380. (b) Illegitimate faith is all faith that departs from the one and only true faith. Illegitimate faith exists in people who climb up some other way and view the Lord not as God but only as a human being. All faith that departs from the one true faith is illegitimate. This is self-evident. Given that only one faith is true, it follows that any faith that departs from it is not true. The marriage between the Lord and the church generates everything that is good and that is true in the church. Everything that is essentially goodwill and essentially faith comes from that marriage. Any goodwill and faith that are not from that marriage come from an illegitimate bed, not a legitimate one. They come from either a polygamous marriage bed or an adulterous one. Every faith that acknowledges the Lord and yet adopts false and heretical beliefs comes from a polygamous bed.
A faith that acknowledges three lords over one church comes from an adulterous bed. It is like a single woman who is promiscuous; or like a married woman who has a husband but rents herself out overnight to two other men, and when she sleeps with them she calls each of them her husband. Therefore these types of faith are called illegitimate.
In many passages the Lord calls people with these types of belief "adulterers. " He also means people like this when he mentions thieves and robbers in John:
Truly I say to you, those who do not enter through the door to the sheepfold but instead climb up some other way are thieves and robbers. I am the door. Anyone who enters through me will be saved. (John 10:1, 9)
Coming into "the sheepfold" is coming into the church and also coming into heaven. It means coming into heaven because heaven and the church are one. Nothing else constitutes heaven except the church in the spiritual world. Therefore just as the Lord is the bridegroom and husband of the church, he is also the bridegroom and husband of heaven.
[2] To test and find out whether a given faith is a legitimate or an illegitimate offspring, one can use the three indications presented just above: acknowledgment that the Lord is the Son of God; acknowledgment that he is the God of heaven and earth; and acknowledgment that he is one with the Father. The more a given faith departs from these essentials, the more illegitimate it is.
People who view the Lord not as God but only as a human being have a faith that is both illegitimate and adulterous. This is obvious from two atrocious heresies, the Arian heresy and the Socinian heresy, which have been anathematized by and cut off from the Christian church because they deny the Lord's divinity and climb up another way. I am afraid that these abominations lie hidden in the general spirit of people in the church.
Astounding to say, the more that people believe they have better scholarship and judgment than others, the more readily they latch onto, and adopt as their own, ideas that the Lord is human but not divine and that because he is human he could not be divine. When people adopt these ideas as their own, they join the club of Arians and Socinians who in the spiritual world are in hell.
[3] The reason for this general spirit among people in the church today is that all of us have a spirit who is allied with us. Without that spirit we could not think analytically, rationally, or spiritually. Without those types of thinking we would be brute animals, not human beings. We all invite to ourselves a spirit who is similar to the desire in our will and the consequent perception in our intellect. If we develop good desires through truths from the Word and through living by those truths, we connect an angel from heaven to ourselves. On the other hand, if we develop evil desires through convincing ourselves of false beliefs and through living an evil life, we connect spirits from hell to ourselves. Once these evil spirits are connected to us, we increasingly develop a kind of sibling relationship with satans. Then we become more and more convinced of falsities that are against the truths in the Word and more and more hardened in an Arian and Socinian loathing for the Lord, because no satan can stand to hear any truth from the Word or to say the name Jesus. If satans hear these things, they turn into furies running around and uttering blasphemy. Then if light from heaven flows in they throw themselves headfirst into caves, into their own pitch darkness. In those places they have a light like that of night birds in the dark or like that of cats in basements when they are chasing mice. This is how all people who deny the Lord's divinity and the Word's holiness in their heart and in their faith turn out after death. Their inner self has this nature no matter how well their outer self does impressions and pretends to be Christian. I know this is true, because I have seen it and heard it.
[4] There are people who honor the Lord as their Redeemer and Savior with their mouth and lips alone but view him in their heart and spirit as a mere human being. In every case, when these people speak and teach, their mouth is like a jar full of honey but their heart is like a jar full of bile. Their words are like pastries but their thoughts are like poisoned wine. They themselves are like cake rolls with little worms inside. If they are priests, they are like pirates at sea who fly the flag of a peaceful country, but when a nearby ship signals to them as allies, they replace that flag with a pirate flag and capture the ship and its passengers.
They are also like serpents of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil who approach you as if they were angels of light. They hold apples in their hand from that tree that have been painted with deep red colors as if they were plucked from the tree of life. They offer them and say, "God knows that on the day you eat these, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil" (Genesis 3:5). When you eat, you follow the serpent into some underworld and you make your home with it. All around that underworld there are satans who ate the apples of Arius and Socinus.
People like this are also meant by the person who came [to the wedding] but was not dressed in a wedding garment and was thrown into outer darkness (Matthew 22:11-13). The wedding garment is faith that the Lord is the Son of God, is the God of heaven and earth, and is one with the Father.
People who honor the Lord with only their mouth and their lips, while in heart and spirit they regard him as a mere human being, and who reveal their thoughts and convince others to believe those thoughts are spiritual murderers. The worst of them are spiritual cannibals. Human life comes from love and faith in the Lord. If this essential ingredient of faith and love is removed - the recognition that the Lord is the human God and the divine Human - our life becomes death; its removal kills and devours us the way a wolf kills and devours a lamb.
