1 Corinthians 16

The giving of our tithes and offerings to the Lord in worship is a very spiritual exercise when it is done truly from the heart. The portion that we set aside is a testimony of something larger then what is collected. Not only is the Lord the owner of all of our financial resources. He is also the Master over our time, our bodies, and over everything that we think of as ours. Our giving of a portion as an act of worship is a commitment of the fullness of love, for we know what it is to be on the receiving end of an amazing gift.

Here we see the church in God gathering together on the day of our Lord’s resurrection, the first day of the week. On the day when we mark our new life in our resurrected Lord, it is fitting for us to lay down our lives in Christian giving as an act of worship. That giving is not just a pragmatic plan to help support the needs of a local assembly. In the case of the Corinthian church, as Paul writes this letter he does not even address their care for those in need in their own number, although there can be no doubt that this was an important matter to him. The collection he urges them to assemble little by little each Lord’s Day is for the church in Jerusalem that is suffering some kind of economic distress. But there is something more going on in this collection beyond their need. There is something here that signals the end of the ages. The Gentiles in Christ are giving the blessing of the nations to the Jews in Christ in Judea.

They will give not only their money, but they will choose some representatives to take their collection directly to Jerusalem. This is a happy moment in the history of God’s saving plan, as the blessings of the nations are pouring into Jerusalem in the hands of those who are willing givers. Paul’s work is continuing for the moment in Ephesus. He may visit Corinth, and then they will have the privilege of helping Paul on his journey, wherever his destination may be. Here we have a man who has set an example of loving ministry for the flock. He is willing to offer up his body daily as a whole burnt offering to the Lord, a living sacrifice, to give himself to the work of God according to the Word of Jesus Christ. This is everything that he has been writing about in this letter, now displayed in love before them in His own life. This is the love of Christ for them to see with their own eyes, and then to imitate.

This gospel of love is being lived out in a world where there are adversaries of Christ and His church. Paul knows all about this. He used to be in their number. He was a captain in the fight against the church. Now he is a servant-leader with men like Timothy, Apollos, and Stephanas who have seen what it is to live in love and who are fruitful in the service of the King who loved us with His life and with His death. The rule that He has laid out for us is plain. Even though we live in a dangerous world, let all that we do be done in love. Let us devote ourselves to the service of the saints.

The work of the Lord is moving forward through the region of Macedonia, Achaia, and Galatia. The love of Christ is preached everywhere. The Scriptures of the Jews are being opened up to the Gentiles. The message of first importance, that of one death and one resurrection that has a meaning for all who are in covenant relationship with God through Christ, that message is touching many lives. The church is moving forward in great love and service. It is very exciting to serve such a powerful and gracious God. It is such a privilege to give to a God who has given so much to us. It is such a joy to love the children of a Lord who has loved our children so well. It is such an honor to be courageous in a battle of love in the name of One who faced a Roman cross and the just wrath of God for our salvation.

It was something of a new idea for so many Jews in Paul’s day to have a covenant community of both Jews and Gentiles all considered one household of faith. Paul has been captivated by that mystery that has now been revealed to him and through him now to so many others. We are the recipients of this message, a message that after so many centuries should be quite obvious to us.

As we close this letter to the church in Corinth, greetings are expressed from the churches of the Roman province of Asia. Money is being collected for a gift to the brothers in the land of Judea. Who can say how far the message has already travelled at this early date in the history of the church? What we can say is that it would be a horrible mistake for us to decide today that our only concern should be with those who look like us or speak our language. Surely our common bond in Christ is what has united us to Jews and Gentiles throughout the world who have heard the message that is of first importance and have surrendered to our King. And one day, as God revealed in Habakkuk 2:14, “The earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.” Our Lord will come, and we will know the fullness of His love and grace, but those who have no love for our Lord will be cut off and accursed. Until that day, may the love of God be with us all in Christ Jesus, and may we love His servants as those who know how good it feels to have others care for our children. Amen.

1 Corinthians 15

Every day is not a wonderful day. Every thought is not a happy one. There is much anguish, loss, and misery in this age. One strategy of facing up to our pain is to do what we can to get some notoriety immediately, perhaps through an emphasis on our own gifts, especially if they look pretty supernatural and spiritual. That strategy leads one to focus on self, and to devote oneself to the task of self-promotion. It does not lead to love, and it is not the way of the cross. Whatever might be the message or theme of the day in the self pick-me-up plan, it must necessarily be of little importance in the whole scheme of things as God has arranged the world.

There is a better way. There are some things to focus on that are of first importance. These things comprise the outline of what the Apostle Paul calls the gospel or good news that was preached to the Corinthian church and to every church where Paul had an opportunity to preach. This gospel is a way by which a person can remain standing in a shaky world of trouble. Everything less than the gospel is not spiritually stable. This gospel is the way that a person can be both saved and kept, brought somehow beyond the limits of loss and emptiness all around us.

Our gifts are not of first importance to this gospel, but something else is of the greatest significance to the gospel, to God, to Christ, to heaven, and if anything is as it ought to be, to the church in every time and place: Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, He was buried, and then was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures. This fact of resurrection was well-attested through a number of resurrection appearances, one involving more than 500 people, some of whom were still alive at the time when Paul wrote First Corinthians.

Why is this so important? The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ are central to the entire plan of God in creation and redemption. Without these truths, we have no sense of our place in God’s eternal plan, a plan that calls for a world-wide resurrection of the dead, and the unveiling of the permanent kingdom of restored humanity in the presence of the Almighty. Why does Paul insist that this death and resurrection was in accordance with the Scriptures? This plan of God was known to Him from before all time, and was recorded for our benefit in the Hebrew Bible, that we might more certainly understand that the faith we believe in is from God, and not from men.

The Apostle Paul was one of the people that saw the resurrected Christ, though not at the same time as others. Paul saw Him after Jesus’ ascension into heavenly glory. He notes the irregularity of this appearance by comparing it to one “untimely born.” The Apostle is very aware of his unworthiness for this mercy, for he was traveling on his way to persecute Jewish Christians when he saw Jesus. Nonetheless, God likes to surprise us all when it comes to His choice of people. He so often uses failures to bring His success to the weak. And He used a cross to win His greatest victory over evil. If we are anything in our giftedness, it is because of the grace of God.

The death and resurrection of Christ are the key points in our holding on to the Christian hope of the coming fulfillment of the age of resurrection. Our Christ died for a purpose, to win for His Father a resurrection people. His death was not in vain. His resurrection from the grave powerfully testifies to the truth of His accomplishments. But there are some in Corinth who have not gotten the point of all this. There are those who claim that there is no future resurrection of the dead. Others change the meaning of the bodily resurrection entirely, and decide that the resurrection of sorts, (all the resurrection that there will ever be in their thinking), has already occurred, apparently in a secret spiritual way. Both groups are utterly deceived.

If they were right, then the apostles were liars, and God made a horrible mistake on the cross, since it will never accomplish what He abundantly claimed that it would according to the Hebrew Scriptures. Without resurrection, the dead are all lost, there is no hope, there is no point to preaching, and there is no forgiveness of sins, since Christ must not have been raised either.

This is all nonsense. Christ has been raised, and by Him has come a general resurrection of the dead. An end to the plan of God is coming that is worthy of all His greatness. Nothing less will do, and the full resurrection kingdom will be delivered to the Father in accord with the promise of the Son. This fact is of such great importance. It is worth the kind of suffering that Paul faced in order to proclaim it. Though we cannot understand the glories of the biology of resurrection, this does not make it false. We cannot understand the biology of the first creation. Why should we be surprised that the re-creation or renewal of people and the world should be beyond us?

Rather than delving into the secrets of the Almighty, we should simply believe what He has told us. There are those with heavenly bodies even now, just as there are those with earthly bodies. One day we shall enjoy a world that is imperishable, and we ourselves will never perish. As Christ is, so shall we be in due time. Even now death has lost something of its sting, for through our mortal death, we will be freed from this perishing world, and brought to God is His heavens. But what sting will be left in death when there is no more death? What sting will be left in sin, when there is no more sin?

This is the content of our hope, though we may see it as in a shadowy mirror, yet even now, the just shall live by faith. Even now, gospel labors, and true labors in the Lord are not in vain. They are full of meaning because of the certainty of the hope that Christ has won for His people. Therefore we have every reason in the world to abound in the work of the Lord today, for our works will follow us into a new world of unfading glory, where our Redeemer, even now, lives and reigns.

1 Corinthians 14

There should be no question for the Corinthian church as to the best way, the must excellent way of Christian living. It is the way of love, displayed so powerfully in the cross of Christ. This does not mean that the miraculous manifestations of the truth of the gospel are unimportant, and it is to these great gifts that Paul returns now, as He shows how they are to fit into the life of the church in Corinth.

