1 Corinthians - talk 4

What are you doing? This is a no-brainer! Expel the immoral brother that he may be saved on the day that the Lord returns and you may be acting properly.
Intro
The only sport I’ve ever been sent off in, is netball, and it was mixed netball at that. My illustrious playing career lasted 2 games and then we parted ways. It is fair to say that netball and I have some philosophical differences in what we think sport should be. To me it is a game of contradictions.

It’s a ball sport where you get penalized for going for the ball, at least while anyone else is within 3 feet of it. It is supposed to be a fast moving sport, which it is, except that the referee blows their whistle and halts play every 3 seconds. It is a game of contradictions it seems to me, and contradictions are just so frustrating aren’t they?


Well when it comes to Christian judgment, the apostle Paul in the book of Corinthians seems to be offering something of an apparent contradiction. Last week in Chapter 4 he says, ‘Don’t judge a brother!’, this week in chapter 5, he bemoans ‘why aren’t you judging a brother?’. It looks like a contradiction doesn’t it?

Why can’t we just have a simple rule to cover every situation, instead of this Christian wisdom stuff? Well because that simple set of rules to cover it all would make the Old Testament look brief, and would be about as exciting to read as tax law. How does that sound?

So Paul today is going to point out the issue we need to use Christian wisdom to address sin within our community, and he is going to demonstrate some principles in this particular case in Corinth that we will be able to follow.


Well if you remember that Paul finished Ch4 last week with some stern words of challenge, the rod or in a gentle spirit, you choose, and at the time it seemed a little harsh for mind, but now as we start the new chapter, it all becomes a little more clear. The Corinthians has some serious problems with morality in their Church.

1. Don’t Boast, but expel this man!
NIV 1 Corinthians 5:1
It is actually
reported that there is sexual immorality among you,
and of a kind that does not occur even among pagans:
A man has his father's wife.
2 And you are proud [arrogant]!
Shouldn't you rather have been filled with grief and
have put out of your fellowship the man who did this?

Paul in this section of Corinthians certainly calls a spade a spade, and he asks how can you be boasting, you need to expel this immoral brother out of your fellowship. Now it seems a little odd to us doesn’t it?
Exactly how could the Corinthians be proud of this?

[Aside] Now it is possible that people were proud because they were such “enlightened and liberal” people that they “knew” that what a person does with his body doesn’t count. But this kind of idea owes more to Greek philosophy than it does to Christianity. This kind of idea that the flesh is essential evil and needs to be disposed of, and the flesh is what my spirit needs to be set free from, this is classic Greek philosophy and is a view of life called dualism.

Christianity however, points out that although the body is riddled with sin, it is not evil, but it is broken. Christianity teaches that we don’t need the body to be destroyed, but renewed. Christ was bodily resurrected, not just a spirit or some ghost, and in the same way we will be bodily resurrected. In Christianity the spiritual and the physical go together in the one person.

‘But what kind of bodily resurrection will we have?’ you may ask, well you are going to have to hang around to later in the year when we do Chapter 15.


Getting back to the main point, it is possible that the Corinthians were boasting about this man, (seeing themselves as enlightened in allowing this kind of behaviour), but it seems more likely to me that that Paul is asking them the question, ‘how can you be arrogant towards me when you have this kind of thing going on in your midst that even the Greeks won’t do?’.

You are proud towards me, and you should be grieved and ashamed. Now why should they be grieved? Well it seems (based upon a more general sense of Paul’s views of life from his letters), that if they have a lack of awareness of the seriousness of sin, (which they quite clear do), the question is have they really grasped the gospel properly?
Have they understood the seriousness of the intense interest of a holy God?
Have they understood the seriousness of the cost that God paid to achieve their freedom, the price of his own son’s life?
Have they really understood that to call on Christ as your saviour is to call on Christ as your Lord?
Have they really understood that to call on Christ as your Lord is to be his disciple?
And to be a disciple, is to be like Paul, and follow Jesus in the way of the cross!

It’s up for grabs a bit isn’t it whether they have grasped the gospel properly, because their wrong thinking about the gospel is exhibiting itself in wrong behaviour, and well what do you make of the behaviour we are seeing in their midst?

The way of the Cross is not about sexual immorality that much is absolutely clear, (so this one brother is in some imminent danger), but more than that, what does it say about their whole fellowship that they would allow this sought of thing in their midst?
This one person’s sin has a corporate impact upon the rest, in contrast to what those great theologians the Bee Gee’s said, which was so impressively restated by Kenny Rodgers and Dolly Parton, we are in fact not ‘Islands in the Stream!’. And what we do impacts on the rest of the body of Christ.

The book of Leviticus in Chapter 18 prohibits this exact sin, so how can this kind of behaviour be good for the people of God, when the same God who clearly prohibited this kind of behaviour, is the same God who told them, ‘Be Holy for I am Holy!’.

Whatever Holy is, this kind of immorality is not it, but then neither is standing by and allowing it to go on!

Paul commands them in quite a surprising manner really, that what is holy, is to expel the immoral brother from their fellowship.

In fact he is going to say that four times in this chapter, that’s pretty emphatic isn’t it!



2. This is a No-brainer! Expel the man that he may be saved.
3 Even though I am not physically present,
I am with you in spirit.
And I have already passed judgment on the one who did this,
just as if I were present.
4 When you are assembled in the name of our Lord Jesus and
I am with you in spirit, and
the power of our Lord Jesus is present,
5 hand this man over to Satan,
so that the sinful nature may be destroyed and
[in order that] his spirit saved on the day of the Lord.

Well Paul’s red hot instruction to the believers in Corinth continues and he offers possibly the most radical, and yet essential, interpretation of ‘Love your neighbour’ you are ever likely to see. Paul commands the Corinthians, ‘This is a no-brainer, Expel the immoral brother from your midst that he may be saved!’

Now lets be clear here, Paul is no right wing talk back radio shock jock here, he does not make this decision for retribution alone. But instead Paul’s goal is for repentance and then restoration.

Is their any punitive (or punishment) element to this command, well sure it is supposed to be severe wrap over the knuckles for this brother, but the goal is that this punishment would lead to his repentance, and then his repentance would lead to him being restored properly to the fellowship of the believers at Corinth.

Paul’s logic seem to be that the judgment of the fellowship, as hard as that can be, is better than this person having to face the judgment of God. This man’s eternal salvation is at stake.

But Paul’s goal is that this rectified situation would lead to all of them being just a little more like their God, who is Holy. And it seems that Based on 2 Corinthians 2:5-11, Paul’s approach works (notwithstanding the fact that some commentators insist it isn’t the same man), the same principal was employed and it has clearly worked in this real case, which you can look up later.

So as we move in to the third section of chapter 5, Paul isn’t sure we got the point, so he goes on to restate his point, and this time he backs it up with the work of Christ and an analogy of Passover bread.

3. Expel the man and act like you should because of Christ
6 Your boasting is not good.
Don't you know
that a little yeast works through the whole batch of dough?
7 Get rid**[cleanse thoroughly] of the old yeast
that you may be a new batch without yeast [unleavened]—
as you really are [unleavened].
For Christ, our Passover lamb,
has been sacrificed.
8 Therefore let us keep the Festival,
not with the old yeast,
the yeast of malice and wickedness,
but with bread without yeast,
the bread of sincerity and truth.

