Tag Archives: 1 Corinthians

Every Joint, Every Part

01 Sunday Feb 2015

Posted by in Ministry

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What are the dangers inherent in convincing ourselves that we can live outside of God’s normal means of personal spiritual health and growth? They are equally clear in this passage. If we attempt to do what we are not wired by redemption to do, we will be susceptible to lingering immaturity in specific areas of our life and to doctrinal error or confusion, and we will live in danger of being deceived. Think with me for a moment. Each of us is able to cite occurrences of each danger in our own circles of pastors. I have counseled pastors who damaged their churches because they had failed to grow up. I have experienced churches damaged by pastors who were moved away by the latest wind of fad doctrine. I was a self- deceived pastor, thinking I knew myself better than I did and thinking I was more spiritually well off than I actually was. These warnings are not just for the average Christian but for every member of the body of Christ. They call everyone in ministry to humbly admit that in the middle of the already–not yet, there is a war that is still taking place for the rulership of our hearts. And because there is, we all need the warning, protective, encouraging, rebuking, growth- producing ministry of the body of Christ.

Now, what methodology has God chosen to employ to guard, grow, and protect us? It is the public and private ministry of the Word. This passage particularly emphasizes the member ministry. Again the words are specific and clear: “Speaking the truth in love . . . joined and held together by every joint . . . when each part is working properly . . . builds itself up in love.” There is no indication in this passage that any member of Christ’s body is able or permitted to live outside of the essential ministry of the body of Christ. But I think it is exactly at this point that we can be tempted to draw conclusions from this passage that it doesn’t actually teach. Because it ascribes to the pastor the responsibility of training God’s people for their member- to- member ministry function, I am afraid that we have unwittingly concluded that the pastor is above a need of what the rest of the body needs and does. But the passage never teaches this; it actually teaches the opposite. The pastor is in the unique position of not only training the body for this ministry but also of personally needing the very ministry for which he trains them. Remember, the words here— “every joint,” “each part”— do not leave much room for exemptions. Again, I think of it this way: if Christ is the head of his body, then everything else is just body, including the pastor, and therefore the pastor needs what the body has been designed to deliver.

Paul David Tripp, Dangerous Calling

Biblical Conflict Resolution Part 1

28 Tuesday Oct 2014

Posted by in 1 Corinthians, Biblical Counseling, Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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COUNSELING PROBLEMS AND BIBLICAL CHANGE
BIBLICAL CONFLICT RESOLUTION

Redeeming church conflict is less about resolving specific problems than it is about seeing conflict as a means by which God is growing his people into true saints, true eternal children of who are being continuous conformed to his holy image.
—Barthel & Edling, Redeeming Church Conflicts

INTRODUCTION
Conflict resolution is the practical outworking of a cure for a spiritual disease. This week we will first take a look at both spiritual health & the spiritual disease. We will not be going through any of the mechanics of restoration and resolution. The education of a medical doctor does not begin with surgery and medication, but rather with training in disease, germs, health, anatomy, physiology, et cetera; and so, neither will we.
In fact, a too-quick jump to mechanics without an understanding of disease and health can easily lead to worse problems. Therefore, we will look at this situation from the prospective of spiritual mechanics of the heart, before we look to interpersonal mechanics.
II. PEACEMAKING AND FELLOWSHIP
Peacemaking is the act of restoring/developing true Christian fellowship. Peacemaking, understood rightly, is worship and seeks to create deeper, more God-glorifying worship. Peacemaking is an act of love, in that seeks to restore relationships between human & God, and between brother & sister. Thus, peacemaking is based upon fellowship and develops/restores fellowship.
A. Something in Common
Fellowship simply means to hold something in common:

Fellowship (Gk. koinōnía). The communion or common faith, experiences, and expressions shared by the family of believers, as well as the intimate relationship they have with God.

Allen C. Myers, The Eerdmans Bible Dictionary (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1987), 380.

When we speak of “fellowship” we are speaking of communion, holding something in common; we are not speaking of just friendship.

Since fellowship hinges upon having something in common with another, it is type of relationship which can develop quickly and will continue as long as the thing in common continues to draw the people into relationship. Consequently, it is a type of relationship which will end as soon as the basis for the relationship is withdrawn. Thus, it is fundamentally different than most friendships.

We know and experience fellowship at various levels and over various things. Some fellowship is very thin. Employees of a company have a sort of fellowship in common in that they have experiences, concerns, interests which are in common and based upon their common employment. If the group from work goes out to dinner together, they will most likely center their attention on their common interest: work.

