Category: Epistles – Is his letter to our church?

.. but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block, and to Gentiles foolishness..

1 Corinthians 1:23

Times of Difficulty – 5

Peter – Preaching Christ to believers in Sodom

Simeon Peter, a servant and an apostle of Jesus Christ:

To those who have received a faith equal to ours through the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ.

2 Peter 1:1 CSB

Simon Peter, who had denied Christ three times during the Lord’s trial but was then restored by Jesus after the resurrection, introduces himself as a servant [bond-servant] and Apostle of Jesus Christ. He speaks of Jesus in the present tense, for Christ has shown Himself to many alive and risen from death!

Peter is a bond-servant of the Living God in the Person of Christ Jesus. And the Apostle writes not to all, but to those chosen by God to receive ‘the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ.’

2 May grace and peace be multiplied to you through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.

Peter builds up believers in their faith, assuring them:

18 We ourselves heard this voice when it came from heaven while we were with him on the holy mountain.

THE JUDGMENT OF FALSE TEACHERS

The Apostle then cautions the church of false teaching.

YES, even from the first days of Christ’s Church, built on a foundation of His Apostles, some sought to destroy the Good News of the Lord’s resurrection and restoration of sinners by distorting the way, the truth and the life of Christ Jesus our Lord.

Peter warns:

There were indeed false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you.

They will bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, and will bring swift destruction on themselves. Many will follow their depraved ways, and the way of truth will be maligned because of them.

2 Peter 2:1-2 CSB

The King James Version then pointedly follows Peter’s warning translated thusly:

And through covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you: whose judgment now of a long time lingereth not, and their damnation slumbereth not.

2 Peter 2:3 KJV

Thou Shalt Not Covet. Do you remember the Commandment?

• greedy desire to have more, covetousness, avarice

These false teachers with insincere words make merchandise of those who would believe Christ Jesus.

Then the Apostle Peter uses the strongest language of their inevitable demise:

and their damnation slumbereth not.

The Lord Jesus had said (using the same Greek word for damnation):

Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, ^G684 and many there be which go in thereat:

Matthew 7:13 KJV – Strong’s G684 (damnation)

Christ then concluded this caution by stating:

Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.

Matthew 7:14 KJV

FEW find the strait gate and the narrow way leading to eternal life. FALSE teachers WILL NOT teach that, though our Lord Christ Jesus preached this challenging truth.

Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.

Matthew 7:15

Returning to Peter’s analogy of Sodom

The Apostle acknowledges the challenges of believers living in a world of sin and disbelief.

Peter preaches that God cast angels down to hell and did not spare ANY in a sinful world, except Noah and his family.

For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to pits of darkness, held for judgment; and did not spare the ancient world, but protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness, with seven others, when He brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly; and if He condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction by reducing them to ashes, having made them an example of what is coming for the ungodly..

2 Peter 2:4-6 NASB Bolded emphasis mine. – RH

The Apostle of the Lord Jesus then encourages the church to be faithful, as were Noah and Lot.

So what is the Apostle’s encouragement to believers who persevere in their own difficult challenges of the first century? (Or, I might add, equally applied for the believer of this 21st century?)

.. and if He rescued righteous Lot, who was oppressed by the perverted conduct of unscrupulous people..

.. then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from a trial, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment, and especially those who indulge the flesh in its corrupt passion, and despise authority.

2 Peter 2:7, 9a NASB20 Bolded emphasis mine. – RH

A (parenthetical) pain of the righteous

We are righteous in Christ Jesus, beloved believer, (though we were condemned as sinners).

• Did you notice my omission of verse (8) above from Peter’s encouragement?

Here the Apostle shows our empathy for Lot as he lived in Sodom.

(for by what he saw and heard that righteous man, while living among them, felt his righteous soul tormented day after day by their lawless deeds)

2 Peter 2:8 NASB20 – speaking of Lot living in Sodom before its destruction by the LORD

• Is the city of your church a Sodom of sorts?
• (Of course it is.) Here we feel the same compassion for Lot which Peter points out.

