2 Corinthians 11-15 Reading
Paul warns of false apostles masquerading as apostles of Christ-different spirit and different gospel…(vs 4, 13).
..for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light (vs 13, NIV)…his servants masquerades as servants of righteousness.
2 Corinthians 11:1-13
[1]I wish you would tolerate me, even when I am a bit foolish. Please do!
[2]I am jealous for you, just as God is; you are like a pure virgin whom I have promised in marriage to one man only, Christ himself.
[3]I am afraid that your minds will be corrupted and that you will abandon your full and pure devotion to Christ — in the same way that Eve was deceived by the snake’s clever lies.
[4]For you gladly tolerate anyone who comes to you and preaches a different Jesus, not the one we preached; and you accept a spirit and a gospel completely different from the Spirit and the gospel you received from us!
[5]I do not think that I am the least bit inferior to those very special so-called “apostles” of yours!
[6]Perhaps I am an amateur in speaking, but certainly not in knowledge; we have made this clear to you at all times and in all conditions.
[7]I did not charge you a thing when I preached the Good News of God to you; I humbled myself in order to make you important. Was that wrong of me?
[8]While I was working among you, I was paid by other churches. I was robbing them, so to speak, in order to help you.
[9]And during the time I was with you I did not bother you for help when I needed money; the brothers and sisters who came from Macedonia brought me everything I needed. As in the past, so in the future: I will never be a burden to you!
[10]By Christ’s truth in me, I promise that this boast of mine will not be silenced anywhere in all Achaia.
[11]Do I say this because I don’t love you? God knows I love you!
[12]I will go on doing what I am doing now, in order to keep those other “apostles” from having any reason for boasting and saying that they work in the same way that we do.
[13]Those men are not true apostles — they are false apostles, who lie about their work and disguise themselves to look like real apostles of Christ.