Paul is far from prohibiting the exercise of miraculous gifts, but he urges upon the church an order fully informed by the love of Christ. What that means is that the goal of the use of any gift is the glory of God in the building up of the church. By upbuilding Paul is not referring to the numerical growth of the church, but to the strengthening of the body of Christ in the way of faith, hope, and love. This is why the exercise of a prophetic gift in a known language within the church is superior to the use of an unknown tongue in the absence of any gift of interpreting that tongue. With prophesy, the church can hear the truth in their minds, they can believe (faith), than can nurture the growth of godly expectations of the life to come (hope), and they can give themselves over to the well-being of others within and even beyond the body of Christ (love).

This is to be contrasted with a way of using gifts that is designed only to build up the one who possesses the gift in the esteem of the ignorant. This is not the way of the cross. It is through the renewing mind that the church hears and loves the truth, not through the hearing of an unintelligible message. In the life of spiritual warfare, it is of great importance that we hear the call to battle. In this way the mind and the spirit are engaged in both the speaker and the hearer, and the body of Christ experiences true growth. Paul’s advice is very practical and spiritual to the one who feels he has the gift of tongues and who has grown used to using that gift in worship without any interpreter: Pray for the gift of interpretation, so that you may simply speak the truth in a language known to your hearers. This may be less impressive to those who want to see marvels, but it will be better for everyone who wants to grown in grace and knowledge.

In all things in the church, whether speaking to men or singing and praying to God, we need to speak in such a way that the church and the outsider may understand and affirm the great truths of God and be built up together as the body of Christ. Paul is not prohibiting the use of tongues for this first century church, but he is discouraging unintelligible worship. The prideful display of supposed gifts is a childish thing, and the way for the church is the Christian maturity of faith, hope, and love.

There are times in the history of revelation when the Lord has spoken more to conceal than to reveal. The prophets spoke of this, and our Lord did this when He spoke in parables to crowds without explanation. This was very similar to speaking in an unknown tongue without an interpretation. Such speech has a purpose. It is judgment speech, and it came at the end of the era of the Law as a prophetic act of judgment against Israel. God had warned her very clearly through the prophets for many centuries. The Lord of the covenant came with judgment speech to many, but He explained His parables to the disciples, the Jewish seed of the New Testament church. That seed has grown all the way to Corinth, not through confusing parables and riddles, but through the clear preaching and teaching of the Word of God.

There is no doubt that great things were happening in the church at Corinth, but they needed to consider the right way to use the gifts they had been given. It would be better for the church, and for the seeker or skeptic who might be in their midst, to hear intelligible words rather than unintelligible speech. For those who are hearing this message for the first time, our prayer is not for judgment through parable-like confusion, but salvation through words that are heard in the mind and that cut to the heart. They should not be so impressed with who has an unusual gift, but with the intelligible fact that God is surely in this place.

In these instructions Paul is applying the law of love to the order of their gatherings of worship. The general rule is clear. Worship is not your stage to display how impressive you are. Worship is for the glory of God. Beyond that vertical instruction the general horizontal rule is plain: Let all things be done for building up. Therefore some limit needed to be imposed on the number of people speaking, and they should not all be speaking together. Everything should be weighed by those who are recognized as spiritual in their oversight of the worship. The goal is not confusion but clarity, not war and division but peace in Christ.

Private conversation, like that referred to here concerning questions by women about what was being taught, should be remembered and handled later at home, lest these kind of communications unnecessarily disturb the assembly. All things needed to be done decently and in order. Was this because Paul loved order above everything else? Not at all. It was because Paul loved Christ, and in the church He loved to see the dying love of Christ known and proclaimed, and He loved to see that love expressed as a way of life in and beyond the gathering of worship. He knew that there was a connection between the life of love and the understanding and believing of the truth. This required order, and not a childish desire for miraculous preeminence. This is the way of the cross, and in God’s hands, it is the pathway that we are traveling together to the resurrection.

1 Corinthians 13

The Lord is a great giver of gifts. His most wonderful and abiding gifts are those that are given to all who call upon His Name. To them He has granted Himself and a place in His home. For some reason we too easily consider special gifts that distinguish us from each other as more important than the common gifts that we share together as Christians. This is especially the case when individual gifts have a supernatural feel to them, as they sometimes do, (which was certainly the case in the first decades after the resurrection of Jesus Christ).

At the end of the prior chapter the Apostle’s instruction to the church is to desire the “higher gifts” and to pursue the “excellent way.” There can be no doubt from 1 Corinthians 13 that Paul is not speaking of miraculous abilities as the upper deck of Christian experience. He is directing the church to seek a greater measure of the common spiritual gift of Christian love.

A Corinthian Christian may have had the special gift of speaking another language of which he had no prior knowledge. Paul even speaks with hyperbole of the tongues of angels. But if that person does not have a generous measure of the common Christian gift of sacrificial love, then he does not have anything worth talking about. The same is true of prophesy and special gifts of knowledge. Again, probably with a touch of hyperbole, the Apostle speaks of having faith to move mountains. That’s fine, but without love, it really isn’t much of anything. Paul uses the word “nothing” here. We may think that we are something, with our great gifts, but we may still be judged to be nothing if we have no love.

What is love? It is the willingness to be lower, so that someone else would be higher. It is costly, and not merely emotive. Love casts out our fleshly impatience, our envy of others in the church and in the world around us, and all our proud boasting where we would lift up self at the cost of casting down others.

It is through the lens of love that we are able to see the flaw of our insistence that others focus on our special gifts that distinguish us from the rest of the body. When we do not receive the attention that we think we deserve for the tremendous donation we make, are we tempted to be privately or even publicly irritable or resentful? If we are pushed the wrong way by someone, do we secretly believe that we have a free pass to be privately or even publicly arrogant or rude? We think we deserve better treatment; we insist on our own way, perhaps on even petty matters of relative unimportance, and we may even have a rejoicing heart to see someone else taken down or even taken out. How does that kind of attitude fit in with the love of the cross displayed in the willing death of our Redeemer for our eternal well-being? And then we remember that Christ died for us while we were yet sinners. We have only lately come to love Him, and we only love because He first loved us.

The singular hope for us is to come back to the common Christian truth of the cross, and to approach the Lord in the common exercise of faithful prayer, seeking that we would be moved by the common love of Christ, and that this gospel fellowship that all Christians can enjoy may be enjoyed by us, and may yield true resources of real love. What a blessing if God would give us such a gift! And we have no reason to think that He would deny us this. We are not asking for some miraculous manifestation of divine power, although truly love like this must come from God. We are not seeking something that is available to only a tiny percentage of Christians over the course of the history of the church. We are asking for the virtue that should be the defining mark of a church that is truly alive in Christ by the divine power of the Holy Spirit.

If we will have this gift of love, then we must have Christ, the author and finisher of our faith. It is hard to have large resources of cross-based love where there is only a meager supply of hope. Hopeless people find it hard to pay the personal cost that love demands. Therefore we need much hope if we are to love. It is hard to have much hope with only a tiny supply of faith in God. You must believe that God is, and that His future promises can be approached with a very confident expectation of their reality. Therefore we need much faith to have much hope to have much love. It is impossible to have true faith without a foundation of true truth. Therefore it is with the truth of Christ and His cross-love that everything begins. In faith we lay hold of these great truths. In hope we believe firmly in the promises of the One who died for us. In love we sacrificially express the soul-enriching and body-empowering joy of our hope of the new heavens and the new earth. Without these foundational resources of God-granted faith and hope, it is hard to see how we can have abundant love.

One day we will have all of these things in fullness. The faith will be sight. The things that were our hopes will be our possession. We will then exist in a world of perfect love. So many other things, even very good things that are just for the present age will eventually come to an end at the return of Christ. They are for the present only. In Corinth there were special prophetic words from God, some even given in a foreign tongue. Paul knew that such gifts would cease. They were partial things that would pass away. He knew that a perfect day was coming. That day would be a day of perfect love, when all of God’s children would rejoice in casting their crowns before their glorious Redeemer.

It is enough for us to know that something of a spiritual adulthood is coming for us, as we pass through something of a childhood of faith, hope, and love. We have seen the perfect in Christ. We have seen His dying love, and His glorious resurrection. We follow Him in love, however pitifully now, yet with joy. The perfect is surely coming. The partial must give way. The church will one day be a world-wide Israel of perfect love.

1 Corinthians 12

In the previous chapter the Apostle addressed issues of head covering and the sharing of food and drink at the Lord’s Table. These issues are just two of many topics that Paul addresses in this letter concerning the worship of God. Worship takes up the remainder of this letter. In specific, Paul writes about the use of spiritual gifts in worship in chapters 12 through 14.

God wants us to approach Him with both sincerity and knowledge when we come together to worship Him. Many within the Corinthian church used to worship idols. Now they worship a God who speaks, and who has given His message through prophetic representatives, authoritative spokesmen of the Lord. But how is the church to know whether someone who wishes to speak is a true spokesman for Jesus? Paul wants the church to be well informed so that they can exercise discernment on these matters. As always, the message must be tested according to the body of speech from the Lord already recorded in the existing Scriptures.

