Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing 3: Their Activity
Image by Kiki Falconer
“Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves.”
Introduction
This is the third instalment in a series on Matthew 7:15-23.
In my previous post I reflected on the identity of the wolves in sheep’s clothing, examining the three perspectives from which Jesus describes them. I concluded:
“Jesus combines the OT figures of wolves and false prophets, warning about phoney prophets who are dangerous, destructive people, using and abusing others in pursuit of their own gain. Additionally, Jesus extends the OT idea of a false prophet as a cover-up artist, since the prophet-wolves now cover for themselves by projecting a persona of safety and harmlessness, thereby blending into the flock on which they feed. … like the hypocritical Pharisees, they hide their true nature under a carefully cultivated exterior.”
Now we turn our attention to the prophet-wolves’ activity, seeking to discern it from the metaphor itself, the OT background (see the previous post), and the context and concerns of the Sermon on the Mount. These must function as controls on any conclusions that we draw.
Before outlining a few things which I think we can deduce about their activity, I will first highlight a false assumption often made about them.
Series Outline
Here’s a brief outline of the series, with this post highlighted:
Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing : Introduction
Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing: Their Identity
Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing: Their Activity
Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing: Their Paternity
Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing: Their Discovery Part 1
Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing: Their Discovery Part 2
Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing: Their Destiny
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False Assumption: The wolves in Matthew 7 harm through heresy
Do the wolves in sheep’s clothing attack through false doctrine and heresy?
It is often assumed, without argument, that the way the prophet-wolves cause harm is through false doctrine. We touched on this briefly in the second post, in relation to the meaning of “false prophet” (pseudoprophetes), but it warrants more extended reflection.
There are three problems with this assumption.
Problem 1: Understanding a prophet’s role to be essentially a doctrinal one
A prophet’s primary focus was not doctrinal, the instruction of the flock in the truth. It lay elsewhere.
In the OT, they were servants of the Lord who called the nation to repentance, to forsake sin and turn back to the God of the covenant. They called the people to account in the light of the Mosaic law. In this light, it is noteworthy that Matthew associates the OT prophets with righteousness. They were righteous men (13:17; 23:24-25), who were persecuted for righteousness sake (5:10-11). They told the nation where they stood with God in view of their covenantal obligations, and cast a future vision of peace and security for the repentant and obedient.
Similarly, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus—who speaks from the mount as a prophet like (but greater than) Moses (5:1; 8:1)—calls people to a life of true righteousness (5:20) in the light of the law’s fulfilment in himself. And, like the prophets of old, he makes it clear that his audience’s destiny hinges on their response to his message (Matt 7:13-29).
A key part of a faithful prophet’s role was proclaiming “peace and safety” to the obedient in the land, and “woe and judgment” upon the disobedient. A mark of a false prophet’s teaching is severing the link between righteousness and salvation, proclaiming “peace, peace” when there is no peace (Jer 6:14; 8:11), thereby using their office to whitewash sin (Ezek 13:10, 16; 22:28).
In this light, the false prophets of Mt 7:15 are people who do not represent the Jesus-fulfilled will of God set out in the Sermon (the narrow path that leads to life, 7:13-14). They substitute a Pharisee-like external righteousness for the greater righteousness taught and exemplified by Jesus (5:20), and whitewash unrighteous behaviour—in the first instance their own—severing the link Jesus himself makes between obedience to his words and safety on the day of judgment (Matt 7:13-29).
Problem 2: Not understanding that the false prophets of Matthew 7:15 are phoney prophets
As we saw in the last post in this series, what made the prophet-wolves false was not primarily their teaching. They themselves are false. They lie about their identity, claiming to be prophet-sheep when in fact they are prophet-wolves. Their persona, their harmless, carefully cultivated exterior is what speaks “peace, peace” to the flock. This involves more than just their teaching (though not less). In this they are like the Pharisees, who have the appearance of righteousness, by which they whitewash an interior full of hypocrisy and lawlessness (Mt 23:25-28).
Therefore, what makes them counterfeit is not primarily that they teach lies but that they live a lie. The whole caboodle is counterfeit. This needs highlighting, since it is a key implication of Jesus’ metaphor—the prophet-wolves represent the broad way by embodying it.
The disconcerting reality we would rather avoid is that our lives are an articulation of the truth and wisdom we espouse. If, for example, we give expression to bitter envy and selfish ambition, then we (lit. in the Greek) “lie against the truth” (James 3:14). If that’s the case, then a prophet-wolf’s life of destruction and habituated deceit is itself a perpetual lie against God’s truth revealed in Jesus.
Problem 3: Collapsing the wolf’s behaviour into the act of prophesying
The assumption that the prophet-wolves harm through heresy narrowly tethers their wolfish activity to the activity and content of their prophesying. This is unwarranted in the light of how Jesus’ complex metaphor functions. Since their description as wolves is a statement of their true nature (“within they are ravenous wolves”), all that they do is wolfish. They are evil trees producing bad fruit (Matt 7:17).
The office of prophet both gives the wolf access to what they ravenously want (money, power, sex, or status), and provides cover for the activities by which they coercively control and abuse the sheep to satisfy their appetite. What makes wolves in sheep’s clothing so dangerous is that everything they do serves their ravenous appetite, prophesying included.
