This week we start a 4-week series on one of the pivotal chapters in the Bible: 1 Corinthians 15. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is not an afterthought of the gospel. It is not a tidying up of the events of Jesus’ death at Calvary. The resurrection is the gospel; it is foundational to the Christian understanding of Jesus’ mission and the world’s future.

In this episode of Two Ways News we look at the first 11 verses which are on the truth of the gospel. As we recall the message that was preached, in the coming weeks we will see the significance of doubting the resurrection as well as the marvellous implications of our confidence in Christ’s resurrection.

Yours,

Phillip

Phillip Jensen: 1 Corinthians 15 is a fantastic chapter. But because it has 58 verses, we’re not going to go through the whole thing in one hit; that wouldn’t do it justice, even apart from its length. We’re planning to look at it over the next 4 weeks, because you can divide it up easily enough into 4 parts. This is of course the great chapter on the resurrection.

Peter Jensen: This chapter arises from yet another misunderstanding by the Corinthians over whether the resurrection from the dead is the best way to describe life after death, or whether it’s just the spirit that lives on. So Paul lays the foundation in the first 12 verses by talking about the gospel he has received, in which they ostensibly believed. And then he comes to questioning their belief. If they believe in the resurrection of Jesus, how come they don’t believe in the resurrection of everybody? They don’t understand. Then in the next section, he talks to them about the resurrection of the dead, the necessity of it, and then the resurrection of the body. Finally, the end of the chapter is full of wonderful victory. The last verse, of course, is an exhortation to us as we are living between the first and second coming of Jesus.

So today, we ought to look at the first section and the last section. I’m a great believer in this; I like reading the last bit of a book first to see if I want to read the rest of it. But here, the first bit is about laying the foundation of the gospel, while the last bit tells us what the consequences of the gospel are. So they tie the whole passage together. Then over the next few weeks, we’ll look at the middle of the chapter.

Phillip: Alright. What is the whole chapter about?

Peter: The key question is raised in 15:12, “Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?” This verse raises the question: can they truly be Christians if they don’t believe in the resurrection of the dead?

Phillip: Did they believe in the afterlife?

Peter: Undoubtedly. But to them, was there a bodily resurrection, or was the spirit released from the body and sent into the afterlife? The Apostle is saying here that the Christian gospel is about the bodily resurrection of the dead. This takes us back to the doctrine of creation, where God declares all things good. In God’s good world, is the body good?

Phillip: There were all kinds of questions floating around the ancient world in this regard. We know about the Jews and the Pharisees and the Sadducees, for instance. The Sadducees didn’t believe in the resurrection, whereas the Pharisees did. There were some Greeks, like the Epicureans, who didn’t believe in the afterlife. But by and large, Greek philosophy was much more caught up with an afterlife that was spiritual. Leaving aside Epicureans and people like that, what do you think was their view about bodies, spirits, life, and death?

Peter: They had very negative views about the body, and with good reason. In their experience, as with the experience of so many human beings, the body was a liability. They suffered from sickness, disfigurement, and disability without any real hope of fixing the problem. There was no useful dentistry back then. If you’ve ever had a tooth that’s giving you a lot of trouble, you know what pain is. The body is this wretched thing that your spirit is trapped in, and so heaven would be about getting rid of the body.

There are also the desires and passions which enslave us: the desire to have food all the time, and the sexual desires that obsess us. The body seems like a punishment for the real person inside us: the spirit or the soul. We have a longing to be free of the body, and so in the ancient world a pure soul would float high above the moon. Then there were the impure souls—and interestingly, people who were crucified came into this category. Those who were evil or who died violently became spirits here on earth, haunting and interfering with people. So the afterlife was spiritual, and the idea of existing bodily after death was ridiculous.

So you have this longing to be free, and it’s not desirable for God to resurrect a person. Upon hearing the gospel, the anti-Christian philosopher Celsus said that the resurrection, the hope of the Christian, is “the hope of worms,” a filthy, obstinate, and impossible thing which God will not and cannot do. In a world which said that sort of thing, how would you like to be going around preaching a saviour who died on the cross and then was bodily resurrected?

Phillip: When Paul preached it in Athens, some mocked. The idea of the resurrection of the dead was unimaginable.

Peter: So we often hear, and Paul refers to the way in which the message of Christ being crucified was regarded as foolishness to the Greeks and impossible to the Jews. But it was the work of God.

Phillip: Referring now to 15:12, “Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?” Were the Corinthians saying that Jesus hadn’t risen from the dead, or that there is no final resurrection? Were they denying the day of the resurrection that the Pharisees and the Old Testament pointed to, when all would rise from the dead?

Peter: It’s impossible to say for sure, but I believe that somehow, they’ve accepted the idea of the resurrection of Jesus, but it hasn’t flowed over to an understanding of the resurrection of all, which is a terribly inconsistent belief. It could be held by people who are Christians if they don’t know better, but I think they’ve now committed themselves to a non-Christian belief system. So they’re on the path to being unbelievers at this point, but that’s my reading of it.

Phillip: 1 Corinthians 15:1–11

Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain.

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. Whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed.

It’s a great passage which goes back to the basics, to the great news of the gospel. A man has risen from the dead—and not just a man, but Christ himself. So Paul’s job was to be the herald. He went around proclaiming the news, and the listeners received the message. They had been made to stand in Christ, because they were saved by this message. This proclamation of the fact that Jesus rose from the dead saved them, but they now had to hold fast to the word, because if you don’t hold fast to this word, then hearing it and receiving it will not save you. You’ll receive it and believe in vain. So if they’ve received this message and seen the salvation that it brings, why would they change? Why do people who have embraced Christianity, and embraced the risen Jesus, change in their belief? I think it’s due to temptations, perhaps to avoid ridicule and persecution.

It can be tempting to fit with the accepted truths of our surrounding culture. But to change threatens their very salvation. For if you do not stand firm in this, then your belief is all in vain. It’s of no purpose at all. So the change that is happening or threatening to happen in Corinth is one that involves the truth or falsehood of Christianity itself. That makes a big difference.

Peter: It’s not so remote from us. Famously, there was a bishop in England in the 1980s who declared that he believed in the existence of Jesus, but he thought the bones and body of Jesus were still lying there in the grave—that the resurrection was simply a symbol of the victory of Christ. He was like the Corinthians, but why was he saying such a thing? Without knowing the gentleman in question, I believe that he was trying to speak the truth of Christianity in a culturally appropriate form. But what we’ve got to see here is that when Christianity began, it was absolutely counter-cultural. It wasn’t a philosophy, but a news report. You heralded it as an event that had taken place. You couldn’t say, “The event that you report is only a way of saying that Jesus was still alive in our memory,” or something like that. If you were to take that line, then Christianity would have been torpedoed, gone, forgotten.

Phillip: I once went out with my wife to listen to a lecturer, and he said that he was against the resurrection of the flesh; he was assured that if we went to the right tomb, we would find the body. In other words, he denied the bodily resurrection of Jesus. But he very strongly believed in the presence of Jesus’ spirit in the Lord’s Supper.

Peter: What do you think made him deny the physical resurrection of Jesus?

Phillip: I think he didn’t believe in the miraculous; he was a materialist. I think he believed that dead men cannot be raised, that God could not raise a man from the dead. Yet he did believe that there is a spiritual world that we can engage in through the liturgy of the Lord’s Supper. In his view, the spirit of what Jesus taught and how he lived impacted the disciples, and they tried to express that ongoing presence of Jesus in their life by talking about the resurrection of the body. No-one would have thought that they actually meant that; they just felt the presence of Jesus in their lives after he had been crucified.

Peter: So the surrounding materialist culture of our time shaped his response.

Phillip: And the academic one as well. If you give pride of place to the university that is now established in terms of secularism, then you study religion not because it is true, but as a phenomenon. You can then have many qualifications in academic theology, but it’s established by an institution that in its very nature denies the reality of it. But it’s conforming to the culture.

Peter: So how is the ordinary person going to be so shaped by culture as to, almost without knowing it, abandon the truths of the gospel?

Phillip: It’s got to do with the elite: those who lead the culture and who have control of the educational media process of distributing information. If you live in a culture which continually decries the possibility of a resurrection and an incarnation—at school, at university, in the newspapers, in television, in podcasts—especially by those who are seemingly knowledgeable leaders, then it’s embarrassing to believe something so crude as Jesus’ body being raised from the dead.

Peter: It’s a subject which we must return to, because you may never have gone to university but still be a victim of the culture, hearing its voice more strongly than you do the voice of God in scripture.

Phillip: Yes, you don’t hear it in university, but that’s where the teachers and journalists are trained.

Peter: Returning to the text, 1 Corinthians 15:3–5

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.

That is to say, he received the gospel. It wasn’t invented by Paul. He always acknowledges that he received the news that Christ is the promised Messiah; that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures; that Christ is the promised one in the sacred scriptures, which were written before he came; and that the human problem is not fundamentally moral, as though by being a good person you can satisfy God, but that we are sinners. We have offended God and continue to offend God. That’s where our problem is. It’s not in the fact that you have a body—in fact, having a body is part of God’s good creation. The problem is with the attitude we have now towards God and his law.

So Christ died for our sins in accordance with the promises of the scriptures, and therefore he died, he was buried, and he was raised again. The very thing so offensive to the culture was seen by witnesses. He goes on to describe the witnesses: he appeared to Cephas and then to the Twelve, and then he appeared to more than 500 brothers at one time. He says that most of the witnesses were still alive, so the Corinthians could go and ask them. What I love about the gospel accounts, by the way, is that several times the doubts of the apostles are recorded. Even in Matthew 28, with the final words of Jesus before he ascends into heaven, they see him. “But some doubted,” it says.

Phillip: I think that’s a genius part of God’s inspired scripture. Here are the original, authorised witnesses, and the last great event of revelation of the resurrected body—and we read, “But some doubted.” There’s no way a fiction writer would write that in, unless he was a really clever liar. It just speaks of truth.

Peter: Thomas is a great witness to the resurrection, I would say. According to the scriptures, part of the reason for believing in Jesus is because of the eyewitnesses. But it is also because it fits so beautifully into the promises of God in the already existing scriptures. When you hear about Jesus and see what he did and said, you can see the fulfilment of the Old Testament as clearly as anything. It fits into the very history that God has unfolded from the beginning, and that he intends to keep going to the end of time. All this is nonsense in our culture, because we are, according to culture, not sinners at all. We are good people who sometimes sin. Even in much Christian and academic theology, Christ didn’t really die for our sins. He died as an example, for instance, but you can’t say he died as our substitute on the cross, because that’s offensive.

Phillip: That is one of the big problems of our culture and society. It’s funny how you keep saying this statement, “In accordance with the scriptures.” That’s because what you’ve said about how the promises of the scriptures point to the resurrection is true, as is what you’re saying about the witnesses. But these things are also giving you the meaning. Christ died on the cross—that’s a fact. But what is the meaning of this fact? The meaning is given according to the scriptures. So we don’t interpret the scriptures; we read the scriptures, but the scriptures give us the meaning and interpretation. Likewise, the prophets didn’t write their own ideas, but gave the interpretation of God’s ideas to the events.

“Jesus died,” is a fact; “for our sins,” is the interpretation. That’s the context of the facts, and the prophetic explanation of the facts helps us understand our sins. So preaching Jesus’ death never gets anywhere for people who do not understand sin, punishment, judgement, and death as the consequence.

With this in mind, the Old Testament context is essential for an understanding of the gospel, and the resurrection is the same. The tomb was empty, he appeared, he made it clear he wasn’t a ghost, he sat and ate fish with them, and so forth—those are all facts. But the resurrection does not make sense without the Scripture explanation. In the parable of Lazarus and the rich man in Luke 16:19–31, Abraham speaks to the rich man who is suffering in Hades. The rich man begs for Abraham to send the poor man back from the dead to warn his brothers of this terrible place. And Abraham says in Luke 16:31, “If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.” The Mosaic prophetic teachings of the scriptures help us to understand what the resurrection is about. In the light of that, you understand why Jesus rose from the dead.

As for the historical witnesses, Paul himself is an extraordinary witness. He tried to persecute Christianity out of existence, yet he turned around and changed his whole worldview. Paul meeting the risen Jesus was the great conversion experience in the history of Christianity. The resurrection doesn’t work as a myth, because it’s not what the Old Testament taught. In trying to stay friends with our culture and our materialist friends, we may be tempted to downplay the resurrection by finding some mythological explanation. But it just doesn’t work.

Peter: No, and Paul is uncompromising in saying that it doesn’t work to these Corinthians, who were doing exactly the same thing in their time and culture. So he says to them, as this section concludes in 15:11, “Whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed.”

In other words, he is saying, “When you became Christians, you Corinthians accepted the gospel of the death for sin and the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ according to the scriptures. That is what you were baptised into. Now are you going to continue to stand on that, or are you going to compromise and change the gospel to suit the age in which you’re living to make it more comfortable to be a Christian?” Because at that moment, the apostle Paul and others were suffering terrible persecution for giving the news. His challenge to them, as he says in 15:12 and so forth, is exactly the same challenge that we face living in a world which doesn’t believe in the gospel, and where we find it so easy to compromise by changing the gospel to suit the culture. We find it so easy, but he says to us, “Are you going to stand on what you believe or not?”

Phillip: Yes, the Corinthians are just re-expressing it in more socially acceptable fashions, which in fact is the denial of the reality. Either Jesus physically rose from the dead because he died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, or Christianity is false.

Peter: And so he goes on. In 15:1-11, the gospel is true. In 15:12-35, you cannot reinterpret it. In 15:36-49, he talks of the nature of the resurrection body. But before we get to those, next week we’re going to turn to 15:50-58, God’s victory and its consequences.

Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Links & Recommendations

For more on this topic, check out this talk given at St Andrew’s Cathedral called The Gospel First Preached.

Freely available, supported by generosity.

If you enjoy Two Ways News, why not lend us a hand? Consider joining our Supporters Club—friends who make it possible for us to keep producing this article/podcast.

To join the Supporters Club, follow the link below to the ‘subscribe’ page. You’ll see that there’s:

• a number of ‘paid options’. To join the Supporters Club take out one of the paid ‘subscription plans’ and know we are deeply grateful for your support!

• also the free option (on the far right hand side)

Sign up to support us

The second half of 1 Corinthians 14 gives us great insight into the nature of church life. Having addressed the subject of prophecy and tongues in the light of love, Paul now discusses their use specifically in the church. We know from the first half of the chapter that prophecy is greater than tongue-speaking, because of its edifying effect. But what is the effect of speaking in tongues in church? And how should we conduct it, if we have tongue-speaking at all?

Three times in this passage, Paul tells people to be silent. What does that mean and why does he want silence in church? As our ministries in church are to be conducted in love, so also we see here they are to be conducted in accordance with the character of God—not chaotically, but decently and in order. What does it mean and how are we to do it? I hope you enjoy this episode of Two Ways News and remember to subscribe and share it with your friends.

Yours,

Phillip

Phillip Jensen: Today, we will look again at 1 Corinthians 14, this time dealing with the second half of the chapter, verses 20–40. Last week, we saw that prophecy is greater than tongues because of its loving characteristic, its intelligibility, and its fellowship, which all come together to build the church. But in the second half of the chapter, Paul turns his attention much more directly to church itself, particularly towards how we operate. He still touches on the issue of prophecy and tongues, but he’s now focusing on the effect inside the church. Before we read the passage, what are your thoughts?

Peter Jensen: The pivotal issues of this passage are that we’re to love, to build up the church, to think like adults, to show love for unbelievers, and to have order in church; for God is a God of peace, and a God of order.

Phillip: That last point touches me in some ways. Because of my revolutionary character, the concept of order as being a fundamental part of church is not given to my personality, yet it’s there in the scriptures and we need to understand it properly.

Peter: 1 Corinthians 14:20–40

Brothers, do not be children in your thinking. Be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature. In the Law it is written, “By people of strange tongues and by the lips of foreigners will I speak to this people, and even then they will not listen to me, says the Lord.” Thus tongues are a sign not for believers but for unbelievers, while prophecy is a sign not for unbelievers but for believers. If, therefore, the whole church comes together and all speak in tongues, and outsiders or unbelievers enter, will they not say that you are out of your minds? But if all prophesy, and an unbeliever or outsider enters, he is convicted by all, he is called to account by all, the secrets of his heart are disclosed, and so, falling on his face, he will worship God and declare that God is really among you.

What then, brothers? When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. Let all things be done for building up. If any speak in a tongue, let there be only two or at most three, and each in turn, and let someone interpret. But if there is no one to interpret, let each of them keep silent in church and speak to himself and to God. Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others weigh what is said. If a revelation is made to another sitting there, let the first be silent. For you can all prophesy one by one, so that all may learn and all be encouraged, and the spirits of prophets are subject to prophets. For God is not a God of confusion but of peace.

As in all the churches of the saints, the women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission, as the Law also says. If there is anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.

Or was it from you that the word of God came? Or are you the only ones it has reached? If anyone thinks that he is a prophet, or spiritual, he should acknowledge that the things I am writing to you are a command of the Lord. If anyone does not recognise this, he is not recognised. So, my brothers, earnestly desire to prophesy, and do not forbid speaking in tongues. But all things should be done decently and in order.

Phillip: This is a great chapter that has caused considerable heartache within the last generation or so, as people have tried to wrestle with the issues raised here. I was reminded of the fact that the word ‘Spirit’, as in ‘Holy Spirit’, does not occur in chapter 14. That’s extraordinary, because when you ask people where in the New Testament you’re going to find out about the Holy Spirit, people say, “Chapters 12–14.” But the Holy Spirit is only referred to in the first half of chapter 12. ‘Spiritual’ is there, as are ‘spirits’, but not the ‘Holy Spirit.’

I also have a problem, though this is my problem and not that of the translators. That is, 14:20, “Brothers, do not be children in your thinking. Be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature.” It’s a perfectly good translation. But it used to say, “In understanding, be men.” I like that because that was the title of a great book by T.C. Hammond,1 of which you and I, in our first year at Moore College, studied carefully. In fact, the doctrine lecturing of Broughton Knox was based on that book.

Peter: It was. I have about 3 different editions at home, with comments in the margins. We read it before we came to college, but then Dr. Knox led us through it. T.C. Hammond, for those who don’t know, was the principal of Moore College from about 1936–1953, when his place was taken by Marcus Loane. He was a great teacher, a very knowledgeable man, and a great lecturer. He wrote this book, in a way addressed to university students, on Christian doctrine. It’s not like a novel; you can consult it and read bits and pieces from it. If you’ve never seen it, it may be worth picking it up sometime and having a look. Mind you, part of his method as a teacher was to have some other great textbook there on the 39 Articles, for example, and to go through and to criticise it. I’m saying that because his book In Understanding be Men was used by Dr. Knox for over 20 years. While Dr. Knox mainly agreed with the book, he would pause sometimes and say things like, “I think the Archdeacon is wrong there.” Additionally, because T.C. wrote this book on his way to Australia from Ireland, Dr. Knox would sometimes pause and say, “The Archdeacon must have been seasick when he wrote that.” These are unforgettable and useless things that you hear in lectures sometimes.

Phillip: Indeed; us talking about our history at Moore College is important, because it’s the history of evangelicalism here in Sydney. But it doesn’t help us to understand what 1 Corinthians 14 is saying.

Here, the passage says that Christian maturity is important. As sinners, our knowledge of sin should be that of the naive baby; but as thinking people, we need Christian maturity. We need it particularly in this passage, because many people misunderstand it terribly regarding talking “By people of strange tongues and by the lips of foreigners.” But it’s relatively simple to understand as he alludes to Isaiah 28. If you walked through the streets of Sydney today, and the 2 languages you heard were Japanese and German, you’d have to wonder who won the Second World War.

Peter: You wouldn’t have to wonder who won the Second World War.

Phillip: That is correct. You see, the language of the conquering culture is imposed upon the oppressed people, and so in this passage, speaking in foreign languages is for unbelievers—not for their conversion, but for their condemnation: for declaring to them that they are not in touch with God. Prophecy, on the other hand, is for believers and for people coming to belief. People often think that speaking in tongues is for unbelievers that they may get converted, whereas prophecy is for believers. But the paragraph is actually saying something very different. That is, speaking in tongues is the condemnation of the unbeliever; whereas speaking in prophecy is for believers, that if an unbeliever hears, they will come to faith as well.

Peter: Paul wants prophecy under those circumstances.

Phillip, we’ve been talking about these things now for several weeks, but you must now explain yourself. What do you mean by ‘speaking in tongues’ and ‘prophecy’? In a sense, these are not the most important things of this chapter; it’s Paul’s answer to these things that really matters. Some people think of these passages as simply describing church, but he goes to the essence of the matter by talking about building up the church in love.

Phillip: Paul knew what he was talking about, as did the Corinthians, so he doesn’t spend any time explaining what he’s talking about regarding prophecy and tongues.

As for the definition of ‘tongues’, the short answer is that it means speaking in foreign languages. Appendix 11 in the book The Coming of the Holy Spirit2 will take you through the details of why I come to that conclusion, of which I am quite convinced. It’s not ecstatic utterances. The word ‘tongues’ is sometimes translated as ‘languages’, and certainly the one place in which it is described, namely Acts 2, means foreign languages.

A few months ago at the King’s Birthday Conference, I spoke on the subject of prophecy. I’m also writing an article on it at the moment, which will come out in a few weeks’ time. But in simple terms, ‘prophecy’ is claiming to speak for God. False prophets are still prophets. Paul calls Epimenides a prophet as he quotes him in Titus 1, because even though he’s a false prophet, he fits in the category of prophet. The Bible is not really interested in defining what a prophet is; it focuses on discerning between the true prophets and the false prophets. The essence of true prophecy is found in Revelation 19:10, where the angel declares, “For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.” That particular verse can be translated and understood in 2 ways: either the essence of prophecy is testimony of Jesus, or the Holy Spirit of prophecy is the testimony of Jesus. But either way, prophecy is about Jesus. All of the Old Testament prophets pointed to Jesus, and New Testament prophecy is about him as well. So why don’t we turn to its implications for what should happen in church?

Peter: Paul doesn’t set down a liturgy, but he tells us the essence of what should happen. It will occur in different ways depending on where you are, of course. But 14:23–25 tells us that church is a gathering of God’s people around the Word of God, in the presence of Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Phillip: But it’s not a secret cult that only believers are allowed to enter.

Peter: Certainly not. Indeed, one of the important points about church, generally speaking, is that it should be a public occasion, and anyone who wishes to should be able to come in and see what’s going on. But the saints—the ones who truly believe in the Lord Jesus—are gathered in order to meet the Lord Jesus in his Word by the power of his Spirit, and to love one another.

When he talks about all people speaking in tongues, it doesn’t mean that everybody is doing it spontaneously; it’s an activity of the church. ‘All’ is an ambiguous word, but here it means that the congregation hears the tongue-speaking, and they listen attentively and so forth. And if they do, their conclusion will be that you’re quite mad. It’s in a sense a judgement on them. At the coming of the Assyrians into Samaria in the 8th century, speaking the language of the Assyrians was a sign of judgement. So is speaking in tongues also a sign of judgement? It doesn’t help them. If they hear prophecy, however, Paul says they may well be convicted of their sin, fall on their faces and worship God. So there’s no question as to whether prophecy or tongues matters there.

Phillip: Following this up with the point made in 14:26, we come together as a church, and each one has a contribution to bring. Of course, you’ve got to be careful about how hard you push this. Does this mean that every person in church, out of the thousands who turn up, all must make a contribution? No. We should not become legalistic in the reading of this sentence. It’s saying that anyone can bring important things: hymns, lessons, a revelation, a tongue, an interpretation. There are 2 principles that he’s laying out.

1. All that is to be done is for building the church.

2. As 14:33 says, “God is not a God of confusion, but of peace.” Therefore, as he says in 14:40, “All things must be done decently and in order.” In other words, the church must be appropriate and orderly.

So the idea of a wild, frenetic meeting is the opposite of the character of God, and therefore of God’s church. In 1994, there was an event known as the Toronto Blessing, where it was said that people had this “influx of the Spirit”, whereby they started to roll around the floor laughing, barking, screaming, and yelling, all at the same time. But God is a God of order and peace, not a God of giggling and laughter across the church front.

Peter: By the way, Tony Payne has just written a book on church, Let the Word Dwell Richly3 which I recommend.

You rightly point out that everyone brings something to church. Does that mean that everyone must use their gifts in some way? Well, the first gift in coming to church is to be there.