Paul’s analogy, or mixed metaphors, here is clearly pointing out that this one man’s sin is of the kind that will infect the whole congregation. This man and his sin needs to be quarantined to protect the rest of them from being struck down and bearing the guilt themselves for allowing this sin to go on in their midst.

Paul calls them to do the right thing and expel the brother (that’s the third time incase you are keeping count!) and act properly. Paul is pointing out that these sins are not just an issue of personal piety, but a matter of communal responsibility, which means communal guilt, and which means they need to be repented of communally. Communally they need to put things right.

Paul calls upon the believers in Corinth to be what Christ made them to be. Christ died to wash away your sins and to make you more than this, and currently you are acting like the base level of humanity. So the Corinthians are to repent and get rid of the wrong and to live how they as really are. ‘They are to be Holy for I am Holy!’. They are to act as they have been made, with sincerity and truth.

APPl: Well at this point in the passage Paul moves away slightly to a new topic, so it is worth us stopping for a moment and considering what does this first topic of Christian judgment mean for us today?

Firstly, the relationship between grace and discipleship. The Corinthians had forgotten the essential teaching of the gospel, that Jesus is both saviour and Lord. They have forgotten how they have been saved and just how costly the cross was God. And more than that (if you can actually say that!) they have forgotten what it means to call Jesus Lord. They have forgotten what they have been called to. They have forgotten that are called by the Lord (and indeed bought by the Lord) to follow him, and to ‘be holy’ as they have been made.

Secondly, Corporate care in a church means real relationship, how else can you love your neighbour and tell them the truth?
We live in a culture of consumer Christianity, where people shop around for what suits them and meets their needs. And the church, (to it’s shame), rather than challenge this view, has pandered to it, and reduced the expectations of commitment to church, and indeed the basics of the Christian life (just do a straw poll on personal Bible reading and see how you go!), to the least demanding and a lowest common denominator type of Christianity.

We live in an age of de-facto Church goers, you know the ones who want all the benefits but are unwilling to commit themselves to the other believers for better or worse. So Real relationship comes at a personal cost of investing in each other, and it is more than the share accommodation approach to relating we so often see today.

Paul is telling us here that Real relationship mean speaking truthfully to each other, even if that truth can be difficult to hear. But it also means being willing to hear that truth for what it is, because sometimes others can see the truth about us more objectively than we can. And this truth may be of eternal importance for the hearer. It is better to have a difficult conversation with a friend, than a difficult conversation with God.

These things can only be said and heard properly in the context of real Christian relationship, so get committed to each other!

Now a mate of mine, was once on a beach mission team, and at the beginning of the week a girl from the team piped up with great confidence and announced to a number of the team that she had been spiritually gifted for the good of the body, and in this particular case the beach mission team. Do you know what her professed spiritual gift was?

Well she said with great confidence that, ‘my particular spiritual gift, is the gift of rebuking.!
Can you believe it, rebuking! And she wasn’t kidding!
Right now 30% of you are shocked someone could be so brazen!
And the other 70% of you are just wishing you had of thought of it first!
Now Just in case, and to be clear, there is no such gift, but in contrast to this girl the Bible tells us that rebuking is the responsibility of all Christians to each other.

But when you talk about judging (or rebuking, or Church discipline, same thing by any other name), the problem is that as Christian’s, we just don’t tend to be very good at it do we?
Most times it seems that we use the passive aggressive approach, of do nothing about it for ages despite our better instincts because we really don’t want to offend, and we all know we all have our own sins to deal with. And then after the passive approach hasn’t worked, we overcompensate and try the aggressive approach and run them out of town with torches and pitch forks.

So how can we do this important aspect of real relationship and church life well?
Well a couple of thoughts.

Church discipline happens in the context of real relationship.
And Church discipline happens in regard to obvious and unrepentant sin.
But Church discipline is focused upon end goals not just moral imperatives.

What does this mean?


Well believers are called to leave their old ways of life, and if they can’t, or more to the point won’t, well we should act as a community to ensure they realize the seriousness of the situation. But this action is not solely about our communal obligation to act in the right way (the moral imperative bit), but it is clearly an action focused with the end goal (the end goal bit) that the person who is sinning may be lead to repentance. And the goal of their repentance is that they be restored to a right fellowship with their Christian brothers and sisters. And the goal of this restoration of fellowship is that they will then be certain of their salvation on the day of the Lord.
Church discipline plays with high stakes doesn’t it?

In short, we need to have the humility on both sides of the relationship to realize that it is Better to be judged by your brothers with a chance to repent, than to be judged by God when it is too late.

But just in case someone is about to start the Spanish inquisition, remember the grace we all share in common and the words of Galatians 6:1-3,
Brothers, if anyone is caught in any sin,
you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness.
But Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted. 2
Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. 3
For if anyone thinks he is something, when he is nothing,
he deceives himself.

Be honest with each other in love.

4. Expel the man and Judge the Church not the Outsider
9 I have written you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people--
10 not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral,
or the greedy [covetous] and
swindlers,
or idolaters.
In that case you would have to leave this world.
11 But now I am writing you
that you must not associate with anyone
who [if he] calls himself a brother but is
sexually immoral [fornicator] or
greedy,
an idolater
or a slanderer,
a drunkard or
a swindler.
With such a man do not even eat.
12 What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church?
Are you not to judge those inside?
13 God will judge those outside.
"Expel the wicked man from among you." (Deut 17:7)

This section is pretty self explanatory really, Leave the judgment of the World to God, but as for you watch over yourself and your brother, and stay away from these things, and tell your brother to do likewise.

And in the last verse Paul slips into the argument one more time like subliminal advertising with a quote from Deuteronomy, ‘Expel the wicked man’. In case you had forgotten or had missed it.

5. Rather be Wronged, but if it comes to this, the Church should Judge the Church not an outsider!
NIV 1 Corinthians 6:1
If any of you has a dispute with another,
dare he take it before the ungodly [unjust] for judgment
instead of before the saints?
2 Do you not know
that the saints will judge the world?
And if you are to judge the world,
are you not competent to judge trivial cases?
3 Do you not know that we will judge angels?
How much more the things of this life!
4 Therefore, if you have disputes about such matters,
Appoint**(?) as judges even men of little account in the church!
5 I say this to shame you. (re: 4:14)
Is it possible that there is nobody among you
wise enough to judge a dispute between believers?
6 But instead, one brother goes to law against another—
and this in front of unbelievers!
7 The very fact that you have lawsuits among you
means you have been completely defeated already.
Why not rather be wronged?
Why not rather be cheated?
8 Instead,
you yourselves cheat
and do wrong,
and you do this to your brothers.

For the sake of time, we’ll just briefly point out in that in this section the issue is no longer the immorality of one brother, (but another impressive charge in a litany of charges that testify to the Corinthians ungodliness). Instead the problem now is the personal grievances of one brother against another, and they are taking them to a secular court. And Paul says with irony and sarcasm, why do you go to the ‘ungodly’ and expect them to tell you what is the ‘godly’ thing to do here?
It’s patently crazy.



So rather Paul instructs them, let the offence be forgiven and the offended should rather be wronged. But in stark contrast the Corinthians to their shame are not even seeking justice, they are in fact the ones cheating and doing wrong to their brothers. And this should not be!

Paul goes on to say if comes to the point of needing a determination, (which it shouldn’t) then a wise elder from the church should decide, anyone but a pagan!

