2. The Old Ways Are Better

By Thomas M. Parsons

What Christian Religion Teaches
The old ways are better. We never used to do things the way we do them now. Things were better in the past. During World War II, Christians didn’t moan and groan about the war. They accepted it and worked hard to win it. They believed God was on the side of what was right, and the enemy was wrong and had to be stopped.

Take the schools, for example. We used to be able to pray in school. Teachers could lead classes in prayer. Schools had baccalaureate services with local pastors taking turns speaking to the graduates and their families. Today that’s considered unconstitutional. The old ways were definitely better than the mess we have now.

It used to be that if there was something that needed doing at church, people stepped up and did it. Now they are all going in a multitude of directions, their energies drained by so many meaningless activities that they have no time to do the Lord’s work. The old ways were definitely better.

This nation was founded by Bible-believing Christians and we need to go back to the way they thought and lived their lives. The traditions of our founding fathers would deliver us from all the secularism of today. We need to become law-abiding citizens who are committed to the laws of the land, obeying them and demanding that others, especially our leaders, obey them. The only hope for our future lies in recommitting ourselves to the traditions of the past. The old ways were definitely better.

What the Bible Actually Says In today’s passage, Paul argues for the opposite viewpoint from what popular Christian religion teaches. The old ways are not better. Like the ancient Babylonian king, the old ways have been weighed in the balances and found wanting.

It is said that conservative-thinking people want to go back to a past that never existed. We do tend to remember the past “through a glass, darkly,” as it were. None of us can remember all the details of days now gone, and as we get older we tend to remember the past as better than it actually was. This is okay, to an extent, but it is not to be the basis for judgments made today. The past is gone and its precepts may not have much relevance to today’s issues.

Paul suggests that remembering the past, especially as it relates to other’s failures, is a scheme of the devil. There were people at Corinth who had failed in the past, and their failures were being held against them. Paul states these people need forgiveness. Failing to forgive them gives Satan the opportunity to take advantage of the local church and stir up trouble within it.

Paul was more interested in the present and the future than the past. In his immediate past, he had wanted to go to Troas, but did not have peace about the decision. So he went to Macedonia instead. Some could have argued that this was a mistake on Paul’s part, because it meant he did not minister at Troas, leaving the people without a testimony for Christ.

But Paul looked at the present and decided that God always leads His people in the way He wants them to go. We are His prisoners in a triumphal procession, being paraded wherever God wants to be seen. He uses these twists and turns in our paths to spread “the aroma of the knowledge of Him everywhere.” Paul did not look back at what might have been, but rather he looked at what God had accomplished through him and others.

This parading of believers as prisoners sends the aroma of death to the unsaved, and the aroma of life to the saved and to those who are coming to faith in Christ.

In the ancient world, as now, documents that recorded the past were necessary to establish identities and commendations today. But Paul did not depend on past documents. Instead he depended on living believers who became a kind of letter, read by all. This letter came from Christ and was the result of Paul’s ministry in Corinth. But this letter was not written with ink, or on tables of stone, but rather with the Holy Spirit on fleshly tables of the heart.

The old ways, states Paul, brought death. The old ways were engraved in letters of stone. God did

Sep 6 - Problems Are For Losers 2 Cor 1:1-2:4
Sep 13 - The Old Ways Are Better 2 Cor 2:5-3:18
Sep 20 - Pie-In-The-Sky Religion Won’t Cut It 2 Cor 4:1-5:10
Sep 27 - I Have To Do It Myself 2 Cor 5:11-6:2
Oct 4 - God Doesn’t Want Me To Suffer 2 Cor 6:3-7:1
Oct 11 - Don’t Judge Me 2 Cor 7:2-16
Oct 18 - I Don’t Have Enough To Give It Away 2 Cor 8:1-9:5
Oct 25 - God Gave It To Me For Me 2 Cor 9:6-15
Nov 1 - I Take Pride in Myself 2 Cor 10:1-18
Nov 8 - You’re Okay, I’m Okay 2 Cor 11:1-15
Nov 15 - My Heritage Is Important 2 Cor 11:16-12:10
Nov 22 - Don’t Make a Fool of Yourself 2 Cor 12:11-21
Nov 29 - Don’t Tell Me What Not to Do 2 Cor 13:1-14
Classes taught by Tom Parsons at Maranatha Baptist church in Columbus, Ohio Sunday mornings at 9:30 am.

the engraving, and presented the tablets to Israel through Moses. These tablets contained the law and the penalty for breaking it. That penalty was death.

An Israelite who put a false god before himself was worthy of death.

An Israelite who committed adultery was worthy of death.

An Israelite who committed murder was worthy of death.

An Israelite who broke the Sabbath day was worthy of death.

The law given in the past was not good news to the human race. The law was “transitory,” Paul says, but it did have its glory. The ministry of the law was condemnatory, but it was from God and therefore it was “glorious.”

But how much better is the new covenant, the gospel of Jesus Christ, the good news that Christ purchased our redemption on the cross and offered us freedom from the penalty of the law’s condemnation. How much more glorious is this new covenant than the old!

Moses had to put a veil over his face so the ancient Israelites would not see the better glory that was coming. Paul says “their minds were made dull.” When they read the old covenant law, they were blinded to the brilliance of the new covenant glory. It is the glory of the new covenant that shined on Moses’ face. That is what the veil covered.

Even today, people who read the old covenant, but do not know Jesus as Savior, have a veil covering their hearts. The faded glory of the old covenant blinds them to the brilliance of the new.

But when a person comes to Christ by faith, the veil is taken away. Believers may approach God without a veil covering their faces. We can see the glory of the Lord. In fact, we can glory in the truth that He is transforming us into something we could never be on our own. He is making us like Himself. We are being transformed into His image with ever increasing glory. This does not come from the world, or from the past. It comes from the Lord who is the Holy Spirit.

So, were the days gone by actually better than today? Of course not. Things have not really changed.

“Oh, but we had prayer in school, and godly leaders, and . . .”

But we also had crime, poverty, suppression of some classes of people, unbelief, corruption, intolerance, hatred, murder, war, adultery, and on and on. The truth is, the world has always been the world. Since the time of Adam and Eve, the world has been broken. The world has always been guilty before God. The law has always condemned the world.

What was good about the good old days was the same thing that is good about contemporary days. Paul states it in II Corinthians 3:16. “Whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.”

NEXT: PIE-IN-THE-SKY RELIGION WON'T CUT IT