Phillip: Yes, especially regarding mothers of young babies.

Peter: I can’t believe how people make such an effort to be there—bless them! That’s a great victory. But your absence from church, while it may only be noticed by some people, matters. Your presence in church matters. Seeing you stand up and sing matters. The conversations you have afterwards matter. The way you go about getting morning tea matters. There’s a whole host of things where your giftedness is expressed in loving service. So it’s not a matter of everybody having to prophesy in order to be wanted in church. The loving use of gifts is about building each other up, speaking the truth in love to each other, caring for one another, and noticing the absence of some people.

Phillip: Indeed. It’s now difficult in our particular society—or at least the section of society I live in—to have people coming every Sunday, because there are always people travelling for work or for pleasure. There are so many alternatives, such as sport or other activities, which we shouldn’t be doing. It is really important that people have a default position that they’re going to church, and only have extraordinary reasons to break from it.

Peter: Do you remember what the late Archbishop Donald Robinson used to do when he was the principal of Moore College? If he wasn’t going to be at his local church on Sunday, he would apologise for his absence. I was blown away by that.

Phillip: In our church, we’ve had 2 recent converts, and that’s what they do. It’s very interesting that they apologise to the rector when they’re going to be away, but the old-timers don’t necessarily apologise. But I think there’s a truth in that we should.

Peter: Interesting. Now please talk about the implications for tongue-speaking and prophecy.

Phillip: Having said what church is about in verse 26, Paul then addresses the issue of tongues. He says that it shouldn’t be done unless there’s a guaranteed interpreter. That means you’re not going to just get carried away by speaking in tongues; you’ve got to know before you start speaking that there is going to be an interpreter who can translate and interpret what you’re saying. Furthermore, even if there is an interpreter ready to go, only 2-3 people should be speaking in tongues. As I suggested last week when I talked about being in an Arabic church, sitting through a sermon which is being translated is very difficult. When I was preaching in South America, I had my words translated into Spanish, and again, it’s difficult not just in terms of the length of time, but the communication. That’s why Paul makes it clear that just 3 people at the most should be speaking in tongues, and certainly not all at the same time. There is a place for speaking in a foreign language in a church: 2–3 people, and only when you’re assured that there will be a translation, and only one at a time so that everybody can be heard.

Peter: There are different ways of doing that these days. In our church, for example, we now have about 26 different ethnicities or nationalities in our congregation, which is absolutely wonderful. In order to help people who speak Mandarin far better than they speak English, we are able to have the translation done before church and hand it out. I have also seen churches in which a group of foreign speakers at the back would translate the service. That is tongue-speaking done for a good reason and in a way which actually works.

Phillip: I used to have a Korean man who was so clever that he would type up my sermon in Korean on the screen while I was speaking, so that the Korean speakers could read what I was saying.

Peter: That is brilliant. These are wonderful gifts of our day. I also think it’s absolutely terrific that our Archbishop is of Sri Lankan heritage.

Phillip: As are 2 of our bishops, and some of the lecturers at Moore College, also of non-Anglo heritage.

Peter: Yes, we are seeing the nations coming into our churches. Long may it continue.

Phillip: Back to the subject of prophecy. Again, he says 2–3 people should prophesy, but he doesn’t say ‘only’ this time. I think he’s saying that it’s not as if everybody brings their prophecy to the church; rather, 2–3 people prophesy, and the others (though it’s hard to know whether he means ‘other prophets’ or ‘other members of the congregation’) weigh what is being said. That is, they listen with discerning hearts and minds to what is being said; but more importantly, you’re not to have 2 prophets speaking at the same time. The rest are not to talk, so that all may hear, all may learn, and all may be encouraged. This teaching has been so profound in Christian circles, and in our circles in particular, that it is almost unimaginable that we would have 2–3 preachers at the same time in our churches. It’s just considered bad manners amongst everything else, but I have been in the context where people do not stop and listen to each other, where they all talk over each other simultaneously and don’t listen. That is not the way to run church.

Peter: Here’s a question for another time, though we won’t pursue it now. I am presuming that teaching and prophecy are not exactly the same things, though there is overlap, and our practice of having a teacher teaching us in a sermon is fundamental. The preaching of the word of God is, after all, essential to church. Prophecy is something else. How do we exercise that in church? I think it’s a question which we’ll have to ask some other time.

Phillip: When I went to a church in America, the sermon only went for 10 minutes. I felt short-changed, but then the whole congregation proceeded to go to the hall where they had one hour-long lecture. We spend too much time trying to define ‘prophecy’ and ‘teaching’ when the exercise of church life can be quite different. That was an edifying way of running church, but different to the way in which I’ve ever seen it run here in Sydney.

Peter: How do we see prophets and prophecy in our churches?

Phillip: I see prophets as those who speak of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Peter: Does this include when we talk to each other after church?

Phillip: Yes, that’s prophesying.

Peter: Would you have it from the platform in addition to the sermon?

Phillip: Yes, or it could be part of the sermon. Definitional problems arise in part because we’re being overly precise, as you said. But there’s huge overlap between these activities.

Peter: The last subject is on silence in the church, because Paul appeals to the idea of silence, but the word is not as absolute as it sounds. It just means to stop talking.

Phillip: When the second person gets up to talk, the first one’s got to stop talking.

Peter: Yes, because we’re always in danger of trying to work out exactly what it means and being rather pharisaic. We’ve established what speaking in tongues means. But in terms of 14:30, what do you mean when you say that the word ‘is’ is wrong?

Phillip: 14:30, “If a revelation is made to another sitting there, let the first be silent.” I think ‘another’ refers to a prophet who is sitting there because he’s a preacher too. In ancient synagogues and churches, you stood to listen, and the preacher sat down to preach. That’s why the cathedral is seen as ‘the seat of the bishop’, because that’s where the bishop literally sat to teach. In Luke 4, Jesus, having read from Isaiah, sits down and starts speaking. The preacher sitting is so foreign to our way of thinking that we misread what the verse is talking about here, and so it’s made worse by the fact that it’s translated in the present tense rather than the past tense. So it should say, “If a revelation was made to another sitting there.” It’s not that he’s just suddenly got a revelation; he’s already come to church with a revelation, as is mentioned back in 14:26. Now that he has his revelation, the first one sits down, and the second one gives the revelation that he already had when he came to church. But the key point is that one person speaks at a time, so all can listen and learn. Prophecy is a desirable thing, so we want everyone to prophesy. But prophets are the ones who are good at prophesying.

Peter: Yes, that’s a good distinction because we’ve all got to speak the truth in love to each other.

Phillip: We all can prophesy and we all can teach one another, and we do so in songs. Yet there are teachers who are particularly gifted in doing it.

Peter: Indeed. We now come to the most controversial bit of all, and that is what he then says about women. 1 Corinthians 14:33–35

As in all the churches of the saints, the women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission, as the Law also says. If there is anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.

What on earth does this mean, and why say it now?

Phillip: To be silent is the posture of learning. We see silence as being prohibitive, when in fact we are to learn in quietness and silence. That’s why we are all to be silent while the speaker speaks, so that we can learn, and the women also are being encouraged to be learning. Others have got commentaries which give all kinds of explanations as to what it means here. But I think they’re all desperately trying to make this acceptable within our cultural milieu of today. So they will say, for instance, that the women were gossiping in the back rows, and so he’s telling the women who gossip to stop gossiping.

Peter: That’s not what the text is saying; it’s a bit implausible.

Phillip: Others say that the word ‘saying’ has a special meaning here. Unfortunately, it doesn’t. It’s the same meaning as the others. Or some have said that the women shouldn’t be involved in weighing the judgement. But they should. We should all actually be discerning what is being said. So what is he saying?

The first thing you notice is that he says, “As in all the churches of the saints.” That is, this is a universal practice, at least among the Jewish churches. In fact, 14:37 says that if you’re not going to go along with this, you’re not going to be recognised as spiritual. That’s a big claim here that he is making about the importance of this silence of the women. But why? It’s got to do with the order of creation.

Speaking out at this point is in opposition to submission. Because when we learn, we are to learn in quietness and submission, and she is to be, at this point in church, in submission, for the Law itself teaches this. If she has questions, she goes home and asks her husband about what should be done. Because the Law teaches shame before God came in the Fall in Genesis 3, so to exercise church in a way that reinforces the shameful rebellion of Genesis 3 is not following God in his order and decency. In fact, this passage argues similarly to the other passages about men and women in learning, like 1 Timothy 2 on the subject of teaching, and 1 Corinthians 11 about the created order. In each of these, God has created men and women in particular orderliness for his purposes which we find back in Genesis 2. And when men and women are together in church, you do not suspend the order of creation; you reinforce it. So for men to be speaking is one thing, but for women to be speaking is another thing. The role is learning at this point, not teaching with authority, as in 1 Timothy 2.

Peter: I think that speaks to this passage. To make other suggestions without recognising the appeal to Law, for example, is to undermine the passage itself. But then there is the question which you and I will differ on, at the moment at least, that arises in chapter 11 about prophecy. This one appeals to the Law in the sense that men are to have one appearance and women another. In other words, the 2 sexes cannot be confused. But there is a disagreement that we have on the task of prophecy. I’ve listened to the King’s Birthday Conference speech that you’ve made on this, and if you want to follow that up, you’ll see why we differ. But bearing that in mind, I’m going to suggest you may have the last word.

Phillip: I do not believe 1 Corinthians 11:2–16 is about church. I think it is about life, where men and women pray and prophesy. I do not limit prophesying and prayer to church, and there is no reference to church in that passage, or to activities within church. 11:17–18 shifts the direction of the discussion to church. So I do not think it is about church. But what is important to me is that when people see it in terms of church, they then read chapter 14 as a contradiction between chapter 11 and chapter 14, and spend their time trying to resolve the contradiction. Having been liberated from thinking chapter 11 is about church, my mind is free to see what chapter 14 itself is saying, and come across the thing that I didn’t want it to say. That is, “Everything must be done decently and in order.”

Peter: No doubt, we’ll pick up that discussion some other time. What challenges would you offer to church as a result of 1 Corinthians 14?

Phillip: I would say it is time for me to reconsider the meaning of decency and order.

3

Tony Payne, Let the Word Dwell Richly, 2026 (Matthias Media).

Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

---

Links & Recommendations

For more on this topic, check out this talk. It’s called Seek to Prophesy.

---

Freely available, supported by generosity.

If you enjoy Two Ways News, why not lend us a hand? Consider joining our Supporters Club—friends who make it possible for us to keep producing this article/podcast.

To join the Supporters Club, follow the link below to the ‘subscribe’ page. You’ll see that there’s:

• a number of ‘paid options’. To join the Supporters Club take out one of the paid ‘subscription plans’ and know we are deeply grateful for your support!

• also the free option (on the far right hand side)

Sign up to support us

Chapters 12-14 of 1 Corinthians are a unit. Paul uses one long argument that Paul is using. Most people think it is about spiritual gifts, but it’s much more about what he calls “the spirituals", whereas chapter 13 on the topic of love seems to have moved off topic. Chapter 14 brings us right back into the pointy end of the debate that Paul addresses. What of speaking in tongues? What of prophecy? What is the greater or higher gift? I hope you enjoy this chapter as Peter and I discuss it.

Yours,

Phillip

Phillip Jensen: Today and next week, we will be looking at 1 Corinthians 14, which is a terrific chapter which you would expect to be about the work of the Spirit, as it is part of this idea of ‘desiring spirituals’. But is it? I encourage you to read the book The Coming of the Holy Spirit1 that I wrote some years ago, published through Matthias Media. There are quite a few appendices in this book, including Appendix 11 which discusses speaking in tongues. We will quickly pass by that en route in this discussion, but if you want a fuller half-dozen pages on what speaking in tongues is about, I’d recommend that appendix.

We’re also going to talk about prophecy. Back in June this year, we held the King’s Birthday Conference during which we spoke on ‘Prophecy Today.’ If you would like to follow up on the subject of prophecy, the audio of these talks can be found at phillipjensen.com.

Prophecy and tongues are both involved in 1 Corinthians 14:1–19

Pursue love, and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy. For one who speaks in a tongue speaks not to men but to God; for no one understands him, but he utters mysteries in the Spirit. On the other hand, the one who prophesies speaks to people for their upbuilding and encouragement and consolation. The one who speaks in a tongue builds up himself, but the one who prophesies builds up the church. Now I want you all to speak in tongues, but even more to prophesy. The one who prophesies is greater than the one who speaks in tongues, unless someone interprets, so that the church may be built up.

Now, brothers, if I come to you speaking in tongues, how will I benefit you unless I bring you some revelation or knowledge or prophecy or teaching? If even lifeless instruments, such as the flute or the harp, do not give distinct notes, how will anyone know what is played? And if the bugle gives an indistinct sound, who will get ready for battle? So with yourselves, if with your tongue you utter speech that is not intelligible, how will anyone know what is said? For you will be speaking into the air. There are doubtless many different languages in the world, and none is without meaning, but if I do not know the meaning of the language, I will be a foreigner to the speaker and the speaker a foreigner to me. So with yourselves, since you are eager for manifestations of the Spirit, strive to excel in building up the church.

Therefore, one who speaks in a tongue should pray that he may interpret. For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays but my mind is unfruitful. What am I to do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will pray with my mind also; I will sing praise with my spirit, but I will sing with my mind also. Otherwise, if you give thanks with your spirit, how can anyone in the position of an outsider say “Amen” to your thanksgiving when he does not know what you are saying? For you may be giving thanks well enough, but the other person is not being built up. I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you. Nevertheless, in church I would rather speak five words with my mind in order to instruct others, than ten thousand words in a tongue.

Peter Jensen: This passage is dealing with a clutch of issues which we find hard to reconstruct, because the ancient world is something of a mystery to us. For instance, what did they actually do when they met as a church? Where is the pastor in all this? What ancient background noises are there? Is the world of the spirits a reality to them?

To understand this passage, I believe there are 5 doctrinal points on which Paul’s argument swings:

1. The preeminence of love in fellowship. As we saw in the conclusion of chapter 12, we are told, “But earnestly desire the higher gifts. I will show you a still more excellent way.” And 14:1 tells us, “Pursue love and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy.”

2. Love that is dedicated to building up the church. We hear several times in this passage about this edifying of the church, particularly in 14:5 and 14:26.

3. Adult thinking; in 14:20, we are told, “In your thinking be mature.” He says the same thing in Ephesians 4:13 about becoming adults in the way we think.

4. Love of unbelievers; 14:25 tells us to reach out and seek the blessing of the gospel upon unbelievers.

5. Good order, which is key to the whole chapter, because the passage ends with these words, 14:40, “But all things should be done decently and in order.” They are sometimes neglected, because they’re the last words in the passage. But I tend to think that they’re important because of this.

So there are 5 pivots that the passage swings on, which have ongoing significance as we can understand them in our situation. But do you agree with my method? What would you take away from 1 Corinthians 14?

Phillip: By approaching it that way, you’ve avoided the context and close exegesis. I would say that your method is a lot easier, but is it what Paul wanted to communicate, or what we want to know? Answering our own questions can raise their importance when in fact, Paul may not be talking about what we think is important; or he may only be doing so tangentially. Therefore, we’re missing what is being said, and so we can distort Paul’s teaching in looking for our questions to be answered. For example, you talk of the love of unbelievers in 14:25, but that verse is specifically talking about what happens if an outsider comes into the church. If you’re speaking in tongues, he’ll think you’re mad, but if you’re speaking prophetically, he may well get converted. Though you and I both believe in the importance of loving the unbelievers, that is not what Paul is talking about here.

As to your choice of 5 doctrinal points, they’re fairly good given the method, but there are other questions you could raise. Your method avoids, for example, the hard answers about what he’s saying about tongues. Paul is talking so negatively about tongues that towards the end of the chapter, he has to clarify, “Do not forbid speaking in tongues.”

Peter: I’d like to defend myself slightly. See, the tongue-speaking phenomenon that we have today is relatively recent. For hundreds of years, it never appeared. So does this chapter then get consigned into the dustbin of history because it’s talking about tongues? What I’m trying to do is to see him grappling with this issue and find out why he decides what he does about the issue. That’s why I’m looking for these axioms, these things that have ongoing significance—not just about tongues, but about all sorts of things.

Phillip: I was in an Arabic-speaking church which had a translator, and in that experience I saw the wisdom of what Paul is saying here about the practicality of not having more than two or three translations, because even one translation took such a long time. Even the jokes were so dreadfully destroyed by the lack of timing involved in translation.

Peter: You should never joke when you’re being translated. Very unwise indeed. But as for the context, which I happen to agree with you on, we’ve looked at chapter 12, concentrating on the points at hand rather than the details of, for example, what tongue speaking is these days. Again, your book The Coming of the Holy Spirit talks about this subject. The main point of chapter 12 is that all have to be blessed; that the exercise of gifts is for the blessing of all, so that no one has all the gifts. The gifts that we do have are to be used for the good of others.

You made an important point in an earlier episode about 12:1, which we’ll come back to in looking at chapter 14. The word is ‘the spirituals’ rather than ‘spiritual gifts’ or even ‘spiritual persons’. What impact does that have? Then, of course, the chapter makes its main point that we are to love each other. The gifts aren’t given — this is a particularly important point for our generation, the gifts are not given as a way of self-identification or self-authentication, but as a way of service motivated by love of others. In fact, whether you have the gift or not doesn’t matter, in a sense. You see the need, you seek to meet the need, and hence you discover that you are gifted to do so. But the gift is not the important thing. It’s the need and your love for others. That’s how I saw our treatment of chapter 12.

Phillip: That’s a good comment. That teaching is true as far as it goes, but I think the context with the Corinthians is more about the spirituals. You see, our translators are terrific. We can be very thankful that we have such good, godly, intelligent, and capable translations into modern English. But they do try to make it easier for us to understand. As a result, in 12:1 and 14:1, they’ve added the word ‘gifts’, which is not in the original. In 14:12, they added the phrase ‘gifts of the Spirit’, though our translation has gone for ‘manifestations of the Spirit’. What are the spirituals? What are the Corinthians concerned about? In our secular world, we minimise all spiritual realities as we give materialistic answers to all questions. But they lived in the age of supernatural spirits; to them, the supernatural was very much emphasised. So 14:12 presents a problem in the translation of the text, because while our translation says, “eager for manifestation of the Spirit,” the original says, “eager for spirits.” They lived in a world of angels, gods, and demons, and so they were interested in the spirits. So the context of what he says in chapter 12 is that there is only one Spirit, the Holy Spirit, who makes us confess that Jesus is the Christ, and gives in fellowship with the Father and the Son all the different gifts for the common good.

Peter: So you’ve demonstrated the importance of context and exegesis. I concede those points, though I hope you think my points are not unimportant. Proceed with chapter 14.

Phillip: Chapter 14 starts with contrasts. First, there is the contrast between speaking in tongues and speaking in prophecy. 14:2, “For one who speaks in a tongue speaks not to men but to God; for no one understands him, but he utters mysteries in the Spirit.”

It’s like if I were to speak to God in Spanish. You do not understand Spanish; therefore, I wouldn’t be speaking to you. Likewise, speaking in tongues is not beneficial to others like prophecy is. Prophecy is for upbuilding, encouragement, and consolation, but speaking in tongues is for me to have a private conversation with God. So in doing that, I am building myself rather than building the church. Building the self is not what is being commended here; it’s being put down in contrast to building the church. So Paul’s desire for tongues is exceeded by his desire for prophecy, because prophecy is greater.

Remember back to 12:31, “Earnestly desire the higher gifts.” The translators have written, ‘higher’ instead of ‘greater’ as in chapter 14, even though the original word was the exact same in both chapters. But by translating it ‘higher’ in chapter 12 and ‘greater’ in chapter 14, people miss the connection. So now we know he is going to show you the greater gifts. How do you determine one gift is greater than another? The answer is that the gift that is exercised in love is the greater one. Speaking in tongues is not an exercise in love unless there’s interpretation or translation. So prophecy is always greater than tongue speaking, because prophecy is the one that fulfils love.

So the end of chapter 12 poses the question. Chapter 13 gives you the criterion for greatness, and then chapter 14 applies that criterion in this series of contrasts in the opening 5 verses.

Peter: So fundamentally, we don’t mark the being of a church by tongues or prophecy or other gifts, but by the word of God and love, which the gifts exist to serve. Is that a good way of putting it?

Phillip: Yes. John 13:35 says, “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” That is the mark of the true church, not whichever gifts you are or are not using at any one time. But if you love one another, you’ll use those gifts in a loving way.

Peter: Having opened with these words, he now moves in 14:6 to illustrations. How do tongues benefit just on their own without interpretation? Indeed, how do prophecy and teaching benefit? If there’s no knowledge and understanding, it is like Paul’s illustration of instruments with indistinct notes, like bugles that sound but don’t actually gather the troops. Unintelligible speech is just noise, like when I sometimes overhear people speaking in a foreign language. They are enjoying their conversation, but to me it just sounds garbled.

By the way, I presume Paul must have spoken two or three languages. He wouldn’t come and speak Hebrew or Aramaic to the Corinthians. That’s speaking in tongues. Languages have meanings, but of course those who don’t have that language don’t understand the meanings; therefore, it is of no use in church unless it’s interpreted. The conclusion of this section is 14:13, “Therefore, one who speaks in a tongue should pray that he may interpret.” I take ‘tongues’ to mean speaking a foreign language.

Phillip: Yes. The angels may have a language—that’s the only reference that’s beyond just a human foreign language in chapter 14—but that’s a rhetorical usage. The phrase ‘speaking in tongues’ is not used very much in the New Testament, but when it is described in chapter 2, it’s clearly meant to mean speaking a foreign language, as happened in Acts 2.

Peter: 14:12 redirects the Corinthian misunderstanding of spirits, saying, “Since you are eager for manifestations of spirit, strive to excel in building up the church.”

Phillip: There are all kinds of spirits, and people who have this spiritual worldview are eager to get these gods, angels, demons, etc. to be actively involved in their life. But what we’re concerned about is building the church, and intelligent communication of the wisdom and understanding of God and his word is what works. It’s like those churches that pray to saints, attributing different saints to different purposes. St. Christopher is the Saint of Travellers, and St. Luke is the Saint of Medicines, and so on—rubbish. There is the Holy Spirit, who is the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ, and that is the point. The Holy Spirit has given us different gifts, and we are to use them for building the church. Tongue speaking with interpretation can build the church, but without interpretation, it can’t, because it’s unintelligible to the church. Prophecy, however, will build the church, because it’s the very nature of speaking God’s word.

Peter: Yes, and we’ll think more about prophecy next week, because the answer is yes, but not always. There are such things as false prophets.

Phillip: But everything we do must have this sense of the mind. I remember that John Stott book, Your Mind Matters,2 where he traces through the New Testament about the importance of the Christian mind. Your mind must be fruitful, and it will be fruitful if it understands what is being said. But there’s no fruitfulness in going to church and not understanding anything that is being said. The kinds of songs which do not in any way reflect the truth of the scriptures are really unhelpful.

But there are songs which are full of the truths of the gospel, and as we sing them many times, our minds as well as our hearts are filled. Music is very emotional, but it connects our emotions to our mind, our mind to our emotions, and our fellowship for the benefit of others. As Paul says in 14:19, “Nevertheless, in church I would rather speak five words with my mind in order to instruct others, than ten thousand words in a tongue.”

The absurdity of this statement is like if I were to offer you 5 cents if you’ll give me $100 in return. It’s worth having 5 words that address the mind, compared to 10,000 words.

Peter: What is your summary of this section?

Phillip: We’ve been challenged, at the end of chapter 12, to seek the greater gifts. We’ve been told by chapter 13 what the greater gifts are: the ones that are most loving. In chapter 14, we discuss 2 gifts: prophecy and tongue speaking. Quite clearly, prophecy is the greater of the 2, because it always engages the mind. Whereas tongue speaking, unless it’s translated, doesn’t address the mind at all, and therefore in church, it’s not loving to speak in tongues.

Peter: As we shall discover next week, unless you tell me I’m wrong here, prophecy too has its limitations.

How do you see modern churches—the ones we’re familiar with—fulfilling the underlying pattern of this? Are we doing what the Apostle wants us to do in our church life?