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The Church at Ephesus and Canticles 3

31 Wednesday Oct 2012

Posted by in 1 Corinthians, 1 John, James, Revelation, Song of Solomon

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In Revelation 2, Jesus commends and then rebukes the church at Ephesus. He commends their good works and care for correct doctrine, “I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance, and how you cannot bear with those who are evil, but have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not, and found them to be false.” He also commends their “patient endurance”. Yet, there is a fault, “But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first.”

Now James explains that a faith which has no work is no true faith:

14 What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? 15 If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food,
16 and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? 17 So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. (James 2:14-17)

John in his first epistle explains that one who claims love and yet does not actually conduct acts of love has no true love from God:

16 By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.17 But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?18 Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth. 1 John 3:16-18

Thus, “faith” and “love” which exist only as words, are not faith or love; yet work — even good work of charity, and endurance and right doctrine — without love means nothing:

1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. 1 Corinthians 13:1-3

What does all this mean? At times Christians of this time and place speak of a personal relationship with Jesus. Unfortunately, it seems that such words usually mean a self-centered self-defined vague Jesus as the guy who paid for my get out of hell card. Yet there
is a sense in which the phrase is quite correct: Jesus is a persons : he is a man and the Son of God incarnate and is a person. He is a person with whom a relationship may and must be cultivated.

But the relationship may not be a matter of mere words like “faith” or “love”. Were I to tell my wife “I love you” and yet keep a mistress, my wife would rightly question (to say the very least!) the word “love”. I perhaps may feel an emotion of some sort — but I would not demonstrate love. That would be a “dead” love or faith. My wife seeks the words, but she really seeks my life. When words and conduct, when the entire life renders a true love, then the marriage exists.

Conversely, if I were to do things because I thought she wanted me to, but I did not care for her out of love, there would still be no true love.

Conduct without love and words without conduct are both nothing more than manipulation. Work without love and faith is rank paganism: I have sacrificed X and so the deity owes me Y. Words without corresponding conduct are fraud. A confidence man promises an interest in an oil well in North Dakota — he may even deliver a piece of paper claiming the same — but he only delivers words without meaning, because he words correspond to nothing in reality.

How then must the church at Ephesus respond? Canticles (Song of Solomon) 3 pictures the bride who seeks her love:

1 On my bed by night I sought him whom my soul loves; I sought him, but found him not.
2 I will rise now and go about the city, in the streets and in the squares; I will seek him whom my soul loves. I sought him, but found him not.
3 The watchmen found me as they went about in the city. “Have you seen him whom my soul loves?”
4 Scarcely had I passed them when I found him whom my soul loves. I held him, and would not let him go until I had brought him into my mother’s house, and into the chamber of her who conceived me.

This passage pictures the desire of the bride for the bridegroom — and thus the desire of the Church for Christ. In Revelation 2, Jesus has told the Ephesians, You must come seek me — and seek until you find: just as the bride in Canticles must seek her love. James Durham’s comment on verse 4 helps us to understand the application to the soul:

The second thing here, is her success, which is according to her desire, ‘I found him’ (saith she); when I had pressed but a little further, he sensibly and surprisingly made himself known to me. Observe. 1. Christ is not far off from his people when they are seeking him, whatever they may think when he hides himself. 2. They who love Christ, and conscionably follow all means for obtaining him are not far from finding, nor he far from manifesting himself to them. 3. They who sincerely press forward to the life of ordinances beyond the form, and by faith take themselves to Christ himself for the blessing, not resting on their performances will not long miss Christ, yea, it may be, he will give them a sensible manifestation of himself sooner than they are aware; for, ‘the Spirit is obtained, not by the works of the law, but by the hearing of faith,’ Gal. 3:2. 4. A soul that sincerely loves Christ, should not, and when in a right frame will not give over seeking Christ till it find him, whatever disappointment it meets with; and sure such will find him at last. 5. Christ found after much search, will be very welcome, and his presence then will be most discernible. 6. Believers should no less observe, and acknowledge their good success in the means, than their disappointments; there are many who often make regrets of their bonds, that are deficient in acknowledging God’s goodness when they get liberty.