And if you need more advice on this, well then read the words of Jesus in Matt 18
If you’ve done wrong, then ask for forgiveness, if they’ve done wrong then speak to them about it, don’t gossip. And if they don’t listen take a brother with you, and then if that is no good, take the elders and they need to decide whether it is time that the brother was treated as an unbeliever and excluded from the fellowship.


Conclusion:
So in Ch5 Paul has pointed out that our corporate spiritual health counts. So it seems that in our age, a mark of it’s health is our willingness to enter into real relationship with each other. Real relationships where we speak the truth to each other, real relationships where we are willing to hear the truth from each other, and we together exhibit a willingness to act in accordance with the truth of scripture, for the good of us all.

What we do as individuals affects everyone else who calls on the name of Christ, but in particular those we meet with week to week. So Ch5 is a call to us to leave behind the things of the old life and follow Jesus faithfully, that we all may be saved on the day of the Lord’s return.

1 Corinthians - Talk 3

Arrogance or Power? Pride or humility? Whip or Gentile Spirit?
Don’t judge Paul; But imitate Paul your father in the Gospel whose life is the way of the Cross.

Have you ever had the experience of saving up for a holiday, and looking forward to it so much that you thought you could burst, only to find yourself, when the great day arrives and you reach your long awaited destination, being so dog unwell from jetlag for half the holiday, and then for a week after you get home, you started to wonder if it was at all worth it?

Are you the kind of person that suffers from Jetlag?
It’s terrible quite frankly. I have distinctly unpleasant memories of being utterly awake and unable to sleep from 4am, and spending the next 4 hours lying next to Kath who was sleeping like a log (how times have changed) looking at life on the street below. Fortunately, even at 4am on Wednesday there is still things to look at out of a window in lower Manhattan, but by 2:30pm in the afternoon people were asking because of my catatonic state, whether I was a sufferer of narcolepsy or had just taken one too many valium.

It is a thoroughly unpleasant state of affairs, when your mind and body seem to be at odds, or even worse than that, at war with each other. Because, let’s face it, the body always wins in the end doesn’t it?
It will get used to things, when it is good and read, and until that point it’s bad luck really!

Well Paul in his letter is pointing out that the Corinthians are suffering from a form of spiritual jetlag. No really stick with me here! Their heads are in one time zone, but their bodies are in another. Their minds have moved on to the spiritual realm where Christ reigns, but they seem to be ignoring the obvious fact that their bodies are still in the earthly realm, where we don’t yet experience that rule in full. And as a result Paul, is having to tell them a few home truths to make sure that they get themselves correctly grounded.


Paul in this section instructs us that Christian maturity is about learning how to live with the ‘now but not yet’ time zone difficulty we find ourselves in. Our heads are in this new spiritual age of the Kingdom of Christ, but our bodies are still planted in the earthly garden of this world, (and it would seem our will manages to float between the two).

How do we live this wise and mature way now, well Paul in essence says,
‘follow me, because I know, follow and serve Christ.’

1. Do not Judge another man and his work, because the Lord will judge all!!
NIV 1 Corinthians 4:1
So then, men ought to
regard us as servants of Christ and as those entrusted with the secret things of God.
2 Now it is required that those who
have been given a trust
must prove faithful.
3 I care very little if
I am judged by you or by any human court;
indeed, I do not even judge myself.
4 My conscience is clear,
but that does not make me innocent.
It is the Lord who judges me.
5 Therefore judge** nothing before the appointed time;
wait till the Lord comes.
He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and
will expose the motives of men's hearts.
At that time each
will receive his praise from God.

Expl (clarity-difficulty-clarity):
Paul gives a direct command here to the Corinthian believers in V5 where he says:
5 Therefore judge** nothing before the appointed time;
wait till the Lord comes.

Paul is pointing out to them, that they have been judging people and their work for God, (and when he says people, what he means is that the Corinthians have been judging Paul himself, their very own God appointed apostle), So Paul commands them that judging people is not their business for 3 reasons.

Firstly, and most importantly they are not to judge people because they don’t have the authority to judge. God alone has authority to judge his workers, God appoints each to his work and will test the quality of each persons work fairly.

Secondly, the Corinthians are commanded not to judge because they don’t have the ability to gather all the required evidence properly in order to deliver a correct judgment. How can any man see the motives of another man’s heart?
Paul reminds them that Only God can know what is done in the dark, what is done in the hearts of men. Only God has all the evidence to judge justly.


Thirdly and Finally, the Corinthians are commanded not to judge because it isn’t the time for judgment yet. The Corinthians are a group of people who are just getting ahead of themselves, they are getting ahead of their father Paul in what they think they are ready to do, and yet more than that they are getting ahead of God and his plans for the world. They are suffering a spiritual jetlag, where their heads are detached from their physical reality.

So Paul commands them however, that only God knows the right time for judgment, but then only God has all the evidence for Judgment, but then only God has the authority to judge his own servants.

But God’s Judgment will come, and it will come for all people, and the standard of judgment will not be like the Corinthian church seems to think of people’s great oratory skills, or their impressive or spirituality, instead Paul tells us that the standard of God’s judgment for his servants will be their faithfulness to what they have been entrusted with.

Appl: Do you fear other people’s judgment about your life, or do you fear God’s judgment?
Do you shrink back from the truth you know, because of the judgment of others? Because you know when you face God, the people you fear, they won’t be there!
Do you fear God alone like Paul did?
Are you willing to turn your back on worldly praise to follow Jesus?

2. Do Not go beyond what is written because it always ends in pride!
6 Now, brothers,
I have applied these things to myself and Apollos for your benefit,
so that you may learn from us the meaning of the saying,
"Do not go beyond what is written."
Then you will not take pride in one man over against another.
7 For who makes you different from anyone else?
What do you have that you did not receive?
And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not?


Expl (clarity-difficulty-clarity):
Paul goes on in V6-7to instruct the Corinthians to not go beyond what is written. Now this something of an enigmatic phrase and Paul doesn’t specifically explain what he is referring to, and you can go and read the commentaries about this if that sought of thing floats your boat.

However, it seems to me that it is most likely that Paul is talking about the gospel testimony that they have written down, the life and work of Christ that is written in the scriptures.

Both the Old Testament and New Testament scriptures point clearly, faithfully and truly to the Christ, and in turn tell Christ’s followers how they are to live in response.


The Corinthians it seems are overvaluing their new shiny spiritual toys and wanting to jettison the things of the past, the boring written testimony of God and it’s unimpressive apostle. And Paul points out these scriptures are the common treasures of all Christians, they are the gift of God.

Paul himself has been entrusted with great riches of the secrets of God, but instead of being judgmental he is faithful steward responsible for the running of God’s house we learned back in v1. He is the one charged with the responsibility for the distribution of the riches of the mystery of God, the power of God and the wisdom of God, the Gospel of God’s Christ, the crucified Messiah, the gospel message that is the power of God to save.

And Paul is clearly reminding the Corinthians that they likewise are to be faithful with the great common treasure for all Christians is of what is written down. So don’t boast and don’t go beyond what is written.


It’s a helpful reminder for us today isn’t it?
I mean we belong to a Society today where everyone wants to be special, they want fame and notoriety and exclusivity, how else do you explain the fact that the abomination that is big brother manages to stay on the air?
I mean somebody out there has to be watching it. People go on because they want to be special and exclusive, they want to be famous!

