Today’s message is from 2 Corinthians 11:1-15. The HCSB translators gave the passage the title Paul and the False Apostles. It’s the apostle Paul’s warning to the Corinthian church to stay away from false teachings (and from false teachers). (It’s his warning to us, too—really, God’s warning to us.

As we read the passage, remember as always that we are reading the word of God. What is the word of God? It’s God’s instruction, his correction and encouragement, to us who trust him—to us who believe in him. It’s also his warning of wrath to those who reject him.

Also, as always, I encourage each of you to read the word of God every day. Toward the end of today’s passage the apostle Paul says that there are false apostles who disguise themselves as apostles of Christ and, in fact, that Satan himself is disguised as an angel of light. You need to know well what is written in the Bible to be able to recognize false teaching when you see and hear it. It’s generally very appealing, but it’s designed by the devil to lead you to destruction. False teaching is designed by the devil to lead you to destruction. Study the word of God.

¹I wish you would put up with a little foolishness from me. Yes, do put up with me. ²For I am jealous over you with a godly jealousy, because I have promised you in marriage to one husband—to present a pure virgin to Christ. ³But I fear that, as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your minds may be corrupted from a complete and pure devotion to Christ. ⁴For if a person comes and preaches another Jesus, whom we did not preach, or you receive a different spirit, which you had not received, or a different gospel, which you had not accepted, you put up with it splendidly!

⁵Now I consider myself in no way inferior to the “super-apostles.” ⁶Though untrained in public speaking, I am certainly not untrained in knowledge. Indeed, we have always made that clear to you in everything. ⁷Or did I commit a sin by humbling myself so that you might be exalted, because I preached the gospel of God to you free of charge? ⁸I robbed other churches by taking pay from them to minister to you. ⁹When I was present with you and in need, I did not burden anyone, for the brothers who came from Macedonia supplied my needs. I have kept myself, and will keep myself, from burdening you in any way. ¹⁰As the truth of Christ is in me, this boasting of mine will not be stopped in the regions of Achaia. ¹¹Why? Because I don’t love you? God knows I do!

¹²But I will continue to do what I am doing, in order to cut off the opportunity of those who want an opportunity to be regarded just as we are in what they are boasting about. ¹³For such people are false apostles, deceitful workers, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. ¹⁴And no wonder! For Satan himself is disguised as an angel of light. ¹⁵So it is no great thing if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. Their destiny will be according to their works. (2 Corinthians~11:1-15)

In this passage the apostle Paul is warning the Corinthians about false teachers and false teaching. He is also trying to make the point that, as I have mentioned, what he is teaching is the true teaching, the word of God. Paul doesn’t say what the false teachers are teaching (I’ll suggest some things in just a little bit), but the point is that if you know the true teaching, the true message of the gospel, you should be able to recognize the false teachings and reject them. Let’s look at verses 1 and 2.

Verses 1 and 2 say, “I wish you would put up with a little foolishness from me. Yes, do put up with me. For I am jealous over you with a godly jealousy, because I have promised you in marriage to one husband—to present a pure virgin to Christ.” Why is Paul asking them to put up with him? What’s the foolishness he’s talking about? Well, in verse 5 he says that he is in no way inferior to the “super-apostles” and that he is certainly not untrained in knowledge. And later on in chapter 11—we’ll get to it next week, the Lord willing—he’s going to tell us how much he has suffered in order to spread the message of the gospel. It sounds as though he is boasting—engaging in foolishness—but it’s not from pride. His desire is that, by any means, he may do all that is possible to make sure the Corinthian Christians stand firm in the gospel of Christ. The apostle Paul is serving Jesus, not himself. He says that he is jealous over them with a godly jealousy—literally, it says, with a jealousy of God. Paul is not jealous for himself, but for God. It’s not because he wants the Corinthians to belong to him but because he wants them to belong to Jesus.

Our God who made us and who loves us is a jealous God. His commandment is that we must have no other gods beside him. “You must not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the fathers' sin, to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing faithful love to a thousand generations of those who love Me and keep My commands.” (Ex. 20:5, 6)

Paul promised the Corinthians to Jesus. Some translations say he betrothed them to Jesus—like a bride to a bridegroom. In Revelation 19:7 the church is the Bride of Christ: “Let us be glad, rejoice, and give Him glory, because the marriage of the Lamb (the Lamb is Jesus) has come, and His wife has prepared herself (His wife is the church).”

Listen to what John the Baptist said about Jesus: “He who has the bride is the groom. But the groom's friend, who stands by and listens for him, rejoices greatly at the groom's voice. So this joy of mine is complete. (John 3:29) The groom is Jesus and the bride is all those who believe in Jesus. The bride is the church. John the Baptist’s disciples were fretting that everyone was leaving John and going to Jesus. John told them that Jesus must become greater and he must become less. He rejoiced that they were going to Jesus.

