Slices
Prepare
Ask the Holy Spirit to help you understand and respond wholeheartedly to what God says to you and your church through the tricky chapters 5 to 8. Beware! The Holy Spirit is gentle, but he challenges too!
Bible passage
6 Now, brothers and sisters, 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 be puffed up in being a follower of one of us over against the other. 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?
8 Already you have all you want! Already you have become rich! You have begun to reign – and that without us! How I wish that you really had begun to reign so that we also might reign with you! 9 For it seems to me that God has put us apostles on display at the end of the procession, like those condemned to die in the arena. We have been made a spectacle to the whole universe, to angels as well as to human beings. 10 We are fools for Christ, but you are so wise in Christ! We are weak, but you are strong! You are honoured, we are dishonoured! 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. We have become the scum of the earth, the garbage of the world – right up to this moment.
Paul’s appeal and warning
14 I am writing this not to shame you but to warn you as my dear children. 15 Even if you had ten thousand guardians in Christ, 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. 17 For this reason I have sent 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.
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 rod of discipline, or shall I come in love and with a gentle spirit?
Explore
How’s your church? Good? Does it have brilliant leadership? Is it doing a great job in the community? Is there excellent mission activity and gracious pastoral care? If not, keep praying. If so, fantastic – thank God for it, but pray that your church won’t become too comfortable or even arrogant about it.
Everything is a gift from God (v 7), says Paul to the Corinthian Christians and to us. But, as you see from my experience, he says, Jesus’ way is also about suffering, rejection and sacrifice (vs 9–13). We stay humble, with a recognition of how dependent we are on the Lord, and we’re ready to give things up and give things away.
Remember, these Christians aren’t living like the people Jesus made them to be (1:2). In contrast, notice how Paul describes his own life (v 17). Through this chapter, perhaps Paul is preparing them, in a ‘fatherly’ way (v 15), for the tough challenges coming up in chapters 5 and onwards – ‘There’s a whole lot of stuff you’ll need to give up!’ When he revisits them, he wants all these issues resolved already (v 21).
Respond
Pray that you and your church will learn to depend more on the Lord, and to welcome suffering and hardship as an opportunity for spiritual strength and growth.
Deeper Bible study
Help us, O God, to see your redeemed people throughout the world as you see them and to love them as you love them, through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Nothing is more basic to the gospel than equality in God’s sight. No matter what our differences – class, race, gender, education or experience – there is no place for divisiveness, judgement or pride. Disunity and discord wound the church as the body of Christ on earth. This is the elementary babies’ milk of the gospel.1 God’s grace is unmerited and we have all received it.
Shifting into irony, Paul caricatures the Corinthian Christians as would-be royalty, obsessed with their wisdom and ability, consumed by their desire for honour and prestige. He pictures the apostles as people whom the world despises – ragged and hungry, struggling in chains at the rear of the procession of humanity, the least of all people, staggering to their death. The Corinthians should be following the ‘way of life in Christ Jesus’ (v 17) which Paul himself tries to demonstrate in his own life. There is no basis for disunity among people who should boast only of the grace which God has shown them. Discrimination, however, has always been the way of the world. As I write, the desperate inequality of race and class is plain to see. The Black Lives Matter movement is born of racial discrimination. The Covid-19 pandemic disproportionately kills more poor people than rich. Against this stark background of inequality and injustice, does the church truly proclaim in word and deed the equality of all humankind? What does the world understand by the ‘Christian’ label? Do they see our oneness in Christ? Or do they see division and disharmony? We are children of the Father, elect from the beginning of time, redeemed by his grace. This alone must shape who we are and how we live.
‘Elect from every nation / yet one o’er all the earth, / her charter of salvation / one Lord, one faith, one birth; / one holy name she blesses, / partakes one holy food’.2
1 1 Cor 3:2 2 Samuel Stone, 1839–1900, ‘The church’s one foundation’
Bible in a year
Read the Bible in a year: Proverbs 17,18; Psalm 91
Pray for Scripture Union
Pray for Mark Green who, as Digital Transformation Manager, has a key role in the implementation of the new database of supporters, volunteers and donors. Pray for him as he oversees the testing and works with external suppliers.