Paul is telling us through the example of the Corinthians; ‘Don’t be boutique Christians’, one’s seeking something that is exclusively yours, that gives you a reason to judge other Christians, but rejoice in, and be faithful with, what we have received in common. And what do we have in common, well the Christ as we have him in the scriptures.

Paul asks the apparently especially gifted Corinthian’s, ‘why would you boast anyway, all of it is God’s gift to you, it is not you did something impressive.’


3. Paul warns the Corinthians that you are getting way ahead of yourselves!

8 Already you have all you want!
Already you have become rich!
You have become kings-- and that without us!
How I wish that you really had become kings
so that we might be kings with you!
9 For it seems to me
that God has put us apostles on display at the end of the procession,
like men condemned to die in the arena.
We have been made a spectacle to the whole universe,
to angels as well as to men.
10 We are fools for Christ,
but you are so wise in Christ!
We are weak,
but you are strong!
You are honored,
we are dishonored!
11 To this very hour we go hungry and thirsty,
we are in rags,
we are brutally treated,
we are homeless.
12 We work hard with our own hands.
When we are cursed,
we bless;
when we are persecuted,
we endure it;
13 when we are slandered,
we answer kindly.
Up to this moment we have become the scum of the earth,
the refuse of the world.

Expl (clarity-difficulty-clarity):
Paul goes on to explain with heavy sarcasm the reality of how wrong their perception of reality is. The Corinthians are suffering spiritual jetlag and they are ahead of themselves in two ways, firstly in terms of their expectation of the timing of events, and secondly in terms of their station in life.

Firstly, the Corinthians timing is out. Paul says in V8 twice that they think that they are , ‘already’ many things: filled, rich, kings who rule like Christ himself, in v10 they are wise, strong and honoured, which as you may remember is a total contrast to how they were described in Chapter 1. Paul is pointing out to them, they have got their timing wrong, these things haven’t happened yet, because if they had, well why would he as their apostle be such poverty as living in such a stark contrast to them now?


Secondly, the Corinthians are acting above their station in life, Paul describes himself as wishing he was also a king just like them, but instead he goes on in something of a satirical tirade to point out that rather than being a king, he is in fact a fool, weak, hungry and thirsty, beaten and slandered, the least of all – the scum of the earth he says, the dung of the world.

In this passage Paul uses this powerful image of the military parade of the returning and conquering king entering back into Rome, where the king leads the parade in the place of honour and then he is followed by his military commanders, and then by the spoils of war, including their prisoners. The Corinthians believe that they are at the front of the parade with the king, to which Paul sarcastically points out that the apostle’s in contrast are at the back of the parade with the prisoners, the one’s who would then go on to die in the coliseum.


Paul in this masterful and satirical passage purposefully exalts in the very things the Corinthians are embarrassed about, Paul exalts in the heart and power of the Gospel message, Paul exalts in his shame in eyes of the world, his shame of following Jesus, for that is the wisdom and power of God, that is the way of the cross.
Isa 53:2 He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.

3 He was despised and rejected by men,
a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.
Like one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

Paul clearly is reflecting the teaching of Jesus here that No servant is above his master, and those who wish to come after Jesus must pick up their cross and follow him.




4. I write to urge you ALL to imitate me, your father in the Gospel!
14 I am not writing this to shame you,
but to warn you, as my dear children.
15 [for] Even though you have ten thousand guardians [tudors] in Christ,
[but] you do not have many fathers,
for in Christ Jesus
I became your father through the gospel.
16 Therefore I urge you to imitate me**.

Expl (clarity-difficulty-clarity):
This is the heart of what Paul has to say in the chapter, and indeed I think you could easily argue this is something of a centre for the book itself. Paul writes to warn the Corinthian believers to repent, to stop their current behaviour and turn back towards Christ, to follow the way of Christ, which is to follow the way of the cross, and this is the way the Apostle Paul lives, their father in the faith. Paul commands the Corinthians believers to imitate him.

And what does that mean, well those two things we have already been speaking about. Firstly, Paul’s way is to speak the gospel message, the message that is the foolish message in the world’s eyes of the crucified messiah.
And secondly Paul’s way of life is shaped by the message he brings, Paul lives the life of way of the cross, Paul is willing to be humiliated and suffer for the Gospel, he embodies the message of the crucified Christ and he is not above his master, Paul’s message and his life is the way of the cross. A way that is word and action, it is teaching and behaviour.

And in this he is commanding the Corinthians to follow him, that is what Christian people do, they follow Jesus, and they do not regard themselves as being above their master.

Phil3:10 I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death,

We all need examples
17 For this reason I am sending to you Timothy,
my son whom I love,
who is faithful in the Lord.
He will remind you of my way of life in Christ Jesus,
which agrees with what I teach everywhere in every church.

Expl (clarity-difficulty-clarity):
The Corinthians needed to fix their time clock problem and the solution was to learn from Paul by listening to his faithful servant Timothy, everyone in the church is to follow his example.

Conclusion: You choose, the whip or with a gentle spirit?
18 Some of you have become arrogant,
as if I were not coming to you.
19 But I will come to you very soon,
if the Lord is willing, and
then I will find out not only how these arrogant people are talking,
but what power they have.
20 For the kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but of power.
21 What do you prefer?
Shall I come to you with a whip,
or in love and with a gentle spirit?

Expl (clarity-difficulty-clarity):
Paul here is basically taking the pepsi challenge here and calling their bluff, This last section has shades of the rhetoric or trash talk you see at the weigh in before a heavy weight title fight, all you need is Don King in the background saying, ’only in America!’
So Paul is clarifying for the Corinthian believers their options, and the options are pretty emphatically clear aren’t they?

Paul the Apostle, who is their Apostle not only in name, but in God’s power is going to come to them, and not with the hot air of the Corinthians, but with a whip in one hand and gentle spirit in the other, the Corinthians get to chose their medicine.

Clearly the right response is to chose the gentle spirit, but in order to do that, they will need to stop the madness, the selfishness, the division, their infatuation with being impressive in the eyes of others, and instead they will need to pick up their cross and follow Paul, as he follows Jesus.

Conclusion:
Paul is reminding the Corinthians here of the basic truth of the Christian faith, that Jesus Christ is both saviour and Lord. The message of the Saviour is Gospel of the Crucified Christ who died for the sins of all who should believe in his name to completely save and redeem them from the judgment of God. But Christ is also the Lord, the one whom we are now to serve faithfully.
These are the two sides of the Gospel coin, the cross is the message of Jesus as saviour, but the cross is the way of living with Jesus as Lord

The Corinthians in their spiritual pride were trying to escape the cross, Paul rebukes them and calls them to follow him as they seek to live out the way of the Cross and follow Jesus.

1 Corithians - Talk 2

The Spiritually Mature realize that under God’s sovereignty we are all God’s Fellow workers; but only God makes things grow!
So build God’s Temple well now because a day of testing is coming!
Intro

As most of you will be aware, I have only fairly recently become a parent, and as you may also be aware, I have very recently got to experience the great joy it is, to go on a long family holiday car trip with a small child. And just to put the cherry on top of the cake, a small child who is cutting their first teeth.

Now even as a child I remember family holiday car trips being difficult, if not outright traumatic, occasions. I mean sure we didn’t have air conditioning back then, that didn’t help. And the fact my sister had a penchant for being car sick after drinking spearmint milkshakes at the oak at Hexam, in 40 degree heat on vinyl car seats, that didn’t help either.

