Character of These Teachers
C. Lipscomb 2 Corinthians 11:13-15 For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ.… Indications of a marked change in the apostle respecting these intruders at Corinth appear in the tenth chapter. Recent circumstances had aroused his attention to their acrid and persistent hostility as directed against him and the spiritual welfare of the Church. From the first he had not misjudged them. Under all their specious arts he had detected a low and carnal spirit, calculated to affect these volatile Corinthians and obstruct the progress of his ministry. Meantime they had increased in boldness and audacity, and assailed him with more impetuous virulence. Evidently, then, there was a growth in his convictions as to their mischief-making power, and of late these convictions had become very strong. The growth is apparent both in his thought and feeling, and in such a mind as St. Paul's it could not be long in reaching his will and shaping itself in a resolute purpose to put down the evil. So long as it was mainly a personal vexation, he had borne it patiently; but the hour had come when, while true to "the meekness and gentleness of Christ," he must show "the rod." Very clearly is the military attitude of his mind exhibited in the previous chapter, he speaks of "weapons," of their might to overthrow "strongholds" and "cast down imaginations," and of his readiness at the proper moment "to revenge all disobedience." This deepening intensity finds utterance in the paragraph now under consideration. Unable to repress his feelings any longer, he gives them expression in the most forcible form his language could assume as it regarded the religious pretensions of these men. They are "false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves [by their own act] into the apostles of Christ." Looking at the matter from St. Paul's point of view, nothing worse could be said of them. What his description involved quickly appears. "No marvel;" how could there be any room for surprise? It was characteristic of him, the great adversary, to send just such "apostles;" for "Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light." Perfectly natural; sender and sent are one; and the union is seen in the transforming power. No great thing if "his ministers" should so fashion themselves as to seem "ministers of righteousness." And having stated who and what they were, he announces their future doom: "whose end shall be according to their works." We see now why he mentioned his fear in the opening of the chapter, and referred to Eve as led into sin by the subtlety of the serpent, and we see also why he spoke of their bearing with these hypocrites. Hitherto some of the Church had been deceived by the plausible devices of these persons. But he had opened their eyes to the danger, and, if they continued to listen to these ministers of Satan, they themselves would be willing dupes and participants in their guilt "whose end shall be according to their works." The passage has a deep spiritual meaning. It shows us the great power of Satan in adapting himself to circumstances and using means suited to times and occasions. It shows him versatile, adroit, untiring in inventiveness as well as in energy, and able to impart to others this transforming or fashioning power which he pre-eminently possesses. Not only does the Pauline theology recognize the inherency of sin in our nature, but in addition thereunto it recognizes a mighty agent who employs the utmost skill and a prodigious strength of will and passion to call out and direct this indwelling evil. And it shows this Satanic agency working in the Church, and even counterfeiting the apostleship. The passage is full and explicit. Its force cannot be evaporated in rhetoric; its truth is the sternest reality in most earnest speech. A critical occasion had arisen, one of momentous interest in the history of Christianity, one that presented a turning point in St. Paul's career, and he met this occasion by exposing the diabolical source of their conduct. From his course of action we may learn a very useful lesson. His way of dealing with. sin looked to a personal agent beyond the sinner - one with the sinner and yet distinct and separate, and this agent exerting his tremendous ability in exciting all the latency of evil as unconscious to the sinner, and with it all his conscious susceptibility, so as to accomplish his eternal ruin. Too often with us this Satanic power in men is not duly estimated. In trying to save men, we should remember from whom we are delivering them, and what an awful hold Satan's tyranny has upon their souls. As a practical fact, this is a matter of vast importance. And, accordingly, we find the Lord Jesus impressing on the apostles that the Holy Ghost was not only to convince the world of "sin" and of "righteousness," but also of "judgment" - "because the prince of this world is judged." How else, indeed, could the work of conviction be consummated? Precisely here the Spirit perfects his gracious office as the Divine Convincer; and precisely here we must labour with all diligence and prayerfulness in order to convince men that they are by nature the subjects of this prince, and that only Christ, who has "judged" him, can deliver them from his bondage. No closeness of contact with man as mere man will meet the requirements of the case. It is man, the servant of sin because the slave of the devil, with whom the preacher of the gospel has to do, and unless he realize as far as may be the fearful import of Christ's words, "Ye are of your father the devil," it is not likely he will cooperate with the Holy Ghost in bringing men to that depth and thoroughness of repentance which go tar to determine the stability and worth of future Christian character. Depend upon it, our danger at this point is real and serious. What is the human nature with which we are struggling in the daily endeavours of thought and in special sabbath efforts, praying, wrestling, agonizing, that it may be rescued from unbelief and restored to its Father? Inspiration is never content to portray it as merely far gone from original righteousness, dead in trespasses and sins, but the very phraseology takes its deepest import from ideas and images originally associated with Satan. If detached from Satan, such terms as "subtlety," "blindness," "deceitfulness," "bewitched," "craftiness," "beguiled," "wiles," "snares," "captivity," "bondage," would lose the peculiar force which always accompanies them in the Scriptures. And with this use of language the spirit of the New Testament accords when its writers are setting forth human depravity in its special relations to Christ's mediatorial work. Is Judas about to negotiate for the betrayal of Jesus of Nazareth? "Satan entered into him." Is St. Peter over confident, proud of his devotion to Jesus, full of daring? "Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat." St. John: "he that committeth sin is of the devil." St. Peter: "Your adversary, the devil." St. James: "Resist the devil." St. Paul: "Recover themselves out of the snare of the devil." Surely, then, this uniform tenor of scriptural language, coupled with Christ's most emphatic declaration as to man's incapacity to see Satanic agency in its true light except through the convicting office of the Holy Ghost; surely, we say, this should impress us very deeply as to the urgent need of making prominent in our preaching and teaching the fact of Satan's enormous power over the human soul. Time was when this truth was felt far more profoundly than now, or at least when it filled a much larger space in pulpit thought and Christian literature. And the fruits of it appeared everywhere, not only in a higher order of religious sentiment, but in the amenability of folly and vice to that moral fear which no community can afford to lose. Wickedness abounded then, as now, and yet wickedness was open to the probing of its conscience and to the disturbance of its sensibilities, nor did it commonly have the complacent hardness and the defiant attitude towards the solemn hereafter which it now wears as its familiar aspect. Communities had convictions then on moral and religious subjects, but only sections of communities (speaking generally) have such convictions now. Men of convictions were sure of an audience. Savonarola could not but be heard. Luther had an intense realization of an evil spirit; less of it would have made him less of a reformer. Milton and Bunyan, the two names that Englishmen would choose as the finest representatives of English genius and manhood in the literary spheres they filled, wrote as men who realized that Satan was something more in the affairs of the world than a subject for artistic treatment. We have come to the closing quarter of the nineteenth century, and within the century the land of Luther has given us 'Faust' with Mephistopheles, and the England of Milton and Bunyan has gives us 'Festus' with Lucifer. Insensibly to itself, the pulpit has caught the effeminate spirit of the age, and it discusses sin much more than it grapples with Satan in sin. "For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil." If the most tender and loving soul among inspired thinkers could lay such an emphasis on this truth, assuredly there is a way for this doctrine to be strenuously preached, free from every taint of extravagance and morbid imagination. Depend upon it, when we throw this doctrine into the background of set purpose, or when we let it lapse from our grasp by casual infirmity, we have nothing left but a fragmentary Christ and a depleted ethical Christianity. - L. Parallel Verses KJV: For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ. WEB: For such men are false apostles, deceitful workers, masquerading as Christ's apostles.