In today’s passage, the apostle Paul was not trying to claim the Corinthian church for himself, but for Jesus. Paul wanted the Corinthians to be “a pure virgin” betrothed to Christ. He wanted them to not be corrupted by false teachings and sin. (By the way, how do we become pure? ...... It’s through the blood of Jesus—through his death on the cross and his resurrection. “He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.” (Rom.~4:25 – NIV) (Justification, by the way, means being made innocent. And it doesn’t mean being found innocent even though you are guilty. It means that your sins are taken away just as though they have never been. That’s the only way we can be pure.)

Let’s go on to verse 3: “But I fear that, as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your minds may be corrupted from a complete and pure devotion to Christ.” How did the devil (the serpent’s the devil, by the way)... How did the devil deceive Eve? Here’s what it says back in Genesis, chapter 3:

⁶Then the woman saw that the tree was good for food and delightful to look at, and that it was desirable for obtaining wisdom. So she took some of its fruit and ate it; she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. (Genesis~3:1-6)

“Did God really say, ‘You can’t eat from any tree in the garden’?” “I can hardly believe he’d say something like that.” You see, Eve wasn’t there when God told Adam that he would certainly die if he ate from that tree. She hadn’t even been created yet. As near as we can tell, she had to take Adam’s word for what the Lord had told him about the tree. “Maybe your husband was mistaken. Maybe he’s lying to you.” And she added something to the restriction, something that the Lord had not told Adam: “You must not eat it or touch it, or you will die.” Eve added the requirement to not touch the fruit. And we are warned in the New Testament not to add any restrictions or further requirements to the message of the gospel (and I’ll say more about that later).

Also, the serpent was planting the idea that God was selfishly withholding something good from them. “You can’t trust God anymore. He’s lying to you. He doesn’t really love you. He’s withholding something good from you. He’s just selfish.”

How would you feel if you found out that someone you trusted had betrayed you and was, in fact, just selfishly using you? Isn’t it a shock? How do you think Eve might have felt? The serpent was convincing Eve to make her own decisions instead of trusting God. That’s what he does with all of us. (By the way, does God really love us? How do we know? What evidence has he given us? (The answer is left as an exercise for the disciple. (That’s an old “professor” trick to get the student find the answer for him.) If you don’t know the answer, read the Bible.)

Let’s look at verse 4: “For if a person comes and preaches another Jesus, whom we did not preach, or you receive a different spirit, which you had not received, or a different gospel, which you had not accepted, you put up with it splendidly!” Well. I mentioned that Paul didn’t say what the false teachings were that he was concerned about (and that the Corinthians were likely to easily accept). But, from what Paul has written elsewhere we know that he was concerned about people that were teaching that you had to be circumcised to be saved. (I’m not sure what they thought about women, but I read somewhere that there were some Jewish teachers who didn’t believe that women were even raised from the dead.)

There were also those who taught that you had to keep the various Jewish rituals, dietary laws and holy days to be saved. The message of the gospel is nothing like that. The message of the gospel is that you are saved by faith through the blood of Jesus, not by observing any rituals or rules. It may not sound like much to add some rituals to faith, but God (speaking through the apostle Paul) says that if you believe that you have to do anything besides trusting Jesus for salvation—anything at all—you are rejecting the only possible way of salvation, which is through faith in Jesus Christ. Don’t do it!

In the early church there were also the Gnostics who taught that you were saved by knowing certain “secrets” rather than by faith in Jesus—secrets that, by the way, weren’t even true. I don’t think that was a problem with the Corinthians, but “knowing certain secrets” is very appealing to the flesh. It has the appeal of being exclusive: “Come and join us. We will teach you things that ordinary people don’t know. You will be better than they are.” It’s an appeal to pride. You know what? The real message of the gospel is for ordinary people—for you and for me.

Well, Paul was writing to the Corinthians, but God saw to it that what he wrote was preserved for us to read. (And that’s no small thing. There were many persecutions and Bible manuscripts were destroyed. But we still have 2 Corinthians to this day.) We have 2 Corinthians. So, how does it apply to us? What kinds of false teachings and false teachers do we have that we must look out for today?

One big one (in my opinion, anyway) that I don’t think seems to get much attention is that you just have to say the “sinners prayer”, “Lord, I am a sinner, please save me,” (or words to that effect) and you will be saved. Just saying the right words will not save. You have to believe that you really are a sinner and that you really are headed for hell and that Jesus really can save you. You have to humble yourself under God’s mighty hand. Then you will be saved. Only faith in Jesus will save you. To use Tom Thomin’s illustration, there are a lot of people that you could pay ten dollars to to say the sinner’s prayer and they would say the words but they would still be lost. But still there is the teaching that if you can just get someone to say the sinners prayer, that person will be saved. It’s very misleading.

