Micah Bemenderfer

September 21, 2023

Mark Mark

Passage Read: 2 Corinthians 10-11
Meditation Verses: 11:23-29

Thought

These are the marks of a true servant of Christ. How can any man think he knows Christ unless he had suffered like this in order to proclaim Christ to those who have yet to hear? How can any man think he is close to Christ unless he has suffered in like manner for the gospel and the lost? Who can compare himself to Paul in terms of service? So who can dare to judge Paul or debate his word? Paul knows Christ in ways I can't imagine, so who am I to sit in judgment on his teachings? I can only bow myself in humility and labor to understand how to apply his teachings. If anyone does not treat Paul with the respect he deserves, then I have no need to listen to that person. They know nothing. Paul's writings were included as canon; no one today will share that privilege. No one today has any right or business to set aside a single word Paul wrote.

Application

There is such arrogance among men and women today, to think they know better than Paul how we ought to live, to so boldly debate and argue with Paul's writings and so freely set aside anything they don't like. How foolish can we be to think that we know God better than someone who so completely abandoned himself to God's mission, suffering as he did and still going forward? Even our greatest evangelists can't claim to have given as much as Paul. Paul knew Christ on a level that none of us can dream of, not yet. But this is the spirit of our age: arrogance. We think we have grown in such knowledge and wisdom as to have progressed far beyond the "wisdom" of ancient man. But we haven't progressed; we have fallen far into the trap of the devil, the arrogance of Satan, to consider ourselves at least equal with men like Paul, if not actually superior to him. Let me be ashamed to think that I'm qualified to improve on any of God's Word; there is no proper response but to bow in humility and seek only how to put into practice what has been written.

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