Phillip: There is a great division in churches at this point. When people say, “Your church is too cerebral,” I say, “I know what you mean if what you mean is ‘academically detached from real life.’ But if you mean ‘It’s too much about what you think and understand,’ then you can’t be too cerebral.” Because the gospel is addressed to the mind as well as to the heart. The activities of church are mental activities, and so we need to be wary of the church gathering that is structured to stir emotions, but doesn’t address the mind for our encouragement, rebuke, building, and consolation. You’re not loving people if you’re leaving them in mindless Christianity, because we’ve got to love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our mind. So those churches which emphasise, exhibit, and participate in experientialism rather than in addressing the mind of a person are not loving, even though they mean to be.

Peter: What about the sort of churches you and I might go to? Do you think that we exhibit love?

Phillip: Yes and no. One of the things about the great commandment, “Love your neighbour as yourself,” is that you can never fulfil it as a sinful person. I haven’t stolen or committed adultery, but when you have the open-ended commandment to love, you never finally fulfil that. There is always room for improvement. Furthermore, love is not “I love you.” Love is about doing what is loving for you. There is a sense of superficial love we see in many places. I see it in politicians who say, “I love you all,” as they speak to a crowd of 10,000. If they really loved them, they’d sit down and shut up. The love we’re talking about is the love of the Lord Jesus Christ who died for us. And yes, I do see that in our churches with people making real sacrifices for those in our congregations. But I don’t see enough of it. But I think that’s true of me, not just the congregation.

Peter: This passage is not addressed to pastors. It’s addressed to the congregation, to everybody. We don’t build each other up as much as we should, but we do build each other up. And we are seeing mature adult Christians as a result of the preaching of the Word and the love we have with each other, particularly exhibited in speaking the truth in love.

Phillip: Yes, but the command of the passage is to “Pursue love and earnestly desire the spirituals, especially that you may prophesy.” It’s not about what has happened in the past; it is about what we must now do.

2

John Stott, Your Mind Matters: The Place of the Mind in the Christian Life, 2006 (Inter-Varsity Press).

Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

---

Links & Recommendations

For more on this topic, check out this talk. It’s called Seek the Higher Gifts.

---

Freely available, supported by generosity.

If you enjoy Two Ways News, why not lend us a hand? Consider joining our Supporters Club—friends who make it possible for us to keep producing this article/podcast.

To join the Supporters Club, follow the link below to the ‘subscribe’ page. You’ll see that there’s:

• a number of ‘paid options’. To join the Supporters Club take out one of the paid ‘subscription plans’ and know we are deeply grateful for your support!

• also the free option (on the far right hand side)

Sign up to support us

Should you read 1 Corinthians 13 at your wedding? And should we translate 1 Corinthians 13 as ‘charity’ or ‘love’? Today’s episode will answer both of these questions.

One of the best known and most popular passages of the Bible, 1 Corinthians 13, is the topic of our podcast this week. The good news is, we are talking about it; bad news is, we cannot do it justice. Nevertheless, we hope you enjoy our discussion. Do take a moment to subscribe, and take every opportunity to share this podcast with your friends.

Yours,

Phillip

Phillip Jensen: In today’s episode, we will look at one of the greatest chapters of the Bible, 1 Corinthians 13. It’s a chapter which people read at weddings, because although it wasn’t written by Paul for these occasions, it speaks of the great truths of God. But to understand it, as usual we need to pay attention to the context. Before we read chapter 13, however, we will start further back with 1 Corinthians 12:27.

Peter Jensen: Paul certainly didn’t write in chapters and verses, so that’s a good idea.

1 Corinthians 12:27–13:13

Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, helping, administrating, and various kinds of tongues. Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret? But earnestly desire the higher gifts.

And I will show you a still more excellent way.

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 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. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

Phillip: Paul continues in 1 Corinthians 14:1, “Pursue love, and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy.” 1 Corinthians 13 is such a marvellous piece of writing—leaving aside the fact that it’s divinely inspired—that rises to the great climax at the end of 13:13, “but the greatest of these is love.” Yet it’s part of this controversy about the use of gifts. Ever since you and I have been in public ministry in the late ‘60s and ‘70s, this is a subject that has come up for us over and over again. Even though 1 Corinthians 12–14 teaches about unity, it has become a subject of controversy and division. That’s why chapter 13 is so important, because it talks not so much about unity, but about the way of unity: its reason and basis, which has to do with love. Chapter 13 is also an example of the typical way in which Paul argues. That is, he introduces the presenting issue and gives some answers to it. But before he comes to the real conclusion, he takes us back to great fundamental truths.

For instance, in chapter 7 when we look at the issues the Corinthians raised about sex and marriage, he begins by answering a lot of their questions, until 7:17 when he suddenly brings up contentment. At that point, you think he’s changed the subject, but after those few verses on contentment he returns to the subject of marriage. You see the same pattern in chapters 8–10, where he talks about food offered to idols; he answers the question in chapter 8, then talks in chapter 9 about giving up his rights and freedoms for the sake of other people’s salvation, before he returns in chapter 10 to demonstrate how that sacrifice informs his view of idolatry. Similarly, Paul has dealt with the presenting issue in chapter 12, but before he comes to the issue of prophecy and tongues in chapter 14, he lays out for us the great fundamental principle of love.

Remind us how we got to this point in the argument, where a chapter on love is going to resolve some of the issues that we’re talking about.

Peter: I like that approach, because we need it. That is to say, we get ourselves twisted into knots about precise things, and that’s okay, because they are often very important. But Paul models for us what we also need to do, which is to go back to the fundamentals out of which the argument comes. I remember the Lord doing exactly the same when he was asked about divorce. Divorce was allowed under the Mosaic law, but he drew people back to the unity of marriage in Genesis 1–2. So we don’t just make the New Testament into a set of rules; we see the reason for it. Here, as you pointed out, is a wonderful illustration of exactly that with this chapter on love. In fact, you only need to look at 12:27–30, the beginning of the passage that I read, to see this.

Paul has spoken in chapter 12 of the necessity of all the gifts: both the spectacular gifts which are obvious to everybody, and the hidden gifts. He criticises the attitude that says, “I don’t belong—all I do is get the morning tea, nobody cares,” and the inverse, which says, “I don’t need you. I’m the most important member of the church.” He criticises both attitudes because of the importance of unity. Then he moves on to this chapter.

That said, 12:27–30 always strikes me as odd given his words, “first apostles, second prophets, third teachers,” which outlines a rank of those who are especially important. He also calls on us to earnestly desire the higher gifts. This seems to cut across the commands he’s given in chapter 12. Are all the gifts of the same value and worth, or aren’t they? And if they’re of the same value, how can he call upon us to eagerly desire the higher gifts?

I see that the higher gifts he mentions are apostles, prophets and teachers. I personally think that Ephesians 4 throws light on this, for here he gives the same list. You’ll notice that these are the gifts of people: apostles, prophets, evangelists, teachers, pastors; therefore it seems as though in that passage, he is referring to people rather than gifts as such.

Phillip: Yes, he refers to people specifically, rather than the activity. It’s “apostles, prophets, teachers,” not “prophecy and teaching.” Everybody can prophesy—and in fact, in chapter 14, everybody’s encouraged to prophesy—but only some people are prophets.

Peter: That’s an important insight. Furthermore, in Ephesians 4, they’re not called the gifts of the Holy Spirit; they’re called the gifts of Christ to his church.

Phillip: Yes, because it’s the spirit of Christ who gives the gifts. To distinguish the Spirit from Christ is nearly always a mistake, for the Spirit didn’t die on the cross for us, but Christ did. These are different persons with different functions. But they are the same in terms of one God, and the Spirit is known as the Spirit of Jesus. So when the gifts are given, this is not a distinctive activity of the Holy Spirit. The distinctive activity of the Holy Spirit has much more to do with regeneration, and the fruit of the Spirit pushing us in holiness within our lives. In this passage, the gifts are of God the Father. In Ephesians 4, they’re the gifts of Christ. Earlier in chapter 12, they’re the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

Peter: Returning to Ephesians 4 now, as the gifted ones exercise their gifts, so the church flourishes. In Ephesians 2:20, the church is “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone,” and it is the exercising of these gifts which enables everybody in the church to serve and to minister to each other, including in speech. In Ephesians 4:15 he talks about “speaking the truth in love.” In short, I take it that the apostles in 1 Corinthians are referring to the apostles designated in Ephesians 2, with the prophets as foundational to the church, and I presume that all churches must have apostles and prophets in their midst. That is, we must have the scriptures as the way in which the Lord is speaking to us through his apostles and prophets. That is one of the marks of a true church: the teachers are meant to teach God’s truth. In that way, these are the higher gifts because they set in process the gifts of others as well. If that is the case, I presume he means that we are to eagerly look for these gifts in our community; we are to test our community and ask ourselves, “Are the apostles and prophets present in their words, and are the teachers teaching the apostolic word?” That’s my speculation about this. What do you think?

Phillip: I like it, but there are other aspects that cause us confusion. That is, we have a confusion in our society today about what it means to be equal. Egalitarianism is a philosophy of social life which is almost sacred within our community, but it’s frequently confused with sameness. To have people treated equally is not to have people treated the same. In what way are we equal? To be equal before the law and to be equal in height are two very different things. To say everyone is equal in height is untrue, but to say everyone is equal before the law refers to a way of treating people which sounds very good, right, and just.

Furthermore, there’s a confusion in non-Christian values about importance, because we treat people as being important in ways that seem to me to be unhelpful. We treat some people as important by giving them large salaries, as opposed to other people to whom we give small salaries, when they’re both working just as hard for the value of our society. Likewise, we give certain people titles. We clergy are as much a problem here as anybody else. I have all kinds of titles, and you used to have even more titles. It’s a daft idea to distinguish people by salaries and titles, because the Bible’s sense of greatness is found in service and slavery. Gifts are about service, but people think about gifts in terms of identity, confidence and pride. We think of ourselves as an engineer or a doctor or a clergyman. Within a congregation, we do the same; we say, “I’m the music director,” or “I’m the Sunday school teacher.” We think that these gifts are our identity and our importance within the gathering of the congregation. Though some services are, as you’ve been saying, more fundamentally important than others in part because of their effect. They are foundational to the very nature of the church and Christ’s appointment of them.

I also want to add that there are some things that have a greater effect than others. For many years, I’ve noticed that the real health in our community is not created by surgeons, but by plumbers. But within our society, we give titles and deference to people who are surgeons who do very little for the health of the community as a whole. They do a lot for the health of old, fat, white males. Plumbers give us clean water and get rid of sewage, therefore they are the ones who create health in the community. Society, then, should give more honour to plumbers.

What we have in this passage is the way of love, which explains why prophecy is higher than tongues. Paul’s argument is not even that prophecy has the greater effect; his argument here is love.

Peter: Have you noticed how surprising that is? I am so lacking in the inspiration of the Holy Spirit that I can remember reading this chapter for the first time and thinking, “What on earth has this got to do with what he’s talking about?”

Phillip: The truth is, it’s the very essence of what he’s talking about all the way along. That’s why, halfway through this discussion on tongues and prophecy and gifts, Paul seems to wander off into the subject of love. Love is not a gift, nor is it the higher gift. Love is the fruit of the Spirit. But all of the gifts must be ministered by the fruit of the Spirit, because the fruit is infinitely more important than the gifts. The fruit is of eternal significance. The gifts will pass away, but the fruit of the Spirit—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness—is the transformation of life that you have as a Christian. This is fundamental to the way we live, and it is the way the gifts are to be evaluated. I like the King James Version, which doesn’t translate the word as ‘love’, but ‘charity’.

Peter: Please don’t re-introduce the word ‘charity’. It’s so old-fashioned that all it means now is an organisation that gives you a bed for the night.

Phillip: Worse than that, I think it has the smell of class distinctions. Charity is what rich, upper-class people do for the poor, working-class or unemployed people with a sense of superiority. So I agree with you, but in some ways the word ‘charity’ is good because it refers to something specific. The word ‘love’ means so many different things to different people. Almost every time you preach on the word ‘love’, you’ve got to go through this little exercise of clarifying, “We’re not talking about romantic love.” It’s painful. The advantage of ‘charity’ is that it is about giving, and the love of the Bible is about giving. The gift of Christ in his death on the cross is the great example of what we mean by love. So ‘charity’ means giving for the benefit of the other person, not because they deserve it, but out of the grace of the giver.

Peter: It’s a bit like finding a person lying on the side of the road whom you don’t like, then stopping, picking him up, and taking him to hospital.

Phillip: Yes, that’s the generosity of the Good Samaritan, whose love becomes the byword. That’s the love of God. Without that sense of giving, that generosity, that concern for the other person, that other service of people, all gifts are irrelevant. 13:1, “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.” Prophetic powers without love are nothing. A faith that moves mountains is impressive, but without love, it’s a waste of time. Just leave the mountain where it was.

Peter: Even martyrdom without love is of no value. That is an astonishing thing to read in the Bible.

Phillip: Yes. If I lay down my life for the cause of the gospel, but I’m not doing it out of love, I can pride myself in it. I can hope to be saved because of it. I can think of myself as a great one because of it. But I’ve got to do it out of love for others and love for the Lord Jesus.

Peter: So love is at the centre of everything. Why?

Phillip: Because it’s the fruit of Christian living. The gospel comes out of the love of God and the love of the Lord Jesus Christ for us. John 13:35, “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Peter: It may be good to ask yourself, “Do I exhibit this love in personal relationships?” Some of these relationships, of course, are very fraught and difficult. But 1 Corinthians 13:4–7

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Is that you? One person could answer that question: Jesus. I think, whether Paul intended this or not, it’s a description of Jesus. Since the whole purpose of our lives as Christians is to grow into the likeness of our Saviour, as these things grow in us by the power of God’s Spirit, we will grow more like Jesus. Or to use the other expression, this is the fruit of the Spirit in our lives. Not that we simply let go to have him do it, rather we aim for and practice these things. But every time we have any success, we give God thanks. We walk in step with the Spirit.

Phillip: You’ll see how this love is different to what the world is talking about. It doesn’t rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. ‘Love’, in the sense that the world uses it, is just your emotional reaction to something, and it’s got no moral fibre or character to it. Love is seen as the moral fibre in character. But the love of the Bible, the love of God, doesn’t rejoice in wrongdoing, but only in the truth, in the right way of life. But he goes on here about the permanence of love. Everything else in life is part of the transitory nature of this world. But love never ends, and even these great things that we think are so important, such as prophecies, will pass away. Tongues and knowledge pass away. In fact, for some of us, knowledge passes away even while we’re alive.

Peter: It does, but in this verse it is replaced by a deep and true nature.

Phillip: Yes—that is being known, which is even more important than what you know. We have a temporary life in an incomplete world, but the day will come when perfection comes. The word ‘perfect’ refers to completion, the end point to which everything is going. Different people have different ideas on what that means. Some would say this means the completion of the Bible, when the New Testament is finished. I would be surprised if Paul was referring to that. I think it has to do with the end of the world, when the Lord Jesus returns and this world finally comes to its completion. At that point, we won’t need prophecy, tongues, or knowledge anymore. We will be known at that time. But while these temporary things pass, love is not part of the temporary. 13:8, “Love never ends.” Love is not the only thing that’s not part of the temporary; I take it that things like hope and faith continue on. But what do you think about that?

Peter: Bear in mind that our knowledge passes, but it is replaced by our full knowledge, even as I’ve been fully known. 13:13, “So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” There’s a reason why people pluck this chapter out of its context, so to speak. It’s not a bad reason, because Paul, having made comments on the particular issue in Corinth, now goes to the fundamentals, to the point which is guiding what he’s saying. It doesn’t just guide what he’s saying in that particular situation; it deeply guides the whole of our lives. It feeds into the question of who we are as human beings, for we are relational.

One day we need to have a discussion on the AI problem, especially as it’s applied to education. I think that the mere fact of others being in the room with me is terribly important. When we have a discussion in class, it’s often another student who will say something that is important, from which I can learn.

Phillip: AI agrees with that, because in my contact and usage of it, it speaks as if it’s a person. Once, I asked it, “Why do you talk as a person when you’re not?” It responded, “Because people find it easier to learn in this kind of context.” This is both true and false at the same time.

Peter: Yes, it reminds me of the pandemic, when we had Zoom classes. The technology is so brilliant; it’s astonishing what you can do. To be able to have classes even while we were all sitting in isolation was brilliant, but it wasn’t the same as being in the same room, eating together, and building relationships. This is also the reason why we gather for church. The services online were great, but how much more would you rather be there with other people? We as human beings were made for relationships.

Phillip: Zoom singing didn’t work. You’ve got to be there together.

Peter: This passage feeds exactly into that discussion of Christian anthropology, in which 1 Corinthians 13 plays a vital part.

Phillip: In 14:1, having given us this great theological statement which goes beyond the context of Corinth, you come back to the context, which is that we must pursue love. Given what he said in chapter 13, that’s not a huge logical leap, but an obvious thing to say. So 14:1, “Pursue love, and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy.” The word ‘gifts’ is not in the original text; it’s “earnestly desire the spirituals,” which is what he started with in chapter 12. That is, earnestly desire to live in the world of the Spirit, to live in the age and the realms of the Spirit; to be spiritual in the sense of the Holy Spirit, not the human spirit. But especially desire to prophesy. He doesn’t say that we should desire to be prophets, because not all are prophets, but we should desire to prophesy. Why is that so important? Because of love. That reminds us again of Ephesians 4 and its importance.

Peter: That is where the work of the pastor-teacher, and the work of the apostles and the prophets, turns into a church which is alive, which is awake, where all the members are building each other up. A significant part of that is speaking the truth in love to each other. That may be worth taking into account when we’re thinking of prophecy. It is the word of truth we speak to each other as we hear it in the light of our situation. Something like that may be building each other up.

Phillip: We’ll see that next week, but I want to say that he’s going to compare and contrast prophecy and tongue speaking, prophecy being the higher gift because it is more loving. But tune in next week to find out more.

Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Links & Recommendations

For more on this topic, check out this talk given at a Church Weekend away called The Church: Love’s Spiritual Way.

Freely available, supported by generosity.

If you enjoy Two Ways News, why not lend us a hand? Consider joining our Supporters Club—friends who make it possible for us to keep producing this article/podcast.

To join the Supporters Club, follow the link below to the ‘subscribe’ page. You’ll see that there’s:

• a number of ‘paid options’. To join the Supporters Club take out one of the paid ‘subscription plans’ and know we are deeply grateful for your support!

• also the free option (on the far right hand side)

Sign up to support us

Body image today often refers to our perception of our own physical bodies. But Paul used the image of the body 2000 years ago when he spoke of the Body of Christ, and that’s what we need to explore when looking at 1 Corinthians chapter 12. It is particularly important in today’s controversies that we understand the image of the body.

Yours,

Phillip

Phillip Jensen: 1 Corinthians 12:12–14

For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptised into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.

For the body does not consist of one member but of many.

What are some of the conclusions that you theologically want to draw from this metaphor of the body of Christ?

Peter Jensen: This metaphor occurs in a number of places in the New Testament, notably Ephesians 5. Thinking of this broader context, I notice these 3 things:

1. The headship of the body belongs exclusively to one whose body it is, namely Jesus Christ, as in Ephesians 5:22. I take it to include authority, not just the source, as it used to be said. I’m not sure if that’s still a position people adopt. It reminds us that just as we are individually to obey Christ as Lord, so we are to obey him corporately as his body. In other words, church is not just a gathering of people to sing and to listen to someone meander on; we gather in order to meet the Lord Jesus Christ, the head of the church and the power of the Spirit. We must listen to his teaching, obey him and speak the truth to each other together, especially when we meet. So meeting as the body of Christ is not an optional thing.

2. He explicitly calls the Corinthian church, in 12:27, “The body of Christ.” That’s at odds with the modern way of referring to a denomination or the worldwide church as the body—as though one church is the leg of Jesus, and another is the arm of Jesus, and so forth. No, the local church carries this great honour of being the body of Christ. When we come into church, we are in the presence of the body of Christ.

3. The image of the body is a special way of talking about the unity that we experience. It’s preeminently in these texts, and Ephesians 4 also: the unity of the local church means the responsibility of every member to be godly and to guard the gift of unity. The New Testament takes the unity of the church very seriously, hence the remarks on the Lord’s Supper in chapter 11 that their disunity and their despising of each other profanes the body of Christ, the church. It also reminds us that the body of Christ is one. It is, if you like, the eschatological body of Christ; it’s the body of Christ in the heavenly places, which we all belong to, and the local church is a manifestation of it. Whatever it was that obsessed the Corinthians—I presume the claim to supernatural gifting was part of it—was in danger of destroying the unity of the church, as people perhaps gloried in their particular gifting.

How do you read the problems in Corinth after all this?

Phillip: Before I go there, I would like to address your second point, that the different churches are not different members of the body. The different parts of the body are the different members within the church, the local assembly. I remember people saying to me that they liked to go to our church because we had the gift of teaching, but they also liked another church because they had other gifts. So the body of Christ was, to them, this interdenominational gifting. It fascinated me that they were so keen to come to our church for our teaching, but they manifestly paid no attention to it, because they thought the other denominational church down the road was another part of the body of Christ.

There is also this question of whether we, as the body of Christ, are his agents in the world. He hasn’t got hands anymore, so we’ve become the hands. He hasn’t got a mouth anymore, so we’ve become the mouth. It’s pushing that metaphor way beyond what it was meant to be used for. It’s close to blasphemy.

Peter: It’s not what the New Testament is saying here. I suppose your friends who came to you because yours was ‘a teaching church’ should have thought, “It’s not what comes from the pulpit alone that matters, but the people who gather. They are the body of Christ, and I need to serve within the body as everyone else does, bringing whatever gifts I have to the service of the church.”

Phillip: I’d like to pick up what this passage is saying, though, because it has some direct implications for us. 1 Corinthians 12:14–20

For the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body.

So Paul uses the image of a body in terms of its various parts, which are all different, yet they’re all needed. Just because you may not feel as important as one of the others, to say, “I do not belong to the body,” is wrong. Within a congregational life, there’s the person who’s involved in cleaning the building; another in opening the building; there’s the treasurer; the maintenance person; the music leader; and there’s the preacher. God arranges, as he chooses, the many parts into one body, and all the different members, gifts and ministries are for the one purpose. You mustn’t think, “I’m only the cleaner.” If you want to bring a church to a standstill, have no cleaning. In fact, if you want to destroy a city, get the garbage men to go on strike. To say, “I don’t belong to the body because my ministry is unimportant,” is a complete failure to understand the image of the body.

On the other side of this is the person who says, “I don’t need you, you are unimportant.” Paul then attacks this viewpoint in 12:21–26

The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and on those parts of the body that we think less honourable we bestow the greater honour, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honour to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honoured, all rejoice together.

God is composing our bodies in such a way as to be united, so that we will care for one another in the body, which is one. When my stomach hurts, I hurt; when my head aches, I ache. It’s not as if I could dispense with my head because that’s the only bit that’s aching today. When I’m sick, I’m sick, regardless of whichever particular part of my anatomy is sick at the moment. So no one within the church can look down on another as being unimportant. In fact, we are all needed, and we must care for one another and honour every member, so that we will be united properly. There is the grave danger of turning our giftedness and our ministries into prestige and significance. This exists at 2 levels:

1. People who think they’re unimportant because their ministry is not ‘significant’.

2. People who think they are important because they have a ministry of great prestige.

When I was at St Matthias, people would talk in a way that made me cringe. They didn’t mean to, but they spoke about it as “my church” because I was the person on the platform dominating the proceedings by my preaching—when in fact, I could point to the people who crawled underneath to find the white ants and get rid of them. My pulpit wouldn’t have stood if they had not gone down there and fixed the white ant problem. There were so many members of our church all pulling together to make the body work. To not recognise that is an insult to the body, and it’s a failure to care. It’s a failure to live in accordance with the way God has organised and laid out the church. That’s the point of this caring for the oneness of the church.

Peter: Yes, which is the duty of us all. The unity of the spirit of Ephesians 4, the necessity for us to see the single body and to care for one another. You’ve mentioned a couple of things, like cleaning the building and finding the white ants. Indeed, there are the obligations set out in Ephesians 4 of building up the body. So even if you’re meeting in the open air or a tent, you’d still all have a responsibility for the whole church, in praying for each other, caring for each other, and listening to each other.

Phillip: I saw something lovely the other day in church. A woman was crying during the first hymn, and then one of the other members from the other side of the aisle came across and sat with her for the rest of the service. What care! What concern! That’s a real ministry that took place right there, which was not done for show.

