But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus, whom we have not preached, or if ye receive another spirit, which ye have not received, or another gospel, which ye have not accepted, ye might well bear with him. 2 Corinthians 11:3-4
Years ago, my wife and I got saved by reading the Bible. We did not have someone lead us down the Romans Road or go over the four, five, or six spiritual laws. We read the Bible because we had tried many churches and it seemed like they all taught different things about going to heaven. We figured if they all say that they believe the Bible, maybe we could find our answers there. As we began to read, searching for answers to life’s questions and the issues of eternity, we discovered Jesus as our Savior. Interestingly enough, that was the easy part. The hard part was trying to find a church that taught what we had found! It took a while and our story of that journey is interesting, but out of all of what we learned, we realized that Paul’s fears were well placed. There are many versions of the gospel of salvation through Christ being taught out there. The Gospel of Jesus being taught is often another Jesus. The Holy Spirit being taught is often not a person, but a force that comes to you in parts as you pray for more of Him. In any case, how can Paul speak of the simplicity of the gospel of Christ and so many people be wrong? It is easy, people are Biblically illiterate and their so called ministers do not teach the raw Word of God, they teach what brings people into the seats. No one wants to hear that God gave us the law to convict us of our sin, that every mouth may be stopped so that the whole world would become guilty before God and in need of a Savior (Romans 3:19-25). No one wants to hear that the law is what condemns us to death because of our sin (Romans 6:23). No one wants to hear that God gave us His Son, Jesus, who was born as a baby, grew up to be a man and never sinned (Hebrews 4:15; Hebrews 9:28). Non one wants to hear that because He never sinned, He did not have to pay the wages of sin, which is death (2 Corinthians 5:21). No one wants to hear that He loved us so much that He willingly allowed Himself to be wrongfully crucified upon a cross to pay our wages of sin so that we should not perish in hell, but have everlasting life (John 3:16; Romans 6:23). And, no one wants to hear that if we believe that He died upon the cross to pay for our sins then we can know we have eternal life (1 John 5:12-13) and He will give us His Spirit as a non-refundable guarantee on our inheritance that will seal us until the day of redemption and give us the ability to do all things through Christ who strengthens us (Ephesians 1:9-14; Ephesians 2:8-9; Ephesians 4:30; Philippians 4:13; Titus 3:5). No, nobody wants to hear that… That’s too simple. That is because faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God (Romans 10:17). Thanks be to God for His unspeakable gift! (2 Corinthians 9:15)