Further Description of False Teachers

For your own instruction you may want to read some characteristics of false teachers who will not preach Christ Jesus crucified and risen. READ the rest of the Apostle Peter’s second letter {below}.

2 Peter 2-3

Then consider if YOUR church, your Bible study, your ‘church group,’ and the children’s ministry of YOUR church all preach Christ Jesus.

The Lord Jesus’ Apostle, Simon Peter closes his letter to the church with this:

17 Therefore, dear friends, since you know this in advance, be on your guard, so that you are not led away by the error of lawless people and fall from your own stable position.

But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

To him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity.

Second Letter of the Apostle Peter to the Church 3:18 CSB

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In an intellectual environment of Athens where Paul could well have debated hours on end with its idolatrous and worldly philosophers and political leaders, this Apostle to the gentiles chose to defend Jesus Christ our risen Lord as ‘the unknown god.’

• IS CHRIST JESUS the unknown god in YOUR city?
• Who do you preach in your church?
• Do you preach Christ OR some unknown ‘Jesus‘?

We glance back at scenes of the Son of Man, Christ Jesus, walking with Peter and the Twelve throughout all of Galilee, Samaria, Judea and other places – bringing the Good News to all who would believe.

Many of us who grew up in the instruction of a faithful church heard stories of evangelists like John Wesley and others riding further distances into unknown towns on horseback, preaching Christ Jesus and planting churches. These faithful preachers of Christ followed a model of the Apostle Paul of the first century Church.

Some even sailed into new lands as did Paul.

So whether in Athens, Corinth, Rome, London, New York, Washington DC — even Cincinnati or the ‘sin city’ where you reside:

We see Sodom in the mirror of our neighborhood, don’t we?

Acts 17:

16 Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was stirred in him, when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry.

.. The God who made the world and everything in it —he is Lord of heaven and earth—does not live in shrines made by hands. Neither is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives everyone life and breath and all things..

So having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now proclaiming to mankind that all people everywhere are to repent, because He has set a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all people by raising Him from the dead.”

Acts 17:30-31 NASB

The Apostle preaches to the idolaters of their ignorance of the Living God! Paul then preaches God’s mercy in overlooking their past sins. And the Apostle to the gentiles warns:

God is now proclaiming to mankind that all people everywhere are to repent, because He has set a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all people by raising Him from the dead.”

This ‘unknown god’ to those on Mars Hill who sought Paul’s teachings is the Lord Jesus Christ.

Does your church preach THAT?

So we hear Paul preach Christ crucified and risen from city to city.

Those young saints of the first century Church did repent and believe in the Lord. They often suffered and frequently died for their faith — a true faith — in the One God and risen Lord Jesus Christ — NOT an idolatrous faith in a god of war (Mars), a temple prostitute priestess, or a false prophet promising sinful bliss.

Paul – Writing to the saints in Sodom

Again, I direct our look back at Scripture to understand the heart of those preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

(Oh, how our Lord was so grieved over an unrepentant Jerusalem and all the other cities which witnessed the many proofs (signs and miracles) of the Son of Man, the Messiah Jesus.)

As the Apostle to the gentiles sustains the saints of The Way, Paul writes to believers in cities such as Corinth.

(Of course Athens and Rome were NOT the only sin cities of Paul’s missionary journeys.) The manifest sin of these cities tormented Paul’s heart as such unrighteous men had troubled Noah and Lot and in the Apostles’ time, Christ Jesus.

The city of Corinth was prominent in the first century. It is located in Greece on an isthmus between the Aegean and Ionian Seas, which guaranteed its importance both militarily and commercially. Corinth was the capital of the Roman province Achaia. It was a prosperous city but also known for its immorality. Because of Corinth’s sordid reputation, a new Greek word was coined, korinthiazomai, which meant “to live immorally like a Corinthian.”

https://www.gotquestions.org/church-in-Corinth.html

Do you have ANY question to whom Paul writes?

