Another Jesus? 2 Corinthians 11:1-6

In 1956 a new show debuted on CBS. It was called To Tell the Truth. The show was so popular that it had a 22 year run before the last episode in 1978. Most of you have probably never heard of the show, but I can set it up for you. In each episode there were four celebrity panelists and three contestants. There were contestants from the world of sports, music, literature, business…you name it. For instance, Dan Gable, the Olympic wrestler who won a gold medal without giving up a single point in the 1972 Olympics was a contestant in 1973. The three contestants, at the beginning of the show, walked onto the stage and each said, “My name is Dan Gable.” Each member of the celebrity panel was allowed to ask questions to try and figure out which contestant was the real Dan Gable before they voted. Then, after all of the questions were asked, the host would say, “Will the real Dan Gable please stand up?” For the past 2,000 years we have been in the middle of one long episode of To Tell The Truth. In each generation the question has been asked, “Will the real Jesus please stand up?” In our study of Paul’s letter to the church in Corinth, in chapter 11, Paul writes, 

4 You happily put up with whatever anyone tells you, even if they preach a different Jesus than the one we preach, or a different kind of Spirit than the one you received, or a different kind of gospel than the one you believed. (2 Corinthians 11:4 NLT)

A different Jesus. In 1906, Albert Schweitzer noticed how many people in his day were portraying Jesus in a way that differed from the Jesus of the Bible. He wrote a book called The Quest of the Historical Jesus, which first appeared in English in 1910. In the book, Schweitzer reviewed several theologians and their use of what was called “Biblical Criticism” to show that “each of the theologians created Jesus in accordance with their own character.”  People tend to remake Jesus into who they want Him to be instead of simply embracing the Jesus we learn about in God’s Word. In 1985 a group of 50 Bible scholars got together to form what was called The Jesus Seminar. Their goal was to go through the four Gospels and the Gospel of Thomas, which is not a book that is in the Bible, and determine what Jesus said and didn’t say. They went word for word through everything Jesus was reported as having said and then they voted on each phrase with different colored beads. A red bead meant Jesus most likely said it, a pink bead meant Jesus possibly said it, a gray bead meant Jesus probably didn’t say it, but He could have, and a black bead meant Jesus definitely didn’t say those words. They met and studied and discussed and labored for thirty years. When they were finished there were more words of Jesus in black than in red, pink, and gray combined. Almost every word Jesus said in the entire Gospel of John is in black. It is important for you to know that the scholars of the Jesus Seminar don’t believe in the deity of Jesus, His resurrection from the dead, the miracles of Jesus, or the substitutionary death of Jesus. If we had known those facts before they started examining the words of Jesus, we could have known how they would have voted on what Jesus said and didn’t say. Maybe what Albert Schweitzer discovered about the scholars of his day is still happening in our own day? The reimaging of Jesus was going on long before Albert Schweitzer released his book. Let’s turn to our Scripture for this morning found in 2 Corinthians 11:1-6. 

1 I hope you will put up with me in a little foolishness. Yes, please put up with me! 2 I 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. 3 But 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. 4 For if someone comes to you and preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached, or if you receive a different spirit from the Spirit you received, or a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it easily enough. 5 I do not think I am in the least inferior to those "super-apostles." 6 I may indeed be untrained as a speaker, but I do have knowledge. We have made this perfectly clear to you in every way. (2 Corinthians 11:1-6 NIV)

