Another Jesus?
Do you know that it is possible to follow another Jesus? Do you know that it is possible to recieve another Spirit other than the Holy Spirit? Do you know that this can happen in the established Christian church?
Many Christians think this is only something that happens in the cults i.e Jehova’s witnesses or the Mormons. Yet the following passage is addressed to Christian believers who were being led away by false apostles. Many after seeing these verses continue to believe that such things do not apply today. Yet the truth is that the whole N.T testament says that deception in the church will be more of a danger in the last days, that is, the times we are now living in.
3But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning, your
minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ.
4For if someone comes to you and preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus we
preached, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or a
different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it easily enough.
5But I do not think I am in the least inferior to those “super-apostles.”
1) We need to remember that the serpent (Satan) is cunning.
He doesnt advertise his deception otherwise it would not be deception. In order to be cunning you need to be able to trick, inorder to trick believers into following another Jesus you need to make the false Jesus look like the real thing.
2) The battle is in the mind.
Deception works through the mind. The passage tells us that Satan seeks to lead your mind astray. It is with the mind that we understand and digest truth. This fact has been lost in today’s ‘heart based’ and ‘experience based’ Christianity. Yet it is through ‘knowing the truth’ that we prove ourselves to be Christ’s disciples. Inorder to know we must understand. Many people are not willing to use their minds and search the scriptures in order to test doctrine or a ‘move of the Spirit’. This is drastic because it means that believers minds are wide open to being led astray, Satan doesnt even have a challenge! We should be like Nehemiah and build a wall of defence around our minds in order to protect that which belongs to the Lord.
3) The deception takes us away from ‘pure devotion to Christ’.
Yet the deceived person does not know this because they are following ‘another Jesus’ or they have recieved ‘another spirit’. ‘But I love Jesus’ they will say, ok but which Jesus do you love? ‘But I am filled with the Spirit’ or the ‘Spirit showed me this and that’, ok but what spirit showed you this or that?
Just because some does something in Jesus Name does not prove that it is the Jesus of scripture. Just because an evangelist has large crowds flocking to the altar to ‘recieve Jesus’ does not prove that the people are recieving the true Christ. Just because people have a spiritual experience does not guarante that the experience was caused by the Holy Spirit.
You may be devoted to Christ, but is your devotion ‘pure devotion’? Error in the gospel leads to impure devotion. You may be trully born again but because you have recieved false teaching your devotion may not be pure. The more deception you get into the further away from the True Christ you become. You end up worshiping another Jesus. This is idolotary. Satan wants to lead the church into idolotary, he knows if he was to pull out a golden calf most Christian would run a mile. Instead he introduces false ideas wrapped in truth inorder to slowly lead believers away from ‘pure devotion’ to Christ. When this runs its full course many believers become subject to ‘another spirit’.
Why is this important?
In verse two of the same passage Paul say’s
to one husband, to Christ, so that I might present you as a pure virgin to him.
The Gospel is primarily concerned with getting people ready for Jesus! It is about purifying sinners and making them ready for the marriage of the Lamb! We are saved by grace, however we have a responsibility to allow God to sanctify us and prepare us for the glory that will be revealed at the end of time. If we lose sight of Chrsit, we lose sight of the only way which we can grow into His image. We need to grow into His image if we seek to be rewarded on the day of judgement. In heaven only that which Christ has reproduced in us and through us will remain.
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