Elemental Religion.2 James Denney (“The experience that God knows me”)

18 Tuesday Sep 2012

Posted by in 1 Corinthians, Hebrews, James Denney, Preaching, Psalms

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We are apt to speak in this connexion of omniscience, but there is nothing about omniscience in the Psalm.  Omniscience is an abstract noun, and abstract nouns are unequal to the intense feeling of the passage. The important thing in religion is not the belief that God is omniscience, but the experience that God knows me, and it is on this the Psalmist dwells. It is almost implied in the connexion of his words that in the heart of the writer there was a kind of passive resistance to this experience, a resistance which God’s overcame, piercing and discovering all his inner life. We are slow to know ourselves, and sometimes do not wish to; purposes form in the background of our minds, of which we are hardly conscious; latent motives actuate us; perhaps own words or deeds, in which they suddenly issue, startle us; we are amazed that we should have said or done such a thing. But it is no surprise to Him. “Oh thou understandest my thought of far off.”  Such knowledge of man by God is quite different from omniscience. Omniscience is a divine attribute, but what here is experienced is a divine action — it is God through His searching knowledge of us entering with power into our lives. It is God the besetting us behind and before, and laying His hand upon us. The Psalmist does not dwell particularly on the divine motive, so to speak, and the searching of man. It might be felt as the shadowing of the soul by an enemy, or is the over-shadowing presence of a friend. The one thing on which he does dwell is its reality and its completeness. It is too wonderful for him; it baffles him when he tries to understand it; but incomprehensible as it is, it is real. He only knows himself as he is conscious of being searched and known by God.

Preaching: Denney first works out his argument by overturning the assumption of the words: This is not about omniscience (although God is omniscient, and God’s omniscience stands behind God’s conduct here), but rather it is about the personal knowledge of God.

He explains the error of misusing this text by means of doing what should be done with the text. He shows how the wrong reading misses the intensely personal knowledge which the text conveys.

He describes the Psalmist’s experience so that it is well understood.

He ends the paragraph with a statement that the proposition ultimately baffles and with the proposition, “He only knows himself as he is conscious of being searched and known by God.”

Good preaching should open up one’s ways of thinking and transform one’s categories of understanding. There is a great deal of argument that we must make the Bible relevant to people in their current circumstance. While it is necessary to understand one’s culture, the important thing is that Christian thinking is conformed to biblical categories and methods – not that Christians have the Bible translated and defanged; domesticated to the culture.

This last sentence explodes our normal manner of thought: How does God prove himself to me? Here, Denney explains, it is only as God knows me that I can even know myself. God is the ground, the subject – I am the observed, the object.

Doctrine: Here is a strange thing: Another person, wise, eternal, knows me inside and out: There is God at hand with my thoughts, knowing my inclination before I admit to myself what I know of myself. The Greek aphorism γνῶθι σεαυτόν Know Thyself hangs dependent upon God’s knowledge: “He only knows himself as he is conscious of being searched and known by God.”

Such knowledge, whether we seek to avoid it or long for it, stands at the heart of human and Divine life: Adam sinned and sought to hide himself from God. God’s question, “Where are you?” Does not reflect ignorance by God, but rather the penetrating search of God – Adam cannot and does not hide.[1]

Am I what I think myself to be, or am I what God knows me to be? This is one element of the basic tension between God and humanity. We seek to define ourselves, but the believing heart knows that it is only God’s opinion which matters. Indeed, what is “confession” but saying the same thing of my sin as God?

Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment. Psalm 51:4 (ESV)

Now consider this as a true proposition: not as an abstract doctrine but as an actual knowledge/experience. He does not say that God speaks to him in any propositional manner. But rather that he knows that God knows him.

The propositional content will be in our reading of the Scripture: It is in the reading of this Psalm that I become aware of this knowledge. Hebrews 4 explains that it is in the operation of the Word of God that we are known by God:

11 Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. 12 For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. 13 And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account. Hebrews 4:11–13 (ESV)

Thus, my conscience, my joy and sorrow, my affections and thoughts as they are informed by the Word of God become my valuation of who I am – it is not my judgment of myself, but God’s judgment of me which matters:

But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court. In fact, I do not even judge myself. 1 Corinthians 4:3 (ESV)

But there is something even more profound in this observation.

[1] In fact, God at times makes fun of human hubris on this point. In Genesis 11, the people seek to build a tower to heaven; a fortress so great that God cannot overcome it. But verse 5 reads, “And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower”: the tower was so tiny, God could not see it from heaven!

Christopher Love: Mortification is a Work of the Spirit.1

14 Friday Sep 2012

Posted by in 1 Corinthians, 1 Peter, Biblical Counseling, Christopher Love, Mortification, Puritan, Romans

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Christopher Love unpacks the clause of Romans 8:13, “But if ye by the Spirit do mortify …” and demonstrates the manner in which the Spirit is the agent of sanctification. First, the Spirit is called the Holy Spirit, for his “proper office is to make a man holy” (89). 