But the hard thing is that as much as you try and explain things to kids, (like you can’t drink that because you’ll get sick, just like you did before) they just don’t seem to get it. The funny thing about kids is, that they only know what they know, and they don’t know enough to know, they are most likely wrong. They want to be adults before their time, and in their mind they think they know more about being an adult, than the adult who has been an adult for at least 15 years before they were in existence.

But you just can’t explain that can you, but then you just couldn’t explain that to us either when we were their age.

And it seems Paul is having a hard time explaining it to his children, his children in the Christian faith the Corinthian church. He is their father in the faith, but they have decided they know better, they want to go and live with their uncle Apollos. But what is particularly striking about the situation in Corinth, is that in questioning Paul and his authority, the Corinthian believers are implicitly questioning God himself.
God appointed Paul the Apostle to the Corinthian Church, but these children in the faith, think they know better than their father, and not just their spiritual father, but also their heavenly father.

The Corinthians confidence in their spiritual maturity, by questioning their God appointed leader, is ironically ‘proof perfect’ that they are in fact utterly immature. How can a spiritually mature person say to God, (like a football crowd to the referee), ‘you don’t know what you’re doing’?

Well these are the issues that the Apostle Paul is going to cover in today’s chapter which is something like a version of a lifestyle show, where he will cover the topics of; Infants, Plants, Building and Maturity (or Spiritual Maturity). So a reminder this lifestyle program, which is not quite like any other; covers Infants, Plants, Building and Maturity by which Paul means Spiritual Maturity.

And in his first segment today, Paul is going to talk about infants.
Infants – Do not be infants any longer, what Paul means is don’t be divided, it’s childish
NIV 1 Corinthians 3:1
Brothers,
I could not address you
as spiritual
but as worldly—
mere infants in Christ.
2 I gave you milk,
not solid food,
for you were not yet ready for it.
Indeed, you are still not ready.
3 You are still worldly.
For since there is
jealousy and quarreling among you,
are you not worldly?
Are you not acting like mere men?
4 For when one says,
"I follow Paul,"
and another,
"I follow Apollos,"
are you not mere men?


Paul, starts this chapter with another stinging rebuke for the upstart and proud Corinthian church. They are divided amongst themselves, they are being sinful and selfish in their ambitions and their views of what Church is supposed to be. They are being sinful in their political positioning as to who they think is supposed to lead the church. And everybody knows it as Paul already told us back in chapter 1.

Paul asked them ‘if there is Jealousy and quarrelling amongst them (and between them), how are they not just being mere men?’.
Paul’s language here has the idea of them just like being brute beasts and fleshly in their behaviour. To pick up the idea of Chapter 15, the Corinthians are people who have been saved at great cost and placed ‘in Christ’, but right now they are acting more like they are ‘in Adam’. They are acting more like they are the problem and not part of the solution.

The Corinthians at some level seem to have a profound lack of self awareness, they insist to Paul that they are mature people, ready for mature spiritual food, and Paul emphatically says to them,
‘You are kidding yourselves! I should be able at this time treat you as mature, but you were infants and in fact are still infants. And you prance around thinking you show your wisdom in your boasting about your leaders, but in that very act, you expose just how infantile, or juvenile you really are. You think your words demonstrate your spiritual wisdom, but instead these words clearly demonstrate that you are immature.’

Illus: The Corinthian believers are insisting that they can be big people too, they can keep the spearmint milkshake down, and Paul is looking at the strewn mess of division across the back seat of the car, thinking to himself, ‘sure you can, boy didn’t you prove me wrong!’


Appl: Now it is interesting to note that the Corinthians sinfulness at this point is not about their personal piety as such, but is a problem of the way they relate together, it is a problem of how they treat their God appointed leadership. Their problem is a communal problem of spiritual pride.

As we read this, it is easy to point the finger at the Corinthian’s, but the passage asks the question of us, Do we have a communal problem here?
Are we divided?
Do we divide ourselves about our church leaders?
Are we in danger of spiritual pride?

Should we ever have division, well yes, Some times issues are so important that we do actually need to go separate ways? And Paul often writes as such, but I suspect that what a church disagrees over, is the great barometer of what it’s corporate maturity is like I think. Paul in his letter is saying here don’t be divisive over worldly things, or over spiritually childish things.
Are you divisive over worldly things?

Well Paul finishes talking about infants, and now he wants to move on to the second segment of his lifestyle show and talk about plants.
Plants – Don’t you realize we are all just servants doing what God has given us to do, God makes things grow
5 What, after all, is Apollos?
And what is Paul?
Only servants, through whom you came to believe—
as the Lord has assigned to each his task.
6 I planted the seed,
Apollos watered it,
but God made it grow.

7 So neither he who plants
nor he who waters is anything,
but only God, who makes things grow.
8 The man who plants
and the man who waters
have one purpose, and
each will be rewarded according to his own labor.


Paul, points out to the Corinthians, that by the fact that you argue over Paul and Apollos, it just demonstrates exactly how immature you are. You are so immature that you don’t even understand what is going on here, you can’t see the great work that God has done. You don’t get God and his purposes, because you are openly questioning God’s plans, (which you highlight to all and sundry), because you have the arrogance to question Paul’s credentials, and to undermine his authority, to dismissively say, we prefer Apollos.

God chose Paul to be an Apostle, God chose Paul to be his Apostle to the Gentiles. But the Corinthians said,
‘Ahh, Give us Apollos, he’s impressive, not embarrassing like Paul.’

But Paul points out, God chose both himself and Apollos, and appointed them to particular roles. Paul planted the word of the Gospel, (in a analogy of sewing reminiscent of Jesus own parable of sewing seed in Mark 4). So Paul plants, but Apollos waters. And more than that, (in fact it is so important he says it twice in v6 and v7 which is not so subtle way of getting our attention). Paul says,
‘But God makes it grow!’.

Paul and Apollos aren’t in competition, like the Corinthians think, (they have missed it totally!) Paul and Apollos are in partnership as we see in V8. But they are in partnership on the Lord’s farm. And only the Lord can make things grow.

Now if you’ve been paying attention, the last part of verse 8 would no doubt raise a few questions for you, what does Paul mean they will receive a reward? I mean we are grace people aren’t we, what’s this stuff about rewards?

Well we’ll get back to that in a minute.

In any case the point of the gardening section of the program is clear, Paul and Apollos are not competitors, but co-workers, and they serve God (the one alone) who makes their work powerful.

God chooses and appoints people to carry out his work, including leadership in his church, and it is his sovereign choice to do it. This is a good thing to know, and even better to act upon, because it stops division in the church.

In the third segment of his lifestyle show the section which goes from V10 to V17 Paul talks about:
Building – Build well because testing will come
In the last section of chapter 3 that we are about to look at, Paul gives the Corinthians three explicit commands, and It seems to me that v9-10 are the heart of Paul’s message in this chapter, and in v10 he gives the first of his direct commands to the Corinthians
Command 1 - See to it and watch how you build
9 For we are God's fellow workers;
you are God's field,
God's building.
10 By the grace God has given me,
I laid a foundation as an expert builder,
and someone else is building on it.
But each one should be careful how he builds.

Paul in a way that reinforces and underscores his previous point, highlights that it is God who builds. God’s sovereignty is seen in the repetition of these verses, everything here belongs to God!

We are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field. You are God’s building, and you have been built through the grace of God given to Paul to share the Gospel message. God is entirely sovereign in this building activity.