Paul is well aware of what was happening in Corinth even though he was in Ephesus when he wrote this letter. He knows what the false teachers are saying about him. In our Scripture from last week Paul was quoting them when they said he was unimpressive in person and his speaking abilities amounted to nothing. As we begin our study of 2 Corinthians 11 we read where Paul is about to engage in a little “foolishness.” This section of Paul’s letter, from 2 Corinthians 11:1 to 2 Corinthians 12:10, is called the “foolish discourse” by many Bible teachers. Paul doesn’t want to take the focus off of the message of the cross, but the future of the church hangs in the balance in Paul’s mind, so he speaks like a “fool.” The words “fool, foolish, and foolishness” are key words in this section of Paul’s letter. I don’t think there is any doubt that Paul has picked up on what his opponents are saying about him while he is away from Corinth. In the opening verse of 2 Corinthians 11, Paul is saying, “Since you Corinthians think I am an idiot anyway, there is nothing much to lose, is there? I am already the object of your patronizing contempt, so it is not much to ask you to tolerate a little more of poor old Paul's buffoonery.” (Clements, 175-76)Paul is not in a popularity contest with the false teachers in Corinth. He is not trying to gain a greater following for himself. Paul recognizes that the false teachers are sharing a different Jesus and a different Gospel and Paul cannot simply sit by and let that happen. Let’s move on to verses 2-3. Paul writes,

2 I 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. 3 But 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. (2 Corinthians 11:2-3 NIV)

Even if you don’t know much about the Bible, you don’t need help in understanding jealousy. There is not a human walking on the planet today who has not experienced jealousy. All of our emotions are gifted to us from God, they are innate within us, but oftentimes we don’t express our emotions in ways that honor the Lord. No one has to teach you how to be jealous or how to feel love or anger or sorrow. It is so important for us to learn that there are healthy expressions of all of these emotions and there are destructive expressions of each as well. When we lack the counsel and guidance of God’s Word, when we are left to determine how we express the jealousy we feel, we are sure to find ourselves in trouble. In Proverbs we read,

30 A peaceful heart leads to a healthy body; jealousy is like cancer in the bones. (Proverbs 14:30 NLT)

“Jealousy is like cancer in the bones.” Can anyone relate to what I’ve just read? We all can, can’t we? A little later in Proverbs we read,

4 Anger is cruel and fury overwhelming, but who can stand before jealousy? (Proverbs 27:4 NIV)

We can find an example of a wrong expression of jealousy in Acts 13:44-45. Paul was teaching about Jesus when the Jewish religious leaders saw the crowds and became jealous. Read it with me.

44 On the next Sabbath almost the whole city gathered to hear the word of the Lord. 45 When the Jews saw the crowds, they were filled with jealousy. They began to contradict what Paul was saying and heaped abuse on him. (Acts 13:44-45 NIV)

What was going on in the minds of the religious leaders that led them to contradict Paul and then to slander and abuse him? It shouldn’t be too hard for us to figure out since we have all been there. The religious leaders felt the crowd was turning to Paul so they concluded they were losing the love of the crowd. When we feel we are losing the love that we cherish we can be hurt and become angry. People can become violent. I hear stories all the time about husbands or wives becoming violent when their love has been lost to another. It is interesting that God describes Himself as “a jealous God.”  We find it right in the book of Exodus, in Exodus 34:14. 

14 Do not worship any other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God. (Exodus 34:14 NIV)

God is jealous for the love and affection of His people. We just finished studying the prophet Jeremiah in Sunday school and we learned how God’s people turned away from Him to other gods. Their turning away resulted in all kinds of problems for the people and their society. The reason is this: False gods, the idols we create in our minds and hearts which take God’s place, will destroy us if left unchecked.The people of Israel and the vast majority of people in every age want a god who will wink at our sin and simply give us what we want. God knows that our getting what we want, what we think will make us happy, will not result in our happiness, but will ultimately destroy us. God loves us too much to leave us in the mess we make for ourselves and that is why His love demands holiness, not happiness. C.S. Lewis wrote, in his book The Problem With Pain,

You asked for a loving God: you have one…not a senile benevolence that drowsily wishes you to be happy in your own way, not the cold philanthropy of a conscientious magistrate, but the consuming fire Himself, the Love that made the worlds, persistent as the artist’s love for his work…venerable as a father’s love for a child, jealous, inexorable, exacting as love between the sexes. …To ask that God’s love should be content with us as we are is to ask that God should cease to be God: because He is what He is, His love must, in the nature of things, be impeded and repelled by certain stains in our present character, and because He already loves us He must labor to make us lovable… What we would here and now call our ‘happiness’ is not the end God chiefly has in view: but when we are such as He can love without impediment, we shall in fact be happy. (Lewis, C.S. The Problem With Pain) 