Second, sanctification is attributed to the Spirit:

1 Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, To those who are elect exiles of the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, 2 according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood: May grace and peace be multiplied to you. 1 Peter 1:1–2 (ESV)

And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. 1 Corinthians 6:11 (ESV)

Sanctification consists of both vivification, being alive toward God; and mortification, being dead toward sin. Therefore, the Spirit must be the agent of mortification.

Third, the Lord states that the Spirit is sent to bring conviction of sin:

And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment: John 16:8 (ESV)

Conviction of sin brings turning from sin:

A man will never seek after a cure until he is sensible of his disease. So you will never go about the extirpation of sin until you are sensible of the danger and guilt of your sins. You will never be convinced of the danger and evil of sin unless the Spirit of God enlightens you. The work of mortification is wholly ascribed to the Spirit of God because only He can convince us of the Evil of Sin so as to make us hate and abhor it and strive against it.

Holiness in the OT.2

12 Wednesday Sep 2012

Posted by in 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Exodus, Leviticus

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In a “holy place”:

The phrase “in a holy place” is used in various places in the OT: Exodus 29:31; Leviticus 6:9, 19, 20; 7:6; 10:13; 16:24; 24:9. As a prima facie matter, “holy” in this instances cannot morally correct, because locations cannot have moral qualities or character. Rather, the place, like many items of the tabernacle (and later temple) are holy because they have been set apart for use for ritual relationship with God. Exodus 40:9 provides an interesting understanding of this process:

Then you shall take the anointing oil and anoint the tabernacle and all that is in it, and consecrate it and all its furniture, so that it may become holy. Exodus 40:9 (ESV)

Stuart comments:

The need to anoint and the process of anointing the tabernacle and its furniture was already adumbrated in 29:36; 30 and especially 30:25–29, so the fulfillment of that command can be reviewed here succinctly as finally completed at the occasion of the first erection of the tabernacle. Anointing symbolizes cleanness and purity, as discussed already in chap. 29. These items of furniture had a sacred purpose; their proximity to Yahweh’s symbolized presence in the holy of holies reflected that sacredness and required recognition by the anointing ceremony that they were part of the holiest place in the nation.

Douglas K. Stuart, vol. 2, Exodus, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2006), 787. Stuart’s comment is interesting in tying the relationship of anointing with oil to the sacrificial purification of Exodus 29:33-36:

Thus you shall do to Aaron and to his sons, according to all that I have commanded you. Through seven days shall you ordain them, 36 and every day you shall offer a bull as a sin offering for atonement. Also you shall purify the altar, when you make atonement for it, and shall anoint it to consecrate it. Exodus 29:35–36 (ESV)

The consecration was made by way of blood and sacrifice. Later, the anointing oil is to be made “it shall be a holy oil” (Exod. 30:26). The command continues:

29 You shall consecrate them, that they may be most holy. Whatever touches them will become holy. 30 You shall anoint Aaron and his sons, and consecrate them, that they may serve me as priests. 31 And you shall say to the people of Israel, ‘This shall be my holy anointing oil throughout your generations. 32 It shall not be poured on the body of an ordinary person, and you shall make no other like it in composition. It is holy, and it shall be holy to you. 33 Whoever compounds any like it or whoever puts any of it on an outsider shall be cut off from his people.’  Exodus 30:29–33 (ESV)

Von Rad comments on holy objects:

The Nazirite was “one set apart for Jahweh”: indeed, whatever in the sphere of worship men, animals, or objects were taken out of daily, secular life, they were “holy for Jahweh”. And right at the very heart of it all were the sacrifices, with or without blood, where the same stereotyped phraseology is to be found. The inference to be drawn from this way of speaking is it, which is both widespread and fixed, is that Israel regarded the cult as the place where pre-eminently  it was incumbent upon her to make room for Jahweh’s right and claim which he made. Thus, what took place in the cult can also be designed as the (Hebrew, “justice” “judgment” misphat) of God. This “right” of God’s inhuman life was therefore the primary and constitutive factor – it was the foundation-stone of the cult, and everything else followed from it. No cultic celebration was solemnized fro Israel, but they were all “for Jahweh”. But the sphere in which that right of God (which nullified all human claims) had to be respected was not an ideal one: on the contrary, it was very realistically demarcated by means of a holy place, holy men and women, holy things, and holy seasons. And the holiness of all these stood or fell with the belief in his present there from time to time. The coming of Jahweh – it might be to the sacrifices – was a moment of the highest solemnity, for which the congregation was made ready by the cultic cry, “Silence at the present of Jahweh!” “Slience at the present of Jahweh! He rouses himself from his holy dwelling” (Zeph. 1:7; Zech. 2:17). Finally, it is this presence which imposes upon man a quite definitive behavior, and this behavior is one which, out of consideration of God’s holiness, was subjected to particular rules and regulations demanding careful observance. Wherever we meet this phenomenon we have a right to say that we are in the sphere of the cult (Von Rad, Old Testament Theology, Vol. 1, 241-242).

