The True God and The True Gospel
It's true that there's more to be said about the gospel than what Paul revealed in 2 Corinthians but what he revealed in that letter is red-hot theology and it's as relevant to our modern situation as it was to his own. It isn't hard to see that when Paul speaks to people he keeps their culture in mind so that he can more effectively proclaim the gospel. It's also easy to see that Paul didn't shape his gospel to the culture but only his way of putting it across.
Who knows for certain what kind of god those ancient Corinthians believed in? We can make educated guesses but at this distance with as little information as we have maybe a large dose of modesty is in order. (You'll remember how we all knew what Jews in general believed in the Palestine of Jesus' day and then came Sanders with his Paul and Palestinian Judaism to shake our confidence.)
Whatever the general populace believed (and it was probably as mosaic of ideas) Paul knew what he believed. He called a restless Corinthian church (and a restless world) to be reconciled to God (2 Corinthians 5:20). For others there might be many gods and many lords but for Paul there was only one God and he didn't look nor sound like Aristotle's. He preached: "Be reconciled to the God whose history embraces a humiliating death at the hands of his creation and his elect people. Be reconciled to God whose death was only possible because he became weak and vulnerable, and a God whose glory is expressed through a young man dying in the dark and expressing some sense of abandonment."
It's inevitable I suppose that God will be rejected by tens of millions of us in every generation but at least when Paul preached we knew which one we were rejecting. Wouldn't it be terrible to find out that the tame god we rejected through life (when we thought we were being bravely rebellious) wasn't the real God at all? Wouldn't it be equally terrible to discover in the end that the god we embraced was an overly-sweet creation in our own image? Our ancient Jewish and Greco-Roman ancestors made up their minds about how God must show himself and then Paul tells us that he came dragging his cross behind him to that awful place. But he's not like that now is he? He's not like that now...is he? All that cross dragging and dying wasn't glory, was it?
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, the abiding word.com.