Pastor, “If I don’t do this, God doesn’t love me” is how cults start. Here’s why.

You’ve met someone who left a group down the road and still flinches when they miss a meeting. Or someone still inside who says, without blinking, “If I don’t do this, God doesn’t love me.” Listen closely and you’ll often hear the other half: “If I don’t do this, my church will reject me.” That’s a sermon of the serpent. Here’s how to spot what’s underneath it, even when it doesn’t look weird at all.

What cultism is

Cultism is legalism taken to its end. Licentiousness gives birth to hedonism; legalism gives birth to cultism. It’s no longer using God’s standards as something you must do to attain grace. It goes far beyond that: now you’ve got to wear certain clothes, keep particular rules, do this and this and this.

Here’s the core line: cultism is what happens when a third-tier issue gets promoted to a first-tier, salvation-level issue. The mechanism is tier collapse. The engine is control.

The serpent’s question

Underneath every cult’s list is one hiss: “Did God really say grace was enough?” It’s the garden’s first lie, “Did God really say?”, aimed at the gospel itself. Paul fought it in his own day, with food sacrificed to idols and with circumcision. Every time, the move was the same: add a requirement and you negate grace by making it earned. He called it “a different gospel” (Galatians 1:6).

Step 1 — Teach the tiers

Closed-handed issues are what make something orthodox, and the Nicene Creed settles those. We believe the creed, we believe orthodoxy, and we don’t go beyond it. Cultism takes things the creed never mentions and makes them salvific.

So teach your people the three tiers. What’s closed-handed? What’s open-handed? A church that knows the difference can smell tier collapse a mile away. A church that doesn’t will treat any confident leader with a list as if he’s speaking for God.

Step 2 — Learn where they got off track

When I was a young pastor, I got a book of cults. I wanted to study some of these sermons of the serpent. What struck me was the pattern. In the Christian-adjacent cults, it was a list of requirements: this, this, this, this, and then maybe Christ. Or no Christ at all. Another gospel. All of it was works-based righteousness to attain something God gives freely.

Learn the cults near your church and exactly where they got off track. Some won’t look exotic. A small group teaching that you must be baptized in their church to be saved. Another saying that watching TV puts your salvation on the line. Not always weird. Often it’s just leaving the creed and making secondary things salvific.

Step 3 — Watch for the control lever

The lists don’t stay lists to appease God. Once something is salvific, it becomes a lever the leader uses to control the people underneath him. The group now owns your standing with God. The heart of it is, “I will control my salvation and the people underneath me.” That’s controlling. It’s wicked.

Watch for the downstream markers: everyone starts to look alike and talk alike, loyalty gets demanded, and the control gets tighter. Contrast that with healthy holiness. Real holiness is aspirational, under the Holy Spirit’s conviction. Cultic holiness is conditional and controlling.

Step 4 — Reach them with compassion

Nobody joins a bizarre group on day one. It usually starts from a genuine place: “I know I’m not right with God.” Then the group hands them a list, and if they can do those things, they think they’ll attain righteousness. There are genuinely good people who end up in cults because they wanted to be right with God. Three years later they’ve lost their money and they’re wondering what happened.

So don’t mock them. Meet the desire underneath. They’re looking for the right thing in the wrong outlet. Show them the one way that’s free: “If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:9). For them, that’s a brand-new worldview, and it takes patience.

We don’t do things to attain God’s love. God loves us because of His Son, Jesus Christ. Cultism isn’t always strange. Often it’s just leaving the creed and making secondary issues salvific. The idols can’t hear anyone. The Lord Jesus Christ can hear you, save you, and make you brand new.