Today, I am reading and commenting on  1 Corinthians 12-14.

I love the fact that chapter 13, the “Love Chapter”, is in the middle of today’s passage, because that allows us to see it in the context Paul intended.  Obviously, this placement lets us know that love is a gift from the Holy Spirit.  Equally obvious, if we read it in this context we do not miss Paul’s message that love is the most important spiritual gift, that without love all other spiritual gifts have no value.  However, there is one point about what Paul tells us about love that we miss most of the time: we have a limited ability to choose which spiritual gifts we receive. Certainly, each and every one of us can ask the Holy Spirit for the gifts of love, faith, and hope in the knowledge that the Spirit will grant our request.  We can even be confident that the Spirit will give us more of those three if we ask for it.  If we desire other spiritual gifts we may ask for them as well, and if our request is truly to serve the will of God, we will likely be granted the gift we request.  There are limits to this ability to request the spiritual gifts we desire, because as Paul points out, the Body only needs so many eyes, or ears, or fingers.  So, aside from faith, hope, and love, there are conditions as to whether the Holy Spirit will grant us the gift(s) we desire.  The first condition being that our desire for that particular gift must be rooted in faith, hope, and love (most importantly in love).  The second condition being that the Body of Christ must not already have enough members who have that particular gift.  In fact, Paul tells us that we should look at the Body of Christ around us through the lens of love and request that gift which it is most in need of at this moment.  This may mean joyfully embracing a role which the world would consider demeaning.  Those who truly love as Paul describes love will never see it that way.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  1 Corinthians 9-11.

Well, I know what parts of today’s passage I want to comment on.  I even have an idea about how those parts fit together.  Now I just need to see if I can put my thoughts down in writing.  Paul writes about his freedom and self-discipline.  He tells us that he has freedom to do as he pleases, but he uses that freedom to serve those who hopes to convince to follow Christ.  He continues by saying that he disciplines himself to serve Christ and others so as to not miss out on the eternal life which comes through faith in Christ.  Having given these examples from his own life, Paul goes on to write about how we should use our freedom.  The important part of his message is that while we have the freedom in Christ to do anything, we should only do those things which are beneficial and/or constructive.  Further, he writes that we should seek to do not what is in our best interests but what is in the best interests of others.

He applies this lesson to his message on our approach to the idol worship going on around us (and do not fool yourself, idol worship is just as much a part of modern society as it was in Paul’s day).  I like how he makes his point.  First, he makes the point that we cannot consciously take part in the ceremonies of idol worship, but we need not worry about doing so as an incidental part of our lives.  He tells the Corinthian Believers that while they may know full well that most of the food available in the market was offered to idols as part of its preparation, they need not worry about that.  Go ahead, buy the food and consume it without asking whether or not it had been sacrificed to idols.  For that matter, if your pagan neighbor invites you to share a meal with them, go ahead and join them.  Eat what they give you without inquiring whether or not it was part of a sacrifice to idols (which Paul points out would be a sacrifice to demons).  But, if they, or someone else, should inform you that eating it is part of their worship of other gods, then abstain.  Paul points out that the point of your abstinence is not your own well-being, but a service to the one who made you aware of the idol worship you were being asked to join.  I see Paul’s instructions here as a practical application of Jesus’ command to be “wise as serpents, but innocent as doves.”

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  1 Corinthians 5-8.

At the end of yesterday’s post I mentioned that we have to interpret what Paul wrote about division in the Church in light of his instructions regarding Church discipline.  Today’s passage begins with Paul discussing a specific application of Church discipline.  Throughout history Christians have either over-emphasized Paul’s teachings about divisions in the Church, or over-emphasized his teachings about Church discipline.  As importantly, we rarely see the connection between what Paul writes about this specific instance on Church discipline and what he says immediately afterwards about lawsuits among Believers.  When speaking about Church discipline, Paul writes that we should only apply what he is writing to those who claim to be a Believer.  He explains that by saying that we are called to judge those inside the Church, not those outside it.

Before I go on to discuss what Paul says about lawsuits, I want to look at those whom he says we should not associate.  Now, we always remember that he tells us not to associate with those Believers who are sexually immoral and/or greedy. but we sometimes overlook one or more of the other sins which he writes about.  OK, we generally remember that idolatry and being a drunkard are things which Believers should avoid.  However, if we remember that we should not be a slanderer we tend to forget that the person spreading the slander does not need to know that what they are saying is false.  Which was why the Church used to teach the truism, “If you can'[t say something nice about someone, don’t say anything at all”   We should all attempt to practice that.  The final sin which Paul writes we should not tolerate among Believers is swindling.  We typically get that, but Paul makes a further point on that.  We should allow a fellow Believer to swindle us before we take them to a secular court.  If we have a dispute with another Believer, we should take that dispute to another member of the Church for resolution.  Some Church bodies establish formal groups for resolving such disputes, but Paul’s wording suggests to me that if we have a disagreement with a fellow Believer we should agree on another Believer to resolve the dispute.  I do not mean that those Church bodies which establish a formal group to resolve such disputes are wrong, just that we as Believers should be willing to seek informal “judges” of our disputes.  Sometimes the person with whom we have a dispute will, rightly or wrongly, believe that the formal body cannot be trusted to judge the disagreement without bias.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  1 Corinthians 1-4.

It has always seemed to me that Paul makes the primary point in this passage that we will rarely convince unbelievers to become Believers by the wisdom of our arguments.  In fact, he argues that the Gospel is foolish to those who are unbelievers.  Only after we have been touched by the Holy Spirit do we begin to understand the wisdom of God and the Gospel.  Having said that I want to note that Paul makes this point in the middle of explaining why we should not make a big deal about which teacher of the faith we follow.  I was not sure where I was going with this, but as I wrote I thought about those nondenominational congregations which explain why they are nondenominational by referencing this passage.  Every time I hear someone make that claim I think about the fact that they are failing to read the final phrase of verse 12 in chapter 1, which reads, “and still others say, ‘I follow Christ.”‘”  Paul makes the point that we should not try to hold ourselves up as better than others because we follow the teachings of this person, or of that person.  Rather than seeking out how studying the writings of Paul, or Martin Luther, or C.S. Lewis can make us wiser than others, let us seek how studying those writings can make us better servants of Christ than we were yesterday.

I want to highlight that many people try to use this passage to convince others to not hold their fellow Believers to a standard of behavior.  Yet later in this very same letter Paul calls on the Believers in Corinth to call out a member of their group for his sinful behavior.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.