Peter: That’s the opposite of an experience I had way back when I spoke on this passage at a conference. I blame myself, because I obviously didn’t teach it adequately. A young man came up to me full of enthusiasm, and asked me, “What’s my gift? I want to use my gift.” I’ve always thought that self-identification was what he wanted, because if you want to know what your gift is, the best thing to do is to look for a need and see if you can fulfil it. That will produce the gift, so to speak. If you have it, use it; if you don’t, move on. If I saw the need for a guitar player in church and tried to meet it, I know that would fail. I may or may not be the right person, but seeing the need is the first step. Do you agree?

Phillip: Yes and no. I say, don’t ask the question, “Am I the person that should?” Just go and fill needs. Because you’re right; that young man was asking about his gift, which is an identity issue. There was a time a few years ago—I presume there are still churches that do it—where they would have an inventory of gifts, and you’d have to work out where you fit.

Peter: I’ve noticed that we haven’t discussed the meaning of the gifts, though we are drifting into it now. People want to make a great deal, for example, about speaking in tongues, about prophecy and so forth. 1 Corinthians 12:27–31

Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, helping, administrating, and various kinds of tongues. Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret? But earnestly desire the higher gifts.

And I will show you a still more excellent way.

What do you think?

Phillip: There are fundamental issues which get passed over if you enter into discussions about what each individual gift is. There are many books which focus on analysing each gift and what it could mean. Any knowledge is a good thing in itself—I’m not saying that we should never do such a thing—but they frequently miss the point that Paul is making. He is in some ways scattering the list of gifts out there as illustrations of a main point. To spend time looking at the individual trees is to miss the whole forest. Here are 5 points I have about this:

1. In the book that I wrote a few years ago, The Coming of the Holy Spirit1 (which you can get through Matthias Media) there are 34 appendices. which astonishes people. A third of the book is appendices. That’s because they’re not central to what the book is about, but they are questions that people ask: What is speaking in tongues? What are miracles? Do I believe in Cessationism, that all the gifts have now ceased? By and large they’re not important questions, but I knew there was no point producing a book on the Holy Spirit in the 21st century without writing a page or two on each of these. If you want to know about those things, buy the book, look up the appendices. Keep in mind that the main subject of the book is more important than the appendices.

2. Many gifts are overlooked, or more difficult than you imagine. Helping, for instance, is a gift, as is administering. But what is “utterance of wisdom”? What is the gift of faith? Haven’t we all got faith? I’m afraid most people are fairly generous in their imaginitis when they try to explain what the gift of faith is, or the ability to distinguish between gifts. Furthermore, have you noticed there are multiple “gifts” of healing? What does that mean? Is it as though one person is good with healing legs, the other is good with arms? You can see how PhDs can be written on the gifts, which still miss the point of what the passage is about.

3. There are other lists of gifts, in Ephesians 4 and in Romans 12. None of these are decisive lists. In fact, in 12:5–10 we hear about the gifts of the Spirit, whilst 12:27–30 talks of the gifts of God the Father. They’re different gifts, because Paul is not giving a definitive list of all the gifts that there are. God can gift us in any way he wishes. This is just a demonstration of the diversities of gifts that there are, for the common purpose of the Holy Spirit, for the common planning of God in his church.

4. Gifts like these are not limited to the Spirit, because the same gifts spoken of about the Spirit in 12:5 following are listed now as the gifts of the Father. Prophecy, for example, is listed again in Ephesians 4 as one of the gifts of the Son. So to see the ministry of the Spirit as the giving of gifts fails to do it justice, for his ministry is fundamentally to point to the Lord Jesus Christ. His gift to this world is the preaching of the gospel, so that people would come to faith through regeneration. That is the great work of the Holy Spirit, as the great work of the Son was to die and rise. But the gifts, the workings, and the application of ministries in the world today, are the gifts of God—Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

5. The spiritual point here, and throughout this chapter, is that though there are different parts to the united body, it is a united body by the one Spirit. For we do not have many spirits, but one Spirit, the Holy Spirit.

Peter: So the passage is not about all the gifts of the spirit; it’s about the gifts as we have them listed here. It’s fundamentally about the body of Christ, the church, and how the church ought to act, which will become even clearer in chapters 13–14. In the meantime, no matter how insignificant you may think you are, you are still equally part of the body and are called upon to serve others in whatever way you can. God has appointed the church. He has given us the Lord Jesus Christ and the Spirit, and we see all at work in our experience of church.

Phillip: We are different in many ways, but we are the same in our care for one another. We are the same in that we have been gifted and able to do this work of ministry by the one and the same God.

Peter: So you don’t come to a church and say, “Here’s the list of gifts which you ought to have in this church.”

Phillip: That’s a terrible way of thinking about church.

Peter: So what is the point? What do you expect when you come to a church?

Phillip: You should ask, “How can you use me to serve others today?”

Peter: You expect, therefore, to see the preaching of the word, and the loving relationships of the congregation.

Phillip: We gather to meet in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. But we must ask, “What can I do to fulfil the plans and purposes of God in caring for other people?”

There was a lovely lady who attended the cathedral who used to come in by train, and during each trip, she prayed, “God, lead me to the person you want me to talk to today.” She always found someone to talk to every day about the Lord Jesus, because at a cathedral church in the middle of the city, there are always visitors. I noticed that she was the one who always talked to them. It was the kind of ministry that was really important, and yet insignificant in this world’s terms.

Peter: That leads us to possibly the most significant point in 1 Corinthians 12:31, “But earnestly desire the higher gifts. And I will show you a still more excellent way.”

Phillip: That raises a problem for us, because we’ve just said that all gifts are important; so what are the higher gifts?

1

Phillip D. Jensen, The Coming of the Holy Spirit, 2022 (Matthias Media)

Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

---

Links & Recommendations

For more on this topic, check out this talk on 1 Corinthians 12 entitled Diversity and Unity.

---

Freely available, supported by generosity.

If you enjoy Two Ways News, why not lend us a hand? Consider joining our Supporters Club—friends who make it possible for us to keep producing this article/podcast.

To join the Supporters Club, follow the link below to the ‘subscribe’ page. You’ll see that there’s:

• a number of ‘paid options’. To join the Supporters Club take out one of the paid ‘subscription plans’ and know we are deeply grateful for your support!

• also the free option (on the far right hand side)

Sign up to support us

We are glad to bring this episode to you free of charge by the generosity of our friends. If you'd like to be a friend and give generously, there are details on how to do so at the bottom of the transcript.

In 1 Corinthians 12-14, we come to a passage that has dominated Christian discussion for the last 60 years. It is one that Peter and I have been thinking and preaching on for most of our public ministries. But I hope that you find this fresh take on the passage to be a helpful way of understanding Paul’s letter.

Yours,

Phillip

Peter Jensen: What a relief to arrive at chapters 12, 13 and 14. I feel as though I have devoted much thought to them over the years and could give a sermon without any further preparation. At least, that’s how I felt until you, in preparation for this episode, threw a couple of grenades in my path. I don’t know what to think, so you’d better explain yourself. But before you do so, let’s begin by reading it.

1 Corinthians 12:1–13

Now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers, I do not want you to be uninformed. You know that when you were pagans you were led astray to mute idols, however you were led. Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking in the Spirit of God ever says “Jesus is accursed!” and no one can say “Jesus is Lord” except in the Holy Spirit.

Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. For to one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, 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. All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills.

For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptised into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.

Phillip Jensen: This brings up several issues—but let’s start with 12:1. This verse, in saying “Now concerning,” refers to a new question that the Corinthians had asked about spiritual gifts. A footnote appears here, which clarifies, “or spiritual persons.” So which are we referring to: spiritual gifts or spiritual persons? But in fact, the original text doesn’t specifically refer to either. It uses the adjective, ‘spirituals’, as in, “Now concerning spirituals.” So you’ve got to understand which noun it could be referring to. It could be ‘persons’, or ‘gifts’, or it could be ‘things’. I prefer ‘things’ because it is as vague as the text is. I don’t think ‘gifts’ or ‘persons’ is necessarily the topic; it is about ‘spirituals’. So I think ‘things’ is a much better translation. What I’m saying here is nothing new to those who read the original text. Peter and I were taught that 50 years ago when we were in College. But it’s helpful for people to understand why the footnote is there, because the Greek words for ‘gifts’ and ‘persons’ don’t sound even vaguely alike. You may wonder, “How could the Greek be so different?” The answer is that the noun isn’t there at all; you need to make up a word. There’s the first problem.

Peter: Indeed. I remember Mr Robinson, our beloved New Testament lecturer, mentioning to us that this word ‘gifts’ was as you say it was, but then I didn’t get a better explanation of the passage. Furthermore, the modern translations have ‘gifts’, but the Revised Version, which used to be regarded in our day as being the most accurate of all translations, puts the word ‘gifts’ in italics. So it’s not a recent innovation.

Phillip: No, it’s not. In one sense, it’s not an unreasonable guess. The phrase ‘spiritual gifts’ doesn’t occur anywhere in the New Testament; every time the word ‘gift’ is there, the word ‘spiritual’ is not. But if there is any part of the New Testament that does talk about the work of the Spirit in terms of gifts, it is this chapter. So if you look down to verse 4, “Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit,” you see that the Spirit is linked with gifts. So it’s not unreasonable to think ‘gifts’ is the noun that is meant. But if you include the word without putting it in italics like the Revised Version did, which was their way of indicating the word wasn’t there, then I’m afraid people read the whole chapter as if it is about spiritual gifts. I think there’s more to it than that.

Peter: You certainly made me think about it. If we think of the ancient world—and indeed much of the modern world—with a worldview of a multiplicity of spiritual entities, both good and bad, then perhaps he’s raising a general subject here. We think that demonic possession is strange, but that’s not how most people throughout history have thought of it; they have believed, and continue to believe in evil and good spirits. This has shown up in our discussions of food offered to idols, and in this passage he goes on to say, “No one speaking in the Spirit of God ever says ‘Jesus is accursed!’” Perhaps, then, Paul has in mind the spirit world in which the Corinthians lived.

Phillip: I think that’s much more likely. He’s already told the Corinthians back in chapter 3 that he can’t talk to them as if they were spiritual; here, the phrase ‘spiritual’ has a wider meaning than just the Holy Spirit. Christian spirituality certainly is about the Holy Spirit, who brings us the age to come. But the spiritual world, of which we as Westerners do not commonly talk about, is the one I wrote about in my book, The Coming of the Holy Spirit,1 that was published a few years ago. In the writing of that book was a verse which held up the whole of my writing for 12 months, for there was a translation problem which one of the editors pointed out to me. That verse was 1 Corinthians 14:12, “So with yourselves, since you are eager for manifestations of the Spirit, strive to excel in building up the church.” The trouble is, the Greek doesn’t say, “the manifestations of the spirit.” What it really says is, “since you are eager for spirits,” plural. The Holy Spirit is never spoken of in plural form, so it can’t be referring to the Holy Spirit—thus it should be written with a lowercase ‘s’. But then that raises the question: what spirits is it talking about? Each translation has this same error.

The commentaries I found all refer to it, and then move on as if it doesn’t exist. So for 12 months, I couldn’t move on because I had to struggle to work out what it was talking about. But once you take seriously the spirit world of which the Corinthians were much more consciously aware than we are in our Westernised world, then “concerning the spirituals” can be referring to not so much the gifts, but the spiritual world. In other words, it is concerning the things of the spirits that the Corinthians were zealots for. That then shifts how you read chapter 12. Because the key question is not, “Should we have gifts at work in our church?” Rather, it is, “What is the role of the Spirit and the spirits in a spirit world?” That then opens up for us polytheism again, because he’s been adamant that there’s only one God, whereas the ancient world has many so-called gods. These different gods had different functions: a god for rain, a god for good crops, a god for love, a god for power, a god of armies and so forth. They all had their different portfolios of life, so to speak.

In the same way, some people have saints performing similar functions. For example, St. Luke is the saint for healing and St. Christopher is the saint for travelling. There are a plethora of saints that come within Catholicism and Orthodoxy, and you pray to them for help in traveling or healing or whatever you need. Similarly, the ancient world had different gods, or different spirits, who were involved in different elements of your life. Now with that framework in mind, think again about 1 Corinthians 12.

Peter: I refer back to 12:2 and so forth, “You know that when you were pagans you were led astray to mute idols, however you were led.”

What you’re putting forward here is a hypothesis, and so we’re going to test it to see if it makes sense of the passage. I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say, “This is the truth, come what may.”

The other point I would like to make is that it’s rather strange that he could be talking to these Christian people, baptised and confessing Christ, in the way he has. If I understand it correctly, the great East African revival had its beginnings when Christian people just had to decide between living in the spirit world or living in the biblical world—the world of God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Because it’s not easy to give up the old to take on the new. It takes a remarkably strong and wonderful repentance. People turned away from the spirit world and committed themselves wholly to the truth of the gospel, whereas before, they had been teetering between the two, and the result was an extraordinary revival in East African religion. The Corinthians may have been in a similar situation of trying to have both ways. Going on from there, the hypothesis we’re putting forward does make sense of the rest of the opening. I’ve mentioned 12:4 already, where the powerful work of the Spirit of God enables them against their sinful, enslaved natures—enslaved to the spirit world and to sin—to confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, the one and only Lord who rules over their lives, as we have as Christian men and women. We have a new master, a new lord, the one who died for us. Furthermore, we are led into his service through repentance by the Holy Spirit. It’s grace which leads us to put our trust and confidence in this new and only Lord. So that’s a gospel beginning.

How does this impact on the rest of the passage, beginning with 12:5–11?

Phillip: It’s such an important gospel beginning: that the heart of the work of the Spirit, in coming into the world, is pointing to Jesus, and so converting people to Jesus as Lord. You cannot have Jesus as Lord without the Spirit, and if you have the Spirit, you will have Jesus as Lord. So the essence of the Spirit’s work is there. Paul then turns to the subject of a variety of gifts, service, and activities—in other words, workings—where the same triune God is involved in them at all. But notice 1 Corinthians 12:4–6

Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone.

What is the emphasis on this word, ‘same’? In a world where there are many gods, many spirits, many lords, it is stark that within the gospel, there is one. So the activity of God in this world may be varied, but there is one Father, Son, and Spirit who are at work. When Paul then talks in particular about the Spirit, he starts off with this issue of the manifestation of the Spirit. So having spoken of the Father and the Son and the Spirit at work in us, he now addresses the particular work of the Spirit which is called the manifestation of the Spirit.

Peter: That is ‘manifestation’, singular, not plural. When I turn to this passage, I tend to skip over 12:1–4 and get straight to the gift of the Spirit. 12:7, “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” Then each of the gifts is listed. It’s not talking about a different manifestation for each gift, but the whole of it. This is where you put your finger on something really important: the unity of what’s going on here, under one God.

Phillip: Yes, it’s interesting that most people read it as, “the manifestations of the Spirit,” and even the commentators who say it’s singular still speak as if each of the gifts then listed are a different manifestation of the Spirit. What you see in the work of the Spirit is the common good. There is one and the same Spirit who is giving to all differing gifts for the common good, but the sign of the Holy Spirit is the sign of unity, not particularly of the different gifts.

Peter: But we read this passage because we’re interested in the gifts.

Phillip: Yes, but it’s really about the Spirit, and we should be interested in him and his purpose rather than the gifts. There’s only one Spirit in them all. Look how it reads. If you just notice this word, ‘same’. 12:8, “For to one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit.” He wouldn’t need to repeat “the same Spirit” unless he was making a point. He continues, 12:9, “To another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit.”

This emphasis on “the one” and “the same” is the emphasis of the passage. It’s not the gifts. There is no doubt that the Holy Spirit empowers and gives us all kinds of things to do. It is because of God, not because of ourselves, that we are able to do what we’re able to do. But that’s not the point he’s making here. The point is there are not multiplicities of spirits at work with differing portfolios, like in the world of gods. There’s one Spirit at work in all the different gifts that you may see around.

Peter: I’m thinking now of unity and variety. As a doctrine lecturer, this is a crucial passage for what we understand about the Holy Spirit from the Bible. First of all, we see him pointing to and leading us to Christ. That’s a great work of the Holy Spirit. There is a parallel elsewhere in Galatians where we are brought to call God our Abba, our Father. We see a Trinitarian doctrine of God in 12:4–6, which again is immensely important. But we’re also dealing here with a passage which has much to do with the Holy Spirit. But we are also dealing with a passage that has considerable importance for our doctrine of church. In 12:12–13, we have a description of the body of Christ.

For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptised into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.

So there can only be one body of Christ, despite the fact that we have different denominations claiming to be the true body. The concept of these denominations being the true body of Christ is a concept arising from what we think about church. It works from the church backwards, rather than from the Bible forwards. The other point to do with the Spirit is that all Christians have received the baptism of the Spirit. When you become a Christian, you are baptised by the Spirit, because you are brought to Christ and incorporated into him. That is the baptism of the Holy Spirit, which is absolutely marvellous. Of course, it’s not so much about the Spirit, but about Christ.

Phillip: Without the Spirit, you cannot know Jesus as Lord. That’s where he started. When we were pagans, we carried off with all kinds of other idols and spirits, in all kinds of ways we know. But we know it is the Holy Spirit that has led us to acknowledge Christ as Lord, as we are baptised into the one body with Christ as Lord and the head of the church. So the work of the one and the same Spirit in all of us is first and foremost to make us Christian. Even though we have a great variety of works and gifts, it’s the one and the same Spirit at work in all of them, just as it’s the same Father and the same Lord Jesus at work in all.

From 12:13 onwards, as we’ll see next week, the Holy Spirit is not mentioned much. In fact, you think chapters 12–14 are about the Spirit, but after 12:13, the key element of the Spirit’s work has been made clear. That is, we’ve now been brought into the body of Christ, of which we’ll talk next week, and it turns out that the gifts that we were just told about were actually the gifts of the Father. So suddenly you think, “It’s not the key work of the Spirit to be giving the gifts, seeing as the same gifts are given by the Father as given by the Spirit. So why have we got these here?” It’s because they’re the great illustration of the fact that it’s only one Spirit, the Holy Spirit who brought us to Jesus Christ as our Lord, into the one body. So this passage is contrary to the spirituals of the pagan, and introduces us into the spirituals of the Christian, via the Holy Spirit who makes us Christian.

1

Phillip D. Jensen, The Coming of the Holy Spirit, 2022 (Matthias Media)

Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

---

Links & Recommendations

For more on this topic, check out this talk given at St Andrew’s Cathedral called Manifesting the Spirit.

---

Freely available, supported by generosity.

If you enjoy Two Ways News, why not lend us a hand? Consider joining our Supporters Club—friends who make it possible for us to keep producing this article/podcast.

To join the Supporters Club, follow the link below to the ‘subscribe’ page. You’ll see that there’s:

• a number of ‘paid options’. To join the Supporters Club take out one of the paid ‘subscription plans’ and know we are deeply grateful for your support!

• also the free option (on the far right hand side)

Sign up to support us

One of the longest standing debates amongst Christians is, strangely, about one of our strongest illustrations of unity. For the Lord’s Supper is meant to be an expression of our unity in the death of the Lord Jesus Christ as we proclaim his resurrection. Yet as long ago as 1 Corinthians was first written, we find Christians divided at this event to such an extent that Paul declared that what they did was not the Lord’s Supper.

So what is the Lord’s Supper about, and what were they doing that so disqualified them from celebrating it?

It is an interesting and defining passage on this important activity which is so central to church life.

Yours,

Phillip

Peter Jensen: 1 Corinthians 11:17–34

But in the following instructions I do not commend you, because when you come together it is not for the better but for the worse. For, in the first place, when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you. And I believe it in part, for there must be factions among you in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognised. When you come together, it is not the Lord’s supper that you eat. For in eating, each one goes ahead with his own meal. One goes hungry, another gets drunk. What! Do you not have houses to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I commend you in this? No, I will not.

For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died. But if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged. But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world.

So then, my brothers, when you come together to eat, wait for one another—if anyone is hungry, let him eat at home—so that when you come together it will not be for judgment. About the other things I will give directions when I come.

Phillip Jensen: This passage contrasts that of our previous episode. In 11:2, he commends the Corinthians for following the traditions that he taught them, but in 11:17, he speaks of condemning them for their behaviour.

Peter: This is on the subject of the Lord’s Supper. It goes by different names in different church traditions, but here it’s the Lord’s Supper. For us Australians, supper usually means a cup of coffee just before bed. Is that the meaning of the Lord’s Supper?

Phillip: It could be called ‘The Lord’s Meal.’ It couldn’t be ‘The Lord’s Passover’, because that would imply that the Passover is an ongoing thing, when the Lord’s Passover only happened once. Perhaps it could be ‘The Lord’s Dinner’? That’s a better word, because ‘dinner’ can refer to lunch or the evening meal. It’s a word that refers generally to a full meal.

Peter: Yes, and that’s what seems to be occurring here, because some people are eating a full meal whilst others seem to have nothing to eat. So it seems to be more than simply receiving a tiny scrap of bread and a sip of wine.

Phillip: That’s clearly the case, but it’s the context of church. I don’t go to church to eat, as I’m generally eating at home. Church is not the place for meals, but the Lord’s Supper is the assembly of God’s people to eat. Sometimes we do eat at our church, but we do it in the hall afterwards, not in the church building.

Peter: This passage, however, is quite special as it is the one passage where the Lord’s Supper is described to us.

Phillip: Yes, but the supper being in the church raises questions about the nature of the church and of what we call sacraments. It’s all intertwined with the subject of food and the purpose of eating meals rather than just grazing.

Peter: You’re perfectly right; we need to recognise the importance of meals in human experience. We could just eat on our own. We could be built in such a way that we could put food into our stomachs, like a motorcar, but that’s not how it is. A meal is a gathering of people, and it’s based on the idea of forgiveness and fellowship, because you gather with people that you can at least get on with. Christmas dinner is a very interesting example of all this. A lot of the time, the mother wants the whole family to be there at Christmas, but then there are stresses and strains in the family which are sometimes at their worst when you are sitting at the table, not talking to each other. Meals have that sense of sharing and fellowship. By the way, your reference to the idea that you eat a meal at church once a quarter is contrary to Asian cultures, where they don’t just have a dry biscuit after church; they have a meal.

Phillip: I’ve always liked being invited to Chinese churches to preach.

Peter: It’s because it’s not just the food; it’s the fellowship and the humanity of the occasion. You can see the importance of food in the ministry of Jesus. As Luke 15 tells us, Jesus ate with tax collectors and sinners. For our modern culture, this is like eating with those who operate drug cartels. This was sending a message which his opponents, the Pharisees, understood only too well. How could he eat with tax collectors and sinners? Jesus immediately went on to talk about repentance and forgiveness, as symbolised by the meal. The Passover, too, is a remembrance of the escape from Egypt. That concept of remembrance through meals turns up in other areas as well: after the Battle of Waterloo, the Duke of Wellington had a meal for his generals every year to remember the battle. There are plenty more instances of people using a meal as a remembrance of something, hence the importance of memory. That’s the very word that we’ve seen Jesus using.

Phillip: But when you remember the battle at the meal table a year later, does that mean you bring the battle back into the event?

Peter: I don’t think so. I believe it would be about having gratitude that we’re still here to share it together.

Another use of the word ‘meal’ in the Bible, of course, is when we see the great banquet at the end. Eternal life is described in these terms. So there is something special about the consumption of food around the same table, for at its essence is reconciliation, friendship and love for each other.

Phillip: It’s also about the celebration of something, be it a wedding or Christmas.

One of the powerful things about this passage is that Paul says, “It is not the Lord’s Supper that you eat.” The Corinthians think they’ve come to eat the Lord’s Supper, but that’s not what they’re doing. What is it that he’s speaking about here? It’s not our controversies. We’ve got to be careful not to read our controversies into 1 Corinthians, but to read their controversy as it applies to us. In the 9th century, there were two men, Radbertus and Ratramnus, who had a debate about the presence of the Lord in the Lord’s Supper, over whether the Lord was present in the bread or in the hearts of the people eating the bread. That kicked off hundreds of years of controversy. Both of them could quote early church fathers to prove their point, because previous generations hadn’t debated this subject. They just knew the Lord was present, that this was the Lord’s Supper. But how the Lord was present, whether he was present in the bread or in the believer, had not been discussed until that point.

