Wednesday 4 December 2013

Keep it simple

But I fear, lest somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. For if he who comes preaches another Jesus whom we have not preached, or if you receive a different spirit which you have not received, or a different gospel which you have not accepted—you may well put up with it! – 2 Corinthians 11.3-4

Why do we have to make everything so complicated? I am certainly no theologian so I have a really hard time figuring our where I stand on some of the great theological issues. I would not want to totally be critical of hard core theology, but I do think we can take things and complicate them far beyond what is necessary. We can, if we are not careful, be so caught up in our '-isms' that we get dragged away from the simplicity that is the gospel. It is that gospel that Jesus spoke of when we talked about becoming child like in our faith. 

Paul was worried about false teachers. He was afraid that the Corinthians would be confused and dissuaded from their simple faith. 

We need to understand what we know and why we know it. We need to be able to I defend our faith in the word of. God. 

But we need to make sure that we get don't get so caught up in arguing our petty differences and minor viewpoints that we forget the simplicity of the gospel that saved us. 

I think what Paul is saying here is that we need to make sure we are fully committed to the basic simple truths of the gospel. If we are not settled on that then it makes no difference how much fancy stuff we know, we will still pulled away from the truth and 'put up with' false teaching. 

We need to nail our colours to the simple gospel that Jesus died, was buried, and rose again. Let's not be so preoccupied with all the extras that we are deceived away from the simple truth. 

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