Do Not be Misled

 

DEVOTION

THE 1^ST LETTER TO THE CORINTHIANS

DO NOT BE MISLED

1 Cor 15:29-34

29 Now if there is no resurrection, what will those do who are baptized for the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why are people baptized for them? 30 And as for us, why do we endanger ourselves every hour? 31 I die every day — I mean that, brothers — just as surely as I glory over you in Christ Jesus our Lord. 32 If I fought wild beasts in Ephesus for merely human reasons, what have I gained? If the dead are not raised,

"Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die." 

33 Do not be misled: "Bad company corrupts good character." 34 Come back to your senses as you ought, and stop sinning; for there are some who are ignorant of God — I say this to your shame.

NIV

Many of the scholars of old are in agreement that there is no agreement among scholars as to the interpretation of this passage, except to say it is one, if not the most, difficult passage to deal with. We are not about to spent pages and pages, which is what it would take to enumerate all the views that have been taken over the years. We will say there is not any empirical evidence found anywhere in the scripture that this practice of someone standing in proxy and get baptized for someone who had died without being baptized. Although, we do have knowledge the Mormon belief does practice this very thing, then again, they are not a Christian faith. This argument Paul is making continues on, and this is just a portion of his point. Nevertheless, what appears to have been going on in the church in Corinth was mayhem. They were out of control. Perhaps they were taking actions that were far from the truth of the gospel and being influenced by false beliefs and it appears by those who had no knowledge of God. We might take that warner, as to not be misled. We know that bad company corrupts good character. As parents, we try to guard our children against being involved with bad company because we know they will be misled down the wrong path. Yet, the question that we have to ask ourselves is whether we allow ourselves to be influenced by bad company, and in our case, that would be the influence of this world. Once again we could spend many pages in a dissertation of the many ways the world could influence us, but the best example is clearly defined for us in the first psalm. Blessed is the man who does not take counsel from the ungodly would be the first thing. Then we are warned not to walk in the way of sinners, or sit in the seat of mockers, or as we have determined that means, not to give God lip service. We would be blessed if we did not do any of those three. We cannot afford to allow the world’s way of thinking to infiltrate our thinking, our thought process. Although we should abide by the law of the land, that does not mean we abide by the ideologies of the land. They had strayed from the truth. We cannot do that. Being a believer in Christ is not incorporating Christianity into our life, but rather making our life about being in Christ, that is Christ is our life, not a part of it. This is not a balance beam, we cannot ride the fence on this one, keeping one foot in the world and one foot in the kingdom of God. This is not adding Jesus to how we live. This is changing how we live in Christ. Again, this is not about the do’s and don’ts, but it is about not thinking about how we gain whatever by the methods the world uses. We cannot be misled.