6/15 Strength for Today

The Simplicity of Christ

2 Corinthians 11:3
“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.”

Year's ago I had a conversation with an individual over the subject of what the Scriptures defined as good music. This individual told me that I would not completely understand what is right because only an expert in music can understand what music is right and wrong. Immediately, I responded back to this individual that the Scriptures were not written so that only “experts” can understand what is right and wrong; God wrote the Scriptures in such a way that even a child can understand what is right and wrong.

Quite often you will hear some “expert” say that you would have to be an expert in some language or subject in order to understand the Scriptures. My response to someone who says something like this is that they need to read the Scriptures and understand that God wrote them so that everyone can understand them without an “expert” to explain them.

That is what the Apostle Paul was describing in the verse above when he said that he was afraid their “...minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.” Paul warned the church of Corinth that there would come in preachers who would try to destroy the Scriptures by flaunting their expertise. He warned them that because the Scriptures are simple so that everyone can understand them that a false prophet would try to make the Scriptures difficult in order to sway them from the truth.

I write this to you to warn you to watch out for anyone who tries to make the Scriptures more difficult than what they are. I have found that if I study the Scriptures, as we are commanded to in 2 Timothy 2:15, that we can easily understand what God is teaching us.

Watch out for the so-called “expert” in religion! These “experts” will do nothing but try to corrupt the simplicity of the Scriptures. God meant what He said when He wrote the Scriptures, and nobody needs to try and explain away what God said. The Scriptures are very simple on purpose. God made them simple so that anyone, at any education level, could understand them. If a person can't understand them then they need to get the Teacher of the Scriptures to live inside of them; that Teacher is the Holy Spirit of God. If you have a problem understanding a portion of the Scriptures, then ask the Holy Spirit to explain them to you.

Let's not let the “experts” ruin the simplicity of Christ. Let's trust God and we will find that we will keep from straying from truth.