What does the Bible say about heresy?

Use these prefiltered searches to craft sermons and prayers, offer pastoral care, or plan worship services around the theme of heresy.

• 1 Corinthians 11:19, divisions within the church body
• Galatians 5:19–20, quarrels, dissensions, factions
• Colossians 2:8, empty deceit 
• 2 Peter 2:1, false teachers will bring in heresies
• Titus 3:9–11, avoid worthless quarrels

Though heresy in the New Testament originally meant a faction or a sect, by the second century it came to represent a corruption of theological truth corresponding to the distortions of false teachers. As 2 Peter 2:1 says, false teachers will arise in the church and bring in destructive opinions [haíresis].

As a human construct with a strong distaste for revealed mystery, heresy cleans up orthodoxy's bad math—on the Trinity, for example (e.g., Arianism), or on the two natures of Christ (e.g., Docetism). As it is almost always an oversimplification of God's revealed mystery, heresy is a species of theological laziness. As it is almost always a triumph of human reason over divine revelation (Colossians 2:8), heresy is also grounded in human hubris and hence is a species of faction classified as one of the works of the flesh, along with such things as licentiousness, idolatry, and envy (Galatians 5:19–20).

A sermon on heresy can explore how heresy is more than mere disagreement on peripheral matters. It is the opposite of orthodoxy. Thus, in its opposition to the truth (2 Timothy 3:8), it is a denial of the One who is the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6, 1 John 2:21–22). Heretical persons are thus to be opposed and avoided by believers who, led by the Word and Spirit, "contend for the faith that was once and for all handed on to the saints" (Jude 3).