Does someone have an ecstatic utterance where the words “Jesus is accursed” come out of his mouth? What does that even mean? Is someone claiming that Jesus is not the way for us, or that Jesus is not in charge of His church? Such a person is not from the Lord, and he needs to be silenced in the gathering of saints who worship God through our Messiah. Is someone else giving a message that exalts the complete lordship of Jesus over His beloved people? This is the truth, and if it is truly believed and lived out, then the Holy Spirit must be at work somehow in the life of the one who is speaking. He may not be qualified to preach, but at least He is not an agent of the devil.

The Spirit of God provides a variety of gifts to the church. His gifts are given not so that we can boast in our giftedness, but that we might boast in the Lord and see the Holy Spirit build up the body of Christ. In the first century church in Corinth there were a variety of revelatory and sign gifts that demonstrated the truth of the New Covenant message. These included the speaking of direct revelation from God, gifts of healing, speaking in languages unknown to the speakers, and translation of languages unknown to the hearers. It would have been easy for the gifted ones to become puffed up when such extraordinary gifts were in use in the worship assembly. Yet this would have been a very sad mistake. It was God who gave these gifts as He saw fit for His own glory. There is no spiritual gift of prideful boasting. It does not come from the Holy Spirit.

There is one body of Christ. The gifts that we have been given together and that we all possess in common are by far the most significant gifts. Have you been given Christ, regeneration, faith, repentance, forgiveness, the comfort and freshness of new life by the Holy Spirit, the hope of eternal life, all the blessings of heaven, and a life of sacrificial love even now as a display of Christ to the world? These gifts are for all of us and they are very substantial.

But our thinking can so quickly become unspiritual as we forget the value system of heaven. We want prominence and recognition. When we do not receive preeminence we can become despondent, disappointed, and divisive. This type of pride and rebellion will not help to build up the body of Christ.

God has revealed to us through the facts of the human body that all parts are necessary for the body to function well together. All of us have our part to play. There are so many great things that we can learn from the bodies God has given us. For instance: 1) A body with just one part would not be much of a body. 2) Being embarrassed about one part of your body does not make that part any less a part of the body. 3) To lose any part of your body is significant trouble. 4) God has arranged the parts of your body in the way He thought best. 5) The weak and unpresentable parts of your body are still of great importance. 6) If one part is in pain, your whole body will more than likely be truly miserable, and if one part is given new comfort and relief, your whole body will be helped. 7) The body is one, and no part of your body that is truly a part of your part should be casually divided from the body as if it were useless.

Paul’s point is of course about the church as the body of Christ. All this exalting over a hand or a foot is very insulting to the One who is the Head over the whole body, Jesus Christ, and ruinous of the right order of holy worship. Jesus alone is Lord. If the apostles are something, then they are messengers of the Head of the church. If the prophets bring a true Word, then it comes first from the One who is the Word. If the teachers open up the mysteries of the Scriptures to the church, they are only showing Christ to His people. If there are those with special sign gifts testifying to the message of the New Covenant to the people of Corinth, they are going forth by the authority of the One who has commanded us to make disciples of all nations. His love to us is the greatest gift, and every one of His loved ones has received it. This love of Christ would be the best gift to live out in our brief lives that we have been given in this age. It is the love of the cross, and it is the most excellent way for all who truly honor Jesus as Lord.

1 Corinthians 11

The way of life that we are to imitate involves personal contact within a community of faith governed by the Scriptures. Some of the topics dealt with in the New Testament are not always easy for us to understand because we were not there. The Corinthian church knew the situation that Paul was writing about with every topic that he addressed. This togetherness is important for our growth in Christ, since it is through living examples experienced within a community of faith that we are able to imitate others as they follow Jesus Christ.

When we encounter a difficult matter, whether that of idol worship in Corinth in chapters 8-10, or head covering and the Lord’s Supper in chapter 11, it may help us to take the clues that we have in the Scriptures in order to see what the Lord has given us to help us to understand the matter of controversy and the word of correction given by the Apostle.

Consider this verse from the Old Testament from Song of Solomon 4:1: “Behold, you are beautiful, my love, behold, you are beautiful! Your eyes are doves behind your veil.” What is probably referred to as something covering the head of a woman in 1 Corinthians is some cloth that covered not only a small part of her hair or the skin on the top of her head, but something that somewhat shielded her eyes from too direct a view by someone who was not her husband. There are many passages in the Bible that speak of this kind of veil as a matter of modesty. While the extent of that covering is very debatable, it does seem reasonable that it may have had something to do with the eyes, since it is the meeting of the eyes of a man and a woman that can be a step towards inappropriate communion between them. These coverings were apparently worn in public appropriate to the customs of any culture as a matter of public decorum. Women who did not wear that kind of appropriate dress might have reasonably been thought to be immoral.

What appears to be the issue in the Corinthian church? Some women seem to have taken off these coverings in church in connection with worship as their own new expression of their freedom in Christ. This was creating a scandalous situation. Paul grounds some part of his instruction here in creation. There is a difference between a man and a woman, and there is a difference in the role of a husband and a wife in marriage. These timeless principles may be expressed in different ways in different cultures, but it is not for Christians in any era to think that when we come into worship we are permitted to throw off the reasonable standards of cultural propriety as some misunderstood liberty in Christ.

The symbols of authority that we have may vary, a wedding ring, a particular style of dress or covering, length of hair, but the order of God is not to be despised. We are not to be rebelling against divine structure, as some angels did, and opening the door to trouble in our lives and in the church, trouble that may be beyond what we understand. The way even for Christ, who is equal to the Father, was a way of willing submission. The church needs to submit to Him, and wives need to submit to the loving leadership of their husbands, and to dress appropriately, showing the mutual dependence of man and woman, and a willing order within that larger reality of family communion.

What about the problem of the Lord’s Supper? The sacramental habits of the Corinthian church seem to display no real sense of their true oneness with Christ. Their eating and drinking are a reflection of what people can afford. Some have a full meal, others have nothing at all. This is a horrible offense against the body of believers, and thus against Christ. The essence of the Lord’s Supper is not in the extent of the meal. This supper is more than food, and it is not a private family celebration, but something for the church as a whole throughout the world. There is a way of outward form that so obscures the spiritual reality that it can be offensive to the Lord.

Whether the issue is what people wear or how they eat and drink at the Lord’s Table, when we gather together in worship, nothing can be allowed to distract us from the most important reality that unites us. Christ gave His body and blood for us. He is the sin offering, the peace offering, and the whole burnt offering. He is the Passover lamb. We are remembering and proclaiming His death, since it is by that death that we have died to this fading world, and it is by His resurrection that we are alive to heaven, and thus have been made more useful to those who suffer all around us, both inside and outside the church.

To worship in ways that obscure these truths is not only offensive to God, it is also dangerous for our own bodies. Paul says that some eat and drink judgment upon themselves by their profaning of the body and blood of the Lord in what is to be a sacramental meal. We are to examine ourselves, and find again the only ground for our acceptance by God in the obedience and death of our Savior. On the strength of that good news we are to be respectable, orderly, reasonable, and generous in the midst of the culture where the Lord has placed us at the present moment. We are people of the New Covenant. We are all over the world, and we seek to leave peacefully and fruitfully wherever we are as we wait for the coming of the new heavens and the new earth. Our confidence comes not from our wealth or our power, but from knowing Him who died for us the death that only He could have died in order to bring us salvation and life. This is our joy and our greatest possession in the midst of a world that is condemned and fading away.

1 Corinthians 10

When we began this foray into the world of meat sacrificed to idols, we noted that Paul would address at least two specific questions: 1. Are followers of Jesus Christ allowed to eat meat sold in the public meat markets when that meat was originally a part of pagan rituals? 2. Are followers of Jesus allowed to eat food at the pagan rituals themselves?

We have already been considering the first of these questions, but now Paul turns his attention to the second. While all good food can be received with thanksgiving as a gift of God, there are some settings that make our participation in the surrounding party inherently sinful and always to be rejected. In particular, there is no way that a Christian should think that it is acceptable to participate in pagan temple worship feasts, and then think it a safe thing to participate in the Lord’s Supper as the icing on a multi-religious cake.

It is not safe to assume that participation in the sacraments erases every other offense in our life like some kind of ritual magic. As with the buying of indulgences for future sins, such practices have no sweet fragrance before the Lord, no matter how lofty the signature and seal on the piece of paper telling you that all is well. God cares about faith and holiness. Anytime we use the Lord’s appointed ordinances as ways to pursue unbelief and sin, we are not only missing the point, we are seriously compounding the problem.

