Tag: 1 corinthians

Addressing the Divisions Amongst Us (1 Corinthians 4:8-13)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year BLeave a comment

Are you already satisfied? Are you now rich? Have you become kings while we are still nobodies? I wish you were kings. Then we could have a share in your kingdom.

It seems to me that God has put us apostles in the worst possible place. We are like prisoners on their way to death. Angels and the people of this world just laugh at us. Because of Christ we are thought of as fools, but Christ has made you wise. We are weak and hated, but you are powerful and respected. 

Even today we go hungry and thirsty and don’t have anything to wear except rags. We are mistreated and don’t have a place to live. We work hard with our own hands, and when people abuse us, we wish them well. When we suffer, we are patient. When someone curses us, we answer with kind words. Until now we are thought of as nothing more than the trash and garbage of this world. (Contemporary English Version)

On this particular July 4 in the USA, there is perhaps no more pertinent biblical passage than today’s in addressing the current American political and emotional climate. Yet, before this is specifically addressed, let’s understand what was going on with the Apostle Paul and the Corinthian Church…

The Corinthian Divisions

Special interest groups had formed within the church. Each was following a specific person – some Paul, some Apollos, and some other leaders and teachers. The groups began to harden into political church factions. And Paul wanted nothing to do with this way of being Christian, because it is antithetical to the gospel itself.

Christ died to bring unity, not division. Paul established egalitarian churches that showed no favoritism. The Corinthians were called to a way of being that breaks down barriers between rich and poor, Jew and Greek. This business of groups and factions only fostered the division which Christ died to do away with.

By the time the Apostle wrote his letter to the Corinthian Christians, they had devolved a way of being with each other that was judgmental. They were pointing out unhealthy and demeaning comparisons, and boasting about how their group was more spiritual and wise than the others.

The Apostle Tackles the Divisions

So Paul, never one to shy away from initiative and justice, went on the offensive. Admittedly, in today’s New Testament lesson, Paul is quite sarcastic. He was actually mocking the Corinthians for their sinful arrogance and pride; and he used their own ways of being together against them to demonstrate how utterly foolish and ridiculous they were being.

The Apostle Paul countered with some comparisons of his own, using the example of the apostles themselves. Through his sarcastic comparison, he essentially argued that God used the very real oppression and suffering of the apostles toward good and positive ends.

Paul contrasted the apostles and the Corinthians to show the injustice that was happening in their factional wars with each other. By drawing attention away from the Corinthians and putting it on the apostles, Paul upheld a Christian ministry of weakness, not strength.

The apostles endured much suffering and opposition in their ministry. Paul viewed himself as a sort of dishrag that was used to clean the dirty dishes of the world. And he was okay with that, because it had a redemptive purpose. But he was not at all okay with the dirty business of factions and divisions within the church.

George Washington Addresses the Divisions

In our own day, it’s as if we have not learned the lessons of the past. And that is most likely because we have such little historical knowledge and awareness. I know of few people who realize George Washington was very much against a party system of government – and argued against it for similar reasons to the Apostle Paul.

Washington considered parties to be the bane of republican government. Parties were factions that threatened to divide the electorate into competing groups who might use violence to advance their interests.

He argued that political parties might also disrupt the separation of powers, especially in the case of unified government where loyalty to a party could interfere with the system of checks and balances.

What’s more, Washington said that parties threatened to stand in the way of effective representation, with elected officials tempted to represent only fellow party members and to leave opposition groups without a voice in government.

George Washington was mostly unique among the founders in never reconciling himself with political parties and never acknowledging the positive things that parties can bring to republican government.

Although it’s likely that Washington understood that parties were inevitable, he argued for keeping them under restraint and limiting their interference in the political process as much as possible.

Obviously, the party system won out, and rather quickly. In a healthy state of being, political parties can mobilize voters and encourage voter participation. They help build support for officeholders and serve as conduits of communication to the people. Political parties allow minorities to form coalitions to create majority rule.

Stick with the Evidence

Yet, what we seem to continually experience nowadays is the unhealthy aspect of the party system. People are hardened and reified into established positions and refuse to listen to the other. In such a position, evidence-based practices take a back seat.

For example, although there is not a shred of evidence that the former U.S. President experienced a hung jury and a corrupt judge in being convicted on 34 felony counts, a sizable chunk of Americans believe the corruption to be true – seemingly only because the former President said so, and without any objective, reasonable, and serviceable evidence to offer in backing up that claim.