And Paul seems to have a Kath Day moment here, where he says, ‘look at me!’.
He means look at how carefully I went about laying the foundation of the Gospel among you properly, knowing that the foundation is literally the grounds on which a building will stand or fall. And those who come after Paul need to build just as well.

And Paul commands the Corinthians that ‘each person should be careful (just as careful as Paul was) how they build!’ We see in V10. He literally says ‘watch what you are doing closely’, so you don’t get it wrong.

And the reason Paul tells them to build well is because testing of their work will come.
11 For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid,
which is Jesus Christ.
12 If any man builds on this foundation using
gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw,
13 his work will be shown for what it is,
because the Day will bring it to light.
It will be revealed with fire, and
the fire will test the quality of each man's work.
14 If what he has built survives,
he will receive his reward.
15 If it is burned up,
he will suffer loss;
he himself will be saved,
but only as one escaping through the flames.

Paul reminds the Corinthians to build well on the strong and precious foundation he has laid of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the rock foundation on which the Church will be built and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. Paul says build well, because testing of each person’s work, (yours and mine), will come.
But then again, would you expect any less than being held to a serious account for your work given that what is being built is God’s residence, God is the one who will live in this house.

Build well because testing will come

Now if you have been paying attention, it seems to me you would have at least two questions about this section of the text. And the first of these is:

What does it mean to build well?
Paul doesn’t explicitly tell us in this passage, he lets the metaphor do the work for him, so at the risk of ruining Paul’s linguistic richness by trying to explain the obvious, well here goes..

It seems to build well is to instruct people, and urge people, as to the truth of the gospel, the gospel of the crucified Christ who is the power and wisdom of God. Paul says in his letters that he seeks to pass on what he received as of first importance, the things of the mystery of the spirit, the truth about the Christ and the implications of this for life now.

We are to build well and be good stewards with the great riches of knowledge of God we have received, and in particular the knowledge of God that has been handed to us in the scriptures by God and his Apostles.

The knowledge of God that we have received in the Scriptures and pass on is building work that produces Spiritual maturity, it build’s people up with the wisdom that God provides, the wisdom that brings unity, the wisdom of them being of one mind and judgment as we learned from chapter 1, not the wisdom of men that brings division.

The second question you should probably have is:
What does it mean to receive rewards, or to suffer loss?

What does it mean to be rewarded for your labour from v8?
Or what does it mean to receive a reward in v14?
And what does it mean to suffer loss but still be saved in v15, how does this work?

Well it seems that when Paul gives us the clue when he talks of ‘the Day’ in V13. This expression picks up on the OT image of the ‘day of the Lord’, which we know as NT readers is the Day of Christ’s return. This will be the last day of this earth, where Christ will return to put everything right, and this will include testing the quality of each persons work. The work that has been built with God’s gold will survive and what work has been done with man’s dross, will be destroyed.

There are many opinions on exactly what Paul means here in regard to rewards and loss, but it seems to me, that Jesus parable of the shrewd manager from Luke 16:1-9 may give us an insight here. The point of this parable is that Jesus commends people to use their worldly wealth wisely, in order that there would be people to greet them in heaven. The rewards are not possessions as such, they are the people that we invest in building with silver and gold, they will be our reward into the next life. Paul is not talking about some sought of self-improvement course here.

And I think this kind of idea is reflected by Paul himself when he describes the believers in 1 Thessalonians 2:19
‘For what is our hope, our joy, or the crown in which we will glory in the presence of our Lord Jesus when he comes? Is it not you?’

And in V16-17 Paul goes on to tell us the reason it matters so much how we build is:
16 Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and
that God's Spirit lives in you?
17 If anyone destroys God's temple,
God will destroy him;
for God's temple is sacred,
and you are that temple.

Build well because we are building God’s temple

People are the temple of God. God himself dwells in us by the power of his Spirit and Christians are to be God’s servants in building this temple, with precious silver and Gold. We are to build each other.

Appl: What are you currently building? A four bedroom house? A home entertainment system? A life, a career, A reputation? prodigious and prestigious offspring?
What are you building with the abilities, gifts and time on earth God has given you?


The world tells us to build things.
Houses, cars, superannuation nest eggs.
Paul tells us to build people, we are to spend our time building people into a temple of the living God. And Paul in contrast is to just about everyone in society today is not talking about us undertaking a program of rigorous self improvement. Christians are focused upon building up other people. We build people to help them be with us in the next life.

Are you building people?
And if you are is it with the gold and silver of the Christian Gospel and Christian Maturity?
Are you careful how you build? Are you as discerning and intentional as you are when you invest a lot of money, or build a new home. Build well because you are building God’s temple, build well because God will hold you to account.

It would be easy for you to ask me, ‘Well that’s easy for you to say, you’re a minister it’s your job to do that?’
And you’d be right, but then We are all Christians aren’t we?
We all know people don’t we?
Well then we are all in the same game them, of building the temple of God, which is the People of God with precious stones. The gold and silver of the truth of the Christian faith the truth about Jesus, the truth of the Gospel, the truth of the Bible, which is really all one and the same thing.

Now in the final segment of his lifestyle show Paul calls the Corinthians to spiritual maturity.


Spiritual Maturity – don’t be children any longer, but be mature, don’t be deceived by the world, don’t boast like mere men!
V 18-20 we read
18 Do not deceive yourselves.
If any one of you thinks he is wise by the standards of this age,
he should become a "fool" so that he may become wise.
19 For the wisdom of this world
is foolishness in God's sight.
As it is written:
"He catches the wise in their craftiness";
20 and again,
"The Lord knows that the thoughts of the wise are futile."

In these verses Paul gives the second of his three commands
Command 2 - Do not be deceived, but be fools
Which seems like a bit of a contradiction really, but he is back on to one of the main themes of the first few chapters of the book. And that theme is the wisdom of the world versus the wisdom of God. And I’ll give you the tip, in this battle God wins!

Paul is exhorting us to Let God’s wisdom of the crucified Christ be what shapes your thinking, not the apparent wisdom of men. Because nothing that men in their wisdom can offer you will last, none of it will stand when you leave this life. Build with silver and Gold, build things that last, build with God’s wisdom of the crucified Christ.
In verse 21 Paul gives his final command in this chapter
Command 3 - Don’t boast about men
21 So then, no more boasting about men!
All things are yours,
22 whether Paul
or Apollos
or Cephas
or the world
or life
or death
or the present
or the future—
all are yours,
23 and you are of Christ,
and Christ is of God.

Don’t boast about men, for all of it belongs to God, and God distributes what he has to whom he wishes as he sees fit for his good purposes.

There is a sense here where Paul is putting things back in their proper and right order here, God is the one who sets the agenda for his creation and his church. Paul is telling the Corinthians to let God be the authority here in his church, he is in fact good at it.

Conclusion:
The letter to the Corinthians is a confronting read for anybody I think, but it reminds us of the importance of Christian growth toward Spiritual maturity.
The Spiritually Mature realize that under God’s sovereignty we are all God’s Fellow workers; but only God makes things grow!
And because of this we are called to build God’s Temple well now because a day of testing is coming!

1 Corinthians - Talk One

We are to live by GOSPEL WISDOM ‘..Lest the Cross of Christ be emptied of its Power’

Intro to Corinthians
Well if the letter to the Corinthians was to go before office for film and literature classification, I’d imagine it would get an iM rating, with a statement that it is recommended for Immature Audiences as this letter contains graphic depictions of:
 Division
 Idolatry
 Sexual Immorality
 Lawsuits
 Unordered Spiritual Activity
 And contains occasional scenes of death by Lord’s Supper

It is safe to say that Paul’s letter to Corinth is not just polite dinner table conversation, but a gritty, earthy and real call to know the gospel, and to live out gospel shaped lives amongst the hard parts of life.

