Chapter 1
v12: Today in the church it is 43 thousand times
worse, for Christians aren’t just saying, “I like this person better” or “I
like that person better”: those who like one person have built denominational
walls to keep out the believers who like another person.
V26: Today in the institutional church it is all about
knowledge. Christians love the scholarly pastor who has as many degrees as a
thermometer.
It is also all about influence. There are thousands of
pastors gunning to be the next Billy Graham, Rick Warren or John Piper. They
use their small town church pulpits as stepping stones to bigger and bigger
congregations till they make the right connections to get them national and
international attention.
It is all about rank, too. Whether the “Fathers” of the
Catholic church or the Reverends, Pastors, Senior Pastors, Pastors For
Preaching, etc. of the other denominations, it’s all the same: people having a
fancy title by which they expect to be addressed.
Chapter 2
Worldly wisdom is particularly evident in the
mainline Protestant denominations, such as the Presbyterian, Anglican and
United churches. Rather than preaching Christ and Him crucified, these church’s
oftentimes take things from the world that sound good and preach those things
instead.
The majority of the preaching emanating from these
denominations centres on man pulling himself up by his own bootstraps, that is,
making himself pleasing to God on his own strength. They teach “Jesus was a
wise teacher who taught some very prudent principles. Follow these principles
and you will be saved.”
Others teach Jesus was a good example. They say, “Jesus’
life provided us with a model for how to live, so learn to act according to
that model and you will be saved.”
Still others teach, “Jesus was a perfect human being and by
living by his principles and living our lives after the way he acted we can
become perfect, too.”
However, it is by no means the majority of mainline
Protestant ministers who are guilty of replacing the cross with worldly wisdom.
In evangelical circles, we’ve seen things such as Dr. Laura on “Focus on the
Family” and conservative talk shows elevated to the same level as Christian
teaching. The thinking in these cases goes that if man can be made more moral
by returning to good old-fashioned values, that will make him more acceptable
to God.
Similarly, while I’m all for apologetics, including
information on things such as creation and how Biblical prophecy is being
fulfilled in current events, an identical attitude persists in these areas as
it does in the area of morality. If we can just get people to see that God
created the world or that the events described in Revelation are about to be
fulfilled before the world’s very eyes, the thinking goes, that will make
people get saved. Such head knowledge won’t get people saved unless it is
accompanied by the preaching of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ for
man’s sin or unless the unbeliever has already heard about the events
surrounding the cross at some time in their lives.
Chapter 3
v15: If a minister of the Gospel who is genuinely
saved preaches doctrines which are not heretical but are nevertheless
incorrect, his preaching won’t be counted to him as good works on Judgment Day
and he will not get rewarded, though he will still get into Heaven.
V16: However, if a minister of the Gospel brings a teaching
the nature of which will destroy the church, that is, God’s people, he will be
sent to Hell.
In the Catholic church it is all about things being holy,
such as water, amulets, statues, and so forth. In the other institutional
churches, it is quite similar. Things such as manmade organizations, positions
and titles are made holy and the focus on the people themselves becoming holy
before God is lost.
V21-23: Contrary to what the prosperity preachers say, the
reason God blesses us with all these things is because we are in Christ. We are
in Christ because He did the will of the Father by going to the cross which
also put us in God.
Chapter 4
v4: Paul didn’t condemn himself, beating himself
up for everything he did wrong, simply because he couldn’t see the end yet.
Christians need to adopt a similar attitude. While plenty of Christians seem to
think they’re already perfect, other Christians are constantly down on themselves
for every little thing, real or perceived, they’ve done recently that didn’t or
might not have been pleasing to God. If you feel this way, think of how you
were before you got saved, think of how you were at various points in the early
part of your walk with the Lord, then think about where you are now. Remember,
just like Paul, you can’t see the end yet. Just know that you, as a
blood-bought saint, are going on toward that perfection in Christ Jesus.
Chapter 5
v5: It doesn’t really appear Paul was saying the man
having sex with his young stepmother wasn’t a Christian. It seems from reading
the text he wanted the Corinthians to put him out of their assembly so that he
might come before the Lord and deal with his sin.
v11: In Chapter 5 Paul is essentially saying as follows:
“Meanwhile, while you’re spending all this time over whether
Appolos is a better speaker or whether so and so seems wiser as far as worldly
wisdom is concerned, there is a guy in the body of believers there who is
having sex with his stepmother. Additionally,” as I think we can infer from
Paul’s list of sins here, “there are people doing other horrible things. Why
don’t you concentrate on removing the fornicators, railers, drunkards,
extortioners, etc. from your midst rather than on who’s the more appealing
speaker.
Chapter 6
v1-2: As Christians, we should not be suing each other
in the first place, and Christians should not be getting into disputes about
many of the things they dispute over. God gave us His laws for restitution in
Exodus.
Chapter 6 can be summed up as follows:
“Not only do you argue over who the better speaker is while
ignoring the fornicators and other such sinners among you, you are caught up in
taking your (probably mostly petty) disputes before the pagan courts and suing
each other. You’re supposed to be the blood-bought saints of God who will one
day judge angels, yet your minds are only on your petty sleights. If it’s a
petty matter where no one really was injured, just let yourselves be
“defrauded. If it’s a serious matter, God gave us laws for dealing with it. As
I’ve just spent the first few pages of this letter going into in great detail,
God’s wisdom is superior to man’s wisdom. Therefore, why are you going before
the unbelievers and letting man’s wisdom settle your disputes for you? You are
supposed to be the righteous i.e. those who live right i.e. those who live
according to God’s way He designed for man. Yet, in this matter, you are not
living the way God designed for man. People who don’t live rightly won’t get into
Heaven. You’ve been washed, sanctified and justified, so live like it.
“Meanwhile, while you’re busy suing each other over mostly
petty things, people in Corinth who call themselves Christians are using
prostitutes. They reason (much like I’ve heard from some quarters of the world
today) that since food benefits the body and we all need food to survive, then
we should all seek out sex because that benefits the body as well. Your freedom
in Christ isn’t freedom to do whatever you like. Your body is a temple where
the Holy Spirit dwells.”
v16: Here we have God’s law concerning prostitution; anyone who
sleeps with a prostitute has to marry her. That would decimate the sex trade
pretty darn quick.
v12-20: A lot of Christians in the purity culture take this passage
and passages like it far further than they need to be taken.
Of course this passage also applies to spiritual
fornication.
Chapter 7
Man, has this chapter and many of the verses in
it ever been taken out of context! I will have to write a whole post devoted to
this chapter by itself.
Based on 1 Corinthians by Geoffrey B. Wilson. London:
Banner of Truth, 1971.
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