Week 45 2 Corinthians 10
Paul didn’t have a completely captive audience in Corinth. One of the things his critics said was that Paul: walked according to the flesh. I checked a couple of versions and they more-or-less confirmed the language. Paul was:
living according to the flesh
living by the standards of this world
operating according to human standards
working in a worldly way.
I wondered what was behind that complaint. Paul always seemed like an extravagantly religious guy to me. How people figured he was a worldly-guy was a bit of a mystery.
I couldn’t see how people would have thought Paul was a non-religious or anti-religious guy. Paul was definitely a religious guy. Their problem seemed to be that his religion let him inch too close to the standards of this world. So apparently Paul was not putting enough distance between himself and the world. And the only religious group that I know who would have come up with that kind of strict avoid-the-world line would be the rigorous observers of the OT (and Paul had a pretty extensive history of locking-horns with them).
Paul was usually complimentary about the OT. But his position was that the regulations of the OT was not the right hill-to-die-on. The NT gospel had made some key adjustments. For some people those modifications were life-changers. But for others they were dangerous innovations.
Note: quote from 2 Corinthians 10:2 (NASB NIV NCB NCV with slight modifications)