But what do we know of Corinth and its church?
Well Corinth was a city in Greece at the time that Paul wrote to them from Ephesus in around 55AD, and Greece at that time was part of the Roman Empire. Corinth in fact was an integral part of the trade route from Italy to Asia, and as a result it had much of the trappings of a trade centre. There was much wealth to be made in the city, as well as a lot of distraction to be had. Distraction at one of the many temples to various god’s from around the world, which often included a healthy prostitution industry, which isn’t entirely surprising given it was a port where sailors spent recreational time.

The Church in Corinth had been founded by Paul, some 3 years earlier, and this letter we are looking at today forms part of a number of letters that Paul wrote to the church, it’s likely there was four or five in total. Not all of the letters have survived and so what we have in front of us, can at times feel a little like listening to one end of phone conversation.

But there is much rich advice to a struggling church, that is good for us to read today as well, advice to a church that was in dire need of growing into spiritual maturity.
V 1-3 Paul’s Introduction to his Letter
NIV 1 Corinthians 1:1
Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus
by the will of God,
and our brother Sosthenes,

2 To the church of God in Corinth,
to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and
called to be holy,
together with all those everywhere
who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ—
` their Lord and ours:

3 Grace and peace to you
from God our Father
and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Paul introduces himself in this letter as the apostle of Christ, at other times such as in Romans, Paul has used the designation ‘slave of Christ’ to describe himself and to highlight his single minded purpose for Christ and his humility. Paul’s slavery to Christ has resulted in him having to undergo great sufferings for the sake of Christ and his gospel.


In Corinthians however, Paul clearly makes an appeal for the authority of his letter, and he does this by outlining his apostolic credentials to speak for God. Paul is an apostle of Christ. The title Apostle, of course means the one chosen by Christ to be sent as his representative. Paul is reminding the Corinthians from the outset of the letter, that God in Christ is making his appeal to them at Corinth, through his chosen messenger, the Apostle Paul.

And Paul tells us, he writes to the church in Corinth, and indeed to all the saints who call on the name of the Lord Jesus. Now as you may be aware when Paul begins his letters he often describes the recipients as ‘saints’, he calls them ‘holy’ would be another way of saying it. But in this introduction in particular, it is the only place, where Paul adds the little phrase, where he describes the Corinthians as, ‘those sanctified in Christ Jesus’. In a literal sense, you could say Paul calls them the ‘ones who have been made holy, to be called holy’. Sanctification is about having godly character that expresses itself in godly action, and this godly action in Corinth is to be unity.

In using this expression Paul tips his intentions as to what he wants to say to the Corinthians about their lives in the rest of the letter, they are God’s chosen people and as such they should reflect God’s good and holy character, in their lives and actions. The Corinthian Church at the time of Paul’s writing, has the appearance of lots of things, and especially impressive Spiritual activity and especially rhetorical flare, and you could call them lots of things, but holy probably would not be in the top ten, but we’ll learn more about that in latter weeks!

In V3 Paul then lets us have his almost trademark greeting, that great gospel summary in a few words, ‘grace and peace to you from God our father and the Lord Jesus Christ’. Grace is the gift of God towards us, and peace is the result. This peace is not just a cessation of hostility, but the promise of healing and wholeness when the kingdom of God is brought in full.




V 4-9 What you have received in Christ
4 I always thank God for you because of his grace
given you in Christ Jesus.
5 For in him
you have been enriched in every way—
in all your speaking and
in all your knowledge--
6 because our testimony about Christ was
confirmed in you.
7 Therefore you
do not lack any spiritual gift as you
eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed.
8 He will keep you strong to the end,
so that you will be blameless
on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.

9 God, who has
called you into fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful.

Paul in a way that is customary in the beginning of his letters, gives thanks to God in prayer for the people to whom he is writing. Paul demonstrates his obvious excitement that those who he is writing to, have genuinely responded to the gospels call, they have received Christ as Lord.

Paul is genuinely excited that God has been pleased to save and change these people at Corinth, and God has been pleased to do it through Paul’s ministry.
The good things that Paul sees at Corinth in the Corinthian church’s spiritual gifting (including their speaking and knowledge) are clear reminders of the great things God has done in their midst. The Corinthians really are converted, they really are saved, they really are God’s, and yet they really are struggling to be mature.

In v4 Paul reinforces his previous declaration, that God has been generous to them, God has given them a gift (or grace if you like), a Gift found in Christ that hasn’t just meant they are saved, like something rescued from the flames of a fire, but they have been enriched in every way.

From their salvation through to their new creation they receive these good things as the gift of God, found exclusively in Christ. God’s gift is not just a cancellation of a past debt, or just a future hope, but great riches in Christ now. in Christ they lack no spiritual thing.


But you could well ask, why do they need to be reminded of this?
Well I think verse 8 helps us out here. At the heart of the reason that Paul writes his letter to the Corinthians is the problem of their wrong understanding of eschatology (yeh, thanks for that, very clear, explains everything!) Eschatology sounds like a fancy word, but really it only means the study of the end things, the things that are to come to us in the future.

Well what does Eschatology mean for us? Well you may have heard it described as the ‘now and not yet’ tension of the bible. Eschatology is about trying to work out and think rightly about our experience of life, as a member of the kingdom of God now, while we still live in this created and fallen world. Gospel wisdom is thinking rightly about our world theologically, in order that we would know how to live rightly in our world ethically.



How you understand eschatology, the ‘now and not yet’ tension of the Bible will shape how you live now. In Corinth they had got the ‘now bits’ and the ‘not yet bits’ confused and it was leading to lots of problems which we will get to look at over the coming weeks.

But for now he brings up the difficult topic of:
V 10 What you currently don’t have in Christ
10 I appeal to you, brothers,
in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,
that all of you agree with one another so
that there may be no divisions among you and
that you may be perfectly united
in mind and thought.

Paul makes a heartfelt, plea to the Corinthians believers, he urges them, with some apostolic authority by calling on the name of Christ, that there should not be any divisions among them. These Christians at Corinth have been enriched in every spiritual way in Christ we learn from V4-9, and yet at the moment they are using their great gifting of knowledge as a reason for division not unity.

For the Corinthians believers, they lived and breathed in a world steeped in Greek traditions and values, and in particular a great heritage of Oration and Philosophy. The great traditions of powerful public speakers and they prided themselves in their knowledge or wisdom and their good use of words. The worldly wisdom of clever words and speakers was bringing spiritual pride and division among the believers

Paul’s words here are not of a slight disagreement between people, but of arguing ‘factions’ within the church congregation. Paul is urging them to turn away from this worldliness, this madness of judging each other by worldly standards, and to agree with one another about the theological truth of the situation, that they have all received grace in Christ Jesus and so they should be united.

This theme of working out their unity will be carried on and developed throughout the letter. As will Paul’s solution to the problem of disunity, the solution of right thinking about themselves, right thinking about their world, and right thinking about each other. The solution of right thinking about the Gospel of Christ.
So as we move on Paul tells us how he knows that the Corinthians don’t have this gospel wisdom, and it is because they don’t have unity.

