2 Corinthians
2 Cor 11v1-15: The Aim, Weapons and Legacy of Pauls Ministry
Although I’ve never seen them I’m told there are TV programmes offering goods for sale or auction on screen. The problem with these programmes is that you can’t examine the goods before buying them. So when the goods arrive you may find that the quality is poor and the goods are not worth the money you’ve paid. Despite the raft of legislation designed to protect the buyer, there is still no better advice than “Let the buyer beware”. Examine carefully what you’re buying to satisfy yourself that it’s of good quality and fit for the purpose you have in mind – that it does what it says on the tin!
If that’s good advice for things temporal, it’s all the more – as I hope to demonstrate this morning - good advice for things spiritual. “Test the spirits to see whether they are from God”, was the apostle John’s advice to his readers, “for many false prophets have gone out into the world”.
From ch10 to the end of second Corinthians, Paul’s mood and direction undergo a marked change; he is suddenly seized with fear that his Corinthians converts will fall into error – seduced by ideas and concepts about Jesus and the gospel which are at odds with the truth he, Paul, has taught them. They are, he believes, in danger of accepting a Jesus based on human imagination and a gospel from which all the power has been taken away.
I don’t know whether his fears were realised or not. But most certainly, in the longer term, Paul’s fears of a distorted picture of Jesus and an emasculated gospel were well founded. For is that not what we face today in many of our churches? A Jesus who lets us worship him on Sunday and live how we like for the rest of week! A Jesus who didn’t really threaten judgement more severe than that deserved by Sodom and Gomorrah, on people who reject the news of the kingdom! A Jesus who didn’t really tell his audience there’s a broad road leading to destruction – and large crowds walking along it! All that’s mere editorial gloss to frighten people into believing!
And what about our gospel that says, “Just trust in Jesus and everything will be fine. You don’t need any radical change in the way you live. God won’t ask you to give up enjoying yourself; he doesn’t go round telling you not to do this or that!” The preachers of that gospel forget that Jesus warned people to stop and think about what becoming a disciple means before committing themselves! That discipleship means taking up a cross!
Paul was worried sick that his beloved Corinthians were starting down that route! Why was he so worried? Because he had such great hopes for them! He wanted, desperately, to see them mature, committed, single-mindedly intent on growing in the faith to become worthy of their high calling in Christ. He wanted them to be spiritually discerning, not blinded by eloquence or cleverly devised arguments. He wanted them to acknowledge and follow leaders who proclaim the true gospel in its entirety, not just the easy part, and who proclaim it in plain, unvarnished language – leaders who are passionate about building up people in their faith, about preparing and strengthening them to stand firm in times of testing and persecution.
That was the aim of Paul’s ministry – and that’s the challenge for us today!
I have to confess I’m a little concerned when I see smiling out from Christian magazines well-dressed, well-groomed men advertised as great speakers, erudite teachers, often accompanied by their pretty wives and children - and supported by music groups with strange names. Gospel meetings dressed up to look like pop concerts! And all this, not to attract the outsider! If that were the aim, there just might be some justification for it. But these events are advertised in the Christian press and patently aimed at Christian people. I’m not suggesting all, or even any, these people are false teachers. But I am saying we can easily be so carried away by the glitzy presentation and the music that we mistake them for the real gospel!
On holiday in Cornwall recently, Marie and I found in our hotel details of the local churches – and among them a church we thought sounded promising. But we had difficulty finding it. Finally, having given up looking, we stumbled on it out in the countryside. Marshals were directing people into a large car park adjoining a spacious warehouse type building. We parked and went in. About 200 people including lots of children were gathered. After a period of worship, the pastor stood up to preach. His text was the story of the Israelites at Meribah complaining about a water shortage. What he said was blunt and powerful – about the damage done by people in the church who moan.
We had never heard of that pastor. He had come over from America some twenty years ago and ministered in a Cornish church, built it up into a large and faithful congregation, from which this warehouse fellowship is a church plant. During the service we were told that a second church plant was about to be made in a nearby town. I have to tell you I can’t help comparing this man I’d never heard of with some of the famous speakers whose photographs grace Christian magazines. No pleasing rhetoric, no slick presentation, no pictures of the pastor and his family, no atmosphere arousing bands! Just heart-felt worship, sound, relevant, expository preaching of God’s word – a ministry of which Paul would have approved!
So much then for the aim of Paul’s ministry – to build people into the likeness of Christ, living Christ-honouring lives, reflecting the message of forgiveness and new life in Christ alone to those around them! Real, mature disciples!
What about the weapons of Paul’s ministry - what’s in his armoury for this spiritual warfare he’s engaged in – his crusade to spread the gospel?
Firstly, while these super apostles employ rhetoric Paul prefers knowledge. In his first letter to the Corinthians, he’d written disparagingly about knowledge, contrasting it unfavourably with love. While love builds people up, knowledge puffs them up – makes them proud of their own intellectual powers; but leads them away from God’s truth. Perhaps he uses the word here because it chimes well with his ironic references to boasting. But knowledge here is an essential weapon in the Christian leader’s armoury; it is a present, ongoing experience of Christ, a mature understanding of what the Scriptures teach and a lively sense of the indwelling Spirit of Christ empowering his ministry.
