Food For Your Soul
by Reverend Hubermann Larose
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The Simplicity Of The Gospel
“I fear, lest somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.” (2 Corinthians 11: 3, NKJV)
The fear experienced here by the apostle Paul is not foreign to any servant of God established on a flock entrusted to his care by our Lord Jesus Christ, “the great Shepherd of the sheep”. This fear is predicated on the fact that the Enemy does everything in his power to cause the believers, in particular, to turn away from the simplicity of the Gospel, and to lead men, in general, to find in this simplicity a reason to reject the only effective remedy to the greatest problem of man, that is, his relation with God marred by sin.
The Church was still in its infancy when this Enemy raised up men who sought to adulterate the pure milk of the Gospel received by the gentiles converted to Jesus Christ. The book of Acts reports indeed that “Certain people came down from Judea to Antioch and were teaching the believers: “Unless you are circumcised, according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be saved.” (Acts 15: 1) These men who were Judeo-Christians believed that Christians of pagan origin were to be subject to the regulations of Judaism, if they wanted to be saved. They found the Gospel to be too simple, too devoid of rituals, of ceremonies, of pumps, in short, of all those things able to catch the attention, to appeal to the emotions, and flatter the senses.
The influence of these men was strongly felt in Corinth, as evidenced in the warning given by the apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 11:3. And there is reason to believe that they had also obtained a lot of success in Galatia, in view of this grievance Paul addressed to the believers of that region: “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ.” (Galatians 1:6-7) These people wanted to treat the external form of the Gospel, to make it more impressive, more attractive, more fascinating…
Still today, the temptation to turn away from the Gospel or to reject it altogether because of its simplicity is not less great. The true Gospel is simple, compared to the religions of the world. Consider, among many other things, the message of the Gospel. What simplicity! “Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you shall be saved”, said the Gospel. “Too simple to be true!” replies the unbeliever who would prefer something more complicated: a set of esoteric knowledge to acquire, of acts to accomplish (pilgrimages, penances, sacrifices, prayers in the direction of this or that place, etc.), before he can hope to attain salvation.
The natural man likes complicated things. The most telling example of that is Naaman, the Syrian general. This man stricken with leprosy was sent by the king of Syria to Elisha, the prophet who lived in Samaria, for him to be healed from his leprosy. And Elisha sent a messenger to say to him, “Go, wash yourself seven times in the Jordan, and your flesh will be restored and you will be cleansed.” (2 Kings 5:10) But this simple prescription caused Naaman to have a fit of anger: “I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call on the name of the LORD his God, wave his hand over the spot and cure me of my leprosy. Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Couldn’t I wash in them and be cleansed?”
He turned and went away in a rage, when one of his servants went over to him and said, “‘Master, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more, then, when he tells you, ‘Wash and be cleansed’!” This servant was by far wiser than his master, because he perceived, beyond the mere appearances, the power of God acting in favor of him whose “heart is not proud, and eyes are not haughty,” but who “have calmed and quieted himself, like a weaned child with its mother.” (Psalm 131) In other words, a man, a woman, who puts aside his/her wisdom to embrace the foolishness of the Gospel’s message in its simplicity.
“The message of the cross “, Paul says in 1 Cor. 1:18, “is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” Washing in the waters of the Jordan to be purified was foolishness to Naaman, but that was the only cure for his leprosy. Similarly, the cross of Christ is the only cure to the sin of man, though simple it may seem in the eyes of the lost. God delights in choosing “the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are…” (1 Cor. 1:28)
The Gospel is made for simple people. Jesus praised his Father for having “have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children.” (Mat. 11:25) In addition, it warns that “anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.” (Luke 18:17) This kingdom must thus be received in the simplicity of faith. Blessed is he who does not turn away from the Gospel or reject it because of its simplicity, but who has the eyes of faith to discover “God’s hidden and mysterious wisdom” (1 Cor. 2:7) behind the foolishness of the message of the Cross!
Hubermann Larose
Associate Pastor
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