The Old Testament covenant community not only had a system of sacraments; they also had a heritage of great acts of divine deliverance. The Passover and the Exodus from Egypt were wonderful moments. If there was something of a baptism in the slight mist of waters that came down on the Israelites as they walked through the Red Sea on dry land, if there was something of real communion with God as they enjoyed water that poured forth from a rock, then the substance of those rituals was in Christ Himself. The people of the covenant were to believe in the One who was to come, and to obey the Lord of glory. Instead, their death in the wilderness was a testimony to their unbelief, and to their failure to obey. No amount of ceremonial water could cover over their willful rebellion.

Why was God displeased with them? For one thing, they thought it permissible to participate in his rituals and in the old games of paganism. This is precisely what some in Corinth are suggesting, that grace allows them to be part of the Lord’s Supper and also to continue to go to pagan temples. God is a jealous God. He does not tolerate false gods well. He loves us too much to permit that kind of unhealthy spiritual intimacy with that which is less than nothing. We cannot say that all the death in the wilderness was just about life under the Law. It is also for our instruction, lest we be so easily overcome by practices that will destroy us.

God can deliver us from even the most ludicrous and evil paganism. He regularly provides a way out for us in mercy. But His warnings are a part out the gracious exit door from that which is destroying us. We do not go out the back door of pagan temples only to decide that we would be wise to go in the front door again as a matter of Christian liberty. “After all they have good meat in there.” Certain bargains are too good to be true, and the spiritual person, the heavenly-minded saint, will do well to flee from such supposed liberty.

Think about the very idea behind religious sacraments. They are outward signs and seals of deep spiritual realities, whether good or evil. If we eat the bread and drink the cup of the Lord’s Table, we do so because we understand that we have a fellowship and communion in the body and blood of our Savior. We are participants in something powerfully great. But when we eat at the table of gods that are no gods at all, we are rubbing shoulders with evil entities that we do not understand, even demonic beings. We cannot have it both ways. Either we want intimacy with the true God through Jesus Christ and the sacramental system He instituted, or we want a relationship with a false god. To expect the true God to be satisfied with our confusion on this point is not a reasonable request. He loves us too much to go along with such an arrangement.

God will not be mocked. Do we want to anger the God who sent His Son to rescue us such a horrible cost to Himself? Eating something from the meat market is one thing. That may be fine, though we still need to consider the teaching of love in light of the exact circumstances. But doing something that could be reasonably interpreted as participation in an idolatrous ritual must be out of the question for those who have been washed in the blood of the Lamb of God.

Remember the cross in all things. Is the course you are pursuing consistent with the love of God and the glory of God as perfectly expressed in the cross of Christ? If not, may God show us a way out. Surely He will provide a way out for us. Angering the Lord, disgracing His Name, damaging the conscience of a weak brother, or putting a stumbling block in front of someone who needs to turn to God – these things cannot be acceptable options. The Lord who has shown us the way to righteousness and mercy through the cross will surely lead us in the way of the love of Christ.

1 Corinthians 9

You may remember that we were talking about whether a follower of Christ could eat food that had somehow come from idol worship. But as we found out in the last chapter, we are really talking about Christian love. Obeying the Lord is not just about having the right answer. It is about pursuing the right answer in accord with what is best for people that we love and for the church as a whole.

This is the point that the apostle needs to press upon the Corinthian church, and he is willing to use himself as an example of someone who abandons his rights for the greater purpose of the love of God. He has the right to eat or drink what he wants to, but he apparently restricts his behavior because of his love for Christ and the church. More significantly perhaps, Paul has the right to have a believing wife, and to have a family that would be supported by the believers among whom he ministers. He has the right to be free from concerns about worldly cares about outside employment.

He is a soldier for the Lord. He is a worker in the Lord’s vineyard. He is a shepherd of the Lord’s flock. Does that all sounds too high and mighty? Paul is willing to go one step lower. He is an ox for God, treading the grain. Does he not have a right to eat? Even an ox should not be muzzled when it treads the grain, according to Moses. Yet Paul is willingly putting a muzzle over his mouth. How so? He is not seeking support from the Corinthian church. Why? It is his right to have that support, yet he willingly restricts his freedom in Christ for the sake of love, his love for Christ and the church. In order to prevent being effectively muzzled concerning the message of the cross, he is willingly being muzzled in terms of the financial support of the Corinthian church.

The principle of caring for the physical needs of the Lord’s workers is well-supported through Old Testament Scriptures. The right answer in Israel was to support the priests and the Levites. That is still the right answer for the New Testament church. But the love of the cross has created a new and exciting dynamic of willingly putting aside rights for the blessing of others. Why can’t the church in Corinth approach the food question in that way?

Isn’t it a fact that Jesus displayed this great ethic, this Christian imperative, in the atonement? Was he inherently obligated as a matter of divine law to do what He did? Will we force the Law-giver to be judged under the Law? Yet the Law-giver came as a matter of willing love. Before the foundation of the world He agreed to the glory of the Covenant of Grace, and to His special part in that covenant. The eternally righteous Son of God became our sin offering. This is love. This is the way for us in every lesser issue of struggle within that covenant community saved by the love of Christ.

Paul is living out this cross-love in front of the Corinthian church. He is presenting the gospel free of charge so that his enemies will be less credible in their critique of him. This is willing lowliness for the glory of a very high kingdom. Is that principle clear? If so, it will help us in solving all kinds of issues. It will help with the disagreement over food sacrificed to idols, but it will also be a guiding beacon for Christian life and ministry in general. Make yourself a servant to all, as much as you rightly can within the context of your calling and your existing obligations. Make yourself a servant to all, that you might win more people to the Lord. He loved you this way. He calls you to love others as an imitator of Him.

Fit into the life that God has given you with a minimum of extraneous disruption and distraction to others, so that the love of Christ becomes the overwhelming message of your existence. In Paul’s context that meant living as a Jew among Jews, though he had the right and freedom to throw off any Old Testament ceremonial yoke. It also meant living as a Gentile among Gentiles in order to avoid distracting Gentiles with Jewish rules. Is someone weak because they think that some meat is guilty by association? Fine. Be weak with them, and don’t eat the meat. Don’t do it because you agree that the meat is somehow evil. All good food is a gift of God to be enjoyed with thanksgiving. Do it for the sake of the gospel, so that weak people might eat much better food in the kingdom of heaven.

This is not always easy. The flesh wants to return to “my rights.” Where would we be if the Lord of glory had insisted on His rights on that day so long ago? No, he had a prize before Him of love and glory, and He ran the race before Him. He saw the wreath of imperishable victory, and He stayed the course, and won the prize for us. Let us give up on some freedoms because of the glory of cross-love. Let us be willing to live it out, so that words of the Savior may not be considered disqualified by hearers solely because they proceeded from the mouth of someone who simply did not love people enough to give up his own rights.

1 Corinthians 8

And now for something completely different… For this chapter and the two chapters that follow, the Apostle Paul gives instructions concerning a very obvious issue in Corinth which is not at all an issue for us today, at least not in the specific that is brought to Paul in the letter he received from the church in Corinth: Are followers of Jesus Christ allowed to eat meat sold in the public meat markets when that meat was originally a part of pagan rituals? Are followers of Jesus allowed to eat food at the pagan rituals themselves? These are two of the questions that Paul will address here.

We should not presume that we can immediately move on to the eleventh chapter, since we do not necessarily live in a culture where our food comes to us through any particular religious ritual. God has not wasted His words. There are principles here that will held us address many issues that we do face and that we will face as we attempt to live faithful lives in a world that has a very different value system than that of the Lord Jesus.

We see this immediately in Paul’s opening remarks concerning knowledge. In this age while we wait for the fulfillment of the resurrection kingdom, there will always be moral and practical dilemmas for the church that we will have difficulty solving. Some of these cannot be ignored. Decisions on some matters are required. As we wrestle through the thorny issues that can unnecessarily divide the church, we will probably come to our own conclusions. There are times when our study and prayer concerning some matter yields not only a conclusion, but also some unwarranted confidence and enthusiasm for that conclusion. We forget that we had to wrestle hard to come to any conclusion, and we become impressed with our knowledge, and wonder how anyone could be so foolish as to have a different answer than we have come up with for the question at hand.

We may also believe that God has revealed the solution to us so clearly, and that anyone who sees this in a different way is simply being disobedient to God. Knowledge has puffed us up and will soon tear others down. What we need is love. Love will humble us and move us to build others up. This is the only way for the followers of the Christ who died on a cross. As we practice the discipline of preferring the love of Christ and His beloved above our personal devotion to our own right answers, we can cultivate a new habit that will ultimately work well not only for our love of people, but even for our love of the truth. Those who love the truth best learn that loving people as if they were Christ Himself in our midst helps others to have a more open ear to the truths that matter most.

We think we know more than we do. Our knowing so many right answers is not nearly as important as the fact that we are known and loved by the One who truly knows and who is most worthy of our love.