But as you will know from ch10, Paul also uses his knowledge to demolish the spurious arguments of false teachers. He has no need of endless debates and worldly arguments; no need to appeal to the authority of the philosophers and rabbis so beloved by these “super apostles” the Corinthians have welcomed into their midst. His invariable appeal is to the truth God has set forth clearly in his word.
Secondly, his love for them of which he had spoken in his earlier letter is still here in this second letter. It is seen in his “godly jealousy” for them. He is like a proud father watching protectively over his daughter. He wants her to look as lovely as possible on the day with a beauty that shines out from a chaste character, a woman who has kept herself pure for her husband. What a pity it is that such a concept seems unnecessary and foolish, to many of our young people even in the church today! A pity because they miss out so much when their wedding day arrives!
When I was a little boy, my brothers and I would turn the house upside down looking for our Christmas presents ahead of the day. And often, we found them. But what an anticlimax Christmas Day was when we had to pretend that our presents were a surprise! Far better to wait with eager expectation for the great day! And that’s what Paul is working to prepare the Corinthians for – to present them pure and blameless to Christ so that he and they together might rejoice with an inexpressible joy that goes on and on and on forever! And he tells them he has no intention of stopping that work!
Do they really believe he doesn’t love them because he berates them for their toleration of false teachers and false teaching – another Jesus, another spirit, another gospel? Nothing could be further from the truth. Just as God disciplines those he loves so Paul chides them because he loves them and wants the best for them in Christ – because he is beside himself with fear lest they spoil themselves for the day of Christ.
Knowledge, love – and, thirdly, humility – abasing himself to build them up in the faith! And at no charge to them! Cherie Booth QC reputedly charges up to £30,000 for one speech. And these false teachers who have ingratiated themselves with the Corinthians charge inflated fees to persuade the church of their worth. They denigrate Paul; he knows, they say, that his teaching is worth nothing so he charges nothing for it. But unlike them he’ll gladly work night and day so that he may speak of Christ free of charge to his hearers!
Of course, the labourer is entitled to his wages! But Paul recognises the danger of giving new converts the idea that all the church really wants is their money! So he is not ashamed to work to provide for himself or to accept gifts from other Christians who are further along in their faith journey than the Christians in Corinth. And, anyway, he received the gospel free of charge: how can he do other than offer it to them on the same terms!
So then these are the weapons Paul uses to such great effect in his ministry to these Corinthians – and to all to whom God has called him.
Knowledge – an authentic up to the minute experience of Christ – which nurtures people in the true faith, builds them into strong, sound, people of God, able to stand firm when their faith is tested, and to destroy every argument pitted against the true gospel. Love, more passionate than that between lovers, constraining the Christian to be pure, preparing himself for the return of his Lord. Like the Ephesians, to whom John writes at the behest of the risen Christ in Revelation, it seems these Corinthians have “lost their first love”. Unlike Paul, who had brought them to faith, the passion they once had for Christ had cooled; they had transferred their affections elsewhere. And humility, delighting the heart of God who resists the proud but raises the humble, which longs to share the faith with as many as possible.
According to Paul’s letters to the Corinthian Church it was well endowed with spiritual gifts. But quarrelling about the relative merits of Christian leaders had disturbed their unity; and others, distancing themselves from such arguments, had claimed allegiance to Christ alone – but in a self-righteous and superior manner! Now what attracted them was not the quality of the teaching or the holiness of life of the persons concerned – which were undoubtedly praiseworthy. Rather it was their eloquent speech and debating ability that captivated the Corinthians. They were in danger of losing sight of the gospel and its life-changing power – of the efficacy of the cross – and of allowing themselves to be seduced by “words of human wisdom”.
Finally then, what is the legacy of Paul’s ministry? The Corinthian church’s experience is a stern warning to us. As Paul says elsewhere: “Let the one who thinks he stands firm take care lest he fall!” We must take to heart the demise of too many churches and the falling into faith-destroying error of too many Christians! We may tolerate people who undermine the gospel and believe our tolerance to be an expression of love. But Paul took a different line. These people are false apostles, deceitful workmen masquerading as apostles of Christ. Their end will be what their actions deserve – and the end of those who tolerate them and their teaching will be the same.
So don’t be seduced by spiritually barren eloquence and discourses that treat the Bible as inferior to philosophical concepts. “Let the buyer beware!” Examine the teaching. Listen to those who love you, are jealous for you with a godly jealousy, and work to present you as a bride for her husband, blameless and without shame on the day of Christ. Some of those teachers and leaders may be well-known, of high birth and position, fine speakers, people of great intellectual capacity. Most of them, I suspect, will not.
Whatever their pedigree, they will have a consummate knowledge of the Scriptures; they’ll be full of love for God’s people. Like their Lord who “was crucified in weakness but lives by God’s power” they will be humble and unprepossessing, passionate about sharing of the good news, powerful in their ministry to resist false teaching and to warn the unrepentant. Listen carefully to them – and with the Holy Spirit’s help aim to be like them!
Vernon Cobb
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