TO the saints of the church of God, separated TO GOD in Christ Jesus — those brothers and sisters of the Church who Name (also as He IS for us) Jesus Christ Lord.

• (It is not an earthly name; i.e. Caesar, King, Governor, Prefect, Premier, President, Emperor, Iman or Pope.)

χάρις ὑμῖν καὶ εἰρήνη ἀπὸ θεοῦ πατρὸς ἡμῶν καὶ κυρίου Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

1 Corinthians 1:3

• The Apostle Paul speaks of Jesus by Name forty-three [43] times in his two letters to the Corinthians.
• He calls our Savior Jesus Christ (meaning Yeshua the Messiah to Jews) seventeen [17] times AND
  • Christ Jesus an additional nine [9] times,
  • once adding ‘the Son of God, Christ Jesus, who was preached among you by us..’

• Paul’s frequent reference to our Master (and his, as a ‘bond-servant’) is Lord Jesus Christ [49 times in 15 verses] & specifically eight times in 1 Corinthians, as well as four times in 2 Corinthians.
• The Apostle further makes some of his most pointed arguments for our Lord Jesus using His Messianic title in Greek: Christ.
• The Church will always hear Paul preach Christ Jesus. The Apostle always serves our Lord Jesus testifying to the truth of His Gospel.

1 Corinthians 15:

NASB; KJV; CSB; ΠΡΟΣ ΚΟΡΙΝΘΙΟΥΣ Α΄ 15
SBL Greek New Testament

12 Now if Christ is preached, that He has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?

Paul frequently warns of the false teachers who preach this heresy boldly or in the guise of interpreting ‘God’s word.’

.. no resurrection of the dead? 13 But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised; 14 and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain, your faith also is in vain.

“IF,’ Paul preaches — IF these things are true, THEN the Gospel of Jesus Christ is false. YET some false ‘christian’ denominations preach and teach this heresy.

Paul says in effect, “You may as well go home and stop calling your self a ‘christian’ or a ‘believer.’

.. ¹⁶ For if the dead are not raised, then not even Christ has been raised; ¹⁷ and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins.

You know what some preach? No resurrection to the judgment or condemnation to hell. Sounds nice, doesn’t it?

But IF God is good and just, how can He just save all to heaven (if indeed life beyond the grave is even possible)?

Many are the heresies which have crept into ‘christian’ thinking over the millennia of these last days.

What about all those funerals?

¹⁸ Then also those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. 

¹⁹ If we have hoped in Christ only in this life, we are of all people most to be pitied.

Are we celebrating (a last time) the lives of the dead? OR

Do our final days and death proclaim Christ?

But the fact is, Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who are asleep..

1 Corinthians 15:20 NASB

Do YOU preach Christ?

& Does your church teach Christ Jesus?

Paul has much more to say about the Lord Jesus Christ, as do all the Apostles.

IF you are not fully convinced, dear brother or sister in Christ, READ more of the letters to the Corinthians.

OR even HEAR 1 Corinthians 15 read from Paul’s letter.

2 Corinthians 4:

.. for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal. For we know that if our earthly tent which is our house is torn down,

we have a building from God, a house not made by hands, eternal in the heavens.

2 Corinthians 4:18b-5:1 NASB20

Second Coming of CHRIST Foretold

The Gospel of Jesus Christ recorded by Luke

“And just as it happened in the days of Noah, so will it also be in the days of the Son of Man..

“It was the same as happened in the days of Lot..

but on the day that Lot left Sodom, it rained fire and brimstone [burning sulfur] from heaven and destroyed them all.

“It will be just the same on the day that the Son of Man is revealed [apokalyptō].

Luke 17:29 NASB20 – Jesus answering as to when the kingdom of God was coming