Live By The Truth

 DEVOTION

THE 2^ND LETTER TO THE CORINTHIANS

LIVE BY THE TRUTH

 

2 Cor 12:19-21

19 Have you been thinking all along that we have been defending ourselves to you? We have been speaking in the sight of God as those in Christ; and everything we do, dear friends, is for your strengthening. 20 For I am afraid that when I come I may not find you as I want you to be, and you may not find me as you want me to be. I fear that there may be quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, factions, slander, gossip, arrogance and disorder. 21 I am afraid that when I come again my God will humble me before you, and I will be grieved over many who have sinned earlier and have not repented of the impurity, sexual sin and debauchery in which they have indulged.

NIV

And this is a Christian church? How can that be? Surely within the church today there would not be any quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, factions, slander, gossip, arrogance and disorder. Although, maybe we are being overly optimistic, or just cannot believe by now, with all the truth far more available than those in Corinth, that there would be people within the community of faith that would have those kinds of attitudes and behaviors. They only had the oral testimony of men like Paul, telling them truths based on his inspiration by the Spirit. It is doubtful they had any copies of any of the gospels for we cannot be sure exactly of the dates when each was written. Scholars debate these dates depending on their firmness to the authorships being ascribed to the original apostles. Mostly it appears Matthew, Mark, and Luke would have recorded their records of the life of Christ, somewhat between 40 and 60 AD. It is thought Paul wrote these letters about 56AD. Therefore, we are convinced the Corinthian Church only had oral teachings from Paul, and of course his letters, but still they were early in the faith and could not refer to all the scriptures, such as all of what we call the Old Testament as well as all the words of Christ as recorded by the gospel writers. In addition, they had all those false teachers with perverted views of the gospel. So it makes sense they had all that trouble going on in their church. But we have so much available to us now. We have multiple translations, even the Hebrew and Greek texts, and a multitude of resource material to aid us to gain a better understanding of the truth of God. So, these attitudes and behaviors ought to be a thing of the past, never to be experienced in our church today. Unfortunately, we have witnessed some of these attitudes and behaviors within the church today, some of which we may have had difficulty with ourselves at times. But the truth is that we are all human, in the flesh are susceptible to failure of being perfect in all aspects of our lives. However, we need to be working to be more submission to the urging of the Spirit allowing God to finish the work He has started in us. This means that we should continually be in a state of transformation, becoming more and more like the image of Christ. We know these attitudes and behaviors are unacceptable perhaps far better than those Corinthians did. But they are being told, and we have and are always being told about those attitudes and behaviors. Let us continue to grow in Christ, listening to the Spirit within and allowing God to finish His work, as we live by the truth.