And that prideful hardened spirit is the very thing that was happening in the ancient Corinthian Church. They wanted what they wanted, and they didn’t care what the other group thought. Each group believed (without evidence) they were wise and right. Yet, all of them were, in reality, foolish and unjust.

If we want a better public political climate; the freedom to be who we are; and confidence for the future; then, we had better begin with examining ourselves and listening well to the other first, before we assume that our own group is in the right and should be in control.

The privileges of freedom can only be enjoyed by embracing the responsibilities of freedom. And those responsibilities include a unified concern for the common good of all citizens, and not just the ones I like and who agree with me.

O God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior, and the Prince of Peace; Give us grace to lay aside our unhappy divisions. Take away all hatred and prejudice, and whatsoever else may hinder us from godly union and concord. Help us to build bridges, not walls, and live into the unity you provided for us in Christ, through the Spirit. Amen.

Raised Into a Spiritual Body (1 Corinthians 15:35-49)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year BLeave a comment

But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?” How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body. 

Not all flesh is the same: People have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds another and fish another. There are also heavenly bodies and there are earthly bodies; but the splendor of the heavenly bodies is one kind, and the splendor of the earthly bodies is another. The sun has one kind of splendor, the moon another and the stars another; and star differs from star in splendor.

So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.

If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. So it is written: “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. The first man was of the dust of the earth; the second man is of heaven. As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the heavenly man, so also are those who are of heaven. And just as we have borne the image of the earthly man, so shall we bear the image of the heavenly man. (New International Version)

We have so far experienced, in this Christian Year:

  • Advent and the anticipation of Christ’s birth; a celebration of that birth in the Christmas season
  • Epiphany with it’s light shining on the salvation we enjoy for all kinds of people
  • Lent, as we moved slowly and silently toward the cross and practiced spiritual disciplines
  • Holy Week, by walking with Jesus in Jerusalem, to the Garden of Gethsemane, up the hill to where he was crucified

But that is not the end of the story. Christ is risen! On Easter Sunday we celebrated Christ’s resurrection from death. Now, we are in the season of Eastertide, an extended time of celebration in which we revel in new life. Life is possible and real because the resurrection of Jesus from death is real.

The resurrection is crucial and central to the entire Christian life. That’s why the Apostle Paul concluded his letter to the Corinthians with a long defense of its truth.

Today’s lesson zeros in on a particular point in Paul’s argument for the importance and place of resurrection in Christianity. He insisted that the resurrection – the spiritual body – is unique; it’s not like any other sort of body. And this is the body that believers will have in the future. Just as Christ was resurrected, we too, shall experience a resurrection.

We shall be transformed from being like Adam, the original person with a physical body, to being like the risen Christ, the first with a spiritual body.

Sometimes the Apostle Paul’s arguments can seem thick and hard to get through. So, allow me to put his line of thinking in a context which I deal with every day. In my work as a hospital chaplain, I visit patients on the cardiac units. The following is the sort of conversation I sometimes have:

Patient: “Ever since I had my heart operation, I don’t feel close to God. I’ve always had a good relationship with the Lord. But I don’t sense it. It’s as if God is distant. Did I do something wrong? Maybe God is punishing me.”

Chaplain: “Sounds like you really love God.”

Patient: “Yeah, I do. I don’t get it, why I’m like this now.”

Chaplain: “Think about this with me for a minute. Your body was just traumatized. Somebody opened up your chest and messed with your literal physical heart. And that doesn’t only affect your body. It messed with your spiritual heart, too. The two hearts are different, in some ways. But there’s a close relationship between the physical heart and the spiritual heart. Trauma is trauma. It impacts your whole person, not just part of you.”

Patient: “So, am I always going to feel this way?”

Chaplain: “It’s going to take a long time to physically heal from what your body has been through. It won’t take near as long for your spiritual heart to heal – but it will heal. You’ll be close to God again. But it probably isn’t going to happen today. What’s more, it’s possible that when you heal, you’ll actually feel even closer to God than before; after having been through this, it will be like you have a new lease on life.”

Paul’s understanding of the resurrection is not far off from these sort of interactions I have with hospital patients. We live the Christian life in the tent of this body, not knowing anything different. But we will eventually die. And when that happens, we never go back to the way things were when we were living on this earth.

We don’t just get resuscitated; we eventually get resurrected. We don’t become disembodied people after death, and at the end of the age when Christ returns. No, instead, we get a body – it’s our body, but it’s different, it’s changed, because it is a spiritual body. And it’s likely to be like nothing you’ve ever experienced before.

