Woe to the Church That Calls Evil Good

There's a kind of church I need to warn you about, and it won't look dangerous from the parking lot. The music is good. The people are kind. The coffee is hot. And a man can walk out of a place like that week after week and never once be told the truth about God. I want to talk with you about that, because a lot of good men are sitting in a church like it right now and don't know it. This isn't me preaching down at you. It's one man talking to another.

Here's where I have to start. Not every church belongs to Jesus just because His name is on the sign, and not every man who stands behind a pulpit is speaking for God. A building can have worship music, a full calendar of programs, and a cross on the wall and still not be a house of truth.

Some churches have quietly walked away from Christ while keeping His name on the door. They still gather. They still sing. They still talk about love and justice and belonging and grace. But they've stopped submitting to Scripture, stopped preaching repentance, and they will not clearly say who Jesus is or call sin what God calls it. Little by little they traded the gospel for affirmation, holiness for inclusion, and the authority of Christ for the preferences of the culture.

Understand what that does to people. A church like that isn't harmless, and it isn't just offering one more flavor of Christianity. It's leading people into sin, helping them silence their own conscience, teaching rebellion and calling it freedom, blessing the dark and calling it light. God already put words to this a long time ago.

“Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil;
Who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness.”
Isaiah 5:20, NASB 1995

Read that again. Not applause for being progressive. Not admiration for being culturally aware. Woe. That's not a soft word, and it's not mine. It's a warning straight from God, and He aimed it at exactly this.

There Comes a Point When a Church Is No Longer a Church

Let me be fair before I go further, because I'm not talking about your church having flaws. Every congregation is imperfect. Every church is full of sinners, and every pastor, elder, member, and visitor there needs grace as much as I do. If a room full of sinners disqualified a church, there wouldn't be a single church left standing, mine included.

So the question was never whether sinners are in the building. The question is what the church does with sin once it's there. A faithful church welcomes the sinner and calls him to Jesus. A false one welcomes the same sinner and tells him he never needs to change.

You can hear the difference in what each one actually says. A faithful church tells a man, "You are made in the image of God. You are loved. Your life has value. Jesus died for sinners. So turn from your sin, believe the gospel, and follow Him." A compromised church says most of that and then stops right before the part that costs anything. "Come as you are," it says, and then, "Stay as you are. Define truth for yourself. Don't let Scripture challenge your identity. God agrees with whatever you sincerely believe about yourself."

That last part is not the gospel. It's poison poured into a cup with grace written on the side. And there really does come a point where a church has thrown out so much of what makes it Christian that still calling it a Christian church is just dishonest. If Scripture has no final say, if Jesus is never clearly confessed as Lord, if sin can't be named, if repentance is optional, and if the very things Scripture condemns get blessed from the stage, then what's actually left? A building. A weekly meeting. A social club with nicer language. Those things can go on for years. But a church that won't submit to Christ is not the church of Christ, no matter what the sign says.

Pastors Who Refuse to Preach Truth Will Answer to God

This starts with the men up front, so let me say it plainly to any of them who might read this. You don't own the church. Elders don't own it, denominations don't own it, and the congregation paying the bills doesn't own it. Jesus bought the church with His own blood, which means every man who stands before His people stands there as a man under authority, not over it.

That's not a small thing. It means you don't have permission to edit God's Word, to apologize for the commands of Christ, or to quietly retire a doctrine because people find it offensive. You don't get to bless what God condemns or hide the cross behind political slogans, therapy language, and whatever cause is trending this year. James didn't soften this either.

“Let not many of you become teachers, my brethren, knowing that as such we will incur a stricter judgment.”
James 3:1, NASB 1995

Stricter judgment. Sit with that. Every pastor who tells people their sin isn't really sin should tremble at that verse. So should every leader who ducks repentance to protect the attendance numbers, every elder board that picks cultural approval over biblical truth, and every church that hands spiritual authority to people who've rejected Christ. You might be praised right now. You might be called compassionate and inclusive and brave and forward-thinking. But none of that applause is going to follow you into the judgment. You'll stand in front of Jesus, and you'll answer to Him.

When Scripture Becomes Optional, Jesus Becomes Optional

The collapse almost never starts with a church throwing the Bible in the trash. That would be too obvious, and somebody would leave. It starts with the Bible slowly getting demoted. It becomes one voice among many, one spiritual resource, one old tradition worth a glance. Its meaning turns personal. Its commands turn flexible. Its warnings get filed under "that was their culture, not ours," and its hard doctrines quietly become negotiable. Everybody is gently encouraged to land on his own conclusions.

