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

I am always amused by Paul writing about not baptizing anyone in Corinth, except for a couple of people.  I imagine him dictating the letter to someone in a room with several other people and one of them interjecting about someone else he baptized and Paul going, “Oh yeah, them too, better say that I don’t remember baptizing anyone else in case someone comes back with, ‘what about so-and-so, didn’t you baptize them?'”  It is not really important. It just amuses me.  However, the point which Paul was making is important.  Paul did not baptize anyone in his own name, and would have objected to anyone else baptizing someone in his name.  His point was that we should follow Jesus in unity.  We should not allow ourselves to become divided by differences between the ways in which different people preach the Gospel.

Paul points out that he was not sent out to baptize, but rather to preach the Gospel.  Further he writes that he did not preach the Gospel with wisdom or eloquence because doing so might have diminished the power of the cross.  Paul explains that the cross is foolishness to those wise in the ways which humans call wisdom and common sense.  I recently heard Tom Holland (the historian, not the actor) expound on what Paul meant by what he writes here.  I want to note that Tom Holland is an atheist, but I think he got it pretty close.  Mr. Holland explained that to the Romans and Greeks, the strong ruled over and dominated the weak and did what they pleased.  Not only did they view that as “the way things are”, but the “way things ought to be”.  In behaving in that manner, the Greeks and Romans (and for that matter, Tom Holland says, so do all other non-Christian belief systems) felt that the strong were merely imitating the gods.  Paul said that, yes indeed we should imitate God, but that’s not how God behaves.  Rather, Paul tells us that God came down and served the poor and powerless, allowing Himself to be killed in order to model the behavior He wishes us to follow.  So, Paul teaches that the strong should serve the weak, not the other way around.  Paul tells us that this is the point of Jesus’ life.  This idea that individuals had value and that the purpose of being strong, of having power, was to serve those who were weak and powerless transformed the world, and that is at least part of the power to which Paul is referring when he writes about the power of the cross.

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.

In his first letter to the Corinthian Believers Paul first addresses the issue of faction within the Church.  In particular, he addresses the issue wherein we attempt to win arguments over living out our faith by appealing to the authority of one teacher or another.  Paul tells us that there should be no divisions among Believers.  As long as the teachings someone is following build upon the foundation which is the Gospel of Jesus Christ (elsewhere Paul speaks about what the “Gospel of Jesus Christ” is, so I will not write about what that is here), we should not argue with them to the point of division, to the point of unfriending them and casting them out of all of our social circles.  That does not mean that Paul is saying that all teachings are of equal value.  Paul writes that we together as a group of Believers are God’s temple.  So, we should choose carefully which teachings we use to build our temple of faith.  However, as long as our foundation is the Gospel of Christ, our temple will survive God’s judgement.  Arguing divisively in the Church destroys the temple to God which the Body of Believers is intended to be.  Those who bring about such division will be subject to God’s judgement.

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.

I am using 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

In his introduction, Paul tells the Corinthians, and us, that they already have all of the spiritual gifts which they need; we have every spiritual gift which we need.  He then goes into the danger of using the differences in teaching focus between different teachers to justify division in the Church.  He even addresses those who try to use this passage to justify doing the very same thing when he warns of those who divide themselves from others by saying, “I follow only Christ.”  Surely you have heard the nondenominational Christians who say, “We don’t have denomination because Paul warns against that. We only follow Christ.”  This does not mean that it is any more wrong to be nondenominational than to be part of a denomination.  The problem comes in when you think being part of a nondenominational congregation, or part of a specific denomination, makes you a better Christian than those who follow a different approach.

The Gospel message is foolishness to those who use human wisdom to understand the world.  Division in the Church results from our attempts to use human wisdom to resolve issues about righteousness.  Wisdom relies on logic, but the accuracy and reliability of conclusions reached by logic depend entirely on the assumptions with which one starts.  Paul uses the example of how worldly wisdom views the Gospel message to remind us how human wisdom falls short of understanding God’s plan.  Those who seek to understand God by way of signs and wonders stumble over the idea that Christ died.  Those who seek to understand God by way of looking at nature think that the idea of Christ’s resurrection is foolishness.  I cannot help but think of the story of the man born blind in John 9. When the religious leaders told the formerly blind man that they knew Jesus was a sinner, he did not respond by appealing to logic or wisdom.  He merely said, “I don’t know whether he is a sinner. But I know this: I was blind, and now I can see!”  He did not try to debate the educated and wise.  He merely used the words which the Spirit gave him.  Let us not try to cleverly come up with an answer to those who attempt to argue with us.  Instead, let us rely on the Spirit to give us the words to say.

I am using 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

Paul discusses division in the Church in Corinth.  Some people are claiming to follow Paul, while others claim to follow Apollos, some another Apostle, and some claim to be just following Christ.  Each group claims that their way of following the Gospel makes them superior to those who chose another path.  Certain non-denominational congregations claim this passage indicates that being non-denominational is the correct way, missing the point entirely (Paul mentions here those who make their claim as following only Christ).  Paul makes here the same point he made in the Book of Romans, none of us are superior to others; we all need God’s saving grace in the same degree.

Paul writes that God chose to use those the world thinks are foolish to shame the wise.  The Jews would not accept Jesus as the Messiah because of His death on the cross.  In that they saw Him as weak, not as the conqueror they imagined the Messiah would be.  The Greeks on the other hand thought the idea of resurrection from the dead was silly and foolish.  The Jews could not see how Jesus’ death demonstrated the power of God’s love.  The Greeks were convinced that resurrection from the dead was a fairy story for simpletons.  The elites were, and are, convinced that they are smarter and wiser than the common man.  Time and again throughout history God has used the simpletons of this world to show that those society deems wise to actually be fools.