Who are the “enemies of the cross” that Paul talks about?

An “enemy” is someone who stands in opposition. This word is used of the devil, but it is obvious that Paul is not talking about the devil here. He is talking about a group of people.

Now if we don’t consider the context of this passage, we might be able to interpret these enemies as being those people who are out in the world and openly opposing godly principles.

In this interpretation, we could include the drag queens and politicians who want to put pornography in your children’s libraries and indoctrinate them into gender confusion. And we could include those political activists who want the right to let a mother murder her baby even after the baby is born, because the baby might inconvenience her.

Now these rebels have certainly made themselves the enemies of God, but this is not the group of people that Paul is talking about when he warns us about the enemies of the cross.

If you read this entire chapter, it isn’t the blatant and extremely wicked people that Paul is warning us about. It doesn’t take a warning to let you know that the drag queens do not have the best interests of your children at heart. All that is required there is a mustard seed of common sense.

But the enemies of the cross are even more dangerous than drag queens and abortionists because they don’t really come across as enemies. They are not standing across the aisle from us in enemy territory. They are hidden in their subtlety.

Shockingly, they are standing in our pulpits and the leadership positions within the church. They are seminary presidents and professors. They have television ministries on TBN. They are the youth and children’s ministers who are teaching your children IN CHURCH.

Paul wasn’t weeping because drag queens and abortionists had become so depraved that they could no longer see the light of truth.

He was weeping because enemies of the cross had infiltrated the church and were teaching doctrines that were “religious,” but that were harbingers of spiritual death. This group of people was far more dangerous than a drag queen because they were standing in pulpits and average Christians were accepting that what they were teaching was the truth.

What were the enemies of the cross teaching? They were teaching that our personal actions had a bearing on our personal righteousness before God. And this terrible doctrine made them an enemy of the cross and responsible for the deaths of everyone who believed them.

A recent poll showed that only 54% of children’s ministers believed that Jesus is the only way to eternal salvation. This tells me that at the very minimum, 46% of children’s ministers are enemies of the cross.

Yikes! How many parents have turned their children over to an enemy of the cross without even knowing it?

Sadly, I wish I could tell you that the statistics were better up at the youth and adult levels, but they aren’t.

If you are being taught that you need to be a good person in order to make, or keep God happy with you, then you have encountered an enemy of the cross. And this teaching is killing you.

It made Paul weep to recognize what was happening. And what was happening in his day did not stop. It still continues today. There are enemies of the cross who are leaders in churches. And they are telling people that they need to be good so that God will be pleased with them.

That is not the Gospel. That is not the Good News. But if you believe what they are teaching you, you will end up staying sick, poor, anxious, depressed, fearful, and defeated. And have a difficult time being good too!

You have been defeated by an enemy of the cross that you didn’t recognize as an enemy. Why? Because they looked and sounded religious and you accepted what they told you as truth.

When Christians are defeated, it is because they are believing a lie. There isn’t another reason for defeat. And there’s a high degree of probability that the lie came from an enemy of the cross.