Today, I am reading and commenting on 2 Corinthians 5-8.

There are a lot of things I thought about writing on from today’s passage, but  I felt like the thing I should write about is what Paul wrote in chapter six verse fourteen: “Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common?”  Often I have heard this quoted in order to support the idea that a believer should not marry someone who has not given themselves to the Lord.  While that is a true sentiment, it is really only a small subset of what Paul is talking about.  A little further on in this passage, Paul quotes from the Old Testament where a prophet wrote that God’s people should come out from among unbelievers and separate themselves from them.  When Paul quotes that he is not saying that we should try to stay away from unbelievers. if we do that, how could we preach the Gospel to them?  The point here is that we should not enter into alliances with unbelievers in our efforts to do God’s will in this world.  If you are starting a business, do not enter into a partnership with unbelievers to do so.   I struggle with explaining this, because every time I think I have the words to say what I understand Paul to mean here, I come up with an example where the words exclude something which Christians are called to do.  The best I can do is offer some examples.  Some years back, some young women who were very committed to serving the Lord became active in an organization seeking to combat pornography, both because of the way in which it victimized its subjects and because of the way it destroyed those who viewed it.  The organization worked against pornography to bring glory to God.  At one point, they were approached by a secular feminist organization which wanted to partner with their organization to fight pornography.  The young women brought this partnership up to a Bible Study group which I was part of as well as praise for the hand of God working.  Having just read this passage a few days earlier I was struck by this being them yoking their organization with unbelievers and warned them to be careful about such a partnership.  They dismissed my concerns because the partnership was focused exclusively on fighting pornography.  A few years later, the once Christian women’s organization which had been formed to combat pornography was promoting abortion (the young women I had known were strenuously pro-life).  This is not an example of my wisdom, or anything of the sort.  It merely shows that the Spirit had provided a warning against what the Enemy would try to do.  When I started writing that I intended to follow it up with a second example, but it has slipped my mind, and this entry has gotten long enough.  The important point to remember is that, even when a secular group shares our concerns on a particular issue, they have a different agenda than that of those who follow Christ and may choose to morph the goals of our mutual organization into things which are contrary to the Gospel of Christ.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  2 Corinthians 1-4.

In today’s passage, Paul writes about how the glory of God in the old covenant was such that Moses needed to place a veil over his face to keep the Israelites from being overwhelmed by the glory which shown out from his face.  He makes this point after writing that the glory of the Gospel is much greater than that of the old covenant.  Yet, he also tells us that when we turn to Jesus, the veil which hides God’s glory from us is taken away.  Therefore since we can look directly into the glory of God, we should not use deception or distortion in our effort to bring people to God.  Instead, we should set forth what we believe, and know to be true, plainly and clearly so that others can see the glory of God and be transformed by it, even as we are being transformed by it.  If we remain faithful and true to the message which God has given us, His light will shine through us so that even those who choose to veil themselves from His glory will see it shining out from us.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  1 Corinthians 15-16.

As Paul comes to the conclusion of this letter to the Corinthian believers he reminds them of what he had preached to them as the gospel, the good news which had brought them salvation.  Paul had preached to them that the Scriptures had predicted that Christ, the Messiah of God, would die for our sins, and Jesus did indeed do that.  But, He did not just die, He was raised from the dead after three days, which had also been predicted by Scriptures.  Paul lists here some of those who had witnessed that Jesus had risen from the dead, which he had told them about when he first preached in Corinth.  After reminding them of what he had preached when he first came to Corinth, and that they had believed him when he first preached it, Paul emphasizes that if Christ had been raised from the dead, then there must be a resurrection which we also will experience.  Paul continues by pointing out that all of the rest of what he preached relied upon the resurrection and was of no value if the resurrection was not true, both that of Jesus and the one yet to come for us.  Paul goes on to address some of the objections which had been raised to the idea of the resurrection in similar fashion to the way in which Jesus addressed the Sadducees, by showing that those who raised those objections both failed to understand what Scripture taught about resurrection and failed to believe in God’s supreme power.  The Gospel which Paul, and all of the other Apostles, preached was the death and resurrection of Jesus.  All of the rest of their teachings derived from those things.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.