There is also the gospel of health and wealth, the prosperity gospel. If you obey God and if you send us money (they don’t usually make it that blunt, but sometimes pretty close), God will heal you and make you rich. You won’t have any more trouble. (Actually, it’s mostly the teachers that get rich.) Also, there’s the “name-it-and-claim-it” teaching that says that if you have sufficient faith, “you can lay your hands on the Cadillac and claim it and it will be yours.” (And don’t get me wrong. I do believe that God is more likely to answer the prayers of those who fully obey him. “Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The intense prayer of the righteous is very powerful.” –James 4:16)

Well, I’m not going to go into any detail about what wrong with the prosperity gospel, but I’ll say this: What about those who are starving and being tortured in the North Korean prison camps because they refuse to reject Christ? Don’t they have sufficient faith? Or what about those in Indonesia and other predominantly Muslim countries who have their homes and churches burned just because they are Christians—yes, and are sometimes killed, too. What about them? Are they not making a large enough gift? Is their faith insufficient? I’ll guarantee you that their faith is greater than ours! What about them?

There is also the “gospel of selfishness”. I call it that, but I’ve never actually heard it named. I’ve mentioned it before—I think not too long ago. There is a book titled Boundaries that was first published in 1990. Ten years later it was still the number one best-selling “Christian” book. It is still being published along with several other offshoots. The cover says, “Boundaries: When to Say YES When to Say NO, To Take Control of Your Life.” “To take control of your life!” The word of God says, “You are not your own. You were bought at a price.” Basically, the teaching is to not let anyone impose upon you too much. The authors claim that they are not teaching selfishness, but that is exactly what they are teaching. Although they try to pretend that they are supporting everything they are teaching by scripture, the teaching actually goes against the word of God at every step. And it’s still one of the most popular so-called Christian books. The appeal is very great.

Also, there are various cults—sects, to use a more Biblical term. In some ways they are like the Gnostics. Their appeal is: “We know something that you don’t know. We are the ones who have the real understanding. Come and join us and you will really be saved. All the rest of the churches are in the dark and teaching you false things. We are the only true church. If you join us, you will be someone special.”

And there are also some cults that are pretty bizarre. There was one group a while back that got some acclaim from some people because they got young people off of drugs. But they did it by offering them free sex in place of drugs. (It had “God” in its name, too, The Children of God.)

Paul is making the case that he knows what he is talking about and that what he is telling them is the truth—and more than that, that he is not teaching them for his own gain—he is not selfishly using them. He says, “I preached the gospel to you free of charge.” When Paul was in need, he didn’t ask them for support. Other churches supported him. Remember the Macedonian churches? Out of their deep poverty and with great joy they begged to be able to help the church in Jerusalem. Well, they also supported Paul while he was ministering the gospel in Corinth.

The false teaching that Paul is concerned about comes through people—false teachers. But Paul is making it clear that the ultimate source is the Satan, the devil. The false teachings are appealing. Certainly Satan doesn’t tell you, “I want to destroy you. I want you to go to hell, so believe the things I’m telling you and do the things I tell you to do.” He makes his teaching sound very good. But generally, whatever his teaching is, it appeals to pride and selfishness, to the flesh. It’s a false gospel.

What is the true gospel? “Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures. He was buried. He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.” Jesus was completely unselfish. And how easy it is to take that for granted. We talk about it during the Lord’s Supper. But how deeply do we think about it? It means the difference between eternal life and eternal judgment and punishment. God our Creator sacrificed enormously so that we might be saved.

You know, we talk about things being in shades of gray. Things are not always black and white. My grandson got criticized by his school teacher for making things black and white. He definitely thinks the question of salvation is a black-and-white question. But, it seems natural to think that salvation is a gray area. We are not sure where the boundary is. People tend to ask the question, “Am I good enough?” Nobody is “good” enough! Salvation is not a gray area. It’s black or white. You are either saved or you are lost and still under God’s wrath. Jesus talked about crossing over from death to life. (John 5:24) You have either crossed over or you haven’t. You have either trusted Jesus for salvation or you haven’t. “What do righteousness and wickedness have in common?” (2 Corinthians 6:14) The answer is nothing. They have nothing in common. The difference is like the difference between black and white.

Do you think you are saved? Are you righteous or are you wicked? The real question is, “Do you have the righteousness of Christ?” Do you? If you are not sure, you probably don’t. You are still dead in sins and transgressions. You have not crossed over from death to life. (I’ve asked people about their salvation. Some say, “Well, I’ve tried to be good,” or “I was brought up in the church.” These people are probably not saved. Trying to be good or being brought up in the church doesn’t save. Only faith in Jesus and in the fact that he died for our sins and was raised from the dead saves us.