With that said, Paul begins to address the particular thorny dilemma at hand. It is true that the Father and the Son are one God and one Lord, and that all food ultimately comes from the one Triune God. The right answer is that there is no food that is inherently evil. Yet again there is the matter of love. Some people have only recently escaped the slavery of worshipping false gods. When they eat this good food, they have a bad conscience about it, because they cannot shake the feeling yet that they are doing the wrong thing.

There is no food that can truly make us holy, and there is no avoidance of food that can truly make us holy. But the conscience is a tender gift of God, and it must be handled with care. Our love for others in the church will help us to consider that others may not feel right about what we think is our true freedom and joy. Why do we need to bring up this matter in front of them? Why do we further need to do this thing in front of them? Why is it so important that we do this thing at all? Have we thought about others? Is this food so important, is this drink so important, is this story so important to tell, or is this joke so important to share? Will we lead others into behavior that they may think is loose and even sinful? Will that be the best thing for them? Will that be the best thing for the church?

When Jesus came as the one who was both righteous and loving, He came not to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many (Mark 10:45). We need this heart and mind in us. His way is the only right way for the church. He did not come to make His beloved children stumble, but to build them up in love.

We must not despise true knowledge. Knowledge is a great thing, and truth is absolutely essential to faith. But knowledge must be made to serve the Lord of love. Knowledge without love is not the way of Christ. It is not the way of truth.

1 Corinthians 7

As we consider Paul’s letters to the churches in Corinth, it is important for us to remember that Paul began this correspondence by giving sincere thanks to God for these churches. The fact that a church may be having some challenging divisions and some real confusion may just be a sign of life. It is best that we not kill the patient as we try to address the symptoms that cause us concern. An area that seems to be causing significant problems in Corinth is sexual immorality. In this chapter Paul turns his attention to a letter he has received from them. The questions they have concerning physical intimacy and marriage are the first ones he addresses.

Let’s also remember that Paul said in another place (Ephesians 5:3) that sexual immorality should not even be named in the church. Those in the church who may have been alarmed by the troubles they were experiencing in this area may have written their own extra-cautious prescription, which Paul perhaps quotes at the beginning of the chapter: “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.”

Like many of the words that Paul quotes from their letter to him, it does contain some truth, but much more needs to be said. Paul is a celibate single man, yet as God uses Him in the writing of this letter, it is clear that the Lord is not enforcing a lifestyle of celibacy on the whole church or her ministers. That might sound extra-safe, but in reality, it is extra-foolish and extra-dangerous, since not many people have the gift of celibacy. Some have so little of that gift that it is highly recommended that they be married, lest they get into even more trouble.

The Bible affirms in many places, beginning in Genesis 2, that marriage is to be a very positive gift to men and woman, and that “is it not good for the man to be alone.” In the case of married people, they should not live as if they are celibate under some false pretension that this is the way to be more spiritual. Marital intimacy is part of the gift, and it is a powerful display of spiritual truth. Intimacy is always spiritual. The problem is that it is sometimes spiritually evil rather than spiritually righteous. Either way, intimacy is spiritual and not merely physical as people often assume. Married people should normally be close this way; unmarried people should not. Married people have a claim on their respective beloved; unmarried people do not.

There are some who have the gift of singleness. That allows them to focus more on kingdom work outside of their own household. The rest of us must do a lot of our kingdom work within our households; and that is as it should be, since we are married and have children. Marriage and children are great gifts from God, but those who can have contentment in the single life can do some good things that others will not have the time or energy to do.

The positive teaching of Scripture on marriage from Genesis 2 forward is simple enough: one man and one woman until death parts the two that the Lord has made one. Yet under the sun, many things are not simple. Sin adds complexity, and then we are reacting; trying to redefine righteousness when every option has problems. Married people should be together for life. They should not separate from each other. But what if they do? Then they should remain unmarried, unless there is a way to be reconciled to each other at some point. But what if there is adultery involved, or abandonment by an unbelieving spouse, or what if the spouse remarries; then what? The church leaders should be involved and should try to evaluate out the specifics of each relationship. For some, the single life may be the only way for them for the rest of their lives. For others, a new marriage may be the right course, but not too quickly. The loss of the first marriage must be grieved, or another loss will follow quickly upon the heels of the first.

Whatever is decided in specific cases should be done to the glory of God, with the goal of preserving and encouraging the holiness of the entire family, even if a spouse is not in the faith. Another principle that is worthy of serious weight is to avoid unsettling changes. Stay as you are if you can do so. We imagine that changes in relationships are going to solve all of our problems, and they simply do not. More often than not, they only further unsettle us and our families. Is it so bad to remain single in the case where a man finds himself single? Is it so bad to stay married if a woman is married to a less than perfect man? Don’t forget that your decisions on these matters have an impact on your children and on the church as a whole.

Particularly during times of intense persecution, people should lean towards remaining in the single life if they can honor God that way. A single man can do much. The king of the church did not need a special person beside him at night in order to make his life complete. He gave all of His attention to the securing of the greatest relationship of intimacy that will ever exist, the joyous union of the Son of God with His holy bride, the church. Every other marriage and every other life of celibacy in the kingdom must ultimately give way to this one great relationship. To treat that final marriage, for which Christ gave His life, as if it is a much smaller thing than the troubles of our few years here below is a great folly. Sad people sometimes make impatient and unwise choices. Don’t rush off trying to fix your life by a new relationship with some new man or woman without first considering whether the one marriage that you need the most is that holy union of the Son of God and His radiant and beloved bride. That marriage is already yours if you are in Christ. Regardless of whether you are married or single, regardless of whether you are deeply delighted or horribly disappointed with the way that things have turned out in your own household, the love of Christ for His bride can be your greatest delight now and forever.

1 Corinthians 6

A church is not just a group that likes to sing songs to God and listen to sermons; it is a community of love, where God’s love is known, and where that love is expressed in ways that make a difference in people’s lives. Love is often messy. A father’s love for his children is not all smiles and hugs. God’s love for us includes correction. When God loves us this way, He already knows the situations that we face in the fullest way. The church is not omniscient. If the church is to love people who are disagreeing with each other, someone may need to investigate the conflict between members and get the facts. Then the situation needs to be examined according to the Scriptures, and the conclusions of all this need to be discussed among those who are trying to do the Lord’s will. When those serving the church as leaders have come to some conclusions that seem good to them and to the Holy Spirit, they need to figure out a way to express God’s will in a humble, helpful, and appropriate way.

All of this takes time, and many errors can be made. Is it really worth the bother? Why not simply use the system of civil courts already set up for everyone in a well-ordered community? Can’t the laws and judges within any community do this job better than we can so that we can avoid making judgments against someone within the body of Christ? This may sound like an easy and attractive alternative, but it ignores the kingdom reality that our Lord has established within the New Covenant church. Jesus is the firstborn of a new resurrection kingdom. Those who believe in Him and who call upon His Name together are a part of this great kingdom. The world and all its powers and authorities have their purposes, but they are a part of a different kingdom that is decaying under the weight of Adam’s sin and the curse of God. When we feel incompetent to investigate disagreements within the body of Christ, and decide to turn over these matters to civil authorities, we are denying something of the victory of Christ in making peace among his beloved church.

The truth is that one day the church will judge not only the people of this world, but the angels who have rebelled against the authority of God. If this is the Lord’s plan for us, how can we run from simple cases of disagreements between brothers within the Lord’s house? We have the gospel. We have the law of God. We have the oracles of Jehovah. We have the Spirit of Jesus. Civil authorities may have excellent constitutions, statutes, and officials, but the church is the kingdom of God. To take our disagreements before magistrates is a horrible admission of incompetence and defeat.

It is bad enough that petty arguments should distract the church from its mission. If we are feeding on the blessings of cross-bought righteousness, it should be very easy for us to let love cover a multitude of sins among those who are part of the family of Jesus together with us. But when church members insist on their rights rather than willingly suffering wrong for the good of the gospel, we are already in very bad shape.

Nonetheless, we are not without hope. We consider what we once were. Where is the commandment that we have not violated? Is there one commandment among the ten about which we can honestly say, “Not guilty?” In a church that is seeing the blessing and healing that comes from Word and Spirit, it is not the self-proclaimed righteous who are being saved, but the unrighteous, but they are not being saved to continue to pursue unrighteousness, calling it salvation and freedom. We should not be shocked when the power of the cross touches the lives of the sexually immoral, idolaters, adulterers, homosexuals, thieves, drunkards, and swindlers. But they must see the past as the past, and the newness of their life in the Spirit as the future. They must be washed, sanctified, and justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

If they are among those who are still trying to evade God’s searching eye in His Law, they are not pursuing a way of life that will be helpful in our goal to live together as imitators of Christ. Is the life of sexual immorality acceptable as just the normal satisfaction of a natural desire, or is it to be rejected as an unacceptable choice for those who are charged to be imitators of Christ? Does the great Husband of the church leave His bride for the company of a prostitute, or does He not stay with His beloved, nourishing her, and cherishing her?

