AP

2 Corinthians 11:2-4   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.  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.  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.

My wife and I have been married for over 58 years, so I can feel some of the emotion the Apostle Paul felt as he penned these words in what was possibly his 4th letter to the Church in Corinth.

In his letter to the Ephesians (5:21-33), he emphasises how the Church is the ‘Bride’ of Christ, the ‘Bridegroom’, so that we might appreciate both the depth of Christ’s devotion to us, “[giving] himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.”, and the implication of what is an appropriate response in our commitment to him.

Throughout the Early Church there was constant pressure for believers to be seduced away from the exclusivity of commitment to Christ alone, as in the Covenant of Marriage.  Read this from Colossians: “The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross” (1:15-20); “So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.  See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ.  For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and in Christ you have been brought to fullness. He is the head over every power and authority” (2:6-10).

It is such a challenge, and so important, that we resist with all our might the relentless pressure of our own [multi]culture to do with the true Gospel of Christ what was happening in Corinth, Colosse, Galatia, and elsewhere. Let us take a firm hold of the ‘FIVE SOLAS’ the 16th Century Reformation proclaimed: “CHRIST ALONE, GRACE ALONE, FAITH ALONE, SCRIPTURE ALONE, for GOD’s GLORY ALONE”, and let us not be diverted from them by being lured into spiritual ‘adultery’.

– Bruce Christian