Paul picks up this line of thinking repeatedly in his letters, particularly in Corinthians. Two references are particularly apt. First, the reference to perfume making something “holy”:

14 But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. 15 For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, 16 to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things? 17 For we are not, like so many, peddlers of God’s word, but as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God, in the sight of God we speak in Christ. 2 Corinthians 2:14–17 (ESV)

Having been set aside for the work of God, perfumed as it were, the proclamation of the Gospel gives off the same perfume.  Paul actually refers to the saints as “the aroma of Christ”.  This is not out of line with the rest of his theology. In First Corinthians Paul sets aside the believer’s body as the holy place of God:

19 Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, 20 for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. 1 Corinthians 6:19–20 (ESV)

This usage and parallel gives a means to study and profit from meditation upon the “holy place” as described in the OT.

Edward Taylor: Meditation on Canticles 2.1e (The Medicine of the Resurrection)

30 Thursday Aug 2012

Posted by in 1 Corinthians, Edward Taylor, Psalms, Song of Solomon

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The first stanzas of the poem set out the decision to seek the Rose of Sharon. The second stanza ends with:

                        the Sparke of Love out breaths
To Court this Rose: and lodgeth in its leaves.

At this point, the poem moves to praise and prayer. Taylor moves back and forth between extolling the beauty of the Rose and praying for the gift and blessing of the Rose.

The first praise is that the Rose exceeds the flowers of “Garzia Horti”.  Professor Rainwater explains the reference thus:

‘Meditation 1.4’ refers to the “flowers of Garza Horti”, which is doubtless a Latinized reference to Garcia D’Orta. Debus, Man and Nature in the Renaissance  remarks tha a Latin text of D’Orta’s work existed (47)

“‘The Brazen Serpent Is a Doctor’s Shop:’ Edward Taylor’s Medical Vision” by Catherine Rainwater; in American Literature and Science, Edited y Robert Scholnick, 1992 University Press of Kentucky; page 38, fn. 26. D’Orta’s book is available in an English translation as Colloquies of the Simples and Drugs of India here: http://archive.org/details/colloquiesonsimp00orta The book discusses various natural medicines of India.  Thus, this initial praise of the poem is that the Rose of Sharon exceeds all other medicines of the world.

Indeed, the poem’s praise and prayer  will move from beauty as such to medicinal properties. The third and fourth stanzas concern the beauty of the Rose:

No Beauty sweet in all the World so Choice: 

The Rose is “fairest”; it “blushes in beauty bright”. The perfume of the Rose is praised in the fourth stanza and becomes the basis of the first prayer:

19   Lord lead me into this sweet Rosy Bower:
20      Oh! Lodge my Soul in this Sweet Rosy bed:
21   Array my Soul with this sweet Sharon flower:
22      Perfume me with the Odours it doth shed. 

 Although not the most common element of praise in the Bible, the perfume of Christ is not without example:

14 But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. 15 For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, 16 to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things? 2 Corinthians 2:14–16 (ESV)

 When seen in this light, the movement from perfume to medicinal imagery seems natural.  Paul uses the imagery (if you will) of perfume of Christ as that which saves one from death – it brings life. Thus, Taylor, without question familiar with the text, would naturally move from perfume to saving and restoration to life.

In the fifth stanza, Taylor follows this line of thought and raises the matter of blood:

The Blood Red Pretious [precious] Syrup of this Rose

Doth all Catholicons excell what ere.

The blood of Christ is the great “catholicon” (universal remedy) for sin and death. Taylor states that this medicine will “purge”. He then prays that the God use the blood to “purge” his soul.  The first detail of what must be purged comes in line 30

Chase all thine Enemies out of my land. 