Do you understand what C.S. Lewis is driving at? The elusive happiness that we all so badly desire is not found in getting the things that we think will make us happy, but it is found in holiness, a love that is so consuming that it desires more than anything in life to be conformed to the lifestyle of Jesus, the holiness of Jesus. This is a love which delights in loving and serving our faithful God. This was Paul’s heart’s desire for the people of Corinth as some of them were turning away, not from him, but to another Jesus and another Gospel. Paul said he was “jealous for them with God’s jealousy.”  Paul said, “I promised you to one husband, to Christ, so that I might present you as a pure virgin to him.”  Back in Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth he wrote,

14 I am writing this not to shame you but to warn you as my dear children. 15 Even if you had ten thousand guardians in Christ, you do not have many fathers, for in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel. (1 Corinthians 4:14-15 NIV)

Paul felt a great amount of responsibility to those he had led to Christ. He was their spiritual father and they were his spiritual children. Paul spoke of himself as a “father” to Timothy in four of his letters. Timothy was his “dearly loved son.” Paul’s goal in life was to present those he had led to Christ to their “husband, to Christ, …as a pure virgin to him.” The idea of God being the Husband of His people is one of the favorite themes of the prophets in the Old Testament. In Isaiah 54:5 we can see an example of what I’m talking about. Read it with me.

5 For your Maker is your husband-- the LORD Almighty is his name-- the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer; he is called the God of all the earth. (Isaiah 54:5 NIV)

And over and over again Israel was an unfaithful wife. There is no more clearer example of this than that which comes from the prophet Ezekiel in the 16th chapter. The entire chapter is the most beautiful, tender picture of God’s love coupled with the most heartbreaking story of how His love was denied by His people, His wife, turning to other lovers. In verse 32 we read,

32 "'You adulterous wife! You prefer strangers to your own husband! (Ezekiel 16:32 NIV)

In ancient times in Israel, a father pledged his daughter to her future husband and it was then the father’s responsibility to protect his daughter’s purity until the betrothal period was over and the marriage ceremony finished. Paul saw his role with those who had made a commitment to Jesus, those who had been “betrothed” to Jesus, in the same light. He wanted to do everything in his power to protect their spiritual purity until the day of the wedding of the Lamb to His bride, the Church, on that day when Jesus will return for His bride.  Paul is afraid that many in the church had become unfaithful, they had been deceived and compromised their spiritual purity. In verse 3, Paul writes,

3 But 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. (2 Corinthians 11:3 NIV)

In verse 3, Paul goes all the way back to Genesis 3 and the story of the Fall. Adam and Eve were living in intimate fellowship with God until they ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the one tree the Lord had told them they could not eat from. Paul says “Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning” and he fears this is exactly what is happening to the people of Corinth. The word translated “deceived” is the word “exapatao" in the Greek New Testament. It means “to deceive or lead astray.” Paul tells us that Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning or craftiness. This is important for us to understand. God had told Adam and Eve they could eat from any tree in the garden except for the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. When the serpent approached Eve he asked, “Did God really say, you must not eat from any tree in the garden?” Did you see that? Pretty slick wasn’t it?! God didn’t tell Adam and Eve they couldn’t eat from any tree in the Garden, just the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And that’s how the enemy works. Don’t counter what is true with a flat-out-bald-face lie, but just put a slight twist on the truth and before long you find yourself way out in left field. D.A. Carson has written,

From the time of the Fall to the present day, men and women have frequently succumbed to the deceptive devices of the devil. Christians are especially open to the kind of cunning deceit that combines the language of faith and religion with the content of self-interest and flattery. We like to be told how special we are, how wise, how blessed… We like to have our Christianity shaped less by the cross than by triumphalism or rules or charismatic leaders or subjective experiences. And if this shaping can be coated with assurances of orthodoxy, complete with cliche, we may not detect the presence of the arch-deceiver, nor see that we are being weaned away from ‘sincere and pure devotion to Christ’ to a ‘different gospel.’ (Carson, D.A. From Triumphalism to Maturity, a New Exposition of 2 Corinthians. pg. 86)

Paul’s concern is that the people are being “led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ.” I love how the New King James Version translates this verse from the Greek New Testament. Listen to this.