Life on this old fallen planet of ours is sometimes characterized by adversity, trouble, hardship, and even sometimes traumatic situations. But it will not always be this way. The resurrection of Jesus Christ from death changes everything.

Death will give way to life. There will be a spiritual body. We shall be healed in the complete sense of the word – physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually – without any more death, disease, and destruction. Suffering will lead to glory.

This is a Christian perspective on resurrection. Since Christ is risen from death, and now has a spiritual body, so too, will his followers be raised to life with just such a body – so that we can be with the Lord forever, as it was intended when God originally created people in God’s image.

Resurrection means hope. We have the confident expectation that promises of an eternal spiritual body is coming. Just as a tiny seed is transformed into a plant, so we will be changed. For those who have had to struggle with the constant debilitations of the body, this is truly good news. And it’s no April Fools.

Lord Jesus, You suffered death but conquered it. You laid in the tomb, but on the third day, You rose again. You are the resurrection, our hope and our life. O glorious and victorious Redeemer, help us not to be afraid of death, for we must pass through it to see you face to face. And on the last day we will rise again because You said so. Amen.

Learn by Example (1 Corinthians 10:6-13)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year BLeave a comment

Now these things occurred as examples to keep us from setting our hearts on evil things as they did. Do not be idolaters, as some of them were; as it is written: “The people sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in revelry.” We should not commit sexual immorality, as some of them did—and in one day 23,000 of them died. We should not test Christ, as some of them did—and were killed by snakes. And do not grumble, as some of them did—and were killed by the destroying angel.

These things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us, on whom the culmination of the ages has come. So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall! No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it. (New International Version)

To learn by example is a whole lot better than having to learn something the hard way. One of the lessons of Holy Scripture is that it contains many stories of what not to do, and the consequences of disobedience and experiencing hard things because of anger and stubbornness.

The ancient Israelites in the desert were a group of people who ended up having to learn most things the hard way – simply because they were too stubborn and independent to listen to Moses and obey God’s commands.

Dealing with upset and recalcitrant people is a drag. But there is such a simple solution to it that you might not even believe it. If you learn to practice the one simple solution to dealing with angry, stubborn, and insecure people, your time will open much wider; your own emotions will calm down a great deal; and, you may find the kind of peace and settled conviction that you long for.

You know the type. We have all dealt with them. That chronically upset relative or in-law who demands your time and attention; the insecure co-worker who is constantly chirping about something he does not like in the company; or, the cranky neighbor who only talks to you when something infringes on his person or property.  These scenarios, and many more, you and I either have or will face.

Perhaps the religiously and perpetually upset person or group is the worst – because they hide their fears, anxieties, and insecurities behind a façade of piety and performance.

Let angry people endure the backlash of their own anger; if you try to make it better, you’ll only make it worse. (Proverbs 19:19, MSG)

I once was in a wedding in which a bridesmaid was constantly upset about something all throughout the rehearsal and into the wedding day. It got so bad that, just as we were about to walk down the aisle, she became agitated about something she did not like, and angrily stormed away. 

What would you do in such a situation? What did I do? I did absolutely nothing. I ignored her, told the rest of the wedding party to not follow her, and went about the ceremony. When she saw no one was going to rescue her, she was in line at the last minute to participate. 

If there is a person in your life, or you are in a group, who has frequent emotional meltdowns about most anything, learn the example of Holy Scripture, and hear this wisdom principle that can change your life: 

Angry, stubborn, and insecure people get upset because it works – they get their way. Someone will come to their rescue and fix their anger. But if you will practice the simple solution of letting them just be upset and stew in their own juices without coming to their aid to make it all better, they will eventually stop sucking your time and energy into their angry upset vortex.

The disobedient and upset person is typically one with some sort of entitlement mentality. The bridesmaid didn’t like the way things were being done, and she felt “entitled” to have things go her way. She wasn’t used to accepting “no” like most other people have to do. She believed everyone else ought to adjust for her behavior.

The important point to note here is that it is not your job to fix their emotions; it isn’t your responsibility to smooth everything out so that everyone feels just fine and are calmed down. Instead, it is my job and your job to practice self-control and be responsible for our own emotional well-being. 

If you keep trying to calm an angry person and assuage their emotions to an even keel, you will have to do it again, and again, and again…. Until they figure out their anger doesn’t work, it just does not pay to be upset.

