Saturday, March 14, 2015

Controlled by Culture or Christ?

Commenting on the situation in Corinth that Paul is confronting in 2 Cor. 10:1ff, Professor Carson draws out this important contemporary application:
There will always be some who are controlled by a lightly "Christianized" version of their own culture: i.e., their controlling values spring from the inherited culture, even when such values are deeply pagan and not Christian. Christian language may be there; yet the control lies, not with the gospel, but with the pervasive values of the surrounding society and heritage. At that point Paul is inflexible.  
As far as Christians are concerned, wherever there is a clash between cherished inherited culture and the gospel of Jesus Christ, it is the former that must give way and accept modification and transformation. Failure at this point calls in question one's allegiance to the gospel. Unreserved commitment to the priorities of the inherited culture, with select elements of Christianity being merely tacked on, brings with it Paul's inevitable conclusion that the Jesus being preached is "another Jesus," the gospel being proclaimed is a "different gospel," and those who proclaim such an Evangel are "deceitful workmen masquerading as apostles of Christ" (2 Cor 11:4, 13) 
Moreover, those professing Christians who, like the Corinthians, show themselves to be profoundly sympathetic to this non-Christian orientation of values must at very least examine themselves again to see if they really are in the faith (13:5). 
—D. A. Carson, From Triumphalism to MaturityAn Exposition of 2 Corinthians 10–13 (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1984), 40–41.

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