Know your enemy; study the Bible

But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. . . . For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ. And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness; whose end shall be according to their works. 2 Cor. 11:3, 13-15

There is a kind of "simplicity" that is good. According to the apostle, we should not want to be "corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ." I think what he means by that is something along the lines of, "I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ and him crucified" (1 Cor. 2:2), that we are not adding to the gospel anything foreign to it.

But there is another kind of simplicity in vogue in certain circles of the church, which claims that theological precision is not necessary and is, in fact, detrimental to the faith. Against this type of simplicity we must recoil with revulsion and repudiate it with all our might. For if we embrace such a position, we rob ourselves of the ability to discern the deceptions of the evil one and his apostles. The devil does not come with lies in your face, but he will come wrapping them in Scripture, with half-lies that have the appearance of the truth. We must be able to stand against them, and the only way we can do this is if we are careful and diligent students of the Scriptures.

The devil is still at it, my friend. He is at work, as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour, and if he can't do it by persecution, he will do it by deception (1 Pet. 5:8). He is a liar and he murders by his lies (Jn. 8:44). So today, take your stand in the word of God. Know your enemy, but understand that you can only know your enemy if you know your Bibles. So know the Bible and know it well. Obey the Bible and obey it well. Only as we do so will we be able to discover the duplicity of those who claim to be apostle of righteousness when in fact they are the servants of Satan.