To Encourage You

2 Corinthians 11:3 “But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ.”

The devil has been at work to deceive the human race ever since the time of Eve.  Interestingly, his methods haven’t changed much in all that time.  From Genesis 3 we know that his opening words to Eve in the garden were these: “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?”  Of course this was not the truth, and Eve attempted to correct him with her reply of “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’”  So, the serpent continued with “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”  Cunningly, he made God out to be harsh and untruthful.  But God had not said they couldn’t eat of any tree in the garden.  In fact, God had actually said they could eat of any tree, but one.  But that’s Satan’s way. His deception begins with an appeal to view God’s law as too restrictive.  He works to make us think that God’s Word only deprives us of many of the really good things in life.  He tempts us to go to the other side of the fence where the grass is greener, when our loving God has warned us to stay within the bounds He has set for us for our protection and blessing above all else. 

Satan tried these same tactics in his temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. He began with “If you are the Son of God,” trying to cast doubt, then tempting him to obey him rather than His Heavenly Father and thereby get something (bread) that he had been deprived of by his fasting as He was led by the Holy Spirit (Matthew 4). However, unlike Eve, who yielded to Satan’s temptation in a paradise environment where she had everything except for the fruit from just one tree, Jesus, who had fasted for 40 days in a desolate wilderness environment, did not yield to temptation to our eternal benefit. Rather, He answered Satan with the truth of God’s Word, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” 

And so, we have Paul in the verse above confronting this same enemy and his cunning devices. Paul’s battle was against false teachers through whom Satan was at work in the church at Corinth.  They viewed themselves as “super-apostles” and cast doubt on the teachings of Paul, a true apostle of God.  They spoke about Jesus but it was “another Jesus than the one we proclaimed.”  They spoke of the Holy Spirit, but it was “a different spirit from the one you received.”  And they preached the gospel, but it was “a different gospel from the one you accepted” (2 Corinthians 11:4).  You see, Satan works cunningly, often within the church, to bring destructive heresies through false teachers who purport to teach truth.  Invariably it will be by way of attacks on the Word of God, rather than by adherence to it.  They will handle the Word selectively, erring both in what they say about it, and what they don’t say.  They will question the writings of Paul and other writers of the Scriptures by arguing that certain teachings aren’t for today, for our society is so much more advanced or that we now know so much more than they did.  And they will often claim higher, extra-Biblical enlightenment about spiritual things – that God told them this or that, regardless of the fact that they are not things the Bible ever says. 

As Paul warned the Corinthians, so he is warning us – don’t just accept what people say about things like Jesus, the Holy Spirit, or the gospel. Don’t swallow everything you hear.  Rather, be a student of the Word of God yourself, and compare what you hear with what it really says.  Otherwise we run the risk of thinking we are following Jesus, but in the end finding out that we never knew Him, deceived by that same old serpent that deceived Eve, and suffering the consequences as a result.