Paul and the False Apostles
1I hope you will put up with a little of my foolishness; but you are already doing that. 2I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. I promised you to one husband, to Christ, so that I might present you as a pure virgin to him. 3But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent's cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ. 4For if someone comes to you and preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it easily enough. 5But I do not think I am in the least inferior to those "super-apostles." 6I may not be a trained speaker, but I do have knowledge. We have made this perfectly clear to you in every way.
Dig Deeper
In a movie I saw recently, one of the characters was supposed to be the pilot of a futuristic helicopter that served as a shuttle for rich people. It was his birthday, however, and one of the other pilots offered to go in his place so that he could go home to his family. He said that he couldn’t because the client had requested him specifically. The other pilot pointed out, though, that they didn’t know what he looked like, so he would just go and pretend to be his friend. He did, and no one was the wiser, until, of course, a little later in the plot when the mistaken identity became a major part of the plot twist. They didn’t know the real pilot from the imposter, however, because they didn’t really know the real pilot.
In this section Paul begins to identify for the Corinthians how they can know the difference between those approved by God and those not. The real issue can be boiled down to who is presenting the authentic versions of Jesus, the Spirit, and the gospel. Implicit in this appeal by Paul is that the Corinthians must know the real Jesus that Paul presented to them so that they can identify the imposters. This section can be particularly instructive for those of us who live in such confusing pluralistic times where it seems as if on every street corner and every TV channel, someone else is presenting a different version of Jesus and claiming it to be the real one.
Paul begins with a bit of irony. If the Corinthians can put up with the foolishness of his opponents as they have, then they can bear with a little seeming foolishness from Paul as he makes a point. He is jealous for them in the sense that God was jealous for the Israelites in the Old Testament. God did not want the Israelites harming themselves by seeking after false gods, and Paul does not want the Corinthians to harm themselves by seeking after false versions of the gospel.
Paul has gone to a great deal of work to prepare the people of Corinth as a beautiful bride for the Messiah. In the Old Testament, it was quite common to refer to YHWH as the husband of Israel and Israel as His bride (Hos. 1-3; Ezek. 16; Isa. 49:18; 50:1-2; 54:1-8; 62:5). Mark 2:19 makes reference to the Messiah as the bridegroom and in Ephesians 5:22-23, Paul applies this image to describe the relationship between Christ and His Church. Paul makes a double point by using this imagery. The first is that the Messiah’s people, the Church, have now become the true people of God, replacing the nation of Israel. The second is that, as the betrothed, they must remain faithful to the Messiah. The last thing he wants is the bride to start taking a look at other men before the final wedding.
Paul has talked quite a bit about his opponents, but now he gets to the heart of the matter and accuses them of something far more serious. When they teach the things they have and stand in opposition to Paul, they are actually teaching a different presentation of what Jesus accomplished in his ministry, a different version of how one receives and grows in the Spirit, and completely different conditions for belonging to the people of God.
These false apostles were teaching that Jesus had come and suffered so that we didn’t have to. He hadn’t opened the door to the Kingdom, allowing people an access to it that would bring misunderstanding and persecution from those who did not possess and did not understand the Kingdom. Rather, they taught that Christ had brought the entire fullness of the Kingdom now, and that the true signs of that were health, wealth, and freedom from suffering. Any lack in someone’s life or any suffering were sure signs that that person did not possess the fullness of the version of the Kingdom of Jesus they were teaching. This was a Santa Claus Jesus who would give anyone anything they wanted. Paul’s concern was that it was enough like the true Jesus, with enough similarities to the true Kingdom, that people who didn’t intimately know the authentic Jesus might be confused. This Jesus, who would give all the benefits without repentance and dying to self was just that sort of thing that appealed to the felt needs of people and could be extremely dangerous. It is dangerous because it convinces people that they can have everything that makes them happy. It keeps people focused on themselves when they should be learning to embrace the fact that they have died to themselves.
The true gospel, however, is not that at all. It is the truth that Jesus did suffer, die, and raise from the dead. He does allow us to enter into His Kingdom and the age to come in the present age but it isn’t so that we can have an eternal Christmas morning, with Christ giving us everything we want like some spoiled little children. The real gospel is the fact that Christ preached that we will suffer and go through many difficult times, but He promised to walk with us and take us through those times, more refined and purified than we had ever been. Paul’s opponents didn’t like this version of the gospel. It didn’t give them the status, reputation, wealth, and comforts that they wanted. If you really believed in Paul’s version of the gospel and patterned your life after the suffering Messiah, you might wind up looking like, well. . . Paul. And that’s the last thing they wanted. Paul preached and lived as though the Kingdom had been inaugurated but not fully consummated, and that it was up to the Messiah’s people to share in his life of suffering in order to expand the Kingdom. His opponents wanted a Kingdom that was already here in full and could be accessed like an eternal, bottomless ATM machine, constantly dispensing anything that we can set our hearts on.
Paul didn’t have all the rhetorical prowess in presenting the real Kingdom, but rather than that making him inferior as his detractors had claimed, it made his humble presentation of the gospel all the more powerful. But the question remains, how could the Corinthians (and us) know the authentic gospel? The answer is simple: by making every effort to know the real Jesus. Once we do that, we can spot the Santa Claus Jesus from a mile away.
Devotional Thought
Which Messiah do you seek after? Are you faithful to the suffering Messiah, the crucified and risen Messiah? Is that the Messiah that you embrace and live out in your own life or do you occasionally find yourself seeking after the Santa Claus Messiah?
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