Is the truth of Christ in you?
We've been talking of truth and lies. Truth and falsehoods. Truth and untruth. They are complete opposites and there are no gray areas in between. Gray areas we love to find and wallow in, gray areas that are soothing to the conscience and yet not holding too much pressure upon us. Gray areas exist all through our lives and in some aspects they are very necessary. How horrible it would be if we left no room in life for individual circumstances to matter. We see movies on tv all the time where there is that beginning- introducing the problem, the middle spent making the problem more realized, capturing the emotions through adversity- and then the ultimate end where the problem is resolved or not and sometimes were left feeling cheated by endings. Gray areas give us the black and white in startling contrast and then say lets see if we can't make this more acceptable, not too dark, not too light. Fortunately God deals in black and white and not grays. We don't have to live in murky gray areas, we can live in truth or in lies. We choose.
You know, even without being what one considers 'Godly' people live with a sense of right and wrong, a sense of fairness. People know when they do wrong, when they're not fair and yes they can be thrilled when they *get away* with being unfair, but they still know that it's unfair. They still have that sense of right and wrong, of truth and untruth. It's not just society which weighs us with strictures, it's humanity. It's being human. It's being humans answerable to a higher power, being accountable to God.
Is the truth of Christ in you?
Paul had the truth of Christ in him.
2 Corinthians
{11:1} Would to God ye could bear with me a little in my folly: and indeed bear with me.
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Here Paul is asking people to bear with him in his folly, not just asking for himself but ... 'would to God' they bear with him in his folly and not only in his folly but bear with him, period.
2 Corinthians
{11:2} For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.
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He was jealous with a GODLY jealousy. God's jealousy exists in that there is only one true God, one true Creator, one true Redeemer. No other Gods before God, none, not one and it's not a boasting thing, it's not a selfish claim, it's love, it's from love, it is love. God is love so completely that love doesn't exist without God, it just doesn't, not real love. Every bit of love we can feel we can feel because of God, and the love we know beyond feeling is of God. Love is of God.
Here Paul is saying he's jealous over the people with a Godly jealousy because he's espoused them to one husband, that he wants to present them as a virgin to Christ.
Think about it, it's a perfect analogy. One who is promised to another in the sacred bond of marriage is to be a virgin, to be solely for the one promised. Yes, it's very hard in this day and age in the culture I live in to recognize such a thing because remaining a virgin is something so foreign to most people. It's trivial, it's something that means little. Living in a culture of selfishness where denying self is frowned upon, or putting on airs is frowned upon, the majority of people are no longer virgins upon the marriage bed.
The church, the people of God are the bride of Christ, a bride espoused to Jesus who will come one day to claim His espoused virgin for the marriage when man and God by His grace live as one.
With so many seducing spirits about, with so many different claims to the *truth*, its easy to see how people can be seduced away by one other than their true partner.
Paul tells it like it is...
2 Corinthians
{11:3} But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.
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Beguiled by subtlety, corrupted from simplicity in Christ.
Such amazing words.
Corrupted from simplicity in Christ.
It doesn't take much to be seduced away when an expert in beguiling is working at you.
The simplicity in Christ. The Truth. His Truth. For by grace we are save through faith. The Truth. Simple truth, uncomplicated. Living in that truth. Living day to day knowing that by the grace of Christ we are save, by the grace of Christ we live.
The beguiling seducing spirits that would have us no longer espoused virgins waiting for our groom, but drawn away into untruth, into lies is very, very real. Real back then when Paul wrote this and real today as we read it.
2 Corinthians
{11:4} For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus, whom we have not preached, or if ye receive another spirit, which ye have not received, or another gospel, which ye have not accepted, ye might well bear with him.
Preaches another Jesus. People do that all the time. They preach another Jesus complicating Him up in their beguiling ways. But make no mistake- the do preach Jesus, just not the truth in Him. Where are Jesus' statement of beliefs so that you may join Him? Where are Jesus' rules and regulations? Where are Jesus' sticky fingers trying to reach into your pockets constantly? Where?
Yes, the simplicity in Christ is all caught up in the beguiling ways of false teachings of Christ. False, so close to the true the deception is hardly noticeable- subtlety, the same subtlety that Satan used on Eve.
2 Corinthians
{11:5} For I suppose I was not a whit behind the very chiefest apostles.
{11:6} But though I be rude in speech, yet not in knowledge; but we have been throughly made manifest among you in all things.
{11:7} Have I committed an offence in abasing myself that ye might be exalted, because I have preached to you the gospel of God freely?
{11:8} I robbed other churches, taking wages of them, to do you service.
{11:9} And when I was present with you, and wanted, I was chargeable to no man: for that which was lacking to me the brethren which came from Macedonia
supplied: and in all things I have kept myself from being burdensome unto you, and so will I keep myself.
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Paul wasn't claiming to be the best one to preach as he was. He was claiming honesty. He was claiming to preach the gospel of God freely. Robbing other churches in that he was drawing people from other churches and accepting the offerings of those he drew away so that he could continue to preach, to do the service appointed to him. He didn't take from them, he was supplied by others, he wasn't a burden at all to those he was preaching to.
2 Corinthians
{11:10} As the truth of Christ is in me, no man shall stop me of this boasting in the regions of Achaia.
The truth of Christ is in him.
No man could stop him from proclaiming this, the truth of Christ!
Why?
2 Corinthians
{11:11} Wherefore? because I love you not? God knoweth.
God knoweth why, God knows, God understands the love he has for Christ, for the truth of Christ which he could not stop from preaching to others out of that love.
2 Corinthians
{11:12} But what I do, that I will do, that I may cut off occasion from them which desire occasion; that wherein they glory, they may be found even as we.
The simplicity of Christ, the Truth of Christ. As long as we are true to that Truth of Christ and the Truth of Christ is in us, no one will have an occasion to speak otherwise. However that subtly is at work, and working hard...
{11:13} For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ.
{11:14} And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light.
{11:15} Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness; whose end shall be according to their works.
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Satan himself is transform into an angel of light.
No marvel.
No great thing that HIS Satan’s ministers are transformed into ministers of righteousness.
Deception! Deceived! Beguiled! Betrayed!
We shouldn't be shocked at all to realize that Satan works so closely to the truth with just enough deception that he and his followers appear to be ministers of righteousness.
We're not fooled by outright unsophisticated counterfeits.
Only those counterfeits so close to the truth it's all but undetectable that they're are counterfeit are the ones that fool us.
People counterfeit money and stores and such go to special lengths to see they aren't deceived. Ever see a cashier hold up your money to the light? They're checking for the seemingly hidden shadings and such that are embedded in the money, shadings that are hard for counterfeits to duplicate. The cashier doesn't want to be fooled and given worthless monies.
We need to hold up our lives, our beliefs to the Truth of Christ! It's so easy to be deceived, so easy to be fooled and we aren't a 50 or 100 dollars when the deception is uncovered, but out eternal life. Make no mistake, we are accountable to hold our beliefs up to the Truth in Christ. That amazing simplicity in Christ. Don't follow anyone or anything blindly, measure it to the bright and shining truth in Christ.
By the Grace of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ may none of us be deceived by any of Satan's ministers, seemingly ministers of righteousness.
In His Name, by His Mercy and Grace
Amen.
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