So there are now views like transubstantiation, where the bread transforms into the physical, literal body of Jesus. There’s the idea of consubstantiation, which the Lutherans came up with. In this view, the bread is the focus of the body of Jesus, but the bread itself is not changed. Jesus is in, with, and by the bread. But then other reformers like Calvin and Zwingli were much more concerned about the heart of the believer. Calvin said that the Spirit is the way in which Jesus is present in the Lord’s Supper, because the Spirit is in the heart of the believer. That reformed position is the position of our prayer book.

Peter: Indeed. The founding fathers had their differences; Calvin and Zwingli disagreed with each other, but nevertheless, we Anglicans belong to that Reformed tradition. It’s indicated in the wonderful rubric within the prayer book, which was aimed at Luther, I believe. It’s called the Black Rubric, and it talks about the body of Christ.

Phillip: Calling it ‘The Black Rubric’ is strange, because the rubric refers to the bits written in red explaining what you should be doing. So the idea of a black rubric is a contradiction of sorts. However, this rubric was added later, and it was put in black. The Black Rubric occurs at the end of the Lord’s Supper.

It is hereby declared, That thereby no adoration is intended, or ought to be done, either unto the Sacramental Bread or Wine there bodily received, or unto any Corporal Presence of Christ’s natural Flesh and Blood. For the Sacramental Bread and Wine remain still in their very natural substances, and therefore may not be adored; (for that were Idolatry, to be abhorred of all faithful Christians;) and the natural Body and Blood of our Saviour Christ are in Heaven, and not here; it being against the truth of Christ’s natural Body to be at one time in more places than one.

This is anti-Lutheran, for Luther had a ubiquitous understanding of the body of Christ. That is, he wasn’t just in heaven; he was everywhere, and so he could be in the bread and the wine. But it’s absolutely explicit here that the presence of the Lord in the Lord’s Supper is not in the bread or the wine, otherwise you would carry it around, and you would bow to it. You would adore it, which people do within certain traditions.

Peter: There was then the Council of Trent, quoted in the modern Roman Catholic Catechism as well

That by the consecration of the bread and wine, there takes place a change of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord; and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of his blood.

By the consecration the transubstantiation of the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ is brought about. Under the consecrated species of bread and wine Christ himself, living and glorious, is present in a true, real, and substantial manner: his Body and his Blood, with his soul and his divinity (cf. Council of Trent: DS 1640; 1651).1

The Holy Catholic Church fittingly and properly calls this change ‘transubstantiation’. The Eucharistic presence of Christ begins at the moment of the consecration and endures as long as the Eucharistic species exist. That’s quite different from our tradition.

Phillip: It’s very different at this point, but we haven’t said what it is yet. So let’s discuss the meaning of the Supper according to 1 Corinthians 11:26, the proclamation of the Lord’s death until he comes. What is it that we are doing at the Lord’s Supper? If God is not turning the bread and wine into the physical body and blood of Jesus, what is the purpose? What is it that they weren’t doing in Corinth that disqualified them?

Peter: I’ve always been struck by 11:26, “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” So the Lord’s Supper is a proclamation, an outward and visible sign of the gospel. It is a preaching of the heart of the gospel, which is the forgiveness of sins through the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. So to partake of his body and blood is not a matter of a physical partaking of the body and blood; rather, to eat by faith, you partake of the body and blood of Christ, as John 6 tells us. In any case, we are united with Christ by faith. Nonetheless, just as the preaching of the word is a special moment, we are reminded and called upon by the Lord’s Supper for faith. So it is like the preaching of the word. It has the same result, namely that you remember and that you receive, by faith, the body and blood of Christ symbolised by the bread and wine. I’ve never been able to see why people think it is the literal body and blood of Christ, given that when Christ said, “This is my body,” he clearly meant, “This represents my body.”

Phillip: He uses that kind of metaphoric language on other subjects. He says, “I am the good shepherd,” even though he was a carpenter. “I am the door,” he says, but he certainly wasn’t wooden. To say that you are something which you are manifestly not is to say, “This door represents me. I am functioning as the door.” Or, “I am functioning as the good shepherd.” So saying, “This is my body,” can hardly mean that he is taking part of his body off himself.

Peter: No, and if it is the preaching of the cross, proclaiming the death of Christ until he comes, then in its very heart is forgiveness. That is, this wonderful gift of forgiveness we have received from God in Christ. Then, as the Lord makes perfectly clear not least in the Lord’s Prayer, if you are forgiven, you must forgive. In other words, the whole business of being united with Christ by faith, symbolised in the bread and the wine, that whole business is intended to transform your life—and in particular, to make you a person who loves others, especially your brothers and sisters in the Lord. So the whole idea is that if it’s a proclamation of the death of Jesus, it must be a means of uniting with one another, as a meal should.

Phillip: We unite in the forgiveness that Jesus Christ has won for us. It’s not uniting with each other in the memory of winning the battle of Waterloo, or because we’ve all got the same grandparents. It’s uniting with each other because with this meal we are remembering and proclaiming the basis of our fellowship, being that we are washed clean by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Peter: It wasn’t intended to be an occasion where you could skip dinner at home to feed yourself, while other people would attend and have nothing. To do what they were doing was to despise the church of God.

Phillip: It was a lack of love. But it’s called a love feast, and rightly so, because you are demonstrating your love for one another, and the Christian love for one another stems from God’s love for us in the death of his Son. As Jesus says during the Last Supper, John 13:35, “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” So if you’re treating each other unlovingly—for instance, when one is eating and drinking whilst the other is thirsty and hungry—at the love feast of all places, it means that you are not celebrating the Lord’s Supper. That is reflected in our prayer book, which says that we need to have, within our congregational life, love for one another if we are to dare to come in the name of the Lord Jesus to his table.

Peter: This must be what Paul means when he says, “You don’t discern the body.”

It’s interesting to hear about the Council of Trent, particularly regarding the emphasis on the moment of consecration, because that’s when the bread and the wine become the body and blood of Christ in the Roman Catholic tradition. But in our prayer book, I think more correctly, the emphasis is on eating and drinking together. It’s about unity. Indeed, you’re not supposed to have the Lord’s Supper on your own. There ought to be at least 2 or 3 people present, according to the prayer book, unless a person is very sick, I believe.

Phillip: There’s a great warning in our prayer book services, which, I’m sorry to say, we rarely read, about being in love and fellowship with your neighbour. If you’re not in love and fellowship, do not think to eat and drink, for it is an expression of the forgiven fellowship with your neighbour.

Peter: We do need the ‘communion’ service, as it’s called because it is the Latin version of the word ‘fellowship’. It is a fellowship meal. We need it because it is about our union with Christ, but that union with Christ entails our union with others. That service in the Book of Common Prayer is a work of genius. It unfolds the gospel from sin to salvation, and it leads to this—then there’s this warning, based on 1 Corinthians 11, that we ought to be in fellowship with each other.

Phillip: We are talking about the 1662 prayer book, correct?

Peter: Yes, that’s the one I was brought up on.

Phillip: As opposed to modern prayer books of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Peter: They have their ups and downs, but that one is the one that we appeal to. I remember hearing a story once of two sisters who were out of sorts with each other for many years, but they went to the same church. Every Sunday they would sit in different parts of the church and receive the Lord’s Supper, but they never spoke to each other in or out of church, and they acted as people who hated each other.

Phillip: That’s not the Lord’s Supper. I’m sure they would have gone home thinking they had been to the Lord’s Supper, because physically, they were at a church conducting it, but spiritually they weren’t celebrating the Lord’s Supper at all.

1

Catechism of the Catholic Church (2nd ed.) (1997)

https://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/para/1413.htm

Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

---

Links & Recommendations

For more on this topic, check out this talk called The Meal That Unites.

---

Freely available, supported by generosity.

If you enjoy Two Ways News, why not lend us a hand? Consider joining our Supporters Club—friends who make it possible for us to keep producing this article/podcast.

To join the Supporters Club, follow the link below to the ‘subscribe’ page. You’ll see that there’s:

• a number of ‘paid options’. To join the Supporters Club take out one of the paid ‘subscription plans’ and know we are deeply grateful for your support!

• also the free option (on the far right hand side)

Sign up to support us

This episode of Two Ways News brings us to one of the most controversial passages of the Bible. Since the Sexual Revolution and feminist movement of the late 20th century, the roles of men and women have been fiercely debated in our society. Within the church, this topic has been contested with the main focus being on the various ministries of men and women.

So when we come to 1 Corinthians 11 and read of women praying and prophesying, our debaters are alerted to possible data for discussion. But when it turns to the head covering of women, the issues brought up are very complicated. I doubt that our discussion here will be the last word or even a significant turning point in the debate. But I hope that, irrespective of the debate, we may make 1 Corinthians 11 a little clearer.

By the way, I recently spoke on Prophecy Today at the Kings Birthday Conference. You can listen to the recordings of that conference at phillipjensen.com.

Yours,

Phillip

Phillip Jensen: Today and next week, we will be reading 2 extraordinary passages from 1 Corinthians 11 which have sparked considerable debate down the centuries.

Peter Jensen: 1 Corinthians 11:2–16

Now I commend you because you remember me in everything and maintain the traditions even as I delivered them to you. But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God. Every man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonours his head, but every wife who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonours her head, since it is the same as if her head were shaven. For if a wife will not cover her head, then she should cut her hair short. But since it is disgraceful for a wife to cut off her hair or shave her head, let her cover her head. For a man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man. For man was not made from woman, but woman from man. Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. That is why a wife ought to have a symbol of authority on her head, because of the angels. Nevertheless, in the Lord woman is not independent of man nor man of woman; for as woman was made from man, so man is now born of woman. And all things are from God. Judge for yourselves: is it proper for a wife to pray to God with her head uncovered? Does not nature itself teach you that if a man wears long hair it is a disgrace for him, but if a woman has long hair, it is her glory? For her hair is given to her for a covering. If anyone is inclined to be contentious, we have no such practice, nor do the churches of God.

Phillip: This raises incredible issues for us. What things stuck out to you?

Peter: I noticed that the ESV uses the words ‘wife’ and ‘husband’, which isn’t the way that other translations have used.

Phillip: But the original passage talks about ‘her man’. The word ‘husband’ here is the same as ‘man’, and the word ‘wife’ is the same as ‘woman’. But because it talks about ‘her man’, this passage describes a wife and a husband, so it’s not a wrong translation.

Peter: It’s certainly possible. But it’s rather strange in telling us how to style ourselves, at least regarding hair. There is not much in the New Testament about how to dress; in fact, nothing much is said about symbols, artwork, music, cooking, which turn up in other religions. But it’s also rather controversial in the statements it makes about the relationship of men and women. It seems rather restrictive on women.

Furthermore, the relationship of God and Christ and its impact on the doctrine of the Trinity is involved here. God is the head of Christ. What does that mean? It challenges the culture in which we now live, and is unpopular for doing so, but can we defend it? I’ve even heard that in some lectionaries—the Bible reading stipulations in churches—it is omitted lest it offend people. So a bit of the Bible is omitted from the reading of the Bible because it offends people. Is that fair?

Phillip: That’s a very stupid thing to do, because if you’re going to determine which parts of the Bible are going to be left out according to your culture and views, you shouldn’t bother reading the Bible. You may not like what the Bible says, but if you’re going to study it, then you must read what it says, for better or for worse. If you have confidence in God and his loving kindness and generosity to us, his view will turn out to be of greater kindness and blessing to you than your culture’s view. Cultures often find themselves wanting, so it’s silly, dreadful, and offensive to leave part of the Bible out because you don’t like what it says.

The translation does add words to make the passage clear. It’s an inevitability in translation that you must smooth across the words from one language to another. But you do have to therefore be careful, for instance, in figuring out whether the passage talks about men and women or husbands and wives. In this passage, it’s both at different times. It talks about the creation of the woman, mind you, but the woman who is created is Adam’s wife. But the approach these days won’t be to go through the passage verse-by-verse. If people want to see that, whether in a Bible study or through listening to a sermon, I’d recommend that you look up phillipjensen.com. As for the subject of prophecy, I spoke on this a few weeks ago at the King’s Birthday Convention, in a series of talks titled Prophecy Today. But for now, we will discuss some of the central issues which arise from this passage, trusting that what we say may be helpful to Christians struggling with the differences between culture and the Bible. First, there is the difference between men and women, especially as it’s played out in our activities of ministry.

Peter: Let’s unpack the passage by asking the key questions: ‘When?’ ‘Where?’ ‘What?’ ‘Why?’

Starting with the ‘When?’ question, the trigger for the passage is the practice of public prayer and prophecy. I see a distinction between the canonical prophets—Moses, Amos, Isaiah, Hosea and the rest—and what Paul is talking about here. The church is built, as Ephesians 2:20 says, “on the foundation of the apostles and prophets.” Here, I believe ‘prophets’ refers to the canonical ones whose words remain authoritative. But particularly since the day of Pentecost, we come across other prophets in the New Testament, both men and women. As Peter says in Acts 2:17, quoting one of the canonical prophets, “Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy.” In Acts 21, the 4 daughters of Philip are described as prophets. I see prophets as being particularly gifted to take the word of God and apply it to the moment in which we’re standing. But their words can be tested as we read and even set aside by those who hear them. It’s a particular gift of bringing the word of God home to the audience to whom you’re speaking. But how do you read it?

Phillip: We are told in 2 Peter 3:1–2

This is now the second letter that I am writing to you, beloved. In both of them I am stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder, that you should remember the predictions of the holy prophets and the commandment of the Lord and Saviour through your apostles.

So the apostles, in a sense, replaced the Old Testament prophets in God’s big, authoritative statement of his word. But there are prophets today. This brings up an interesting discussion, namely that of the distinction between prophesying and being a prophet. All can prophesy, but not all are prophets. It’s like evangelism: all can evangelise, but we’re not all called evangelists. The evangelist has a particular gift in doing that which any Christian can do. Prophets are like that, too. There are certain people, like the 4 daughters of Philip, who are identified as prophets and who have this particular gift to prophesy, but it’s not as if they have an exclusive right to prophesy. In fact, Acts 2 says that one of the signs of the new age is that we’ll all prophesy.

But I think the emphasis of prophecy is placed on speaking God’s word, which is the gospel. Revelation 19:10 says, “The spirit of prophecy is the testimony of Jesus.” While that may have applications for the particular situation at the time, I don’t think the prophet is necessarily the person who can apply the word of God to the situation; it is the one who brings it to the situation. So it is the word of God that the prophet will bring, not greatly different to the evangelist or the apostle, except it’s not necessarily going to be written down. I think a prophet can repeat what prophets before have said. It’s not that it has to be unique in the moment. There is a sense in which all that the prophets need to say have already been found in Jesus.

Peter: That leads to the ‘Where?’ question. I’ve always taken this passage to be talking about church in particular, but it is applicable to both church and private life.

Phillip: No, I’m not as persuaded of that. I think there are certain things you do in life as a Christian, like preaching and prayer. It’s like worship: you worship God everywhere, therefore you worship God in church. You breathe everywhere, therefore you breathe in church. But is it specific only to church? I don’t think so. For instance, when Agabus prophesies in Acts 21, he’s not in church, yet no one doubts that it’s a prophecy. Prophecy is not limited to church. I don’t think that in this chapter there is any indication that he’s speaking about church, especially because, as we’ll see in next week’s passage he says, in 11:17

But in the following instructions I do not commend you, because when you come together it is not for the better but for the worse. For, in the first place, when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you.

So in the flow of 1 Corinthians, the discussion of the church coming together occurs at 11:17, not at 11:2.

Peter: I’ve always taken it that 11:2 onwards rings the bell for a discussion that will go on until the end of chapter 14. That’s how I’ve read it. But you’re raising questions about that, and I suspect we will be talking about those questions now for the next few weeks.

Phillip: Yes, and the majority view of people is that 11:2 onwards is about church, and I’ve taken it that way myself for many years. But the more I’ve discussed it with some people lately, the more I see that notion as being an assumption, which then colours the way in which we read the passage. It then gives us problems in other passages, such as chapter 14, although I don’t want to enter into chapter 14 until we get there. Nor do I want to change my view on chapter 11 just to solve my problems in chapter 14. Calvin says that this passage isn’t about church, but then Calvin is trying to solve the problem of chapter 14 in saying that. That is to say, this view is not unique to myself; it’s a minority view.

Peter: It’s a bit rich to quote Calvin at us, but he is still a great one.

Phillip: He did get things wrong sometimes.

Peter: No doubt. So you’re not saying, “This does not apply in church.” You’re saying, “Not definitively in church.”

Phillip: Yes. The passage is not about church; it’s about prophesying and praying as men and women, which we can do inside and outside of church.

Peter: So now we come to the “What?” question. This is where the passage takes an odd turn. It’s clearly envisaging that both appropriately gifted men and women can pray and prophesy in public. I think you’re right in saying that all Christians can pray and prophesy, but there are some who are gifted. But what has this to do with what you wear on your head, and why does Paul make a fuss about differentiating the headgear of men and women? There are differences of opinion about this, and different translations of this passage. There’s the idea that women must wear a veil in church, although over the years, the idea has been that women should wear hats and men should not wear hats in church. But he’s not talking about all men and women; he’s talking about prophecy. Nor is he talking about church buildings.

Phillip: But it has become that way. However, lately we’re used to seeing women not wearing hats or veils in church. Indeed, the other day I was in church, and there was a man who didn’t take his hat off throughout the whole service. It’s funny that I reacted by thinking, “You should take your hat off.” I thought he must be a visitor who hasn’t yet worked it out.

Peter: But that’s old-fashioned, and a misunderstanding of this passage. Is Paul talking about women wearing a veil? Personally, I think it’s more likely that he is referring not to a veil or a hat, but to hairstyle: whether your hair is let down or worn up. He’s saying that when women pray and prophesy (I would say in church particularly, but that’s a matter for debate), they should wear their hair up. You’re not saying, of course, that women should wear a hat to church or in church, but that’s an issue.

Furthermore, we’ve already touched on this, but the Greek words for ‘man’ and ‘woman’ are the same as for ‘husband’ and ‘wife’. Is Paul speaking of married people and their relationship with each other, with the married woman prophet wearing a hair in a certain way and the married man not? There’s also the reference he makes in 11:10, “because of the angels,” which has provoked a great deal of thought over the years. How do angels fit into all this? The key to all of this may be to examine the question, “Why?”

Phillip: I think your point about hair is right. 11:15 says that if a woman has long hair, it is her glory, “for her hair is given to her for a covering.” In 1 Timothy 2, when Paul talks about women learning to dress themselves appropriately, hair and braiding is one of the factors of modesty and immodesty. So there is an attitude about hair, but we have to be careful not to think of it as just being limited to the culture of its day. For in 11:2, he talks about commending them because they “remember me in everything and maintain the traditions even as I delivered them to you.” And 11:16, “If anyone is inclined to be contentious, we have no such practice, nor do the churches of God.” There is, from Paul’s point of view, an apostolic tradition for the churches of God that we must abide by.

There is also a universal implication which comes out of the concept of headship: the headship of the Father over the Son, the Son over the husband, and the husband over the wife. In our culture of egalitarian sameness, we don’t like the concept of one person being appointed as head over another. We don’t even like it within the Trinity. In our society built on meritocracy, we think people deserve to do what they do because they merit it in some way by their abilities, their education or the like. We certainly have, as a fundamental moral argument today, the subject of dominance and oppression. The essence of being the superior victim is to be more oppressed by anybody else, and therefore call upon greater argument on your behalf than any others. So there are a lot of objections to the very concept of headship, but this passage is quite clearly teaching it.

Furthermore, 11:7–12 talk about the activity of creation, mentioning the image of God and the glory of man. The greatest thing a man has is his wife, and while all humanity is in the image of God, the image of God and the glory of man is being spoken of here as a universal concept. It’s not just the culture of 1st century Corinthian, Roman or Jewish culture at this point. He even goes on in 11:6 to talk about “the nature of things”. In 11:13–15, he appeals to the physiology of humans, that a secondary sexual difference between men and women is hair. By and large, women do not grow bald; by and large, men do. Men grow hair at the bottom of their heads; women grow hair out of the top of their heads. So there is a visible difference between us that is part of our very creation, and is her glory as she is the glory of the man.

As for the mention of the angels, it could refer to the angels in Genesis 6 desiring the daughters of men, but I think not. It’s to do with the order of creation, for the angels are disturbed by the rebellious attitude of rejecting the order of creation. But I don’t think I can prove that point. Nevertheless, you can’t base the idea of unisex in the New Testament with a passage like this. The idea that men and women are the same and interchangeable is an impossibility from this passage. Rather, there is an interdependence between men and women. As brought out beautifully in 11:12

As woman was made from man, so man is now born of woman. And all things are from God.

So when we pray and prophesy, while we’re doing this wonderfully spiritual activity, we cannot do it as persons; we do it as men and as women. When we prophesy, we do it before God in the order that God has created as men and women. It will reflect the nature of God and his Son, the nature of the husband and wife, and creation. So we mustn’t pray or prophesy in rebellion against God or his created order.

Peter: I’m presuming the fundamental issue here is to sustain the difference and the interdependence between the sexes. Do you mean that men and women have to be very careful about how they do their hair when they come to church?

Phillip: Yes, I’m saying that it should be immediately obvious from your hair whether you are a man or a woman. Any attempt to disguise our sex by confusing our hairstyles is an error, as is any attempt to minister on the basis of unisex, that there is no difference between men and women.

Peter: That goes to the motive for doing these things. Back then, the issue may have been about whether hair is worn up and down, but your point is, what is the motive? The motive is that it remains clear that the men are men and the women are women.

Phillip: Yes, and that they can be seen to be doing it like that.

Peter: There are cultural elements here about the way hair was worn when Paul was writing this which come into account. But there’s the more fundamental issue of the difference between men and women which must be evident.

Phillip: Yes. While there may have been 1st century cultural fashions for hair, there are still 21st century differences between men and women’s hairstyles.

Peter: It’s the fundamental issue of the difference and the interdependence of men and women. They are not independent species. I remember a lady telling me once about the doctorate she had written about some people in the Amazon who believed that men and women were different species. It’s surprising, but why do we think otherwise? That goes back to Genesis 1–3, that we are not 2 independent species, nor are we identical humans. We recognise the wonderful differences between the sexes, each with their own contribution to all sorts of things. So humanity depends upon the reality of this relationship of men and women, each one honouring their head and symbolising that honour appropriately, whatever that means, by appearing to be what God has made us to be, both men and women.

It’s hugely important to note that by headship, which does involve the idea of authority, it doesn’t imply that we are not equal in being. This is very important when it comes to the Trinity: that God the Father and God the Son are equal and of the same essence. But there is an order in the relationship, and that order does not disturb the equality. So if there is a headship in marriage, which I believe there is, it doesn’t mean that women are less precious or less important than men. This is very important in everyday life. In all parts of our society, we have a structure of authority for those who have to make the decisions and communicate them, and those who have to abide by the decisions. It is very important that we don’t regard the ones in authority as somehow more significant than those who keep the rules.

Phillip: It is important too that those in authority do not think that those over whom they have authority are less than them.

Peter: I use the illustration, which is far removed from this topic, of prisons. The prisoners are very dependent upon the prison guards. If the prison guards say, “This is the scum of the earth here, and they are obviously less than us, so we can order them around,” they’ll do an awful job. We need the prison guards to acknowledge that the people in the prison are human beings, as they are made in the image of God, as of equal importance. Yes, you hope they will obey your authority, but nonetheless, it doesn’t make them of less importance. On the contrary, in many ways, the prison guards are there to serve the prisoners.

Phillip: Men and women are equally human. That’s a critical thing to be asserting and reasserting. But being equally human does not mean you are the same. It doesn’t mean that you have equal opportunities to do certain things. I am equally human with Olympic runners, but I’m not quite the same as them, and I don’t have the same opportunities they do to run for Australia. You can’t say that just because we’re equally human, we can all do the same things, or that we’re all the same. We’re just equally human. Jesus and his Father are equally divine.

Peter: The take-home from this passage in particular in the cultural context in which we are living is this: we must not confuse the sexes, in the exercise of this ministry of prophecy or elsewhere, because to do so is to confuse and destroy our humanity.

Phillip: Yes, and this reminds me of 1 Timothy 5:1–2

Do not rebuke an older man but encourage him as you would a father, younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, younger women as sisters, in all purity.

Here, he says that in Christian ministry, you treat people older than you as being older than you, and people younger than you as equals with you in age. You treat older women differently to the way you treat younger women, and you have to emphasise “in all purity” with the younger women in a way that you don’t when talking about younger men. There are differences between people that must be reflected in the way in which you minister the gospel, both from the point of view of yourself and of whom you are serving.

Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Links & Recommendations

For more on this topic, check out this talk on 1 Corinthians 11 entitled Man and Woman in Christ. Also remember to listen or watch the talks from the King’s Birthday Conference 2026 on Prophecy Today.

Freely available, supported by generosity.

If you enjoy Two Ways News, why not lend us a hand? Consider joining our Supporters Club—friends who make it possible for us to keep producing this article/podcast.

To join the Supporters Club, follow the link below to the ‘subscribe’ page. You’ll see that there’s:

• a number of ‘paid options’. To join the Supporters Club take out one of the paid ‘subscription plans’ and know we are deeply grateful for your support!

• also the free option (on the far right hand side)

Sign up to support us

We come at last to what appears to be the end of the discussion, which started in chapter 8 of 1 Corinthians on food offered to idols. Here, with the background of thinking about the existence of idols in chapter 8, the priority of other people’s salvation in chapter 9, and then the prophetic warning against all idolatry in the first half of chapter 10, we finally reach the concluding discussion on food offered to idols. Whether in the idol temple at the time of offering, buying meat already so offered, or eating the meat in somebody’s home, the question of our participation is critical.

I hope you profit from this discussion on Christian freedom and responsibility.

Yours,

Phillip

Phillip Jensen: Today, we will be discussing 1 Corinthians 10, which is essentially the climax of this great passage which leads us through to chapter 11. The broad context of this passage is still that of food offered to idols, be it in the temple, the marketplace, or at a private dinner. What should you do as a Christian with food that has been offered to idols? This was a pressing problem for the Corinthians, but the central point that Paul makes is about caring for others, even to your own detriment, especially for their salvation. Integral to his response is the fact that there is only one true God and that he has made all things. From that great theological viewpoint, all manner of ideas flow. And so, for example, the ascetic idea of worshipping by fasting, or through abstaining from sex within marriage in order to get closer to God, is inconsistent with the God of the Bible—just as worshipping other gods is inconsistent with the God of the Bible.

1 Timothy 4:3–5 tells us that it’s the doctrine of demons

Who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer.

Yet in the worship of God, we keep seeing people deny this fundamental great truth in different ways.

Peter Jensen: 1 Corinthians 10:14–22

Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry. I speak as to sensible people; judge for yourselves what I say. The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread. Consider the people of Israel: are not those who eat the sacrifices participants in the altar? What do I imply then? That food offered to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything? No, I imply that what pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be participants with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons. Shall we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than he?

The theme of this entire passage is laid out in 10:14, “Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry.” We have just been reminded of how idolatry led to the downfall of Israel. The Israelites were all rescued from Egypt, yet only 2 of them made it to the Promised Land. The rest fell, whether by worshipping false gods, or by using idols of the true God, not least the use and abuse of food.

Phillip: What we have here is interesting because, having given us that terrible Old Testament warning that we saw last week, in this passage he’s not talking about the Old Testament; he addresses us as ‘sensible people’. It may be better to translate it to ‘people of wisdom’ or ‘wise people’. Nevertheless, they’re called upon to judge for themselves. The key words here are ‘participate’, and ‘partake’, which both appear frequently in the passage. The Ancient Greek word for ‘participation’ is ‘koinonia’, which also means ‘fellowship’. So what he says here is that we are participating in this meal together, but the meal of which he speaks is symbolic. We have many symbolic meals on occasions such as weddings, Christmases, and birthdays. The significance of the meal is that you eat it together. Teenage boys don’t necessarily eat meals; they stand in front of the refrigerator and graze. But when you eat a meal, you fellowship in that meal together. That’s why it’s so rude to read a newspaper, or today, to look at your phone during a meal.

The art of the fellowship is so important. We wait for each other to sit at the table so that we all start together, and we say grace to thank God, both for the food and for the reason that we are sitting at the meal table together. Our fellowship is in the body and blood of Christ. Like Israel’s fellowship in the temple sacrifice, or like the pagan’s fellowship in the idol sacrifice, the meal that the Corinthians are eating has to do with the God that they’re worshipping, or the great work that God has done for us in the forgiveness of our sins. Israel experienced this forgiveness in the temple sacrifice, but we know it in the body and blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Peter: Does that mean that the body and blood of Christ have to be present with us in order for us to truly partake?

Phillip: No, the focus is on the participation, not on the substance. The purpose of the meal is not the food, but the fellowship we have in the meal. I can graze in front of the refrigerator any time, but when I’m having a meal, I’m fellowshiping with the participants. To focus, especially as people have done in the Lord’s Supper, upon the bread and the wine, is to miss the whole point of our fellowshiping together in the death and resurrection of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. The key is our fellowship, not the bread and the wine. As we go into 1 Corinthians 11 next week, we will see that the failure in the Lord’s Supper that occurs is due to the lack of love between the participants. That is the failure to recognise the body of Christ, namely the church. But more on that next week.

Peter: It is also the failure to recognise the fellowship with him and thus the fellowship with the others who gather. So it’s not that idols are no longer important because they represent gods that don’t actually exist. In fact, idol worship, which is intended to be the worship of a particular god, is used by the demonic. It is a pathway into the power of evil. So there is an incompatibility between eating at the Lord’s table and at the table of demons. It’s interesting that God not only forbids false gods and idols, but also the making of representations of him, which is what Israel attempted to do with the golden calf. Do you have any thoughts on the question of that which allegedly represents God in some way, in some concrete fashion?

Phillip: The golden calf is a classic example, but all portrayals, all visual portraits of God, are always a misrepresentation of God. A statue misrepresents God because the statue is stationary. The statue is dumb, dead, and has no power, but God fundamentally is alive. He speaks, he hears, he moves, and he is in control. The great truths of God are always misrepresented by statues. This is why Moses was so adamant that on Mount Sinai, they heard the voice of God, but they didn’t see any form.

The other point about these demons is important, because as we know, the devil is a liar, and the demons are his messengers. So the devil lies about the gods of this world, and he teaches people false gods and false worship. People think they’re doing what is right by God, when in fact the devil has distorted the truth of the true and living God in these false gods. At best you can think that these false gods are nothing, but in fact, even this is not right, for it is devil worship. You don’t recognise him because he doesn’t come with a horn and pitchfork and cape, but he comes in the forms of the gods of this world that idolaters are worshipping.

Peter: Last week, we were discussing the way in which God actually does reveal himself, which is through word rather than through immovable statues. So you don’t see God, but it’s interesting that the incarnation of God has come among us. How do we think of that?

Phillip: We are created as the idols. We are the image of God, because the Lord Jesus Christ is, Colossians 1:15, “the image of the invisible God.” So for God to come in an image, he comes as human in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is alive, he is powerful, he speaks. He does the things that God does. He is like God, but he is more than human, for in the words he speaks is life itself. He exercises power in raising the dead. Jesus is indeed the image of the invisible God.

Peter: And the Word of God.

Phillip: John 1:1, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” And then, John 1:14, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us,” in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Peter: Moving on to 1 Corinthians 10:22–11:1

Shall we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than he?

“All things are lawful,” but not all things are helpful. “All things are lawful,” but not all things build up. Let no one seek his own good, but the good of his neighbor. Eat whatever is sold in the meat market without raising any question on the ground of conscience. For “the earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof.” If one of the unbelievers invites you to dinner and you are disposed to go, eat whatever is set before you without raising any question on the ground of conscience. But if someone says to you, “This has been offered in sacrifice,” then do not eat it, for the sake of the one who informed you, and for the sake of conscience—I do not mean your conscience, but his. For why should my liberty be determined by someone else’s conscience? If I partake with thankfulness, why am I denounced because of that for which I give thanks?

So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. Give no offense to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God, just as I try to please everyone in everything I do, not seeking my own advantage, but that of many, that they may be saved.

Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.

“All things are lawful,” is a quote. That is, there is one God, the creator of all things, and food and sex are his gifts to be received with thanksgiving and joy. But there is a key to understanding the law, and that law is the law of love. A thing may be permissible in letter, but not by spirit, not by love. So you may be permitted to do something by the law, but you may still not do it because of love for another person who would be affected by it, especially your fellow believers with whom you are in fellowship. So all meat is meat, owned by the one God of all. 10:25–26, “The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof.” But care has to be exercised for the other person’s sensitive conscience, lest your behaviour leads them away from faith in God. It is because of their misunderstanding, but that needs to be dealt with in its own good time.

So we come to, in verse 28, the word ‘determined’ in the ESV, though the word really is ‘judge’. He seems to have been denounced, perhaps, seen in this “all things are lawful” phrase, because of his freedom in eating. But he’s not giving himself complete freedom. What is that about?

Phillip: He speaks about that “all things are lawful” point back in chapter 6. It seems that this is a catch cry of the Corinthians that picks up Paul’s freedom from the law that comes through justification. But it’s not lawlessness; as you say, it’s the love that goes beyond what the law requires. I am free to do something, but what I do is not necessarily helpful to the other person, and my love for the other person, especially for the sake of their salvation, means that I should restrict my freedom. The meat on the table is not what the meal is about; it is about the fellowship at the table. If my actions in eating the meat are going to cause another person’s downfall, then my action is a wrong action. So Paul’s freedom lies in the restriction that love places upon him.

Peter: That’s exactly what Christian freedom is, and the joy of Christian freedom in so many ways. It’s not an unimportant point in the world in which we live, which is so besotted with freedom. This is so ironic, because governments and institutions are so busy passing laws which take away our freedoms, forgetting that we are sinful people. Some laws are important for that reason, but true freedom has to be exercised with love for the other. You can’t pass a law which says you must love your neighbour. That’s got to come from your relationship with God. So there’s clearly a sort of an evangelistic imperative in Paul’s actions here. What would you say to that?

Phillip: The salvation of others is what governs this passage. At the end of chapter 9, we see the way he subjects himself for the salvation of others. The way that he’ll only eat vegetables, at the end of chapter 8, for the sake of the salvation of his brother. So the Corinthians, like so many people, are wound up about the meat, when in actual fact they should be concerned about the brother. One time, we had the Lord’s Supper in our church, and a man came to me afterwards and complained bitterly because we used bread with yeast in it. He said that we should not be doing that, because that’s not the Lord’s Supper. As I found out, the man, who was trying to join our church, was an adulterer who had just left his wife for another woman. How can you be worried about yeast in the bread, when you’re not living in the Word of God?

But this last paragraph is just so important, because it’s the summation of these three chapters. But it’s more than that, for it captures Paul’s way of life, of giving no offence to anybody, Jew or Greek. He’s a ‘man-pleaser’, not in the way in which other man-pleasers please men, for their own benefit, but for the other person’s benefit. The evangelistic lifestyle is of laying down your life for the salvation of other people, and in that, you are just like Christ. And in that, he says, this is how we should all live: “Be imitators of me.” In this way we live for the salvation of other people.

Peter: That’s confronting. But we live in a world in which it is so easy to forget the need for the salvation of others, and so we simply don’t pray for and care for others. We don’t think of ways in which to help others to see the gospel. I am speaking of myself here. But what a challenge we have. It’s not just a challenge of following Paul, but a challenge of imitating Christ.

Phillip: Therefore it’s fundamental to being Christian. If I’m not concerned for the lost, then I most likely am one of the lost. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. How can I be like Christ and be unconcerned for the lost? It doesn’t make sense.

Peter: To conclude, give us a one-sentence, 10-word answer to the question of how this applies to us in modern Australia.

Phillip: You can’t be a gospel person without gospelling to others.

Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Links & Recommendations

For more on this topic, check out this talk called The Great Apostle.

Freely available, supported by generosity.

If you enjoy Two Ways News, why not lend us a hand? Consider joining our Supporters Club—friends who make it possible for us to keep producing this article/podcast.

To join the Supporters Club, follow the link below to the ‘subscribe’ page. You’ll see that there’s:

• a number of ‘paid options’. To join the Supporters Club take out one of the paid ‘subscription plans’ and know we are deeply grateful for your support!

• also the free option (on the far right hand side)

Sign up to support us

Idolatry is as ancient and universal as slavery. Paul moves in his discussion of food offered to idols (chapter 8) to his enslaving himself for others’ salvation (chapter 9) to now address idolatry itself (chapter 10). Here we have the clear command, “flee from idolatry”, with the terrifying examples of God’s anger poured out on Israel whenever they engaged in idolatry.

This passage not only gives us clear Bible teachings on the sin of idolatry, but in the process it raises the issue of the Old Testament’s importance for Christians.

Two Ways News is provided free of charge by other people’s generosity. If you are not yet one of those kindly providing Two Ways News for others, can I encourage you to do so? You can find out more here.

Yours,

Phillip

Phillip Jensen: In this episode, we are heading to the conclusion of 1 Corinthians 8–10 which talks about the subject of idolatry. The discussion starts off in chapter 8 with the question of whether Christians may eat or may not eat the food that is offered to idols. But that simple question has 3 different contexts:

1. Going into the idol temple and eating in the feasts.

2. Buying food that had been offered to the idols but is now sold at the butchers’ shop.

3. Attending a private dinner and eating meat which has been offered to idols.

So there are different contexts in which food offered to idols would present a problem for the Christians. Where are we up to so far in Paul’s answers to this question?

Peter Jensen: Before I answer that, I will read from 1 Corinthians 10:1–13

For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptised into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ. Nevertheless, with most of them God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness.

Now these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil 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 rose up to play.” We must not indulge in sexual immorality as some of them did, and twenty-three thousand fell in a single day. We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did and were destroyed by serpents, nor grumble, as some of them did and were destroyed by the Destroyer. Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come. Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall. No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.

In 1 Corinthians 8, Paul says that idols are simply manufactured by human hands, and there is only one true God, the creator of all material things. So food offered to idols is just food and may be eaten. But the abiding theme is that love bids us to take care of our fellow believer who may have a weak conscience about this matter, therefore we may perhaps abstain from such food for that person.

In 1 Corinthians 9, Paul becomes rather autobiographical, saying that his love for others drives him beyond mere law-keeping or the exercise of his own authority. For example, he was entitled to receiving payment for his preaching, but he waived it. Thus he goes to great lengths to save others. In this, he is adopting the attitude of Christ who laid down his life to bring salvation.

It sounds as though idolatry is nothing because the idols themselves are nothing. The one true God rules over all, and he has created all things. So as far as we’re concerned, we are asked to embrace the fundamentals of there being one God and being driven by love for others. We continue to apply this to our situation 2000 years later. But we find that strangely, idols still matter because, as he says, we may be tempted into idolatry. As he says in 10:12, “Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall.”

This is a word addressed to our own hearts, even though we may have given physical idols up many years ago. Is idolatry a modern problem?

Phillip: Of course. The world is covered with idols, and filled with people worshipping what the statues represent or misrepresent. Around our part of Sydney, seeing statues of Buddha and Hindu idols in people’s gardens is common. The eating houses in the suburb I live in frequently display idols. But idolatry is even bigger than that, and more dangerous. Paul said that the idols don’t matter, that the food offered to idols is just food. Yet suddenly in chapter 10, there’s this seeming twist. 1 Corinthians 10:6–7

Now these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil 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 rose up to play.”

There is an evil in idolatry that we need to avoid. So, having laid the ground that there’s only one God and all the food is his, now it seems that Paul is going back on that. He seems to be saying that idolatry does matter. This is a very important passage, because it helps us to understand the Old Testament whilst getting to the heart of what is wrong with idolatry.

First, we notice the way this passage teaches us about the Bible as a whole. It uses what we call ‘typology’, for Paul picks up events in the Old Testament and shows us their application to the New Testament. There are types in the Old Testament—priests, temples, sacrifices—which are necessary for us to understand the New Testament. Jesus comes as the priest, as the mediator, as the sacrifice, and as the king; all of these are applications of Old Testament examples which help us to understand what Jesus came to do. Typology is there in the scriptures, but it can be very dangerous, because imagination can run riot. We may end up saying things such as, “Moses had seventy elders, therefore our church should have seventy elders; Moses killed an Egyptian, therefore our leaders must be men of action; Moses spent forty years preparing himself to be a shepherd, therefore we should have forty years in our theological college.”

You can’t just jump from these events into the New Testament, but the New Testament often quarries the events of the Old Testament to explain what’s happening now. It’s more than simple illustrations, because the events of the Old Testament happened in order to explain and prepare the way for the New Testament. So as 10:6 says, “Now these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did.” The reason why these things happened, and the reason they’re written in the scriptures, is not for the Old Testament people, but for the Christians. That is, the Old Testament is a Christian book.

10:11 says, “They were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come.” This is extraordinary. In academic circles these days, people often refer to the Old Testament as the ‘Hebrew Scriptures’, and the New Testament as the ‘Christian Scriptures’. But that is an anti-Christian view, because the Christian view is that the Old Testament is also the Christian Scriptures. It was written not for the Jews, but for the Christians. So as we read of the spiritual wilderness events, we’re supposed to understand that it relates to our events as Christians.

The Israelites were rescued out of Egypt by the great Passover sacrificial lamb, just as we become Christians by Christ, our Passover lamb who has been sacrificed. The Israelites continued in this long walk to the Promised Land as we continue in this long walk to the promised land of God’s kingdom. On their way, having been baptised into Moses, having eaten spiritual food, (manna), having drunk from the rock, Christ was there the whole time. Christ had not been incarnated as man at that stage, but Christ is eternal, and he was nourishing them in the wilderness. So the Israelites were receiving spiritual food and spiritual drink. I don’t think it refers to the Lord’s Supper at this point, especially as it’s the rock that we’re talking of.

But just as the events of the Old Testament are picked up in the prophets and in the Psalms, Paul does the same, and highlights the eternal significance of these events for Christians in 10:1–4. He reminds them that having been rescued out of Egypt, they had been rescued out of sin, yet they fell in the wilderness because God was not pleased with them.

Peter: These are odd phrases, ‘spiritual drink’, ‘spiritual rock’ and so forth. The idea turns up also in 1 Corinthians 15, where Paul says that you have a natural body and a spiritual body. But does that mean we’re able to poke holes in our resurrection body? What’s the impact of it?

Phillip: It’s there in 1 Corinthians 12:1, where it says Now concerning the spirituals… He’s referring to the supernatural. He’s not talking about the spirit of inanimate things like manna or water, for there is only one, who is Christ. What he’s saying is that you can see physical things without seeing that there is a spiritual activity that lies behind it; that there is a supernaturalism about what is taking place here. That supernaturalism broke through clearly in the provision of manna and the provision of the water out of a rock. You couldn’t help but see it was supernatural.

Peter: The word ‘spiritual’ to me sounds like something with no body, or no material element to it. But what you’re saying is that the spiritual shows itself, in this case, as manna. It’s important to clarify this, otherwise we may spiritualise things like the spiritual body and the resurrection, failing to realise that the resurrection is also physical.

Phillip: 1 Peter 3:18 uses that terminology, but it refers to the supernatural. The word ‘spiritual’ means ‘the other world’; in other words, the supernatural world. Because 1 Peter 3:18 says that Jesus was “put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit,” even though we know that Jesus was raised physically. The New Testament is so emphatic that his resurrection was a physical one, so what is Peter talking about there? He’s talking about the fact that Jesus was put to death in this world and raised in the next world.

Peter: Indeed. Can you explain what idolatry is? Is it something that I should worry about?

Phillip: Yes, especially when you use the word ‘I’, because it’s the activity of the eye. When Paul recounts the early chapters of Deuteronomy, he tells them that when the Israelites went to Mount Sinai, they heard the voice of God but didn’t see anything. There’s this emphatic point that he’s driving home, which is so true of the scriptures: God is not a matter of vision, but a matter of hearing. You come into relationship with God through his Word—through hearing, believing, and acting upon his Word—not by visualising him. One key element of idolatry is that it’s a visual misrepresentation of God.

Peter: Can a 21st century atheist be an idolater?

Phillip: Of course, but that’s for another reason, because the atheist lives as if there is no supernatural. So he turns the things of this world into his gods. He lives for his pleasures. He thinks that his possessions, the things of this world, are the things that matter. Greed is idolatry, and greed is an inevitability. If you’re a philosophical materialist, you’ll become an economic materialist. The two flow together, so if there’s nothing other than this world, then you’ll live to gain as much of this world as you can.

Peter: The other thing, just before we pass on from what you were saying, is the phrase, “on whom the end of the ages has come.” As a ‘doctrine person’, I grasp that phrase particularly, because it connects with the reality of eschatology. That is, the idea of the end of everything, which breaks into present history in the person of Jesus in his resurrection from the dead. Because of this, that which was to come has now come, but not completely; he will come again. So we are in the last age, with only one great thing left: the return of Christ.

Phillip: It’s why Muhammad’s not right, and why Joseph Smith’s not right, because they both claimed that God had yet one more age to come with another prophet. They say that what Jesus did was great, and turned people’s hearts, but that’s not the end of the ages; there’s the Islamic age, or the last age brought about in 19th century America. Both Muslims and Mormons deny the finality of Jesus’ death and resurrection.

Peter: Yes, and this is so significant for all of us here as we wait and long for his return. But we are between the ages. We have received many of the blessings now, but there’ll be even greater blessings ahead.

Phillip: The contrast is spoken of in Hebrews 1. In various ways, God spoke by the prophets of old, but in these last days he has spoken by his Son, who is more than a prophet.

Peter: So the idea of these things being written for us shows that idolatry is an evil which remains a temptation for us all. As he says in 1 Corinthians 10:11–13

Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come. Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall. No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.

‘Temptation’ here can mean the desire to do the wrong thing, but it also can mean the testing that comes upon us. The two things overlap. Nevertheless, “He will also provide the way of escape that you may be able to endure it.” Here are these extraordinary people, set free, ransomed, brought out from Egypt and on the way to the Promised Land. If we’re thinking of the typology of what happened, it was in many ways a disaster. Moses was in the mountains receiving revelation from God, and the Israelites created a golden calf to worship—which is a misrepresentation of the true God. In other words, they thought they were worshipping the God who released them from Egypt. They didn’t think they were inventing a new God, which shows us that idolatry can also refer to the wrong worship of the true God. But it is something that we are prone to doing, for we too are sinners, and we sometimes worship the God we want, rather than the God who is real.

Later on in the wilderness, referred to in Numbers 25, there was widespread adultery with the people of Moab; again, this is true worship of a false God. In Numbers 21, there was further testing as they weren’t trusting God. In Numbers 16, they were grumbling and rebelling against the true God who had taken them out of Egypt. They also grumbled against the leadership of Moses, in whom they were baptised in the sense that they accepted his leadership. So 10:12 says, “Let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall,” as did the people of Israel in the wilderness.

Phillip: They fell because of their evil. Some of these things are caught up in literal idolatry, like the adultery with the people of Moab, where idolatry is related to sexual adultery because Canaanite worship was highly sexualised. They worshipped fertility gods by participating in fertility activities; that’s why it is a true worship of false gods. But other things, like not trusting Yahweh, or grumbling and rebelling against the people that God has appointed, are desiring evil, but they are not idolatry itself.

Peter: No. But as Jeremiah 17:9 reminds us, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?”

Phillip: These are examples for us of desiring evil, one aspect of which is idolatry; but your point is, given that we are sinful people, we mustn’t think we stand. Because just as they fell, we can fall. But that raises certain problems about the preservation of the saints. “None shall pluck them from my hand,” says Jesus. There is also the question of the genuineness of the warning. The people of Israel could fall, but can the regenerated, reborn Christian fall away? There’s Paul’s example in 9:27, “I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.” Paul is saying that it could happen. You mustn’t think you can stand. I remember preaching on this passage once, and afterwards, a man came to me very upset. He said, “Once saved, always saved.” That was what he’d been taught.

Peter: It’s an unhelpful aphorism.

Phillip: It’s terribly unhelpful, because with that logic, there’s no reason to do anything more as a Christian. You could say, “I’ve been saved now that I’ve signed a decision card at a crusade somewhere. Once saved, always saved. I need never bother with God again.” It’s a terrible aphorism, trying to capture the importance of the preservation of the saints. It seems more like a mathematical equation than a personal relationship.

Peter: If this seems strange or contradictory, just think of repentance. Jesus calls us to repent and believe in the gospel. These are things that you are supposed to do. Then when you’ve done it, you realise that you couldn’t have done it; it’s a gift of God.

Phillip: Yes, but it also means I’ve got to do it again and again. In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus tells us to take up the cross; in Luke’s Gospel, he tells us to take up the cross daily. If you take up the cross, you’ll continue to do so.

