What is the greatest enemy of the gospel? When in Ukraine we pointed to the Orthodox Church. When students from the Bible college went to a village to bring the gospel to children, youth, and to all who would listen, it was the Orthodox priest in the village who would warn everyone that we were a terrible cult, tools of the devil, likely to try to kidnap their children. Really! That’s what happened regularly.
We have known missionaries in Ireland who received similar treatment from the Catholic priest. In tribal areas it was the witch doctor who would threaten people with curses if they listened to those who brought the gospel. This is no surprise. Today’s passage from Acts tells of the sorcerer who “withstood” Paul on Cyprus.
However, as powerful an enemy as are the purveyors of “religion,” the greatest enemy of the gospel is the flesh. By “the flesh” we are talking about the pride that reigns in every person. How do I know this? The Bible tells me so! The gospel is the power of God unto salvation (Rom. 1:16-17). A Jewish person is offended by that statement because, if that is true, then all his religious works are useless. The Bible calls this “the offense of the cross” (Gal. 5:11) and the religious Jew stumbles over this idea (1 Cor. 1:23). The rest of the world is offended by the gospel because it tells them that the thing they do best is also useless when it comes to salvation. People put a lot of stock in their education or money or creativity. But the gospel is not about them or their successes but is about Jesus and His cross. Thus, they consider the gospel to be foolishness (1 Cor. 1:23).
When the religionist comes along, he knows all this. So he invites the person to adopt his religion, by which we mean to do those religious things in a religious way that will make the person worthy of salvation. Here’s an illustration of a religion: taking delight in false humility and worship of angels, intruding into those things which he has not seen (Col. 2:18). The details will be different in every religion, but the point of it all is seen in the next line of that verse: to cause the worshiper to be vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind. The gospel says the power is all with Christ and His work on the cross. Every other religion says the ultimate power is in you!
With this “introduction” I would like to encourage you with a simple study of the Bible that reveals the power of the cross of Christ from a variety of viewpoints. I need to tell you that I was helped immensely in this simple study by Leon Morris, an Australian very evangelical Anglican, and his book, The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross. In it Morris spoke of the different “languages” of the NT in describing what the cross of Jesus brought about in the life of one who put his faith in Christ. These languages included the language of the battlefield (salvation), relationship (reconciliation), the marketplace (redemption), wrath (propitiation), the courtroom (justification), the altar (sacrifice), the morgue (quickening). Just this list gives me cause to stop and meditate on the Lord Jesus and what He did for us all. More in the next post.
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