punishment

The Punishment for Being Deceived

“The punishment of the prophet and the punishment of the inquirer shall be alike” (Ezek 14:9-11)

It is often overlooked, that according to Scripture both deception and being deceived have a moral quality. The person who embraces fatal errors is not simply a victim of clever deceivers, but is himself a partner in evil. This is because deception is made possible only by the deceived person having already craved some excuse or plausible justification to depart from the Lord. By nature, lying doctrine leads to separation from the things of God. But lies take root only because they find soil ready to receive them. 

You see a person's hunger by how he shovels food greedily into his mouth. Likewise, hearts which gulp down fatal religious or intellectual doctrines reveal an appetite for errors which excuse sin. When in God's providence believers are misled to entertain serious error, the Spirit of God who lives within them, who is contrary to lies, makes that error spiritually upsetting and untasteful so that they disgorge themselves of it. It is not in the nature of the regenerate to stomach damning lies, but to be repulsed by them and to vomit them out.