This means that, deep within your soul, you must move from the fear of negative emotions in others to positive possibilities in the right direction. Not everyone is going to like you, no matter how hard you try.

“Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ.”

The Apostle Paul (1 Corinthians 11:1, NIV)

Please understand that this does not mean we avoid helping others. It just means we don’t enable their bad behavior by solving their problems for them. We can walk beside them, encourage them, and teach them, but all without doing it for them.

Whenever we think we can handle things on our own, without anyone else’s input through consultation and collaboration, then we are setting up ourselves to have to learn the hard way. So, how will you choose to learn?

O God, by your Spirit, fashion our lives according to the example of your Son, and grant that we may show the power of your love to all among whom we live; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

It’s About Love (1 Corinthians 8:1-13)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year BLeave a comment

Now concerning meat that has been sacrificed to a false god: We know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge makes people arrogant, but love builds people up. If anyone thinks they know something, they don’t yet know as much as they should know. But if someone loves God, then they are known by God.

So concerning the actual food involved in these sacrifices to false gods, we know that a false god isn’t anything in this world, and that there is no God except for the one God. Granted, there are so-called “gods,” in heaven and on the earth, as there are many gods and many lords. However, for us believers,

There is one God the Father.
        All things come from him, and we belong to him.
And there is one Lord Jesus Christ.
        All things exist through him, and we live through him.

But not everybody knows this. Some are eating this food as though it really is food sacrificed to a real idol, because they were used to idol worship until now. Their conscience is weak because it has been damaged. Food won’t bring us close to God. We’re not missing out if we don’t eat, and we don’t have any advantage if we do eat.But watch out or else this freedom of yours might be a problem for those who are weak. 

Suppose someone sees you (the person who has knowledge) eating in an idol’s temple. Won’t the person with a weak conscience be encouraged to eat the meat sacrificed to false gods? The weak brother or sister for whom Christ died is destroyed by your knowledge. You sin against Christ if you sin against your brothers and sisters and hurt their weak consciences this way. This is why, if food causes the downfall of my brother or sister, I won’t eat meat ever again, or else I may cause my brother or sister to fall. (Common English Bible)

Consider an issue you care about… 

Likely, one of the big reasons you care is that you either see some abuse, neglect, inattention, or lack of love applied toward someone or a group of people. So, you want to see it be different. 

Now, here comes the interesting part: We are motivated by love, but we often end up addressing the problem or issue in the realm of thought and/or belief. We may rely on the political, theoretical, and intellectual to solve the problem.

Our hearts might be open and attuned, and yet we may turn to knowledge and rules to achieve the change we deeply desire.

The Apostle Paul knew that we are primarily lovers – not thinkers or believers. Thinkers and believers traffic in knowledge and belief systems. Although these are important, they are not the primary or ultimate ends for the Apostle. 

Instead of leading with the head, Paul led with the heart. He tackled the divisive issue in the Corinthian Church about whether one can eat food sourced from a pagan temple and originally sacrificed to idols by saying:

“Knowledge makes us proud of ourselves, while love makes us helpful to others.”

Paul began with love and ended with love. The issue of particular kinds of food was neither an intellectual nor a faith issue – it was a love issue. 

Paul’s answer to the problem dividing the Christian believers on food was that food is a secondary issue. Rather, to look at the food issue through the lenses of love, makes it clear what you ought to, or ought not to do. In coming at the issue from this angle, it doesn’t make our thinking and our believing somehow irrelevant; it just places it in its proper place, and supports love.

Whenever our opinions and thoughts, and our faith and beliefs are handled without love, then special interest groups begin to form. A division occurs based upon what we think and believe about certain things. But when love is supreme, knowledge is no longer the tail wagging the dog.

Love is meant to enlighten us. Love illumines not only to the problems among us, but love is also the answer to those issues we care about most. And if we will keep this in both our minds and in our hearts, then we have both added to our knowledge so that we can encourage and build-up others, without discouraging others and tearing them down. 

It really is all about love.

Love rejoices in the truth,
    but not in evil.
Love is always supportive,
loyal, hopeful,
    and trusting.
Love never fails! (1 Corinthians 13:6-8a, CEV)

Loving God, you demonstrated your own love for us through sending us your Son, the Lord Jesus, who is the perfect embodiment of love. May Christ be so manifested within me that love becomes not only the motivator to change, but also the answer to change; through the power and help of the Holy Spirit. Amen.