2 Corinthians 11:1-15 English Standard Version Paul and the False Apostles 11 I wish you would bear with me in a little foolishness. Do bear with me! 2 For I feel a divine jealousy for you, since I betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a pure virgin to Christ. 3 But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ. 4 For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough. 5 Indeed, I consider that I am not in the least inferior to these super-apostles. 6 Even if I am unskilled in speaking, I am not so in knowledge; indeed, in every way we have made this plain to you in all things. 7 Or did I commit a sin in humbling myself so that you might be exalted, because I preached God's gospel to you free of charge? 8 I robbed other churches by accepting support from them in order to serve you. 9 And when I was with you and was in need, I did not burden anyone, for the brothers who came from Macedonia supplied my need. So I refrained and will refrain from burdening you in any way. 10 As the truth of Christ is in me, this boasting of mine will not be silenced in the regions of Achaia. 11 And why? Because I do not love you? God knows I do! 12 And what I am doing I will continue to do, in order to undermine the claim of those who would like to claim that in their boasted mission they work on the same terms as we do. 13 For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. 14 And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. 15 So it is no surprise if his servants, also, disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. Their end will correspond to their deeds. It wouldn't be a Pauline epistle without Paul taking some time to spell out the real gospel and tell people to watch out for the false teachers and false prophets that were preaching and teaching a false gospel.
We've already established that Paul feels like a spiritual parent to the members of these churches, and he says here that he has a divine jealousy for them (actually a godly trait) that their allegiance should belong to God and not anyone else. This is like the best man wanting the bride-to-be to stay pure for his friend the groom, and he has a kind of jealousy for the sake of his friend that the one that belongs to his friend not betray her vows, so that he can have the joy of presenting her pure to his friend the groom. Paul is afraid that the people may entertain the lies of these false teachers and false prophets as Eve gave ear to the lies of the devil in the Garden of Eden. Paul seems to indicate that they should not give any attention to anyone that preaches a different Jesus, a different Spirit, or a different gospel they they should not put up with such a person. There is no need to to be polite and listen to such lies just because such a person pretends to be a brother (or sister) in Christ. They are simply wolves in sheep's clothing. These false teachers seemed to falsely claim apostolic authority and tried to make themselves out to be "super-apostles" and Paul simply said he wasn't going to play that game. As Pastor Dwayne Carson told us at Liberty University, the kingdom of God is about "towels not titles." That quote is in reference to the last lesson that Jesus wanted to teach His disciples after Judas Iscariot left The Last Supper before being betrayed. First if you wanted any part of Him and His kingdom, you needed to let Him wash you, but He also gave this as a lesson to them that He as the Master washed their feet (the job of the lowest of the servants in the house) so they too should be about the business of being humble and washing each others' feet (serving each other, in in the lowly and dirty jobs). "The one who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted." Jesus told many parables about this, but the one that stands out to me is the one where you are to sit in the seat of least prominence so that the master of the banquet can promote you to a more important seat, but if you try to take the most important seat then the master may demote you and give your seat to another and you will be embossed because of your pride and arrogance. Paul here says that he was not a man used fancy lingo and jargon and crafty arguments--he spoke to them plainly. This is not because Paul was stupid, we know that he was extremely well-educated and that he debated with the best the world had to offer in terms of philosophers and scholars, but when he spoke to the everyday man on the street, the goal was for that person to understand what was being said and receive it and believe it, not to prove to everyone else looking and listening how smart Paul was at the risk of the clear meaning of the message being lost. This is one of the clear signs of a good teacher verses a bad teacher. Bad teachers often make everyone acknowledge their degrees and puff themselves up and give "lofty" answers to simple questions that either don't answer the question at all, or if they do they answer it in such a way where the goal of the answer is to say "if you were as smart as me, you would understand what I said, and you wouldn't need to ask such a question." This is truly infuriating when someone in trying to learn and all the "teacher" can do is put the student down to try to make themselves look better. Paul says to watch out for such "super-apostles" because their lack of humility is evidence that they are not from God and do not have the Spirit of the God living in them. Paul then rhetorically asks if it is somehow wrong or sinful for him to humble himself so that they can be exalted. We know the answer to that because we just talked about how Jesus commanded all of the apostles that were in the Upper Room with Him to take on the role of a doulos (the lowest of servants). Paul even points out that they need to watch out for people that try to profit from the gospel and are really con-men that cloak themselves in the robes of religion to try to scam people. Paul reminded them that he never took any money from them when preaching the gospel to them so that this would never be brought into question. It's more than that though as Paul says that all the other churches gave so that he could minister in Corinth and the Corinthians seemed to never even think about this issue to make any contribution to Paul's work among them or other places. Money was such an issue for them that Paul didn't want to confuse things by asking for money, but it did reveal something about the heart of the Corinthians. Paul also reminds them that he was in need and was right there in their midst and they did nothing to help, but rather there were Christians that came from Macedonia (a very poor area) to give Paul what he needed out of the little resources they had to offer. I'm sure this was meant to put the Corinthians to shame, and I don't think it's an accident that we saw Paul bringing up the Macedonians to the Corinthians in terms of the offering that they were raising for the Christians in Jerusalem. It was kind of like a "Do you really want to have egg on your face again?" Paul says that even so, despite all this, the gospel was still going forth in their region of the world, Achaia, the southern part of what we know today as Greece, where Macedonia is the northern part of what we know today as Greece. Paul also made sure to add that nothing he's saying means he doesn't love the Corinthians or in some way loves them less--I think he just wishes for the opportunity to be proud of them and brag about them to others like he has been able to do with the Macedonians. Paul wraps up by telling them to not believe those who come to them and claim to be on the same team as Paul--they know Paul and his co-workers by this point and there are others trying to use Paul's good name and work to take advantage of the Church. Paul compares these false teachers to the devil Himself as even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light (a messenger from God), just as these men are disguising themselves as apostles of Christ, which they are not. Paul says it is no surprise that these servants of the devil use the devil's tactics to lie, cheat and steal and to disguise themselves as the servants of righteous. Paul reminds the Corinthians that such men will get what's coming to them when God as Judge judges the living and the dead according to their deeds. They will get exactly what they deserved for preaching and teaching lies and leading people astray, trying even to deceive God's elect, as if that was possible. God is still going to work to save the remnant that He has set out to save and no trick or scheme of Satan or the servants of Satan will stop Him.
0 Comments
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
Daniel WestfallI will mostly use this space for recording my "journal" from my daily devotions as I hope to encourage others to read the Bible along with me and to leave a legacy for others. Archives
January 2025
Categories
All
|