“False teachers can increase their credibility by quoting scriptures and claiming to explain the difficult passages, especially in Paul’s letters, which ‘ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other scriptures to their own destruction.'” (2 Peter 3:16) – “Once Saved, Always Saved?: A Study in perseverance and inheritance” by David Pawson, p. 97
“Explain the difficult passages” to teach false doctrines like: “once saved always saved,” “only believe” / “just trust in,” “Paul didn’t really mean women can’t be pastors,” etc.
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I rearranged the order in Ephesians 4:12-16 to make this point: when the “trickery of men,” their “craftiness,” their twisting God’s words is exposed, their teaching of “wiles of error” and “winds of doctrine,” THEN WE’LL ATTAIN “UNITY of the faith,” become spiritually “full grown,” walking in the “fullness of Christ” — God’s clearly stated words here:
[When the] “TRICKERY of men in CRAFTINESS after the WILES OF ERROR” [stops producing] “children, tossed back and forth and carried about with every WIND OF DOCTRINE” [we’ll have] “the PERFECTING of the saints, to the work of serving, to the building up of the body of Christ; UNTIL WE *ALL* ATTAIN to the UNITY of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a FULL GROWN man, to THE MEASURE OF THE STATURE OF THE FULLNESS OF CHRIST … but speaking TRUTH in love, we may GROW UP IN ALL THINGS INTO HIM, who is the head, Christ; from whom all the body, being fitted and knit together through that which every joint supplies, according to the working in measure of each individual part, makes the body increase to the building up of itself in LOVE.”