Here, Taylor takes up another strand of Scripture: The prayer for deliverance from enemies:

A PSALM OF DAVID, WHEN HE FLED FROM ABSALOM HIS SON. 1 O LORD, how many are my foes! Many are rising against me; 2 many are saying of my soul, there is no salvation for him in God. Selah 3 But you, O LORD, are a shield about me, my glory, and the lifter of my head. 4 I cried aloud to the LORD, and he answered me from his holy hill. Selah 5 I lay down and slept; I woke again, for the LORD sustained me. 6 I will not be afraid of many thousands of people who have set themselves against me all around. 7 Arise, O LORD! Save me, O my God! For you strike all my enemies on the cheek; you break the teeth of the wicked. 8 Salvation belongs to the LORD; your blessing be on your people! Selah Psalm 3 (ESV)

Now the blood of Christ – which is certainly a reference to his death – was given to destroy the greatest of all enemies:

The last enemy to be destroyed is death. 1 Corinthians 15:26 (ESV)

In the 15th chapter of Corinthians, Paul sets out the Gospel and the hope of the resurrection – which has become possible through the death and resurrection of Jesus:

1 Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, 2 and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. 3 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. 6 Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. 8 Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. 1 Corinthians 15:1–8 (ESV)

Taylor in this meditation notes that the great medicine of this Rose is to be had only because the Rose was first killed – and yet the Rose was restored:

49   But, oh! alas! that such should be my need
50      That this Brave Flower must Pluckt, stampt, squeezed bee,
51   And boyld up in its Blood, its Spirits sheed,
52      To make a Physick sweet, sure, safe for mee.
53      But yet this mangled Rose rose up again
54      And in its pristine glory, doth remain. 

Thus, Taylor’s meditation is a meditation upon Gospel – the victory of Jesus over death and sin. His remedy is and hope is the hope of glory:

61   My Dear-Sweet Lord, shall I thy Glory meet
62      Lodg’d in a Rose, that out a sweet Breath breaths.
63   What is my way to Glory made thus sweet,
64      Strewd all along with Sharons Rosy Leaves.
65      I’le walk this Rosy Path: World fawn, or frown
66      And Sharons Rose shall be my Rose, and Crown. 

In so doing, Taylor continues to meditate in the vein of 1 Corinthians 15, which ends:

50 I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. 51 Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, 52 in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. 53 For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. 54 When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.” 55 “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” 56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. 1 Corinthians 15:50–57 (ESV)

 

Trellis & Vine.2

17 Friday Aug 2012

Posted by in 1 Corinthians, Discipleship, Ephesians, Ministry, Service

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This chapter lists specific areas where the change from trellis to vine will occur. Without covering each particular element (buy the book), I wish to consider three general themes to the approach. These themes are present in the list provided within T&V – and these will apply to other circumstances not specifically addressed in the chapter.

Start with the Holy Spirit’s Gifts, Given by the Grace of Christ

In Ephesians 4, Paul explains that Jesus obtained gifts of ministry for the church:

7 But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift. 8 Therefore it says, “When he ascended on high he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men.” 9 (In saying, “He ascended,” what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions, the earth? 10 He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.)

11 And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, 12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, 13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, 14 so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.

15 Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, 16 from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. Ephesians 4:7–16 (ESV)

Christ came to the earth and through his death, burial, resurrection and ascension became the one to distribute gifts to men. These gifts have been distributed to and within the church:

But to every-one. He now describes the manner in which God establishes and preserves among us a mutual relation. No member of the body of Christ is endowed with such perfection as to be able, without the assistance of others, to supply his own necessities. A certain proportion is allotted to each; and it is only by communicating with each other, that all enjoy what is sufficient for maintaining their respective places in the body.

John Calvin, Ephesians, electronic ed., Calvin’s Commentaries (Albany, OR: Ages Software, 1998), Eph 4:7.  1 Corinthians 12 adds:

4 Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; 5 and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; 6 and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone. 7 To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. 8 For to one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, 9 to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, 10 to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. 11 All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills. 1 Corinthians 12:4–11 (ESV)

Take these two passages together: The church is a place in which Christ gives gifts which are apportioned by the Holy Spirit as the Holy Spirit wills. Thus, a particular congregation is a particular assemblage of gifts given and arranged for the purpose of making those people in-that-congregation disciples of Jesus Christ.

Thus, when working through the matters of ministry, it would be wisest to start with the Holy Spirit’s gifts – not the ministry structure we have maintained for 20 years.  Trellis work starts with the structure and looks for people to keep the trellis aloft.

Train the Workers for the Work

The gifts of the Holy Spirit take development and training. Consider this: Jesus sent the disciples to Jerusalem where they remained awaiting the gift of the Spirit. And while they waited, they “devoted themselves to prayer” (Acts 1:14). In those days Peter also instructed the disciples (Acts 1:15, et seq.).  They prepared for ministry by choosing Matthias.  When Paul gives instructions to Timothy on deacons and elders, he cautions against recent converts and those who are untested.  Paul specifically instructs Timothy to “teach and urge these things” (1 Tim. 6:2). Paul tells Timothy to follow a pattern of sound words, i.e., a body of knowledge in which Timothy was trained (2 Tim. 1:13). Paul tells Timothy to “devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation and to teaching”.