We are now the bride of the Christ, the Man who gave Himself for us. We are the temple of the Holy Spirit, the best Gift of God who has filled the church. We have not been saved for sin. We have been saved from sin for the purpose of resurrection holiness. We are not fighting each other for our rights, but giving ourselves to one another for God’s glory. We were bought with a price, the blood of Jesus. Our lives belong to our honorable Husband who gave Himself for us.

1 Corinthians 5

There was at least a segment within the Corinthian church that had expressed some level of embarrassment concerning Paul, the unusual apostle who had planted this church. There are some who apparently want to make it clear that their primary association is with some other figure, like Apollos or Peter. While they were measuring the ministers against each other, deciding which ones were more or less acceptable, there were paying inadequate attention to their own sinful behavior. They were in great need of some forthright correction, and they received it in 1 Corinthians 5 from a man who some considered to be too weak.

Paul brings up one specific. There is a man who is involved in an intimate relationship with his stepmother. Somehow, some have mistakenly come to see this as part of the freedom they have in Christ. To be sure there is another segment that is horrified, and may have come to the conclusion that this is the inevitable result of too much grace, and not enough law.

The problem is not the gospel of the righteousness and death of Christ for even the worst repentant sinners; the problem is not true grace, but licentiousness masquerading as Christian freedom. There will always be people somewhere in the church who come to the conclusion that the Ten Commandments are not for the New Testament era; there will be some who see the rejection of all Law as an opportunity to call sin freedom. But we must not forget that there will be others within a divided church who will see this kind of messy situation as a good reason to abandon genuine Christian freedom, and to even abandon the truth that our salvation actually comes to us by grace alone and not by Law.

In such a volatile situation (which can easily happen in a church where God is blessing, and there are many people who are coming to faith from all kinds of backgrounds), it is imperative for leaders to be clear in their understanding of the faith and courageous in taking necessary action. There is a danger of growth in immorality brought about by inaction, but there is also the danger in the loss of the clarity of the gospel of Jesus Christ by unmeasured words and actions. The sin itself, now apparently very public, needs to be dealt with, lest an opportunity unwittingly be served up to the enemies of the gospel and their allies who suffer from doubt and confusion.

Arrogance is a big part of the problem in this church, and it shows up in more than one way. The licentious are arrogant when they insist that Christ died so that they can live in a way that even their pagan neighbors know is wrong. The law-oriented party can be arrogant in their insistence that there is just too much grace in this gospel, and that Paul and his weak message of Jesus covering all our sins has created this scandal. Let the elders in such a case examine everything decisively and carefully, and let them be willing to take appropriate action, first for the glory of God and the gospel, second for the continued health and life of the church, and finally for the good of the confused person who has been enticed into strange behavior that cannot be seen as consistent with the faith he professes.

This church needs some people to mourn over the sorry state of “Jerusalem” in Corinth, and to give up on all forms of arrogance. If necessary, the offender must be removed from the communing assembly of the Lord. This is the heavenly action to take, lest we be confused about what the pleasures of the eternal state are all about, and start writing sin large and calling that heaven as some false religions do.

We need a true heavenly mindset in order to judge earthly matters rightly. When a church court acts, it acts for the whole church of Jesus Christ in heaven and on earth. If elders do not feel that they can do that, if they are not sure that their actions are spiritual and heavenly, if they are not convinced that they are moving in accord with the Spirit of Christ, then perhaps they have not yet come to the right conclusion. Paul knew what to do here, and as an apostle, He tells the elders in Corinth to take action, with the hope that the goals of church discipline might be fully met.

It is painful to declare one of our loved ones as one who is now walking in the ways of Satan and the world rather than in Christ, but this may be a pain that needs to be felt by all involved. The Passover has come to us in the cross of Christ some time ago. It is well past the time for removing the leaven out of the house of God, His covenant community. The cross of Christ, the fulfillment of what Passover was all about, is not a reason to decide that sin is unimportant. It is a reason to follow up on this greatest of all deaths with the seriousness of endeavor after new obedience worthy of the fulfillment of all of what the Feast of Unleavened Bread was truly about. The church cannot tolerate sexual immorality within the number of believers.

We recognize that when people are brought to Christ, there are changes that need to be made. We cannot expect that the world will be without sin. As people are brought into the resurrection kingdom of the Body of Christ, they must first see the fullness of their guilt and of God’s grace through the blood of the Lamb. But then they must make true endeavors after the new life that is consistent with the power of the cross. Let those changes be made throughout the church, or we will all get used to sin as a way of life, and the body of Christ will be badly wounded.

1 Corinthians 4

Those who would bring a word from heaven, a word of Jesus, to His hungry church here on earth are delivering a message that is beyond them. Who is sufficient for these things? We are “stewards of the mysteries of God.” We speak authoritatively from the Word of God about things that our eyes have not seen, our ears have not heard, and our hearts have not really been able to imagine. It is no wonder that we sometimes feel like we just cannot keep on going. Yet the Lord who calls His servants will return one day, and He is faithful. He enables us to be found trustworthy with the message of the kingdom of heaven until the day when heaven and earth are one again.

To stand before God on that day, and to have to answer Him concerning our faithfulness to His Word as His ambassadors is enough for us to think about. We need not be concerned about what any lesser authority feels about the clear teaching of the Scriptures. People-pleasers make timid preachers. They worry too much about what everyone else thinks. Paul was not in their number.

In fact, we need not even concern ourselves too much with what WE think of ourselves and our preaching. We are stewards of the high King of heaven. We serve a better Master than ourselves. This does not mean that we show disrespect to church courts or insensitivity to the capacities of a weak congregation. It does mean that we need to give the pure message of the Lord’s truth with a heart of sympathy toward people. We want to bring God’s truth to others in a way that might help them to hear it and love it. We attend to both purity and peace because this is what the King of the kingdom would have us do as those who would feed His sheep.

The Lord will be the judge of any minister of His Word, and the perfect time for that judgment will be at the time of His coming. Today there are many things that are hidden from our inspection and understanding. On that day, all the facts for a proper evaluation will be in the light. Today there are many secrets that are sealed within the hearts of men. On that day, the light of God will “disclose the purposes of the heart,” and the Lord will commend His servants for the faithfulness that He has given them to Jesus and the church.

Paul’s real concern in bringing up this matter is not his own reward or that of Apollos. The real problem is that others within the Corinthian assemblies are getting caught up in boasting in people. They are acting proudly about those gifts that they have received from God. They are behaving like puffed-up royalty rather than servants of the King who died for us on the cross. To such proud leaders, some of the real apostles look ridiculous. They want the ministry to have more outward glory perhaps, and men like Paul look too low. Others from Jerusalem are apparently more impressive.

The true apostles are not putting on a show to impress anyone. If there is a show, it is like a victorious army coming home from war, dragging behind them foreign prisoners in chains. Paul says that he feels like one of those prisoners. He is a prisoner for Jesus, and he is something of an embarrassment to men who think that the ministry should be more regal. Such men are in the tradition of the original disciples who argued with each other about which of them was the greatest.

Paul speaks with some sarcasm here, because he cares for the church in Corinth as a father for his adult children who seem to be in danger. Does he need to remind them that God used him to plant this church? Has their “father in Christ Jesus through the gospel” become an embarrassment to them?

They really need to take another look at the spiritual and heavenly nature of the ministry of the word, and put off all these foolish, fleshly, worldly thoughts. Instead of being embarrassed by Paul, they need to imitate him. Paul, in his lowliness, is been an imitator of the Messiah. It is cross-love that is on display. Whatever suffering he gives himself to is for the sake of the bride of Jesus. If they do not learn to follow in this way through the love of the Lord, they will be proud and destructive ministers, unfit for the title of “servant.”

Paul will come to them soon, and they may learn more about him and his authority in that visit. More importantly, the King who shed His blood for His church has a way of visiting over the centuries, and He will surely visit when He comes again with His holy angels and the community of the redeemed. Do not forget Him. Do not forget His return. We cannot stand against the power of His final judgment. It is time for us to kiss the Son, lest we perish. It is time for us to embrace a vision of the ministry that could rightly be called Christian.

1 Corinthians 3

Paul has been writing to the Corinthian church about the deep truths of the life to come, things about which “no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined,” things that “God has prepared for those who love him.” People need to be “spiritual,” Paul says, if they are to appreciate that kind of teaching. Yet, he contends, the Corinthians have not been spiritual. They have been people of the flesh, filled with earthly-minded impulses. The evidence he points to is their jealousy and strife that has led to serious divisions within the church. This is not consistent with true heavenly-mindedness. They have formed factions within the body of Christ based on their associations with ministers like Paul or Apollos.