V11-16 How I know that you don’t have it!
11 My brothers, some from Chloe's household have
informed me that there are quarrels among you.
12 What I mean is this:
One of you says,
"I follow Paul"; another,
"I follow Apollos"; another,
"I follow Cephas"; still another,
"I follow Christ."
13 Is Christ divided?
Was Paul crucified for you?
Were you baptized into the name of Paul?
14 I am thankful
that I did not baptize
any of you except Crispus and Gaius,
15 so no one can say
that you were baptized into my name.
16 (Yes, I also baptized the household of Stephanas; beyond that,
I don't remember if I baptized anyone else.)

Right thinking expresses itself in right action, and Paul hears reports of the Corinthians crazy actions and he joins the dots!
Paul goes says in these verses that it is obvious to all that you are not in fact mature and spiritual, because you are divided!
And Paul himself has learned this situation in Corinth through another group’s reports to him, and now he feels compelled to take some pastoral action. Paul’s action comes in the form of some quite stinging rhetorical barbs, about whom they are to follow, Paul asks three questions in V13 to which each the resounding answer to be supplied by the Corinthian reader is an emphatic NO! But in their actions it is currently a yes (and it is to their shame).

But why is baptism such a big deal in Corinth?
How has it became a reason for division?
IT seems that because baptism was a sign of discipleship, (still is actually), but it seems the people in Corinth had distorted this and were engaging in a little my dad is bigger than yours, or My leader is a better orator and philosopher than yours, because it seems in their Greek influenced culture, to follow a wise teacher was something of a mark of prestige.

But in this they were thinking in worldly ways, they were evaluating the merit of who they followed by worldly values. They evaluated them by who spoke in the most impressive way, or who could do the most spectacular spiritual performance.
They were evaluating the life and leaders of Church not according to the wisdom and standard of the Gospel, but the wisdom and standard of the world. But Paul points out Gospel wisdom doesn’t seek the things of the world or its standards but it seeks the good of the other, it seeks to build others up not compare, it is as Paul says in chapter 10
24 Let no one seek his own good, but the good of his neighbor.
The Corinthians in contrast were immature in their thinking and it lead to the immature behaviour of comparison and division.

V 17-19 The Solution to your problem
17 For Christ did not send me to baptize,
but to preach the gospel—
not with words of human wisdom,
lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.
18 For the message of the cross
is foolishness to those who are perishing,
but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
19 For it is written:
"I will destroy the wisdom of the wise;
the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate."

Paul in these verses rips into the Corinthians about how wrong they have got it. Paul the teacher takes his students to school and today the lesson is maths. You see Paul gives the Corinthians two equations.

1. Clever words = worldly wisdom = emptied cross = division……
clever words = division
2. Message of a Crucified Christ = God’s wisdom = Salvation and Sanctification = Corporate unity.
Message of a Crucified Christ = Corporate unity

To the whole of the world, Paul’s maths seems a screwy, but to those who understand it, they know it to be the wisdom of God, the genius of God at the heart of the universe. A secret that God revels to whom he chooses, that can not be the result of man’s prying eyes. God’s gift is not some trinket found in a $2 store, it is a gift of a pearl, that is not thrown to swine. The message of a crucified Christ, this is God’s wisdom, and it is Paul’s message and work also.

The gospel has always challenged mans wisdom, because it involved a crucified God. In the Greek mind this was unthinkable, how can God die, surely this is foolishness! And to the Jews the gospel was foolishness, because how could the God of all the universe become a man, a created thing, in the first place? And even if he could, everyone hung on a tree is cursed by God, how can God be cursed by God on a wooden cross?

The cross has always been offensive, and this is God’s good design, it is not a truth that is available to the wise, (it is a frustration to the wise), but it is God’s gift given to the simple and the perishing, that he chooses.

But the question is, is the cross offensive to our generation today?
What do you think?


Let me suggest that If David Beckham, (the uber chic pop culture icon who occasionally plays football), can have a large crucified man tattooed across the centre of his back, I think the answer is no. People aren’t offended by the cross anymore, in fact it is so common, people don’t even notice it anymore, they are inoculated by the sight of it. Round your neck, on a T shirt or tattooed on your arm, the cross is a mainstream image of western society today.

Why is it not an offence today?
Well the Greeks objected because how could God die on the cross!

Which gives a hint I think why people today don’t object because, well there is no God, so how can the cross be offensive?


Today generally, Jesus is just another a good man (and a good teacher) who died for their cause. Good men die all time. Perhaps this is attitude is best typified by Mahat MaGhandi, the man who brought the sun to set on British rule in the sub continent, he thought Jesus was the perfect example of non violent protest, and he followed Jesus in this. Jesus was a noble teacher, but not a saviour, and certainly not God.

People aren’t offended by the cross anymore, because they don’t understand the cross, they have an at best anemic understanding or a caricature of what is happening there. They do not understand the scandal that it is the cross, the foolishness that it is the cross, the foolishness that God would die for us, to save us from our sins.

But just incase correcting their view of the cross sounds too hard and you were worried that the gospel has become palatable, well just jump to the next bit and ask people what they think of the dead being raised?
They’ll think you’re message is foolish soon enough.
And yet, it is the wisdom of God.

Application:
So what about us, what worldly wisdom are we in danger of evaluating the church and it’s gospel by today and being like the Corinthians?
Every Christian knows the very real temptation to make the foolishness of the Gospel a little more palatable, a little less confronting, and a little less difficult to ‘sell’ to the non-believer. The temptation to try and show an impressive face to the world!
And one particular form of this at the moment is the trend in Christian circles to follow the Idol of success.

If we just live impressive lives, of wealth, health and general success and respectability, then others will have to listen to us won’t they?
Admit it, we’d all like it to be true at one level, and in fact I bet at at-least one level we all buy into it.
I mean sure it mightn’t be as crass as wearing the right label clothes and having a Tag watch, but maybe it’s something a little less obvious and more subtle.

If we only had a good organization structure, if we only had a good building, if only we had great music, if only we had a café style church – with café styled coffee. if only the preacher talked for shorter, if only he would use multimedia!

We all know the very real temptation to make the gospel more palatable and more appealing, and the current temptation to follow the idol of success. Just look at the latest Koorong catalogue and see how many titles offer you success, in areas as widely varied as church growth, to slim for him… But all of these miss the problem totally..

Because the Bible reminds us that the opposition to the gospel is not rational, it is spiritual. Trust me, you can talk to a man who knows he has only days to live, and they will still think the gospel is not for them, even when there is nothing else left. You would only have to be a Christian for two days out 85 years and you get eternal life, it’s a god deal. How is not accepting that rational?

The problem is spiritual from start to finish, and the antidote is the foolish gospel, the whole gospel, God’s gospel of a crucified Messiah brought to bear under the power of the spirit. It certainly is Not a tag watch and ‘good worship music’ with nice coffee to boot.

And what it is in total contrast to this worldly wisdom, the Bible points out that the Christian life that recommends the gospel the best, is not a life of success and influence, but a in fact a life of bearing up under suffering, just look at the Apostle Paul as an example.

The Gospel is foolishness to the world, but it is the wisdom and power of God for salvation of all who are perishing. Tell people the gospel, the whole gospel the foolish gospel of God, of a crucified Christ, the one who dies to take away the sins of the whole world. The foolish gospel may be a bitter pill for a proud generation to swallow, but it is the pill that does the greatest good for the soul.