I know that sounds humble. It's actually rebellion using an inside voice. Think it through. If Scripture can't correct you, it isn't really your authority. If your feelings get to overrule it, your feelings are your authority. If the culture can rewrite it, the culture is your authority. And if every person decides for himself what the text means based on what he'd prefer it to say, then the man in the chair has made himself lord over the Word of God.

Jesus never handled Scripture that way. He said:

“The Scripture cannot be broken.”
John 10:35, NASB 1995

When the devil came at Him, He answered:

“It is written.”
Matthew 4:4, NASB 1995

When the religious experts got it wrong, He went back to the text and asked them:

“Have you not read?”
Matthew 19:4, NASB 1995

Jesus submitted to the written Word. So a church that claims to follow Him while denying the authority He Himself honored isn't following Him at all. It's building a different Jesus, one who never judges, never commands, affirms every identity, bends with every culture, and saves people from discomfort but never from sin. I'll be honest with you, brother: that Jesus is very popular, and that Jesus does not exist.

A Church That Cannot Define Jesus Has Nothing to Offer

Some churches will not take a clear position on anything that matters. Is Jesus divine? Is there a heaven, a hell, a judgment, a resurrection? What is sin? They won't say. They'll call certainty arrogant, insist that correct belief isn't what makes someone a Christian, celebrate a dozen conflicting interpretations at once, and tell you no one can really claim to know the truth. And I want to ask them a simple question: then why call yourselves Christian at all?

Because Christianity was never a vague admiration for a good teacher named Jesus. It's a confession, and it has content. Jesus Christ is Lord. He is the Son of God, God in the flesh. He lived without sin, died for our sins, rose bodily from the dead, and He is coming back to judge the living and the dead. Salvation is found in Him alone. Those aren't opinions you can swap out and keep the building running. They're the foundation the whole thing sits on. Jesus said it Himself.

“Unless you believe that I am He, you will die in your sins.”
John 8:24, NASB 1995

And John wrote it just as plainly:

“Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father.”
1 John 2:23, NASB 1995

So a church that refuses to confess Jesus clearly isn't protecting people from being too dogmatic. It's hiding the Savior from them. It hands out spiritual language with no salvation in it and gives people a warm community while leaving them without Christ.

You Cannot Preach Salvation While Refusing to Preach Sin

Ask a simple question and a lot of false churches fall apart on the spot: saved from what? If sin is never defined, salvation stops meaning anything. If judgment isn't real, the cross was pointless. It's the same quiet surrender you see in the church that cut out hell. And if people are already fine with God without repentance and faith, then Jesus died for no reason at all.

The gospel actually opens with terrible news before it gets to the good. We have sinned. Not just made a few mistakes, not just failed to live up to our potential, not just picked up some unhealthy ideas along the way. We have rebelled against the God who made us.

“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
Romans 3:23, NASB 1995

And that reaches everybody. The adulterer and the greedy businessman. The liar and the drunk and the gossip. The abusive husband and the proud pastor and the hateful church member. The man whose sin gets celebrated in public and the man whose sin stays hidden behind a spotless reputation. Every last one of us has to repent, myself included. So a church that won't preach sin can't preach grace. All it has left to offer is acceptance, and acceptance was never salvation. Jesus didn't come to validate us. He came to rescue us, and you don't rescue a man who's been told he was never in danger.

Stop Calling Affirmation Love

The word love has been beaten senseless. Churches now use it to justify almost anything. Love means agreement. Love means affirmation. Love means never saying no, never challenging anyone's desires or relationships or choices. Here's the thing, though: that definition didn't come from your Bible. It came from the culture, and the church imported it wholesale.

“Love does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth.”
1 Corinthians 13:6, NASB 1995

Real love rejoices in the truth, which means love does not bless the knife at somebody's throat. It doesn't cheer for the chains. It won't tell a struggling man that repentance would only hurt him, and it refuses to keep him from the very truth that could lead him to Christ. When a church tells people that same-sex sexual relationships aren't sinful, it isn't loving them, it's lying to them. When it teaches that rejecting the body God gave you is a form of holiness, it isn't loving anyone, it's blessing confusion. And when it tells the adulterer, the porn user, the greedy or dishonest man that being sincere makes the rebellion fine, it isn't offering grace. It's quietly removing the need for grace at all. Grace only means something when sin is real. Forgiveness only matters when the guilt is real. The cross only matters when the judgment is real. Take sin off the table and you've taken away the only reason anyone ever needed Jesus.

You Can Welcome Everyone Without Blessing Everything

Now hear me, because this cuts the other way too. Faithful churches should welcome sinners. Every one of them. Nobody should get mocked at the door, nobody should be treated like his sin is too big for the blood of Christ, and nobody should be humiliated for walking in off the street looking for truth. But welcome and affirmation are not the same word, and Jesus proved it with His own life.