Paul and Apollos have each had their gifts. Paul came as a pioneer missionary to the city, beginning in the synagogue, then moving on to the Gentiles, and staying many months in that place where he laid a solid foundation of Christian teaching and living. When Paul moved on from there, Apollos continued the ministerial work in that church. Paul planted, and Apollos watered, but only God could give the growth, and He did. Ministers are servants of the Lord, but God is the one who grants faith and life to His beloved children.

These men, Paul and Apollos, would have the appropriate rewards from God for what they each did. Paul did his part in building up the temple of people in that place. Apollos added to that good foundation. What would happen after they left? No one could guarantee that future ministers of the word would continue to be faithful to God’s word. God will judge the labors of every minister. There is something of a trial by fire coming in the final judgment. Some may teach useless fables with a Christian veneer. Those kind of ministerial labors are potentially destructive of the church in any place or time. The temple of people that ministers build needs to be made of precious metals and valuable stones as the people of God are helped to believe and live as those who have been claimed by the blood of Christ. Only Christ and His true body will be able to stand the judgment that is coming against the world. If we build up the church with fluff, like a temple built of wood, hay, and straw, our labors will be destroyed in the Day of the Lord. The coming judgment of the church will reveal the fruitfulness of the true man of God.

This right vision of the ministry is one that is built on the singular stone of Christ. True gospel labors are Christ-focused endeavors. Every other teaching is useless for the salvation of sinners, no matter how much rhetorical flourish or fascinating argumentation fills the itching ears of an adoring audience. If it is not the mind of Christ that we are receiving, it will not stand the judgment that is coming. This is the only way that any minister will be acknowledged as faithful and fruitful: with his words and his life he must serve up the glories of Christ to a hungry and needy assembly of worshippers.

But there have been far too many who have treated the church of the Lord Jesus Christ with strange contempt. They have introduced odd teaching of secret spiritual knowledge (like the 2nd century Gnostics), or useless moralism and legalism (like the Pharisaic Jews who rejected Christ as the Messiah and clung to their traditions), or man-centered feel-good messages (like any number of supposed teachers of the word who decided at some point in their ministries to give people the practical self-help messages for which they were clamoring).

Inspirational talks or mysterious religious secret-code messages are useless in building up the body of Christ. The only things they are good at doing is demolition and misdirection. They stand in the way of those who would learn of the true Messiah. If a true believer pursues this kind of ministerial effort, he himself may be saved, but he will have almost nothing to show for his years of sermon-crafting.

God’s temple is not our playground. We do not get to decide to build a house of horrors there or to set up a monkey bar set where the preaching of the word should be. This is God’s temple. As far as our new ideas with no basis in the Scriptures, it would be best to let all mortal flesh keep silence.

Any boast in men or in the methods of a world of consumerism is an attack against the One who gave His blood for His bride, the One who reigns at the right hand of the Father in heaven. He will not be impressed with our boasting in ourselves, for He has freely offered His life in submission to His Father. Everything belongs to God. Everyone who would come to God must do so through this Christ. He is the only way to secure a future that will last, and to live in a hope that will be our possession when this life is past. We must have Christ. To preach any other intriguing message is a distraction to all who long to be found in Him, and a delight only to people of the flesh who are addicted to the decay all around us that will surely perish.

1 Corinthians 2

Being impressed with a preacher’s intellect is not listed anywhere in the Bible as a necessary step in God’s plan of salvation. We are thankful for the great thinkers of the faith, and there is no doubt that they have been a blessing to us and to many others, but God did not give the apostolic leaders of the first century church the keys of the kingdom because He found them to be the most intelligent people available on the planet. Nor were they necessarily the most eloquent speakers of their day, or the most popular, most charismatic, or nicest folks available. All of these wonderful qualities have their place, but to rely on man’s intelligence, rhetoric, or personality is to empty the cross of its power.

This is why the Apostle Paul apparently rejected ways of communication that might exalt him above Jesus. Paul was a learned man, but as with many learned men who come to faith, his strength was not in his learning, but in his humble receiving of new learning by the Word of God and the Spirit of God. He says here that he “decided to know nothing except Jesus Christ and Him crucified” when he came to the Corinthians. His method matched the Lord’s message and was accompanied by deeds of power that gave glory to God and not to Paul. Why? It was only through a crucified style of preaching that the faith of the church will not “rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.”

We preach Christ crucified. That is not to say that there are not complex issues in every branch Christian theology, and thorny dilemmas of Christian ethics. These things may seem deep to people, but there are issues that are far deeper still. The most amazing matters are the questions of the present heavens and of the life to come. God has a whole world of glory prepared for those who love Him, a world that no one in any of our theology or Bible classes has ever seen. Our ears have not heard the sounds of heaven, and there are wonders in that world which are even beyond our imagination.

Yet the amazing fact is that God has chosen to teach some of these things to the church by the revelations of His Holy Spirit, revelations now preserved for us on the pages of Scripture. Some of these revelations were packed away for us in the Hebrew Bible, waiting for His illuminating power and the movement of His saving providence, so that we would finally be able to see the wonder of the Zion to come in the words of the Old Testament. Other truths have come to men like Paul and John, New Testament men who have been brought in visions into the heavenly council like some of the prophets of old in order to reveal what God wanted us to know; truths that we can only truly embrace by the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

The glory of the present heavens, the wonder of the coming again of the Lord, the renewal of the earth, and the blessings of a reunited world, a new heaven/earth; these are the greatest topics for our consideration and meditation. If Pilate, Herod, Caiaphas, or any of the other rulers of this age could have seen one glimpse into that great world of glory prepared for us by God, they “would not have crucified the Lord of glory.” These revelations did not come to Paul, Peter, or John because they were smart men, or men that could speak well, or even because they were personable. They came by the Spirit of God, and we hear these truths and embrace them by this same Spirit.

The Spirit of God is not content that we should remain ignorant of the matters of this faith that we profess. He searches us out in the depths of our being, and finds the emptiness of lies and ignorance within us. He rids us of the fluff of sentimentality that has taken up far too much space in our souls for far too long. Taking the building blocks of the word preached to us, this same Spirit builds His residence within us, and grants to us faith and life, and all by the free gift of God. Now we have the mind of Christ planted within our hearts, something that may sound foolish to some, but which is nonetheless the most marvelous deposit of the world of immortal glory that could ever be granted to people in this evil age of decay.

Possessing the mind of Christ is a blessing of incomparable proportions. Through our Lord’s life within us we have access to rich resources of discernment for the life of the church and for our own struggle to live now for a glory that is yet to be more fully revealed. But more than any present benefit for successful living today that comes from having the mind of Christ by the Holy Spirit, the greatest blessing of having the mind of Christ is that Christ, the eternal Son of God, is in us.

At the very center of the world of glory that we have come to know through the Scriptures is this one and only Lord of glory, Jesus of Nazareth, a Man who was despised and rejected, a Man who suffered a death for us that did not appear glorious at all. It is through the glory of the cross, where our Savior was lifted up to die, that we have now been lifted up to live. The message that we have heard and received is about the glory that comes from God from beginning to end. Therefore, it is fitting that we who have the privilege of bringing that message to people should deliver the news of it in such a way that it becomes clear to the hearer that the wisdom that we needed so desperately has come to us from God, and that at root we know only one great thing: Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.

1 Corinthians 1

The Bible has just what we need for the life of faith in the Lord’s church. That means that we are given not only a theological treatise (like Romans) with one of the most systematic presentations of Christian faith and life available anywhere; but we are also granted the pastoral pronouncements of a first century apostle written to a church that is vibrant in the Spirit and getting into all kinds of trouble. Both types of letters are of enormous value. First and Second Corinthians are more the latter than the former.

As in all of Paul’s letters, we begin with an introduction that is appropriate to the message in the rest of the letter. Paul emphasizes the matter of calling, preparing His readers for an authoritative Word for the church. He is called “by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus,” and those who are receiving this inspired correspondence are called to be “the church of God that is in Corinth.” To be the church of God in Corinth is to be a part of a larger entity. The Corinthian church is not to develop its own theology, its own ethics, and its own spirituality. They are to be “saints,” which was the word used in the first century to designate all of those marked by the church as set apart, holy for Jesus Christ. They were to be “saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Paul then extends a greeting of grace and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, and he shares the fact of his great thanks to God for this church, since they have displayed such great blessings of God in knowledge and spiritual giftedness. This kind of boast cannot have as its final target the people of the church, since it is God who has clearly given them everything that they have, and it is God who will sustain them as they wait with the church throughout the ages for the return of Christ from heaven. Because of Jesus they are not only guiltless before the throne of God today, but they will be guiltless on the day of the Lord’s return.

This is all from the faithfulness of Almighty God, and it comes to the church in Corinth despite their very significant confusion, immorality, and false spirituality. This is a church that requires stern apostolic correction, and yet Paul begins this correction with a glowing statement of what these brothers and sisters surely have in Christ Jesus our Lord.