In short, ministry work requires preparation:

1 You then, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus, 2 and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. 2 Timothy 2:1–2 (ESV)

An interesting note from T&V on the failure to train:

Volunteers are the ones who maintain and expand church programs. …The danger of having such willing volunteers is that we use them, exploit them and forget to train them. They burn out and their ministry is curtailed, and we find that we have failed to develop their Christian life and ministry potential (T&V 19-20).

The Church is Local and Global

Sometimes we can become so chauvinistic regarding our personal congregation that we resent or do not seek to train those who will or may not stay within our own congregation:

Once we’ve spent time and resources training our leaders, we soon fear losing them. …We must be exporters of train people instance of hoarders of trained people (T&V, 25).

The work of ministry primarily takes place within local congregations. I love the local congregation and I love the local congregation where I attend and serve. However, this local congregation is little more than a tiny fort of a great army spread out over time and across the earth. When a trained ministry is transferred to another different fort, the work still goes to the same army even if it does not go to the same fort. The analogy works as well with hospital and medical workers (another image of the church – both are true, it is an army and a hospital).

The Alchemy of God

16 Thursday Aug 2012

Posted by in 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Genesis, Mark, Ministry, Service

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The alchemists hoped to work by reversal and turn lead into gold. Such was human aspiration. But God can and does reverse the lead of sin and transform it into the gold of God’s glory. Sin always aims at the shame and ruin of God:

1 Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain?
2 The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD and against his Anointed, saying,
3 “Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us.”

Psalm 2:1-3.

And yet God never quails:

4 He who sits in the heavens laughs; the Lord holds them in derision.
5 Then he will speak to them in his wrath, and terrify them in his fury, saying,
6 “As for me, I have set my King on Zion, my holy hill.”

Psalm 2:4-6. The pattern runs throughout the Bible. For example:

Joseph to his brothers:

19 But Joseph said to them, “Do not fear, for am I in the place of God?
20 As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.

Gen. 50:19-20.

Service in Mark 10:

42 And Jesus called them to him and said to them, “You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them.
43 But it shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant,
44 and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all.

Trials in 2 Corinthians 12:

8 Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me.
9 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.
10 For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

Death itself:

53 For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality.
54 When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.”
55 “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?”
56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.
57 But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

1 Cor. 15:54-57.

Such reversals in the end leave God with all glory:

27 But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong;
28 God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are,
29 so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.
30 And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption,
31 so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”

1 Cor. 1:27-31.

Here is a bit on Carl Truman making a similar with reference to Luther’s teaching and as to eldership:
http://thegospelcoalition.org/mobile/article/justintaylor/the-difference-between-a-theologian-of-the-cross-and-a-theologian-of-glory

Getting Christians Wrong

14 Tuesday Aug 2012

Posted by in 1 Corinthians, Apologetics, Church History

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Tim Challies writes:

I have been reading a lot of history and biography in recent weeks, from books on the history of Mormonism to books portraying characters as diverse as Abraham Lincoln and Queen Elizabeth II. One thing that has stood out to me in my reading is how seldom unbelieving authors accurately portray the beliefs of Christians.

Mr. Challies then provides an astoundingly incoherent example of error. I won’t spoil the example by quoting it, go to his site and read it yourself: http://www.challies.com/quotes/an-error-packed-paragraph .

There is something odd about the routine nature with which Christian belief is misstated.  The belief of Christians is not difficult to learn:  Christians – even with all the variants — have made a point of encapsulating our belief into creeds and formal statements since the earliest days:

Creeds played a prominent part in the daily worship and life of early Christians. To a degree that is hard for twentieth-century people to grasp, the early church believed that it was absolutely vital to know and accept some very specific statements about the nature and attributes of God and his Son Jesus Christ. It was so important that all Christians were required to repeat them frequently, to learn them by heart.

Harold O.J. Brown, Heresies: Heresy and Orthodoxy in the History of the Church (1988; repr., Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, Inc., 1998), 21. Unlike the later Gnostics, there is no secret teaching, no secret ritual or hidden book for Christianity.  From the very start, Christians have strived to make our belief known and understood (Luke 1:1-2).  For example, 1 Corinthians 15:3-5 (7) (a creed which was likely from an Aramaic original).

15:3–7 Paul probably received this confessional statement 20 years earlier at his baptism in Damascus and later handed it over to the Corinthians when he established the church there. This vital summary of Christian belief was formed during the period between Christ’s resurrection and Paul’s Damascus call and baptism. This formula was carried by fugitives from Paul’s persecutions to Damascus, where it was handed over to the new convert at his baptism. This statement may be the earliest formulation of NT Christianity, predating Paul’s earliest letters by 15 years.