He welcomed sinners constantly, and He never once blessed their sin. He didn't tell Zacchaeus to keep skimming. He didn't tell the woman caught in adultery to own adultery as her identity. He didn't tell the rich young ruler that loving money was just fine. What He said was:

“Repent and believe in the gospel.”
Mark 1:15, NASB 1995

And He said this too:

“If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me.”
Luke 9:23, NASB 1995

Deny yourself. That one command takes a wrecking ball to the whole modern gospel of self-expression. Not every desire deserves to be followed. Not every identity gets to be shielded from Scripture. Not every relationship should be blessed, and not every feeling is telling you the truth. Some things a man has to deny. Some things have to die. Some things you just leave at the feet of Jesus and walk away from. A church that can't bring itself to say that isn't making disciples. It's making people more comfortable on the road that leads away from God.

These Churches Are Not Freeing People From Shame

Compromised churches love to talk about lifting guilt and fear and shame off of people, and I'll grant them this: the gospel really does free a repentant sinner from condemnation. Jesus takes shame away through forgiveness. The cross is genuine hope for a man who knows he's failed. That part is true and it's beautiful.

But there's a counterfeit way to get rid of guilt. You can just numb the conscience. You can redefine the sin until it isn't sin anymore. You can talk a man into believing he has nothing to repent of, and tell him every uncomfortable feeling he has is only religious oppression left over from his upbringing. That'll make the guilt go away for a while. It also quietly removes the road that would have led him home. Because sometimes guilt isn't abuse. Sometimes guilt is exactly the right response of a conscience that knows something is wrong. A man who betrays his wife should feel it. So should the pastor who manipulates his people, the liar, the church covering up abuse, the man living in sexual rebellion. Paul knew that ache had a purpose.

“For the sorrow that is according to the will of God produces a repentance without regret, leading to salvation.”
2 Corinthians 7:10, NASB 1995

So a church that rushes to silence every guilty conscience might be smothering the one thing that could have brought someone back to God. Whatever you want to call that, it isn't mercy.

Social Activism Cannot Replace the Gospel

Let me be careful here, because justice matters and I don't want to be misheard. Christians absolutely should protect children, defend the weak, stand against racism, confront abuse, feed the hungry, care for the poor, and fight exploitation. All of that is good, and the church that ignores it has its own problem.

But activism is not the gospel, and a church can get so consumed with causes that Jesus slowly becomes a mascot for the agenda. The poor get discussed. The language of liberation fills the room. The public causes take over every message. And somewhere in there, sin against a holy God barely comes up anymore. The cross turns into a symbol of resistance instead of atonement. The resurrection becomes a metaphor for social change instead of Christ's real victory over sin and death. Repentance disappears. Being reconciled to God disappears. Jesus gets recast as a symbol of human progress instead of the Lord who commands every person to repent.

“Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures.”
1 Corinthians 15:3, NASB 1995

For our sins. He didn't die as a nice example to admire. He died for sins. The gospel was never just "society should be more inclusive." It's that guilty sinners can be reconciled to a holy God through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. A church that will preach every cause under the sun except a sinner's need to be forgiven has walked away from the heart of the whole thing.

Unbelievers Cannot Lead the Church

I almost feel silly writing this one out, but here we are. An atheist can't provide Christian spiritual leadership. A man who denies that Jesus is Lord can't lead other people into obedience to Jesus as Lord. Someone who rejects Scripture can't teach anybody to submit to it, and a person who refuses Christian doctrine can't shepherd a Christian church. It isn't cruelty to say so. It's just true.

Unbelievers should be welcomed in the door. Treat them with kindness, hear their questions, invite them to look hard at the claims of Christ. That's good and right. But they shouldn't be holding spiritual authority over God's people, because if faith in Christ isn't necessary to lead the church, then Christ isn't necessary to that church. An organization like that might still do real charity and build real community and use plenty of religious words. It has just forgotten what a church even is.

Weak Churches Produce Weak Men

This is the part I care about most, because it's where you and I live. A church like the ones I've been describing will not build men of Christ. It can't. It might turn out men who've mastered the approved language, men who never challenge anyone, who are terrified of being called offensive, who've confused being passive with being kind, who think every desire deserves expression and every bit of accountability is harm. What it won't produce is a man who can carry a cross.