Every now and then, my wife asks me whether I love her. I do not say to her, “22 August 1969, I told you I did, in front of all those people. You need never ask again, and I need never tell you again.” No, I continue to tell her I love her. Daily I will do that. Hourly I will do that. Because I have decided to do that.

Some will say, “Falling away couldn’t happen to me.” Others say, “Of course it could happen to me. I can’t help myself; I just keep sinning, and so I’ve got no chance of ever being cared for.” But 10:13 talks about God’s great promise to us. “No temptation will come without the way of escape for us.” Nothing is so powerful as to take us away from him, but nothing is so harmless that it couldn’t happen to us. It’s a very delicate balance. Many ask, “Can a Christian fall away?” The answer is very simple, though irritating: make sure you don’t. We want to stand back in judgement on the idea, when the Scriptures are talking of the reality of the person. Make sure you don’t. It’s not a question of whether I can or can’t fall away; it’s a question of “don’t.”

Peter: Back to the earlier question about idolatry being nothing: the material presentations of idols may be nothing, but it’s clear here that idolatry is real and can come upon any one of us. Hence, do not desire evil. 10:14, “Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry,” is addressed to Christians who live in this world, in this present age. What are some of the idols that we can see in our world?

Phillip: The materialistic world is a great danger to Christian people, especially for those of us living in Western economic comfort. It becomes a distraction from all things of God. But the visual idolatry is still there. We keep making churches into something more than sunshades and rain shelters. There’s nothing wrong with having a nice building; good architecture is always more pleasant than ugly architecture. But taken too far, it suddenly turns into some form of idolatrous representation: statues, stained glass windows, all forms of presenting God in a physical, visual form that is through our churches. It’s a problem with art.

For instance, there is the question of the difference between a cross and a crucifix. The crucifix has the body of Jesus on it, but the cross doesn’t. There are certain denominations which require there to be a crucifix to represent Jesus’ death, and others which say that there must be a cross, otherwise you don’t believe in the resurrection. But why do you have to have a cross at all? The mark of the Christian church is not the cross, but the love for one another. Jesus says, John 13:35, “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” I’m not going to go too much into the issue. As the big M’s tell you where a McDonald’s can be found, so the cross on the building tells you where the church is. But the imposition of religious art inside our buildings continues to be a problem. The Reformation made big changes in this very area.

Peter: Yes, the Reformation churches put the Ten Commandments and the Apostles’ Creed on the wall, and put the Beatitudes and other bits of the Bible onto the walls and the windows. So the stained glass was no longer pictorial. This is a matter of controversy.

Phillip: I met a man in England who spoke of his time in Victoria, where he was the rector of a church. Once, they were discussing moving the cross out of the building during renovations. He said he was fairly neutral about it, but he heard the parishioners saying, “If the cross is not there, I am unable to pray.” At that point, he decided it needed to be moved.

Again, I saw a church the other day. It had been wonderfully renovated, but above the table was a cross. The minister said to me, “It was a fight that I wasn’t willing to take on at this stage. I didn’t like it, but people really wanted to have the cross there above the table as the focus of their attention.” I said, “Why didn’t you put a Bible verse there?” to which he responded, “I didn’t think of that. That would have been good.”

One more point I would like to make is about the idea that you can celebrate God in the relativism of different gods all being the same. There’s one God, and that God is not to be worshipped visually, but by hearing his Word, which is the point that Moses makes in Deuteronomy. The true and living God must be worshipped that way and not in the falsehood of idolatry. But when you have false gods, they nearly always are represented visually. That’s the true worship of false gods, which you mustn’t mingle with the true God. So the interfaith services, as they’re called, are another form of idolatry.

Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Links & Recommendations

For more on this topic, check out this talk given at Moore College Chapel on 1 Corinthians 10 called Freedom of Flight.

We also recommend these talks from the Queen’s Birthday Conference 2019. Talk 1 is called The Idols; Talk 2 is called The Eyes.

Freely available, supported by generosity.

If you enjoy Two Ways News, why not lend us a hand? Consider joining our Supporters Club—friends who make it possible for us to keep producing this article/podcast.

To join the Supporters Club, follow the link below to the ‘subscribe’ page. You’ll see that there’s:

• a number of ‘paid options’. To join the Supporters Club take out one of the paid ‘subscription plans’ and know we are deeply grateful for your support!

• also the free option (on the far right hand side)

Sign up to support us

Slavery is one of the ancient world’s most common practices. The notion that chattel slavery would be banned around the world was unthinkable until relatively recent times; yet today in our society, it is chattel slavery itself that is unthinkable.

All slavery is a restriction of freedom, and so our title ‘Freedom of Slavery’ is intentionally paradoxical. But then, Paul’s attitude to slavery in 1 Corinthians 9 is something of a paradox. For in this freedom, he chooses to enslave himself for others that they may enjoy the freedom of the gospel. It is in this context that we have one of the great passages on cross-cultural evangelism.

I hope you enjoy this episode of Two Ways News. If you want to contact us with a comment or question, please email us at respond@twm.email.

Yours,

Phillip

Phillip Jensen: This week, we will be looking at the second half of 1 Corinthians 9. In our last episode, we raised some very big questions about the nature of rights and authority, as well as the concepts of freedom and responsibility. Because the Apostle Paul, though he was free, chose to serve; in fact, the passage describes this using the word ‘slavery’.

1 Corinthians 9:19–27

For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them. To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though not being myself under the law) that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ) that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings.

Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.

Peter Jensen: Freedom is a key category in the Bible, and also in modern culture. Indeed, we enjoy freedoms that not every person in human history has been able to enjoy. But it is little understood, and one of the reasons is that people do not understand that we are sinners to start with—that we are enslaved to sin. We think we are free from sin. But we will come back to that.

Paul is free, and so he has certain ‘rights’. For example, as an apostle, he can be married, and he can ask for money for his ministry. These are things that are written in the scriptures. But the exercise of rights is not how he understands freedom. For him, liberty is to give himself in practical ways for the good of others. In this, of course, he is following Christ. Paul chose to preach the gospel free of charge, and he saw this as his reward.

Phillip: It’s a different understanding of freedom than that which our particular culture has embraced. We’re constantly being told that freedom is about doing what you want to do. Freedom is making your own choices, living your own way. It’s not to be restricted by the authority of others. We’re told to live by that terrible phrase, ‘You do you.’ That’s freedom in the way the world speaks of it.

Peter: It’s a disastrous approach to freedom, not least because we are not free; we are enslaved to sin. We might simply say that freedom is about doing what you want to do, but our hearts are sinful. Is what we want to do for the good of others? I think that Paul’s approach is confronting to our modern culture. How do you understand it?

Phillip: It starts with the general principle enunciated in 9:19, “For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them.” There are 3 crucial elements to that passage:

1. He’s free from all, and so he owes no man anything.

2. But at the same time, he’s chosen to make himself a servant of all.

3. He has enslaved himself to all so that he may “win more”. He’s not enslaving himself because he’s a masochist; it is for the purpose of bringing more people to the gospel.

Peter: But isn’t the phrase “I am free from all” exactly what our culture is saying? How can you truly be free whilst being a slave to all?

Phillip: The reason he says that he’s free from all is because he has a Lord. He’s already a slave. His Lord is, of course, Jesus, whom he is serving, and the Lord Jesus wants him to serve others. We use the word ‘lord’ so freely that we forget that a lord is a slave owner. But Paul says, in 2 Corinthians 4:5, “For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants (the Greek is ‘slaves’) for Jesus’ sake.” The reason why he is serving other people is because his Lord, Jesus, wants him to serve other people. So he enslaves himself, not because he is a slave to anybody other than Jesus, but because he is the slave of Jesus. This gives him freedom from anybody else. And yet under Jesus, he is enslaved to everybody else.

Peter: So, if I’m hearing you correctly, true freedom is about being the person you were designed to be by God, which means that accepting the lordship of Jesus, becoming the slave of Jesus, is to be set free. The idea of freedom in our modern culture is very individualist. Being free means that nobody else can order you around. You wonder, then, if people have ever been in love, or if people have ever loved their marriage partners, if they say that nobody can order them around. For it is not in absolute freedom, nor in individual freedom, that we find true freedom; it’s in our love for someone else. Particularly, of course, it is found in our love for Jesus, our submission of ourselves to him. Furthermore, Jesus models this freedom himself, and then enables his slaves, his people, to say that they are the slaves of all by their choice: the choice driven by love.

Phillip: We must make it clear, though, that he’s not talking about literal political slavery. Back in 7:23, Paul makes it clear that you’re not to become a slave of anybody; in other words, don’t choose political slavery. Slavery is the yoke, as he describes it to Timothy. Yet in this passage, he is referring to the concept of being the spiritual slave of everyone.

Philippians 2:7 tells us that Jesus took the form of a slave, born in the likeness of men. That’s what we are to do. There’s also Jesus’ great example in Mark 10:43–45

But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.

So Christians are not to put themselves into literal physical, economic, political slavery. But they are to put themselves in spiritual service of everybody.

Peter: And it must be driven by love. That is, the love of Jesus for us, and then our response to him expressed in our love for others. So Paul is free to marry and to receive money from the Corinthians for his ministry. But being driven by love, he exercises his freedom for the sake of others. In this case, he’s telling us that the salvation of men and women is more important than his comfort, desires, wealth, and reputation—all of those individualist values that we keep hearing of. This, he says, is true freedom. Have you ever seen this done in our time?

Phillip: This is a major challenge for us. We are so often servants of our own culture, at the expense of sharing the gospel. We need to contextualise the messenger, not the message. That is, we need to change ourselves, instead of changing the message of the gospel, or its urgency. So Paul changes himself. He willingly embraces all the permissible cultural diversity of other people for the sake of their salvation, out of his love for them and love for the Lord Jesus. To the Jew he becomes as a Jew; to the Greek he becomes as a Greek. But he doesn’t do that because he loves multicultural living. It’s not that he really likes eating pork, and so he’s very happy to evangelise to the Greeks. Instead, he is like Christ, laying down his life and his interests for the sake of the other person and their salvation. He will change himself in order to preach the unchanging gospel. That’s the evangelist in him.

You know, Peter, because you and I were raised on it, that we love cricket and rugby. But for the sake of the salvation of another man, would you go to the Aussie Rules? Would you watch AFL?

Peter: Of course.

Phillip: The same can be said about music. We all have our tastes, but my taste of music is unimportant compared to the salvation of the other person. If listening to someone else’s music and going to his concerts is the way to share the gospel with him, then his music will play on my radio. The passage is about the evangelist rather than the church per se, but you could extend it to the church. What kind of music are we playing in church? Is it the music of the people that we are preaching the gospel to? That is, do we have to impose the music of Handel and Bach on people in the mission field who listen to a completely different style of music? Of course we don’t. We change ourselves in order that the unchanging gospel may be heard clearly.

Peter: I asked you earlier whether you’ve seen this done in our time. I presume that what made me ask the question is because I can see it being done by those who are sent as missionaries, and who spent a great deal of time learning a different language and culture in order to communicate. I know that when I have traveled overseas, I’ve travelled as an Aussie, and that doesn’t always work. I’ve managed to offend a number of people by just being Australian. But those who go in our circles do spend a great deal of time enculturating themselves to a different culture. This doesn’t mean that they change the message, but it does mean that they change themselves.

Phillip: Yes, although as Marshall McLuhan said, “The medium is the message,” and so it’s not easy to do. It’s tricky, because sometimes the message is caught up in the culture. But you don’t have to go overseas to evangelise to another culture, because in 21st century Australia, ‘overseas’ has come to Australia. You only have to move to the next suburb to preach the gospel to people from a different ethnic background, which requires us to make those changes.

Peter: We also need to be aware of the old Aussie culture that we grew up in. When I joined Moore Park Golf Club as a junior way back in my teenage years, my father, who had been the president of the club, took me aside and gave me a warning. He said, “Peter, we don’t talk about politics or religion to our fellow members.” I can understand that, because these things are very divisive subjects. But was that right? The trouble is, if the culture shuts our mouths, if it means that we never talk about the gospel, where does that get us?

Phillip: Well, it’s not written in the rule book. If it’s written in the rule book that you mustn’t preach the gospel, I’d suggest you shouldn’t join the club.

Peter: No, it wasn’t written in the rule book. It’s far deeper than that. It exists in our community for various reasons. But the Apostle says, “I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some.” In other words, I will reach out. I will, in a sense, share their heart so that I can share the blessings of the gospel. The importance of people being saved is what drives him, which is exactly what drove the Lord Jesus: love, but also the Christlike godliness in so doing. He wasn’t telling us to yell at people, but rather that we must reach them in a way suitable to their culture—but not in a way that lessens the gospel.

Phillip: ‘Culture’ is such a highbrow word. Can’t we just say, “The Lord Jesus sat with sinners and tax collectors?”

Peter: That’s another subject, but yes. At any rate, Paul, like the Lord, pays the cost involved so that we may reach people, and sometimes the cost is being rejected by people. So what are the blessings of this freedom? Is it becoming like Christ, and being saved ourselves?

Phillip: It’s more than that. Even in verses 9:24–27, the end of the last paragraph of the chapter, Paul is saying that he subjects himself for others’ salvation. But he’s talking here about the utilitarian, costly cycle. It’s not just to save others, but also to save himself. I’m not at all meaning that by doing evangelism, you save yourself and so you don’t need the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ to pay the penalty for you, or the resurrection of Jesus. It’s not as though the 11th commandment that didn’t occur in the Old Testament is to preach the gospel to save yourself. It’s to avoid the blatant hypocrisy of preaching to others what we ourselves do not believe: of preaching to others what we ourselves will not do. Refusing to put yourself out for other people’s salvation is tantamount to rejecting the cross. There’s an old saying, “If you do not care for the lost, it’s because, most likely, you are one of the lost.” For if you have been found by the Lord Jesus Christ, you will live and die to find others.

Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Links & Recommendations

For more on this topic, check out this talk on 1 Corinthians 9 called Freedom of Service.

Freely available, supported by generosity.

If you enjoy Two Ways News, why not lend us a hand? Consider joining our Supporters Club—friends who make it possible for us to keep producing this article/podcast.

To join the Supporters Club, follow the link below to the ‘subscribe’ page. You’ll see that there’s:

• a number of ‘paid options’. To join the Supporters Club take out one of the paid ‘subscription plans’ and know we are deeply grateful for your support!

• also the free option (on the far right hand side)

Sign up to support us

Welcome again to Two Ways News. We do appreciate your fellowship in recommending this podcast to friends and colleagues.

Today we are looking at freedom from slavery in the beginning of 1 Corinthians 9, but we decided to call this episode ‘My Rights’, for the way the passage has been translated raises the question of ‘rights’. The passage is really about the authority of the Apostle—an authority he does not use in his concern for other people’s salvation.

It is an extraordinary explanation of the nature of Christ’s work of salvation, preached in the apostolic gospel and lived out by the Apostle Paul.

Yours,

Phillip

Phillip Jensen: I remember the sermon that Sir Marcus Loane spoke when he became Archbishop in 1966, because he preached on the passage that we will be looking at today. He spoke on the end of 1 Corinthians 9:16, “For necessity is laid upon me. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!” I remember as a young man being very impressed with the idea that we had an Archbishop whose view of himself and his ministry was centred around the fact that by becoming Archbishop, he was taking upon himself that necessity to preach the gospel which the Apostle Paul also had.

Peter: 1 Corinthians 9:1–18

Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord? Are not you my workmanship in the Lord? If to others I am not an apostle, at least I am to you, for you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord.

This is my defense to those who would examine me. Do we not have the right to eat and drink? Do we not have the right to take along a believing wife, as do the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas? Or is it only Barnabas and I who have no right to refrain from working for a living? Who serves as a soldier at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard without eating any of its fruit? Or who tends a flock without getting some of the milk?

Do I say these things on human authority? Does not the Law say the same? For it is written in the Law of Moses, “You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain.” Is it for oxen that God is concerned? Does he not certainly speak for our sake? It was written for our sake, because the plowman should plow in hope and the thresher thresh in hope of sharing in the crop. If we have sown spiritual things among you, is it too much if we reap material things from you? If others share this rightful claim on you, do not we even more? Nevertheless, we have not made use of this right, but we endure anything rather than put an obstacle in the way of the gospel of Christ.

Do you not know that those who are employed in the temple service get their food from the temple, and those who serve at the altar share in the sacrificial offerings? In the same way, the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel.

But I have made no use of any of these rights, nor am I writing these things to secure any such provision. For I would rather die than have anyone deprive me of my ground for boasting. For if I preach the gospel, that gives me no ground for boasting. For necessity is laid upon me. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel! For if I do this of my own will, I have a reward, but if not of my own will, I am still entrusted with a stewardship. What then is my reward? That in my preaching I may present the gospel free of charge, so as not to make full use of my right in the gospel.

This passage flows straight on from Chapter 8. He hasn’t changed the discussion; he’s just widened it. It’s interestingly autobiographical, but now it seems rather defensive in a way which seems at odds with, say, 1 Corinthians 4:3, “I do not even judge myself,” or 1:31, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” It may be that he was under criticism, but I also see it as part of his teaching method, namely to model the faith. That comes out in a number of places in his writings. After all, in the very early days of Christianity, there were few whose example you could appeal to. So 11:1, “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ,” is a very useful thing to say. It’s part of his teaching. But even now, when we have so much history, it’s still right for the pastor to be an example. In this case, he’s finished the previous chapter with a powerful point, that the wellbeing of his brother and sister is more important than exercising undoubted freedom: in that case, to eat meat. The law of love sets us free—that is, free to serve. Do you think Paul was under critical attack?

Phillip: I’m sure he was, but I’m sure he also used these criticisms to address key points. It’s a pattern of Paul’s writing. For example, in chapter 8, he raises the presenting issue of food offered to idols, then he seems to move on to a completely different subject: his own ministry, and not using certain privileges that he has. Then in chapter 10 he comes back to talking about idols. As another example, in chapter 12, Paul talks about gifts, prophecy and tongues, which he returns to in chapter 14—but in chapter 13, he sets out the basic principle of love that governs how gifts and tongues are used. We saw the same thing in chapter 7, where there was a little section in the middle about contentment which seemed, at first, to be changing the subject, though it wasn’t at all.

So yes, he’s under some degree of criticism, but he’s using the way he responds to the criticism in order to illustrate his point at the end of chapter 8 about not causing your brother to stumble. You can see him addressing the criticism in 9:3, “This is my defense to those who would examine me.”

But what are they examining him about, and what is his defence? We’re only listening to one side of the argument; we haven’t actually seen the allegations against him. Were they questioning whether he was a true apostle or not? That question may be at the very heart of the passage: what authority does he have as an apostle? For the apostle’s authority is derived from Christ, whereas human authority is derived from the law. But he’s talking about his role as an apostle, about how the law directs the way that workers are to be treated. I say ‘authority’ because the word ‘rights’ is not in the original text. The Greek word is ‘exousia’ (that is, ‘authority’) every time. There is no word for ‘rights’ in the New Testament. So we need to work out why it is ‘authority’. The King James version uses the word ‘power’ every time, but the Greek word is ‘authority’, as in, the authority that he received from Christ. That is, he is under Christ as an apostle, but an apostle has a certain authority which he chooses not to use. So he is discussing his choice not to use his authority, rather than the issue of rights and authority itself. Apostleship is key. It could be that he’s saying, “I’m not like those Sophist preachers who make money from their teaching. I deserve to take money from you, and those who are taught the word should share all good things with those who teach.”

Paying for workers is, as scripture says, a perfectly good thing to do. But I suspect that it’s more about apostles.

Peter: Yes, for he claims the title of ‘Apostle’.

Phillip: He fights for it in other epistles.

Peter: He does indeed. It’s a word which became full of meaning as it was used by Jesus. Jesus was surrounded by disciples, those who learned from him, but in the end, it is the 12 who are appointed apostles, the sent ones. Notice the need for Matthias to be appointed and his credentials checked in Acts 1:21–26. Namely, he knew Jesus and he witnessed the resurrection. In order to take the place of Judas, he was able to come on board because he had those credentials. It’s pretty important when we’re thinking about this. I think of John 17, where Jesus prays for his apostles, and he commits them as preachers of the word of God. “Your word is truth,” he says to God. They are given authority within the whole Christian movement, which lasts to this day. It’s not as though we can have contemporary apostles. A bishop is not a successor of the apostles; that idea takes away from the uniqueness of the apostles, and their sheer importance as those who witnessed the resurrection and had been with Jesus all that time. That is why their writings are called scripture. Paul describes himself in 1 Corinthians 15:8, as “one untimely born.” At that point, in 15:7–11, he is talking about the unusual way in which he had become an apostle. He’d been persecuting the Christians, but then he was met by the risen Jesus Christ, and he became a witness to the teaching of Jesus and to the resurrection. Still, despite his record of persecution, he was a genuine apostle and recognised as such by the others. He also points to his work as a sort of a seal on the authenticity of his gospel preaching, and the way in which he gathered the churches among the Gentiles. That’s in the beginning of the passage which we’ve just read. In that way, he is claiming authority. But it’s not the same, as you’ve pointed out, as what we call ‘rights’. That is to say, he could ask, “Have I got the right to be paid for this ministry?”

Phillip: His authority has to do with Christ. At the appointment of Matthias, they cast lots, because there were two men who had all the necessary qualities. Yet it was Christ’s appointment that they looked for. So when they had Christ appoint the apostle Matthias, it was in order to become the witness.

‘Witness’ here has 2 different meanings. The first meaning describes someone who has seen something. The second meaning describes being a professional, appointed preacher of something. Paul is adamant that he’s an apostle of Christ, because he had seen the risen Christ. But in seeing the risen Christ, he was then appointed, on the road to Damascus, to preach the risen Christ to the nations, as is recorded in the book of Acts.

Peter: I don’t think the other apostles regarded him as an interloper. It’s interesting that Peter, in his second epistle, refers to Paul’s writings as scripture.

Phillip: Yes, although they always distinguish between Paul and the 12 Apostles. You’ll find, in the book of Acts, that Paul is the 13th Apostle, because the 12 were the apostles to God’s people, Israel, whereas he was the Apostle to the Nations. But the point that is being used in this passage is that, while he has this authority as an apostle, freedom comes from not using his authority. It’s a funny argument, but it gives him the basis for which he can boast, or the ‘reward’, as he says. See, by witnessing to the risen Lord Jesus Christ, he had no grounds for boasting in preaching the gospel, because as an apostle, he had been appointed to do that task. That necessity was laid upon him, and he was like a slave. In Luke 17:10, Jesus says of the slave, “So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty.’”

Paul, in preaching the gospel, is only doing his duty. But when he preaches free of charge, that’s going beyond the requirements of being an apostle, and so at that point, he can say, “My lifestyle is matching the message.” Doing it by grace, free of charge, is like the Lord Jesus himself, who laid down his life. The sacrifice is what gives him the grounds for boasting.

Freedom is not absolute. For him, there was this necessity to preach the gospel, but his was to preach the gospel at no cost, because in preaching the gospel, he could have charged. He had every authority to, both from the law and from being an apostle. But his choice was not to take money from the Corinthians. Why? Because he didn’t want to put any obstacle in the way of the Corinthians responding to the gospel. So, in a sense, he’s marking himself out as being Christian, as opposed to being one of the Sophist preachers. We can still see it today. The ‘super apostles’ were very wealthy, just like today’s preachers. When people want to invite you to speak somewhere, and they want to tell the audience how important it is to listen to you, what do they say? They say, “This preacher’s a great preacher. Look, he’s preached on every continent of the world. He’s preached at these great platforms. He’s spoken in this context and that context. He’s written 57 books. He’s appeared on these television shows. He has his own television station and programs. His podcast audience has this many thousand people listening every week.” These are all the things that Paul was not. Paul was not going around Corinth as a great, wealthy man; he was making leather tents. He preached at no cost to his hearers, to demonstrate the message of Jesus by the way he preached.

Peter: This brings up some contemporary issues. When you’re in ministry, there will be times when you are instructing a person or a group, and it is sometimes tempting to ask them for money as soon as possible, especially if you are short of funds. I believe it is right for pastor-teachers to be remunerated in order that they can make a living, but there’s a danger of us becoming greedy and using our spiritual power to get people to give us money. All of us need to be careful about this.

Phillip: There’s also the shock of people that comes with not asking. I remember speaking to a very wealthy man who invited me to come and explain the gospel to him, and I said that I would do that on one understanding: that I wouldn’t be asking him for any money. I didn’t realise until later how much his approach to life was always to get an expert to explain to him whatever he was interested in. The experts always asked for money. He’d never had anybody not want his money before.