Ted Cabal, Chad Owen Brand, E. Ray Clendenen et al., The Apologetics Study Bible: Real Questions, Straight Answers, Stronger Faith (Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 2007), 1730.[1] This continues on in the sub-apostolic world a Christian seeks to explain what Christians believe to an unbeliever:

SINCE I see, most excellent Diognetus, that thou art exceedingly anxious to understand the religion of the Christians, and that thy enquiries respecting them are distinctly and carefully made, as to what God they trust and how they worship Him, that they all disregard the world and despise death, and take no account of those who are regarded as gods by the Greeks, neither observe the superstition of the Jews, and as to the nature of the affection which they entertain one to another, and of this new development or interest, which has entered into men’s lives now and not before: I gladly welcome this zeal in thee, and I ask of God, Who supplieth both the speaking and the hearing to us, that it may be granted to myself to speak in such a way that thou mayest be made better by the hearing, and to thee that thou mayest so listen that I the speaker may not be disappointed.

Joseph Barber Lightfoot and J. R. Harmer, The Apostolic Fathers (London: Macmillan and Co., 1891), 503. Answering such questions about Christianity – fully, truthfully, completely – lies in the heart of Christianity (and yes, I understand the particular context for the verse, but the principle applies here):

but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect, 1 Peter 3:15 (ESV)

Christians have made plain and seek to explain what it is that we believe. To make this plain, we have routinely used creeds and confessions to set out position and to distinguish orthodoxy from heresy. The history of the Church can be sketched by the Creeds, Apostolic, Nicene, et cetera. There are entire volumes of the history of creeds and confessions (see, e.g., Schaff’s Creeds of Christendom).

One may disagree with the confession or beliefs of Christians – that is one issue. However, to simply misstate and misquote demonstrates at best a lack of curiosity.

 

[1] Here is the comment from Thiselton:

REB’s first and foremost well captures the logical rather than temporal force of ἐν πρώτοις in this context, i.e., of first importance (as NRSV, NIV).78 NJB’s handed on to you in the first place too readily suggests sequence, but does have the advantage of retaining the double meaning which the word first can convey in both Greek and English, depending on its context. REB explicates the relative pronoun ὅ by Eng. the tradition, which was indeed implied by the two verbs (see above and on 11:23), but in view of the mistakenly negative overtones generated by the notion of tradition by those who have not yet been liberated from the worst aspects of Enlightenment rationalism it may be better not to import the word unnecessarily here. Paul does, however, refer to a continuity of handing on and receiving which constitutes, in effect, an early creed which declares the absolute fundamentals of Christian faith and on which Christian identity (and the experience of salvation) is built.

The number of studies on Paul and tradition are too many to list. Among influential works in the earlier part of the second half of the twentieth century, Oscar Cullmann (French 1953, English 1956) states in relation to this verse, “The very essence of tradition is that it forms a chain.… It is sometimes Paul, sometimes the Church which ‘received’. The word καί must be particularly noticed, for it certainly belongs to the formula derived from the paradosis terminology … in 11:23 and … in 15:3, but also in 1 Cor 15:1.… ‘I received the tradition in the same way as I handed it on to you — by mediation’ ” (Cullmann’s italics, last quotation cited from E.-B. Allo).79 The relation between “fragments of Creeds” in 1 Corinthians 15 and elsewhere in Paul and the steady development of early Christian creeds is traced by Hans von Campenhausen and also by J. N. D. Kelly. Kelly argues that 1 Cor 15:3–6 is “manifestly a summary drawn up for catechetical purposes or for preaching: it gives the gist of the Christian message in a concentrated form.”80 As Kelly observes, we should not assume that 1 Cor 11:23–25 and 15:3–5 provide the only such examples from Paul. From 1 Corinthians, we noted Eriksson’s identification of pre-Pauline tradition in 8:6; 8:11b; 10:16; 12:3; 13 (and also 16:22); Kelly also compares Rom 1:3–4; 4:24; 8:34; Gal 1:4; 1 Thess 4:14; 5:9; and from later material 1 Pet 3:18–20 and 1 Tim 2:5–6, 8 and 6:13–14. The juxtaposition of confession in the saving efficacy of the cross and the divine vindication or glorification of Christ in the resurrection feature in virtually all of these passages as an emergent core pattern of the earliest Christian confessions or creeds within the pages of the New Testament. (Emphasis in original and added).

Anthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians: A Commentary on the Greek Text, New International Greek Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans, 2000), 1186-87.