Remember that though the prophet-wolves Jesus has in view are “Christian” prophets (“Lord, Lord, didn’t we prophesy in your name,” 7:22), they are the same type of hypocritical illusion artists as the Pharisees of Jesus’ critique. And the Pharisees, as we know, were religious conservatives, with a particular brand of rigorous biblicism. But Jesus perceived that their biblicism covered for pride, greed, and power mongering.
We must not naively imagine that wolves in sheep’s clothing are only found within theologically progressive circles. Matthew 7:15-23 does not support that presumption, and a commitment to such a naive, narrow reading of Jesus’ teaching will only serve to protect theologically conservative wolves.
Objection: Wolves are False Teachers in Acts 20:29-30
Are the wolves in Matthew 7 the same as the wolves in Acts 20?
One possible objection to what I’m arguing here comes from Acts 20:29-30, where Paul warns the Ephesians elders of savage wolves—outsiders who will come in and not spare the flock (v. 29). He then warns of insiders (v. 30) who will speak “crooked” or “perverse things” (diestrammena). It is generally assumed by interpreters that the description of the wayward insiders further clarifies the (unspecified) danger posed by the outsiders, the wolves.
Though this is not certain, it seems likely that v. 30 further elaborates the danger posed in v. 29. If so, just as Jesus develops the wolf metaphor beyond the OT prophets’ use by creating a composite prophet-wolf figure, so Paul apparently goes one step further still, building on his Lord’s teaching by then equating their wolfish behaviour and their teaching. The prior uses of the wolf metaphor are not thereby sublimated, let alone invalidated. The biblical development is as follows:
Zephaniah and Ezekiel—wolves harm by exploitation, abuse, and murder, with the protection of prophets (who cover over their evil).
Jesus—wolves harm by being ravenous (for the sheep and how they can satiate their appetite) under the pretence of being prophets (thereby covering over their own evil nature and activity).
Paul—wolves harm by teaching falsehoods.
These are all different ideas, and we would do well not to blur these distinctions and, thereby, lose the Bible’s rich witness to the enemy’s strategies. All of these wolf types are deadly, and horrific. Where wolves do harm to Christ’s flock today they might, of course, function within one or more of these complementary paradigms. Recent years have brought terrible revelations of abuse, harm and cover up within evangelical churches and institutions. Most of the egregious headline topping examples would appear to fit within category 2 above.
Jesus’ particular focus is on wolves who cloak themselves in falsehood and deceit so as to enable harm, thereby promoting a way of life that leads along the broad way to destruction. As it happens, this particular conception of wolf activity is close to that of Polemon, a scholar and politician who lived c. AD 88-144, who described wolves as “bold, treacherous, vicious, plundering, greedy, harmful, deceitful, offering help in order to harm.” (Physiognomy 172)
The prophet-wolves of Matt 7:15-23 are both ministers of violence and masters of deceit. In terms of their behaviour, therefore, we would expect a tangled web of cunning, conniving, grasping, overpowering, deceiving, dissembling, and destroying, camouflaged by the ongoing spectacle of good-cop play acting.
I now offer five “B’s” by way of fleshing out the prophet-wolves’ behaviour and it’s outcomes. The first gives rise to all the others, in a cascading avalanche of destruction and deception.
The Prophet-Wolves’ Destructive Behaviour
Bad Fruit
The wolves are identified by the fruit of their lives (7:16-20). In the final two posts of this series we will consider the fruit test more closely. For now, it suffices to note that to speak of the prophet-wolves’ behaviour in the terms of Jesus’ Sermon, is to talk of bad fruit. Bad fruit is what they do.
That sounds rather anticlimactic until you consider that the good fruit of the kingdom is truth, righteousness, and love, flowing from single-minded trust and devotion to the Father; and that bad fruit is the opposite—self-serving ravenous appetite leading to hatred and wickedness, cloaked in hypocritical deceit.
So, say a wolf murders under cover of darkness. That murderous wolf bears the visible murderous fruit called anger (5:21-26). He can’t help it because that’s his nature. And, say that same wolf always covers his tracks and buries the bodies. That deceitful wolf bears the visible fruit of dissembling and doublespeak (5:33-37) without even realising it.
But all prophet-wolves violently use and abuse particular sheep (often the weak, vulnerable ones) to satiate their lust for … fill in the blank. They do not feed the sheep. They feed on the sheep. It’s not always sex or money that satiates the prophet-wolf. Some find among Christ’s meek flock the status, the superiority, the control that they would never have if left to roam in a wolf-eat-wolf world. Hence the link some have drawn between narcissism and church abuse.
Violence breeds cover up, and the more the violence, the more the deceit needed to hide the evidence. And the greater the deceit, the more the opportunity for harm. Evil breeds evil. Once unleashed, the cascading carnage is hard to stop.
As R. A. Bennett says in commenting on the godless wolves, priests, and prophets of Zephaniah 3: “The soul of a community and the fabric of a society cannot continue intact if justice, right dealings, respect, and honesty are lacking among its leaders” (Zephaniah, NIB, 694). Where their opposites are pursued instead, the consequences are devastating.
