at that person and say, "That guy doesn't even have
God.
That guy's not even saved."
He that abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he hath both the
Father and the Son.
So these deceivers, the Bible tells us in verse seven, they're
entered into the world.
They confess not that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh.
This is a deceiver and an antichrist.
I don't think there's any doubt that that guy in verse seven's
not saved.
He's a deceiver and an antichrist.
Obviously, this is a horrible person.
But the look to yourselves, the yourself, those aren't bad people, right?
He's talking to good people.
He's talking to people that are saved.
He's talking to people that he's won to Christ.
He wants to receive a full reward.
He wants them to continue as they've heard from the beginning, to keep walking in it
and to keep doing what they're supposed to be doing, right?
So it's possible for the good guys in verse eight to get led astray by the bad guys in
verse seven.
Look, there are these really bad unsaved people out there.
Look to yourself that you don't let them do what?
Get you off of serving God.
Now, if that deceiver and antichrist can get you all the way over onto his doctrine, well
that just shows that you weren't even saved in the first place.
If he can get you all the way.
But what we need to understand is that even if he doesn't get you all the way onto his
garbage, he can still get you confused, he can get you watered down on your doctrine,
he can get you to take a compromised doctrinal stance, he can get you out of church, he can
get you to quit soul winning, he can get you into sin, she could seduce you and harm you
in other ways.
So these deceivers and antichrists could be male or female because there was Jezebel who
was one of these in the book of Revelation.
And so these people can even deceive even people that are saved.
So don't get this attitude, "Well, I know I'm saved, I'm never going to go off the deep
end doctrinally."
Well, you know, there are even saved people who get into some stupid doctrines.
But when they go full blown into heresy, where they get to a point where you'd say, "Okay,
they've transgressed to where they're not in the doctrine of Christ anymore," then you
look at that person and say, "That person's not even saved."
You know, I mean, some examples of that would be that there are a lot of people that are
saved and they'll get caught up in this repent of your sins salvation.
And the people that are the architects of this, the ones who really push this hard,
are deceivers, antichrists, wicked people that are just teaching a full-blown work salvation,
the ray comforts of this world.
Okay.
But they can get a lot of people mixed up to where they don't go as far as ray comfort
will take it.
They don't go as far as some of these other really bad false teachers will take it.
But they'll be like, "Well, you just kind of have to be willing to change and just kind
of sorry, and just feel bad about things."
So they'll kind of take a more watered down lukewarm stance, where they're not teaching
a full blown work salvation.
You wouldn't look at that person and say, "Hey, you're not even saved."
But they'll get kind of a hybrid view.
And you run into this all the time where they're not a hardcore Lordship salvation type that's
telling you that you're saved by turning over a new leaf and repenting of all your sins.
But they just kind of lean that way a little bit.
Who's kind of seen that?
Yeah, look, everybody practically, where they just kind of lean that way.
And when you try to pin them down on what they believe, they can't even really give
you a straight answer because they're kind of living in a gray area about what repent
of your sins even means.
So we want to be careful that that's not us, that we don't get into that kind of junk.
And we want to make sure that we stay strongly on salvation by faith alone, believe on the
Lord Jesus Christ, now shall be saved.
But when you see somebody go all the way off the cliff, you know, that just shows you that
guy hath not God.
Another way of saying he's not even saved, he's not of God.
John uses that term a lot like being of God or having God versus not having God.