Men of Christ have to be confronted sometimes. We need somebody who loves us enough to say the hard thing. Your anger isn't strength. Your lust isn't harmless. That pornography is adultery of the heart, and your paycheck doesn't buy you out of neglecting your family. Your feelings don't get to decide what's true. Your pride is eating your marriage alive. Your private life matters more than you think it does, your wife deserves a faithful man, and your kids need a father who actually prays. Your body belongs to Christ. You need to repent, and so do I.

A weak church won't say any of that to a man. It's too scared of losing him. It wants him affirmed and comfortable and included, and it does not want him crucified with Christ. But a church that can never tell a man no will never once teach him how to lead.

A Church That Agrees With the World Has Nothing to Say to It

Think about what the world is actually short on. It is not short on voices that agree with it. It already has activists and universities and media companies and politicians and corporations and entertainers preaching the culture's doctrine around the clock, for free. The last thing anyone needs is a church that repeats all of that with a couple of verses stapled on. The church was called to proclaim Christ, and Christ doesn't blend in.

Light doesn't agree with the dark. It exposes it. Salt doesn't dissolve into the rot and disappear. It fights it. Jesus put the warning as a question:

“If the salt has become tasteless, how can it be made salty again?”
Matthew 5:13, NASB 1995

A church that never once contradicts the culture isn't loving the culture. It's joined it. And a church that gets nothing but applause from every worldly institution ought to stop and ask what it quietly stopped preaching to earn all that approval. Jesus warned about that exact standing ovation:

“Woe to you when all men speak well of you.”
Luke 6:26, NASB 1995

Now, I'm not telling you to go get hated for being a jerk. We're not called to be arrogant or to mock people or to confuse rudeness with courage. But if a church preaches Christ faithfully, the world is eventually going to push back, because the cross offends pride, repentance offends self-rule, biblical sexuality offends desire, judgment offends unbelief, and Christ alone offends a world that wants every religion to be equally true. If none of those truths ever seem to come out of a pulpit, there's a good chance that pulpit already surrendered.

False Compassion Is Cruelty

Picture a doctor who sees the cancer on the scan and decides not to mention it because the word might upset you. We wouldn't call that man compassionate. We'd call him negligent, maybe worse. Picture a father watching his kid wander toward a busy road who says nothing because he doesn't want to raise his voice. A shepherd who sees the wolves coming and stays quiet to keep the peace. None of that is gentleness. It's a failure to love dressed up as being nice.

A church that watches sin marching people toward death and says nothing is that doctor. It isn't kind. It's cruel. And a church that actually blesses the sin has stopped being the passive bystander and started helping the wolf. Jeremiah had hard words for leaders who handed out that kind of false comfort.

“They have healed the brokenness of My people superficially,
Saying, ‘Peace, peace,’
But there is no peace.”
Jeremiah 6:14, NASB 1995

That's the whole game of an affirming church in one line. Peace, peace, where there is no peace. It tells people everything is fine between them and God while they're rejecting the very things God said. It offers comfort with no repentance, belonging with no conversion, community with no Christ, grace with no cross. It bandages a deep wound like it's a scratch, and then sends people off toward eternity completely unprepared to meet God.

Jesus Condemned Churches That Tolerated Sin

If you've somehow gotten the idea that Jesus only ever speaks softly and would never scold a church, go read Revelation 2 and 3 sometime this week. He warned Pergamum for tolerating corrupt teaching. He came down hard on Thyatira for allowing teaching that pulled people into sexual immorality. He told Sardis it had a great reputation for being alive while it was actually dead, and He told Laodicea, to its face, that it was lukewarm and blind and poor and naked. He didn't celebrate their rich diversity of interpretations. He told them to repent.

“Therefore repent; or else I am coming to you quickly, and I will make war against them with the sword of My mouth.”
Revelation 2:16, NASB 1995

That's Jesus talking. The same Jesus who pulled children onto His lap and forgave the worst sinners in the room and went to a cross for people who hated Him. His grace doesn't make Him weak, and His love doesn't make Him tolerant of corruption. He confronts churches precisely because they belong to Him, and a good man corrects what's his.

Some Churches Need to Repent or Close Their Doors

I'm going to say something blunt, and I mean it as mercy, not cruelty. Some churches need to stop pretending. If you won't confess Jesus as Lord, take His name off the building. If you won't submit to Scripture, quit carrying a Bible into the pulpit. If you won't preach repentance, stop telling people you preach the gospel. If you bless sexual immorality, stop claiming you make disciples. If you let unbelief run the place, stop calling it the body of Christ. And if the culture gets the final word every time, take the cross down off the wall, because it doesn't mean what you're implying it means.

