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In Christ, Mark
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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.
I repeat: Let no one take me for a fool. But if you do, then tolerate me just as you would a fool, so that I may do a little boasting. In this self-confident boasting, I am not talking as the Lord would, but as a fool.
Since many are boasting in the way the world does, I too will boast. You gladly put up with fools since you are so wise! In fact, you even put up with anyone who enslaves you or exploits you or takes advantage of you or puts on airs or slaps you in the face. To my shame I admit that we were too weak for that!
Whatever anyone else dares to boast about—I am speaking as a fool—I also dare to boast about. Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they Abraham’s descendants? So am I.
2 Corinthians 11:16-22
This ends this
reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.
The Corinthian church had been infiltrated by false teachers, the kind of men Jesus called “wolves” who would come “in sheep’s clothing” (Matthew 7:15). As we saw in yesterday’s message, these masqueraders put on a front that they were genuine when they were far from it. They even went as far to try and discredit Paul in order to try and establish their own legitimacy.
We get a sense that these Christians were Jews and this would mean they would try and convince the Corinthian believers that salvation wasn’t just by grace alone but also by complying with the Law of Moses and its countless rules and regulations, rules and regulations that no person could comply with perfectly. This is why Jesus mattered so much in the first place. To be saved, one only had to believe in Him as Savior. Nothing more, nothing less.
The false teachers, working hard to try and convince the church in Corinth that their Gospel was more valid that Paul’s, demanded that the Jewish men be circumcised. They sought to return the men to Old Testament times and the old covenant that had been superseded by God’s redeeming work through Jesus, His Son.
As we look to our passage today and our continued study of 2 Corinthians 11, we see Paul facetiously referring himself as a fool. This seems to contradict his earlier statement that no one should take him for a fool but through his words, Paul is using an illustration in regard to what he would be if he adopted the ways of the world and allowed those ways to shape the Gospel he preached.
The foolishness of the false teachers was underscored by their “self confident boasting”, an arrogance that led them to preach and teach in ways that were disrespectful to God Himself, the very God they professed to follow. And if this wasn’t bad enough, the Corinthian believers had tolerated the sinful behavior all the while never realizing what Satan was doing in the process. For if Satan, through the masquerading false apostles, could convince the Christians in Corinth to go back to the Old Testament ways as requirements for salvation, then they would essentially enslave the believers who were blind to the fact that they were being exploited and taken advantage of.
Yes, the false teachers were Hebrews, Israelites, and the descendants of Abraham but this didn’t separate them from Paul. It didn’t make their Gospel true and Paul’s bogus.
Paul made it clear that he too was a Hebrew, Israelite, and descendant of Abraham. In fact, before he became Paul, he was Saul and you wouldn’t have found a more fervent Jew, a Jew who was devoted to persecuting Christians and rejecting Christ and Christianity before Jesus confronted him on the road to Damascus. Paul knew what was like to be a worldly fool because he had been one before.
But that was then, and he was not the same man as he penned these words in 2 Corinthians. He had learned that the only appropriate and proper boasting was boasting done in the name of the Lord (2 Corinthians 10:17),
Friends, false teaching is nothing short of foolishness and wickedness for it intentionally tries to supplant a Lord who is incapable of being supplanted and manifests sin in one of its worst senses. In the end translation, the only way we will never be misled by a false Gospel message is if we don’t know the true requirements, the requirements spelled out by the Word of God, requirements summed up in this one single verse:
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
Amen.
In Christ,
Mark
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