2. Bleeding Sheep
Where there is bad fruit, there will be bleeding sheep. Whether physical or verbal, the wolf’s attacks, being always cloaked in various layers and forms of deceit, inflict profound injury.
Where can we turn to hear first-hand sheep testimony of such violence and its effects? The Psalms. There is no space to explore them here, but note how frequently the psalmists portray their enemies as both murderous and mendacious. For example, in Ps 5 David’s enemies are characterised as both evildoers and liars, both violent and deceitful (vv. 5-6). In Ps 6, David is “languishing,” and his “bones are shaking” (v. 2). He “groans” and “drenches his couch every night” (v. 6).
David expresses the anguish of both body and soul, the rupturing of spiritual and social peace, the confusion of betrayal, and the powerlessness of the oppressed. What God has carefully, lovingly knit together (within the human mind, body, and society), wolves and lions tear apart.
Although some sheep suffer injury from direct attacks, others will suffer through being misled, as they follow the wolf’s merely external religion, untouched by grace, or even follow suit in seeking the worldly rewards of lawlessness.
Ezekiel, after describing the behaviour of the wolves and the prophets who cover for them (Ezek 22:27-28), notes that “the people of the land have practiced extortion and committed robbery. They have oppressed the poor and needy and unlawfully exploited the resident alien” (Ezek 22:29). In other words, they have followed the wolves in their oppression of the vulnerable. Evil breeds evil.
3. Broad Road
Both the mistreated and the misled are at risk of spiritual ruin, of leaving the narrow path that leads to life, and taking the broad road to destruction (7:13-14).
Within the context of the Sermon, the broad path does not represent worldly libertinism, at least not in form. It represents the external righteousness exemplified by the Pharisees. However, it approximates in substance to worldly religion and ethics in being achievable through conformity to the crowd (not Christ), and in allowing the lusts of the heart (for control, power, position, pleasure etc) to roam free. Therefore it is broad or “easy,” even if, as was the case with the Pharisees, it involves a restrictive application of the law, and the oppressive laying of burdens on people’s shoulders (23:4).
4. Big Bible
We are not told what the prophet-wolves prophesy, or how they use the Bible in their prophesying. What we would expect them to do, in line with their spiritual kin in the OT, is to use the Bible to promote the appearance of safety and peace.
Of course, this can be achieved by twisting Scripture to justify evil. But it can also be achieved by giving the Bible prominence, making it big, keeping it front and centre in the life of the flock. Depending on context, this may look like a scrupulous adherence to theological orthodoxy. Or it may look like a commitment to progressive ethics. Either way, it will form part of the camouflage of conformity to religious and cultural norms, a visible sacrament that the wolf represents what is good, noble, and trustworthy.
The visible chink in their biblical armour will be the failure to allow the Bible to critique tribal norms, even where those norms transparently fail to conform to God’s law as fulfilled in Christ. True righteousness is concerned both for what is inward (rather than merely external, see Mt 6:1-21; 23:5-7, 25-28), and for what is most weighty (e.g. justice, mercy, and faithfulness, Mt 23:23). A prophet-wolf cares for neither—both represent a threat—and so won’t let the Bible loose on accomplishing both deep and extensive spiritual and moral renewal. That is what true prophets do.
5. Blasphemous Witness
When Isaiah foretold the plight of Judah in exile, he lamented that one of the terrible consequences of their punishment was that “[God’s] name is continually blasphemed all day long” (Isa 52:5). Called to be a light to the nations, their sin had made both them and their God the taunt of the nations.
Since Israel’s rebellion was the ultimate cause of the Gentiles’ blaspheming of God, the apostle Paul reapplies the indictment of Isaiah to his contemporaries who had physically returned to the land of Israel, but who were still hypocrites in their religion:
“If you know his will and approve of what is excellent, because you are instructed in the law; and if you are persuaded that you are a guide to the blind, and a light to those in darkness … You who teach others, do you teach yourself … ? Just as it is written, ‘For the name of God is blasphemed among the nations because of you.’” (Rom 2:18-24)
In fulfilling Israel’s law, Jesus passes on her light-bearing mantle to his disciples: “You are the salt of the earth … you are the light of the world …” (Mt 5:13-14). When our being and behaviour is in accordance with the righteousness of the kingdom, people will “see your good works and glorify your father in heaven.” (Mt 5:16)
But what if what people see is not good works bringing glory to the Father, but wolves on the loose, evil breeding evil, and sheep, rather than grazing in peace, lying in their own blood? The answer is obvious.
When wolves are allowed to roam free among the sheep no one is unaffected: not the sheep (obviously), not God, and not the watching world who look on and conclude that the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is an impotent tribal deity just like all the others. God have mercy on us if we give them reason to think so.
In posts 4-5 of this series we will think more closely about the fruit test that Jesus gives to his disciples. The next post forms a bridge between posts 3 & 5 by thinking about why the fruit test, in the form of two categorically different types of tree, reliably identifies prophet-wolves. To preempt my argument: it does so because it is a paternity test, not a performance test.
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