3 But I fear, lest somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. (2 Corinthians 11:3 NKJ)

“The simplicity that is in Christ.” Do you remember what Paul told the church in Corinth about his approach to sharing the good news about Jesus when he first came to them? He said he didn’t speak with “wise or persuasive words.” He went on to say, 

2 For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. 3 I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. (1 Corinthians 2:2-3 NIV)

The message of the Gospel is really simple–We are sinners who are alienated from God from birth. We have no recourse, nothing to do in our own power to change our predicament. Our sin created for us a debt we could never pay. But God, who is rich in love, overflowing with mercy, determined that He would rescue His people by sending His sinless Son Jesus to give His life, to pay the penalty for our sins, in order that the door of reconciliation would be opened for all who believe. Karl Barth was one of the most widely read Bible teachers of his time. He wrote so many books about the Bible including many commentaries and his most famous work, Church Dogmatics, a 13 volume read for any of you who are interested. He was a member of the Confessing Church in Germany that stood up to Hitler. One time he was traveling, lecturing in America, when someone asked him, “What is the greatest theological thought that has ever crossed your mind?” Everyone expected some complicated answer that would take a while to unravel and decipher. Instead, Dr. Barth looked at the man and said, “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” That is the simplicity of the Gospel message!I read this past week about a study that was released just last year called The State of Theology. The study is conducted every two years by LifeWay Research and R.C. Sproul’s organization, Ligonier Ministries. In 2022 some interesting insights surfaced which helps me understand how those of us who call ourselves followers of Jesus can be so easily led astray. We are running short of time so I will only share two of the findings, but that will be enough to hopefully convince you of what I’m talking about. Here’s one of the statements in the survey and you will either agree or disagree: “Jesus was a great teacher, but he was not God.” Do you agree or disagree? 43% of those who identify as “evangelical Christians” agreed with the statement. That number was 30% in 2020. Here’s another statement: “Everyone is born innocent in the eyes of God.” Do you agree or disagree? 71% of all Americans agreed with the statement. 65% of those who identify as evangelical Christians agree.Now, it’s important to remember that we’re not talking about the beliefs of those who say they are agnostics, atheists, or even those that identify as liberal Christians, but those who say they are evangelical Christians. Those are the people that our society sees as the most narrow-minded Bible thumpers in America. If we gather the findings from these two questions we learn that you and I are born innocent, as pure as the wind driven snow and Jesus was a wonderful teacher who can help us lead a better life. Where’s the cross? Where is the sacrifice of the Sinless One for sinners like me? There’s just no need for the cross or for Jesus' sacrificial death for sinners, according to these folks. We need to get back to the Bible. We need to never be afraid or ashamed to share the good news of Jesus’ reconciling death and resurrection which opened the door of reconciliation for all people who will believe. We need to diligently seek to engage all believers in the process of discipleship. Getting together with other followers of Jesus and reading God’s Word, seeking to understand God’s will based upon what we learn, and then committing to live it out as we go about our lives. Jesus was a great teacher, but if He had only come to teach, you and I would still be without hope. He was the Savior who transformed Paul’s life and consumed his every thought. He is your Savior and my Savior if we will only confess our need and believe. If you are here this morning and you have never confessed that you believe Jesus to be the Savior sent from God to forgive you of your sins then I want to invite you to come forward and do that this morning. Mike HaysSeptember 17, 2023