Or, and this is what I'm actually praying for, repent. Turn back. Return to Scripture. Confess Christ clearly. Call sin what God calls it. Preach the cross and the resurrection, forgiveness and judgment, holiness and grace, and call people to die to themselves and follow Jesus. One of those two things needs to happen, because a false church is more dangerous than no church at all. No church leaves a man looking. A false one convinces him he already found God while it walks him the other direction.

Leave Churches That Refuse to Repent

There's a time to stay and work for reform. There's a time to sit across from leadership and confront it. There's a time to keep asking the hard questions and hope they land. I believe in all of that. But there is also a time to leave, and some of you already know in your gut that you're past it.

Hear me clearly. You are not required to keep your family parked under false teaching. You are not required to let people who reject Scripture disciple your kids. You are not required to stay in a church that celebrates sin and rolls its eyes at biblical conviction, and you are not required to keep funding rebellion just because the building holds a lot of memories. Sometimes the faithful move is to go. There's a time to stay and work for reform, and there's a time to know when a man should leave his church. So go find a church that confesses Christ and teaches Scripture, that welcomes sinners and calls them to repentance, where grace and truth get preached together and men are being built to pray and repent and protect and serve and stand firm. Your family needs the truth more than it needs the tradition.

Kind People Can Still Teach a False Gospel

I want to guard your heart against a trap here, because this is where a lot of men get talked out of leaving. The people inside a compromised church are often genuinely kind. They serve. They love their neighbors. Many of them sincerely believe they're following Jesus, and I don't doubt it for a second. So let me be clear about what the issue is and isn't. The issue was never whether the members are nice people. The issue is whether the teaching is true.

Being sincere has never once turned something false into something true. A man can be sincerely wrong. A warm, likable pastor can lead people straight away from Christ with a smile the whole way. A congregation can do real good in its community while preaching a message that can't save a single soul. Paul said it about as strong as it can be said.

“But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed!”
Galatians 1:8, NASB 1995

Notice what Paul did not say. He didn't say to judge a message by how friendly the messenger seems. He said to judge it by whether it lines up with the gospel. So judge it that way, even when the people are lovely.

The Church Does Not Get to Improve Jesus

Progressive Christianity usually sells itself as the grown-up version of the faith, the kinder and wiser and more evolved take that finally rescues Jesus from the narrow old Bible. It removes the judgment, softens the sin, makes repentance optional, treats doctrine as a personal preference, blesses whatever identity is in front of it, and then calls the whole renovation progress.

But you cannot improve Jesus by contradicting Him. You can't make Christianity more loving by deleting the commands of Christ. You can't rescue the gospel by cutting out the parts that expose sin, and you can't claim to follow Jesus while treating His own apostles as outdated men who didn't know better. A Christianity that's been corrected by the culture isn't a better Christianity. It's just the culture wearing a Christian costume, and eventually the costume slips.

This Is a Call to Repent

I need you to hear my heart on all of this, because tone gets lost in writing. I didn't write any of this because I hate anyone. I wrote it because eternity is real. Sin is real. Judgment is real. The cross is real. The resurrection is real. And Jesus Christ is Lord, whether a church admits it or not.

Which means there's real hope in here too. A church that abandoned Scripture can repent. A pastor who compromised can repent. Leaders who blessed sin can repent. A whole congregation that bowed to the culture can turn around. But it has to stop lying first. Stop calling rebellion love. Stop calling compromise grace. Stop calling unbelief openness. Stop calling cowardice compassion. Stop calling evil good. Just turn back. The mercy of Jesus is bigger than the failure of any church that truly repents. The only people that mercy can't reach are the ones still insisting they've done nothing wrong.

The Warning Is Clear

So let me lay it out one more time, as plainly as I know how. A church that rejects Scripture isn't free. It's deceived. A church that refuses to confess Jesus isn't open-minded. It's faithless. A church that won't define sin isn't compassionate. It's dishonest. A church that puts unbelievers in charge isn't inclusive. It's spiritually dead. A church that celebrates sexual rebellion isn't loving. It's leading people into sin. A church that swaps the gospel for activism isn't following Jesus. It's using Him. And a church that never calls anybody to repent isn't making disciples. It's just gathering a crowd.

God will not be mocked, and Jesus will not share His throne with the culture. The church belongs to Him. He bought it, He defines it, He commands it, and He will judge it. So let every pastor and elder and leader and congregation hear the warning and do something with it. Return to Christ. Return to Scripture. Return to the gospel. Call sinners to repentance. Preach the cross without a single apology. Build men and women who actually obey Jesus. Or be honest enough to admit that the name on your building no longer matches the God you serve. Because a church that blesses the very thing Jesus died to save people from isn't a light in the darkness anymore. It's become part of it.