The pastoral situation in this church is one where anyone might rightly have said, “Now where do I begin?” There’s plenty of material to work with. There are news reports that he has received that require significant correction, and the letter that has come to him from the church poses questions that show the disorderly way of life that has had its impact upon many who profess faith in Jesus in this great city. With all of these matters before him, Paul begins with the problem of divisions within the church, divisions that are about a very fundamental question of our baptism, and much more than this, of the way that we live the life that Christ has given us.

It seems that factions have divided the church based on the agent of Christian baptism and the human instrument of Christian teaching. Some identify themselves with Paul, and others with Apollos. Both of these men spent a great deal of time in Corinth. Others within the church connect their spiritual life to the Apostle Peter, called here Cephas, and still others invoke the name of the Messiah, as if he were one of the choices alongside Paul, Peter, and Apollos.

Paul’s focus is singular. The Christian church in Corinth and throughout the world is united in only one Name, that Name above all names, the Lord Jesus Christ. This Name must be our unity and our delight. The fact that there is only one Jesus will be the only basis for safe agreement throughout the worldwide church. There is only One Man who was crucified as our Passover Lamb. Anyone else who would make such a claim to our highest affection is an imposter and a false prophet. It is into Christ that we have been baptized, and it is the powerful word of His cross that we have heard, received, believed, and followed.

This word of the cross has never been universally loved throughout the world. It is an embarrassment to many to speak of a God who would be victorious through His willing death as a substitute for sinners. Many Gentiles who heard this word thought it lacked something in wisdom. Many Jews felt that it was too weak to be the truth from God. For those who have believed this Word, so well attested through the Hebrew Scriptures of the Old Testament, for those who have been captivated by the love of God for us in Jesus Christ, we proclaim that the weakness of Jesus is the greatest strength, and the foolishness of Jesus is the most profound wisdom. This is what the church must preach from the Scriptures, the cross of Christ, the death of the One who is our unity and our peace.

Any other message will tear us apart. We will find some way to talk about our own supposed wisdom, our own great family backgrounds, our own strong qualities, real or imagined. God has shown us that such things will never be the basis of true Christian unity. In fact, in the very composition of the church throughout the ages, the message of grace is marvelously reinforced, since so many intelligent people are too smart for Jesus, and so many powerful people are too strong for a King who was crucified. But for those who see Him, those who have been set apart to hear a Word not of our own greatness, but of His, we find in Jesus Christ all the greatness we could ever need or desire. He is the source of our oneness in the church, the sure solution to our greatest needs, our eternal boast, and the author of our one holy calling as worshipers and saints.

Love and Tragedy

Grief is debilitating. We should not try to cut it short through a false sense of spirituality that is only faking it.

Christian word-based spirituality is founded on truth. We do not have to pretend that everything is wonderful when we are reeling from horrible loss. Our loss is an important part of the truth, though it is not the only truth.

The Lord gives us time.

Though we may never understand why we have lost so deeply, our loss somehow fits into the eternal purpose of God in Christ.

One way that we can see some measure of His grace in grief, is to allow God over a number of years to move us toward love in a way that we could not have known without loss.

How does this work?

We experience the truth of loss within the larger tapestry of truth in our lives and especially in God’s Word.

We lay hold of the truth of that Word by faith, particularly as that Word speaks to our loss within the whole system of truth that is the Bible.

We increasingly allow the promises of God to inform our hearts of the certainty of the glorious plan of God which is already ours in Christ. Our hope grows, and even some measure of joy is known by our grieving hearts.

We comfort others with the comfort of Christ, especially as those who know pain more than we did before we lost what we loved. Thus we give ourselves in love to others in a new way, a way that is a help to us, a blessing to those around us, and a credit to the Lord who is sovereign, and who loves us with an everlasting love.

We find that we can eventually love better for having loved and lost, and we are still allowed to grieve as we wait for the glorious hope that is ours in Christ.

This is the way of faith, hope, and love. It does not insist that we be spared tragedy. It insists that tragedy must not ultimately be set apart from the overwhelming fact of the love of God for us in Christ Jesus our Lord.

So be it.

My prayer:
Come soon, Lord Jesus! Until that great day, make me a vessel of your love. Amen.

The Centrality of Christian Love to True Christian Spirituality

Consider a number of verses that speak of the importance of love for the Christian life:

Our love for God and for others flows from God’s own love…
1 John 4:19 We love because He first loved us.

Love is more important than whether you are a Jew or a Gentile…
Galatians 5:6 For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.

Love is the aim of the best Christian instruction…
1 Timothy 1:5 The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.

Love is a noticeable testimony to the world…
John 13:35 By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.

It is at the end of a list that the Apostle Peter says is worth our every effort…
2 Peter 1:5-7 For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love.

And finally, the verse that started this consideration of the life before us, Love is the greatest…
1 Corinthians 13:13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

Love is so great, that we should seek it from God at all times.

Though joy helps fuel Christian love, this does not mean that joy and love cannot coexist with grief and pain.

How is God glorified through Christian love in even the worst trials of life?

Tomorrow...

What is Christian Love?

The revealed truth of God is certain and stable.

Faith lays hold of truth.

Hope proceeds from faith, and brings the power of fresh joy.

Love thrives in a life that is full of the joy that comes from hope.

Love is more than an emotion. It is lived, and not just felt. Love is sacrificial. Christian love is more than good family bonds of sacrifice and commitment. It is more than the patriotism that we experience in the service of our community and nation.

Christian love is distinctive and new in two particular ways.

1. It is especially expressed within a new family and community of faith, hope, and love: the church. We lay down our lives for one another. We are willing to be low, that some other brother or sister in the body of Christ might be lifted up. It is to be a defining mark of the church that has been touched by the truth through the power of the Holy Spirit. Then beyond the church, the love of Christ overflows bountifully to the world, even touching those who count us as enemies.

2. Christian love is based on a new divine accomplishment of love that demands our complete surrender. The cross is that new manifestation of the most powerful love.

John 15:12-13 “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lays down his life for his friends.”

Love is at the position of highest excellence in the list of faith, hope, and love. Without love, we have nothing, and we are nothing.

Is love really that central to Christianity?

Tomorrow...

Why is Christ central to our hope?

We have been considering hope, our confident expectation that the eternal purpose of God will be our blessed experience in the resurrection world of a new, reunited heavens and earth. Yet the Scriptures speak of this eternal purpose as already accomplished in Christ.

How could something in the future be already accomplished, and why is one man so central to the achievement of God's eternal purpose.

A future event can be spoken of as a certain reality if it is certain, and if the key event securing that event has already happened. The achievement of the eternal purpose of God required the creation of mankind and the entire universe, the fall of mankind in Adam, the provision of a substitute for the elect in the God-Man Jesus Christ, His obedient life as the keeper of the Law of God, His atoning death that secures our hope as the objects of God's mercy, the display of the coming resurrection in His own resurrection, the proclamation of His benefits throughout the world, the application of those benefits to His people by the work of the Holy Spirit, the return of the Lord in glory with His glorious kingdom.

The key event that secured our future is the cross of Christ. The success of that atonement was displayed as a certain fact in His resurrection, a resurrection not to more mortal life, but to immortality, and His ascension to the present heavens. Because our right to a place in the eternal blessing of God is entirely in Christ, and because He is in that place now, the eternal purpose of God has already been accomplished in Jesus Christ. Our union with Christ is so sure, that there is now nothing that can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Take away Christ from the eternal plan of God and that plan could not have been accomplished.

God's purpose called for a glorious kingdom of grace and holiness. We needed to be those who would be there not by our merit, but by His mercy. Yet He insisted that all the requirements of His holiness had to be fulfilled. This necessitated the cross.

Our hope has been accomplished in Christ. The fullness of our experience of that hope is certain.

But what difference does that make now? Is it just for our spiritual contentment, or are we supposed to live differently based on this certain hope?

Tomorrow...

What is the eternal purpose of God that hope waits for?

The message of certain hope is that the eternal purpose of God will be accomplished.

But what is this eternal purpose?

Ephesians 3:11 speaks of the singular eternal purpose of God as something that has been already accomplished in Jesus Christ our Lord. This eternal purpose was announced long ago in the opening chapters of the Bible, and was decreed by God before the foundation of the world:

"...to unite all things in him (Christ), things in heaven and things on earth." (Ephesians 1:10)

The reuniting of heaven and earth as a perfect eternal community of grace and holiness in the fullness of the presence and blessing of God has always been the great and certain plan of God. This is for the glory of God, and it shall be accomplished. Everything else that has taken place or will take place serves this one great purpose, a purpose that will be seen and experienced in the perfection of the resurrection world, the renewed and reuited heavens and earth.

Those who die now in the Lord, are already in the realm of heaven, the place where Christ went after making atonement for the sins of His people. One day that world will descend upon the earth, and God, who makes all things new, will be our all in all.

This is the eternal purpose of God, and the Christian hope.

But how is this hope spoken of as already accomplished in Jesus Christ?

Tomorrow...