Breathing shallow?

"You may be a wonderful science officer, but believe me, you couldn't sell fake patents to your mother".

"I fail to see why I should care to seek to induce my mother to purchase falsified patents".

Harry Mudd and Mr Spock - I Mudd.

"We are not unaware of his devices".

2 Corinthians 2:11.

So, a few months back I received an order from across the waters that wasn't anywhere near the product that had been advertised. I contacted the seller, and they offered me a trifle of what I'd paid as compensation. Fortunately, I'd made the purchase via a third party, so I was able to lodge a complaint and send all the details to them. It took a while, but eventually my money was refunded and I gained a full if somewhat reluctant apology from the seller.

Sometimes, of course, we're not that fortunate.

Paul certainly felt infuriated that way when he saw how quickly and naively gentile churches were duped by all manner of 'teachers' and ideas that sought to circumvent and thereby undermine the genuine nature of the freedom and responsibility made ours by the Gospel.

In that sense, we're a little like Adam in the garden. After the Lord places him there, he says he is free to eat of any tree save one, but that he'll also need to 'tend' (guard) the place. Freedom and responsibility go together, because however much we may want to revel in the glorious liberty we've received, you can be dead certain there will be those who are itching to take it all away from us.

Sometimes this happens gradually.

A classic example of this is found in the story of the conquest of Canaan in Joshua chapter 9. The Gibeonites knew they were no match for God's victorious people, so they decided instead to beguile them into a compromise that allowed them to maintain their existence and forced Israel to co-exist with them. The lie cost Israel greatly, simply because they failed to understand what was really taking place under their noses.

The simple truth is that the powers arrayed against us truly hate the majesty and the weight of the position God has bestowed upon us, so they will seek any opportunity to either distance us from this or diminish its brightness by seeking to lie about its true place and worth.

When the Judaisers came to the Gentiles, they didn't come directly against Paul's teaching - that kind of assault would have caused issues. What happens is they seek to bring alongside what is doctrinal a 'better' way of seeing and doing things - one that promises to take you into a 'healthier' status than before, simply by adding a little wrinkle or two to where you were (which was OK for a while, but now you need to 'grow' into something deeper, better, truly mediatorial between the old and the new, so you be enriched properly by both).

Deception is always defined by promising something better by putting aside what is already possessed.

Paul identifies this for what it is. Such enemies despise the freedom we have - they wish to malign and denude it of its worth and power, because, in truth, they are enemies of the purchasing work of Christ's cross and blood, and it is the vital work of God that they seek to repudiate and replace with a method of self-righteousness, merited to their followers only by their combined success in carnal obedience, not naked, singular faith in Christ alone.

Such enemies, then, rarely enter by the back door, rarely tell you the full picture of what they're about, rarely give too much away until they have the confidence of believing they have what they're aiming for, signed, sealed and delivered... then reality kicks in, just like when receiving defective goods.

That's why we need genuine doctrine to override and lead us back home.

Let me conclude these thoughts by referring once again back to Eden.

When the serpent seeks to seduce Eve into succumbing to rebellion, he doesn't just tell her a lie (about death), but he wraps this in a promise - she would find her true identity (become god) by in effect seeking to make herself equal with the divine by what she knows. This moment should raise several considerations in us. Do we think, behave or define "godliness", for example, in such a manner that we, like Adam and Eve, in effect, undermine the real nature of godliness conveyed only in the genuine, reconciling work of God in His Son? Is our identity now defined principally by the life given by Christ in the Gospel, or does it derive from our own definitions of godliness and piety?

That's the crux of it, and how we seek to live in the light of such will mean that we're either pursuing what is genuinely excellent, or selling false patents to ourselves and others...