Peter: It’s not because you’re a wonderful person that you refused his money, but rather because we can see here the apostle and Jesus doing this.

Phillip: It’s fundamentally Christian thinking.

Peter: You are a sinner.

Phillip: I am a sinner.

Peter: I’m glad to hear it. We’ve been talking about rights, and you’ve been distinguishing between rights and authority. But I believe in the human rights movement. I think it’s good to attribute rights to others and use it as a way of respecting or even loving others. Is that wrong?

Phillip: What you believe is in duties and responsibilities, which are said to be the flip side of rights. When you use the word ‘authority’, it immediately makes you ask the question: who gave you such authority? Whereas rights, especially since the Enlightenment, are something inherent in you. It’s a modern concept, written into our Bible translations, but it comes from the Enlightenment, which replaced God with humans. Though the word itself came before the Enlightenment; for example, there was the divine right of kings. I’m no great lover of the way in which Charles I used it, by the way—but the understanding was that government is there by God’s appointment, not just by human election. God may use human election to appoint a government, but the government is there by God’s appointment. Napoleon, I believe, put the crown on his own head, which is a sign of that humanism. Rights are also discussed by people like John Locke, who was anti-atheist before the Enlightenment, and who insisted that rights were given by God. There was even the Bill of Rights in 1688 with the Glorious Revolution of William and Mary. But that was all about the rights of kings as opposed to parliaments, as opposed to citizens, and the like.

It was in the Enlightenment that the word came into its present use: from the deists, the faux-atheists that they were. They would talk of the laws of nature equally to the laws of God, because God really didn’t govern their way of thinking. The American Declaration of Independence says

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

But these rights are not self-evident; they’re revealed by God. It was a late editorial change, I understand, that brought in this concept of them being ‘self-evident’, and that all men are created equal. Other than the fact that the Declaration was written by men about men, saying nothing about women, the very concept of being “created equal” sounds like they’re talking about the Creator. But of course, the Creator was not their driving point; it was that you, by nature, are equal. So you’ve been given these “unalienable” rights (we would say ‘inalienable’ today). These are things which are inherent in you as a person: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Peter: They are endowed by their Creator, let it be said.

Phillip: Yes, “endowed by their Creator” still is there. They’re struggling in their Christian nation with their non-Christian thinking. But others are inalienable rights. The word ‘inalienable’ means something that cannot be taken away from you or given away by you. But these people owned slaves, so where was the liberty in that? Furthermore, if I can’t give my liberty away, am I truly free? This is what the Apostle was doing. He was giving away these things which he had, supposedly, the right to, as it’s translated.

As for the inalienable right to life, does that mean they cannot go to war? Does that mean they shouldn’t have capital punishment? Does that mean they will not defend themselves by shooting anybody? This comes from the nation of guns, after all.

And where does the pursuit of happiness come from? Does this mean hedonism is a fundamental right in life? Rights as absolutes become the new religion, because once you say, “That’s my right,” there’s no argument left. If I have a right to something, then you can’t take it away from me. In fact, I can’t give it up either.

Peter: I think this is a subject which will haunt us in the next section as well.

Phillip: It haunts us in our society now. The United Nations, after the end of the Second World War, declared human rights in 1948, but not all the nations accepted it. In 1979, in the revolution that took place in Iran, the Ayatollah withdrew Iran from the United Nations Declaration of Rights. Why? Because he said that that declaration was a secular understanding of Judeo-Christian tradition. I hate to say it, but I think the Ayatollah is right. I’m not sure we should ever say that the Ayatollah is right in our present context. But I think he’s right in saying this. Indeed, in the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights, the Muslim countries accepted that Sharia law rules over the top of the Declaration of Human Rights. So they’re not rights, just things that were made up. Indeed, in our own society, this is the case too, because we believe in multiculturalism; that is, each culture has to be respected, even though different cultures have different sets of so-called rights. I think that as a society, we’ve got a big problem with the word ‘rights’. So I’m unhappy that it’s brought into this discussion by our translation of 1 Corinthians 9. I think we should go back to reading it as ‘authority’, or as Paul saying, “I may do this.” You don’t have to say the word; all you need to say is, “I may take along a wife. I may take money.” It’s all in terms of permission. Then you must ask the question, where does the permission come from? For Paul, it’s from Christ.

Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Links & Recommendations

For more on this topic, check out this talk from Campus Bible Study 1977 on 1 Corinthians 9 called The Love that Captivates.

Freely available, supported by generosity.

If you enjoy Two Ways News, why not lend us a hand? Consider joining our Supporters Club—friends who make it possible for us to keep producing this article/podcast.

To join the Supporters Club, follow the link below to the ‘subscribe’ page. You’ll see that there’s:

• a number of ‘paid options’. To join the Supporters Club take out one of the paid ‘subscription plans’ and know we are deeply grateful for your support!

• also the free option (on the far right hand side)

Sign up to support us

“Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up”. What a challenge Paul gives to us in the first verse of his answer to the Corinthians’ question about food offered to idols.

As we continue our discussion of this part of 1 Corinthians, I hope you will share with us the wonder of thinking lovingly about knowledge. For knowledge, especially the knowledge of God and his ways, is very important. But knowledge, like many good things, can be used for evil as well as for good. Without love, our knowledge will be used for our benefit instead of the benefit of others. And so we will fall under the condemnation of being puffed up instead of building others up.

It is just so fascinating how Paul’s discussions of particular problems in 1st century Corinth open up for us such permanently important topics.

Yours,

Phillip

Phillip Jensen: Today, we will look at the second half of 1 Corinthians 8.

1 Corinthians 8:7–13

However, not all possess this knowledge. But some, through former association with idols, eat food as really offered to an idol, and their conscience, being weak, is defiled. Food will not commend us to God. We are no worse off if we do not eat, and no better off if we do. But take care that this right of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak. For if anyone sees you who have knowledge eating in an idol’s temple, will he not be encouraged, if his conscience is weak, to eat food offered to idols? And so by your knowledge this weak person is destroyed, the brother for whom Christ died. Thus, sinning against your brothers and wounding their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ. Therefore, if food makes my brother stumble, I will never eat meat, lest I make my brother stumble.

Peter Jensen: The context of this passage is, as we know, the issue of eating food offered to idols. We heard last week about the contrast between the knowledge that puffs up and the love that builds up. In our previous episode, we thought about knowledge; so this week, we are going to think about love.

We know that the idols that we are told about in this passage are nothing. It’s likely that the Corinthian Christians were making that claim, and therefore eating food offered to idols, rejoicing in the knowledge that idols have no existence. 1 Corinthians 8:5–6

For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth—as indeed there are many “gods” and many “lords”—yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.

How does this knowledge “puff up”?

Phillip: It puffs up because we’ve taken it out of the context of our relationship with God and with each other. So we’re not knowing as we ought to know, as 8:2 says. Love and knowledge are important, but knowledge must be shaped in relationships, preeminently with our relationship with God whom we worship. True knowledge is therefore humble. It’s humble because of the fact that we don’t know everything, and also in the sense that our knowledge must always be put in the service of God and others, rather than in self-aggrandisement.

Peter: One of the problems, though, is that we don’t know exactly what the Corinthian question in 8:1 is about. The ESV, which we’re using here, has quotation marks around the phrase, “And all of us possess knowledge.” We don’t know whether those quotation marks are in the original passage or not, but let’s assume for the moment that they are. In that case, the Corinthians are saying, “All of us possess knowledge, and that knowledge means that we are free to do as we like with the food offered to idols.” We can’t be sure whether they were going to the temple to worship the gods by partaking in a communal religious meal there, but with the knowledge that there are no gods of such sort; or if they were simply eating meals in the temple, as many temples had dining rooms used for occasions such as weddings. The passage could also be referring to eating meat that had been sacrificed to the idols and subsequently sold and brought in the marketplace. Any or all of these situations described could have been involved in this business of food offered to idols.

Phillip: 8:10 says, “For if anyone sees you who have knowledge eating in an idol’s temple, will he not be encouraged, if his conscience is weak, to eat food offered to idols?” Seemingly, some people were eating inside the temple, but was that the same as worshipping the idol in the temple? In 1 Corinthians 10:25, Paul says, “Eat whatever is sold in the meat market without raising any question on the ground of conscience.” So you could buy meat that happens to have been offered to an idol. However, while we don’t understand the exact context of the Corinthians, we do understand the principles of Paul’s answer, and the fundamental principle that’s spelled out in 8:1 is love.

The modern world loves the word ‘love’, but what does it mean to us? We see God’s love in the giving of his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ who laid down his life for us. It is the sacrificial love, not because of the worthiness of the recipient, but because of the generosity of the lover, that he will lay down his life for us. So why does Paul make such a strong statement about this to the Corinthians? What’s the point of this contrast between knowledge and this incredible love that we have in the cross of Jesus?

Peter: It is strange, because the appeal to the fact that eating food offered to idols is harmless, because idols are nothing, is based on the truth. But the problem was that not all had grasped this truth. 8:7 tells us, “However, not all possess this knowledge. But some, through former association with idols, eat food as really offered to an idol, and their conscience, being weak, is defiled.”

Phillip: 8:1 says, “All of us possess knowledge,” but 8:7 reminds us that “Not all possess this knowledge.”

Peter: That’s right. The knowledge possessed by the Corinthians was the key, in their mind, to freedom. We all long to have freedom, and they now had the freedom to do things which others were unable to do because of their conscience. This of course raises the question of conscience, and what it means to have a weak conscience. There’s a song I remember from our childhood, sung by Jiminy Cricket in the movie ‘Pinocchio’, which went, “Always let your conscience be your guide.” Parents would pat their children on the head and say, “Listen to Jiminy Cricket.”

Phillip: Hollywood has not proven to be a very good teacher of conscience over the years. The fact that you have a conscience may be a testimony to your innate sense of right and wrong, but your conscience is as sinful and in need of reshaping by the word of God as the rest of you. Jeremiah 17:9 says, “The heart is deceitful above all things.” Thus the conscience must be educated. Paul is here speaking of the weak conscience, but the way he speaks of it generally is different to what most people expect, because the weak conscience for Paul usually reflects the abstainer, or legalist. For instance, the Jew who had become a Christian, but who kept the old food laws, was often critical of those who didn’t. Here in 1 Corinthians, we see that those with weak consciences seemed to be those who believed that they were defiled by eating food offered to the idols. They had not yet absorbed the idea that as the idol was nothing, eating food to the idols didn’t matter.

There’s nothing new in this—this is just Paul writing in a missionary context. Similarly, new Christians are often confused about our beliefs. Old Christians can be confused too; we don’t get to 100% in our knowledge of the word of God. But new Christians carry all kinds of baggage from the past, especially when they’ve had previous associations with certain things. They become vulnerable on these issues when their consciences haven’t yet been educated about them. The vulnerability may be that they’re tempted to go back to it, or it may be that they’ve become reactionary towards it. I remember some people who, having lived in a decadent world of rock and roll, found that they could not have anything to do with rock music because it just took them back in association to a world that they knew. But the Corinthians are brothers and sisters in Christ. We’re not talking about non-Christians at this point. If you’re in the know about there only being one God, what should you do when you see your brother or sister still caught up with that reaction?

Peter: The last thing you should do is allow knowledge to puff you up. When we are in the know—and believe me, I’m speaking from personal experience—we could easily say, “I must continue my rights to freedom. After all, the gospel has set me free, and I must be allowed to have that freedom. Firstly, I am theologically in the right, after all; I have the Bible on my side. Secondly, who are they to remove my freedom? Thirdly, they should learn a lesson by seeing me act in this way.” There are considerable powers in these arguments which affect us, so we’re often tempted to use them. For example, I have a right to drink alcohol, because alcohol is not forbidden in the Bible, and we have been set free. Therefore, I might say, I must be allowed to drink it even if it’s a difficulty for other people.

Phillip: There is an aspect to it as well, where we might be tempted to think “These poor people, they haven’t yet understood the gospel as they should. I’m a mature Christian because I’ve understood, whereas they haven’t.” Alcohol is a good example of this. In my early years as a Christian, I took drinking alcohol as sinful. That was an error in my thinking. I was, at that point, feeling like a strong Christian because I didn’t drink alcohol, when in fact I was a weak Christian because I thought alcohol was wrong. Now I’ve come to understand that the drinking of alcohol is not wrong; God made wine to “gladden the heart of man” in Psalm 104, and Proverbs 31 talks about giving strong drink to those who are in pain. While I’ve come to understand this, I still don’t drink alcohol. I think the alcohol industry in Australia is a terrible blight on our society, and there are other terrible problems that come with alcohol such as Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. But I don’t think it’s a matter of sin. That is, I’ve come to a better knowledge, but that knowledge does not allow me to have that sense of superiority over others; instead, it changes how I relate to others on the subject of alcohol.

The word of God speaks in surprisingly different ways to people. You spoke of that freedom, that right. But the weak person sees it as a stumbling block. There can be great confusion in the Christian community on this issue, and Paul is dealing with all kinds of confusions and disagreements in the church. He says, 8:8, “Food will not commend you to God,” meaning that neither eating nor refraining from it will make a difference. But notice the reversal: he puts down those who think they’re strong, who think their eating is a sign of their spiritual strength. He continues, “We are no worse off if we do not eat, and no better off if we do.” But the weak see the strong eating in the temple, and the weak are then encouraged by the strong and their example to think that it’s alright to eat idolatrously.

Now, the strong person eating in the temple is not eating idolatrously, because he doesn’t believe that the idol has any power, strength or significance. But of course, the weak person thinks the idols are real, and eating food offered to the idol is compromising for them. So when the weak person compromises like that, he goes against his conscience. Strong words are used here in 8:11 to refer to the weak person’s own destruction, and 8:12 says that it is “wounding their conscience”. The consequence of all of this is that the strong person, who is giving the example to the weak, is not just sinning against their brother or sister, but sinning against Christ. Because when my actions would destroy or ruin the brother for whom Christ died, I’m not just sinning against him, but against Christ who died for him. Wounding the weak brother’s conscience is a dreadful thing.

So we come to this extraordinary personal confession of Paul in 8:13, “Therefore, if food makes my brother stumble, I will never eat meat, lest I make my brother stumble.”

Peter: But is this always the case? I can think of historical incidents where a person’s conscience was not just weak, but completely wrong. My favourite illustration is of a Nazi camp commandant who went and confessed to his boss that he’d allowed some Jews to escape. He was confessing a ‘sin’, which was the exact opposite of sin, because his conscience was so perverted. It wasn’t just weak.

Phillip: No, ‘weak’ here must refer to those cases where it’s a matter of indifference. It’s neither right nor wrong that you eat meat offered to idols, but the weak brother or sister sees it as vital to their piety, their worship of God.

Peter: I think back to Romans 14:23, “For whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.” That too may throw some light on what is meant here.

Phillip: Yes, I’m doing something which itself is neither right nor wrong, but if I do it in defiance of God, it is wrong.

Peter: Indeed. But what are the principles on which Paul is basing his argument? These will have power across a range of issues, not just the issue of meat offered to idols.

Phillip: The principles derived from what you and I would see as strange topics have been so removed from our culture, but they are still very important principles. Knowledge can puff me up, especially when it’s not part of loving God and loving my brother. The mature Christian is not the one who knows the most; the mature Christian is the one who, with knowledge, sacrificially loves the most. Love is more concerned with the other person’s welfare than with the self, especially self-pleasure or even one’s own explicitly legitimate pleasures. Furthermore, we should not go against our conscience, even when it’s ill-informed, nor should we encourage others to go against their conscience even when it’s ill-informed. Though we should seek to inform conscience, we must see the seriousness of sin and the limitations of knowledge. We must see the preciousness of our brothers and sisters in Christ, and that sinning against them is sinning against Christ. Love builds the other up, and it builds us up too.

Peter: Indeed. Central to the whole argument is 8:6, “Yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.” There’s so much there to unpack, but we get the idea of the almighty oneness of God, with its implications about how we are to understand our world. We’re not living in a world without purpose; we are going towards a destination with its implications, therefore, for our faith and for the future. There is the fatherhood of God with its implications for the love of God and his knowing us. There is the Lordship of Christ with its implications for his deity, the triune nature of God. Then there is the question of the nature of the freedom that the gospel gives us.

Phillip: We will come to that next week, in 1 Corinthians 9.

Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Links & Recommendations

For more on this topic, check out this talk on 1 Corinthians 8 called The Knowledge That Liberates.

Freely available, supported by generosity.

If you enjoy Two Ways News, why not lend us a hand? Consider joining our Supporters Club—friends who make it possible for us to keep producing this article/podcast.

To join the Supporters Club, follow the link below to the ‘subscribe’ page. You’ll see that there’s:

• a number of ‘paid options’. To join the Supporters Club take out one of the paid ‘subscription plans’ and know we are deeply grateful for your support!

• also the free option (on the far right hand side)

Sign up to support us

This week, we come to a new section in the writing of Paul to the Corinthians. In chapters 8–11 he is dealing with an issue that the Corinthians have raised with him: namely, food offered to idols. I confess that when I first preached on this passage, I wondered about its relevance to our congregation. How wrong I was! God’s word is always relevant, and this passage turned out to be one of the most foundational passages for our congregation. For apart from the many overseas students who grew up with food offered to idols, the treatment of this issue by Paul raises the great questions of freedom, knowledge, and love.

This week, we look at knowledge.

Yours,

Phillip

Peter Jensen: 1 Corinthians 8:1–6

Now concerning food offered to idols: we know that “all of us possess knowledge.” This “knowledge” puffs up, but love builds up. If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. But if anyone loves God, he is known by God.

Therefore, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that “an idol has no real existence,” and that “there is no God but one.” For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth—as indeed there are many “gods” and many “lords”—yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.

This sounds like a very different world than the world we inhabit. I’ve never been asked to eat food offered to idols or to face the issues raised by such an invitation. Why don’t we simply skip over this passage? It’s hard to see its relevance.

Phillip Jensen: The presenting problem may or may not be ours, but the actual problems that arise will always beset humanity. They are modern, not just ancient. You may never have been approached on this issue, but working with overseas students, I have been approached about it very often. But it goes beyond that; even if we are not approached by this, we can look at the great principles that are involved in Paul’s answer. This week, we are looking at the theme of knowledge, and next week we will look at the theme of love. Knowledge and love are two great principles. In fact, in this part of 1 Corinthians, freedom is also built into it, as we’ll see in the coming weeks. But of course, love and knowledge hang together, as you can see in the very first verse.

Peter: Verse 1 says, “This knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.” Why are we, then, teachers of knowledge? I’ve always assumed that knowledge is a necessary good. Is it dangerous?

Phillip: You see now why we’ve got to discuss this passage, because already you’ve raised some issues: what is knowledge? What is the importance of knowledge? But if we’re going to look at what Paul is saying about knowledge here, we’ve got to put him in his context. The context is the business of idolatry and spirits. So I think we need to start with this concrete situational issue that’s raised, and from there move into knowledge.

The presenting issue is that of idols. It’s much more significant than most people think. See, a vast number of people in the world still practice the worship of physical idols. You can’t go through India without seeing idols, for instance. Many an overseas student has asked me, “What do I do now that I’ve become a Christian, yet my family has offerings to our ancestors, and there are idols in the lounge room?” Can a Christian go along with the family tradition, or should they now stand separate from them? It is a very real issue for many, many people.

Peter: Indeed. But even if this isn’t our main issue in our western world—which is, as you point out, a minority world—the way that Paul deals with it has many ramifications. His principles are what count.

Phillip: That’s right, but to understand his principles accurately, you have to see them in the physical context of which he’s speaking—and so you’ve got to understand idolatry, to understand why he talks about knowledge in the way that he does. Our interest is in the knowledge end, but the beauty of Paul is that it comes in clear context, not just in abstract thinking. So we need to be aware of what idolatry entails. It’s not just the worship of statues and other objects; it’s the representation of gods, or worse still, sometimes the misrepresenting of God in physical image. It’s a very visual form of religion.

Peter: It’s like the golden calf. The Israelites claimed that it was a representation of the God who had rescued them from Egypt, but it was still a golden calf.

Phillip: Yes, because much of the polemic against idolatry in the scriptures is polemic against visual representations of Yahweh, for all visual representations are dead, dumb (in both senses of the word), and immovable. You have to carry them around. Whereas if you know the true and living God, he speaks, he’s alive, he’s powerful, and he doesn’t need to be carried around by us. So the visual representations are misrepresentations. But what we have here is the issue of the representations of gods. That’s also part of the problem here: what people are worshipping is not so much the statue, but what the statue represents—that is, gods, demons, or spirits. So you notice in verse 5 that the so-called gods in heaven and on earth correspond to the reality of many gods. In other words, we’re talking about the spirit world, which does exist. The normal human experience is to live in a world of many spirits with whom we have dealings and worship if we’re to be safe and happy. The atheistic world is a very unusual world. It’s not the normality of humanity today, let alone of history. The vast majority of people down history and around the world are and have been very conscious of a spirit world, which they seem to try and capture in visual images, through whom they’re able to worship in this spiritual world. You catch glimpses of the spirit world in the New Testament in references to evil spirits—and of course Satan, who’s called the god of this world in the scriptures.

Peter: Though I’ve mentioned this before, it reminds me of a conversation I had with an Indigenous friend of mine. We were talking about this very issue and I said, “It’s hard for people here to believe in spirits and ghosts and so forth.” He responded, “If I marooned you for two days in the bush, you’d believe.” It’s all very well for us to talk about India, but idolatry is universal, and it’s even right here.

Phillip: One of our great cricketers always had to have his lucky handkerchief with him when batting, as if that was going to make a difference to his skills in hitting a ball.

Peter: 87 was always the worst score to get, because you’d get out 13 short of 100. This leads to the rise, or the reintroduction, of sorcery, seances, fortune-telling, and the like; the worship of the spiritual world.

Phillip: I remember going and buying a crystal from a New Age shop. It was for the purpose of an illustration, so that I could hold up this crystal for the congregation, to say that this crystal was to have enormous power over my life, yet they didn’t give me any instructions as to what I was to do. Was I to place it under my pillow, in my ear, up my nostril? Was I to swallow it? It was supposed to be so powerful, but it cost 5 cents.

Peter: It’s on the rise in our contemporary world. We think we’re living in the world of ‘Science’ with a capital S, which has banished all such things. Who can believe in ghosts? We have a scientific, materialistic approach. We like to think that ghosts have disappeared.

Phillip: It’s more than that, in a sense. If we don’t worship via the spirit world, we tend to worship the material world. Idolatry captures our eyes and our hearts, but whether or not we worship the spirits, we will worship money, we will worship prestige, we will worship human champions, we will worship the things that we can see, because our vision is only limited down to the material. So idolatry in one form or another is endemic to the whole human soul.

Peter: Yes, and that’s what makes Judaism in the Old and New Testament so extraordinary. That is to say, this belief that there is one God, the Almighty, who’s in charge of all things, and anyone else pretending to be God is lying. Monotheism looks very strange at first, because in a sense it’s sort of unnatural. But note how here, in verse 6, Paul stresses that it’s only the power of this truth which we can challenge idolatry, whether of the spirit world or of ourselves. But verse 6 is crucial not just in this passage, but biblically. 1 Corinthians 8:6

Yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.

This is a critical and fundamental truth which carries many radical consequences—which we forget about because we’ve become used to it—bringing us into conflict with the alternatives, and saving us from superstition and the chaos of polytheism. Indeed, it is a reassertion of the rule of the one God, and of course his Son, and the power of the Holy Spirit: one God in three, three persons in one God. Indeed, it was the reassertion of the rule of the one God which began the decline of magic in the 16th century and helped pave the way for the rise of modern science. I would argue that science is not inherently atheistic; it is monotheistic. When we lose this, we don’t become atheists. We return to the worship of spirits because the human heart longs for worship.

Phillip: That’s why, strangely, Paul seems relaxed about eating food offered to idols, at least at this part of the argument. But it makes sense; if the idol is nothing, and if the god that it represents is nothing, then whether you eat food offered to it or not is nothing, because it’s of no consequence, of no significance. It can do nothing to you. It won’t poison the food. We all possess this knowledge in Christian circles, and so there would be no problem now in eating food offered to nothingness. But Paul is putting this knowledge into its missionary context. That’s the important part about understanding the knowledge concept here. He’s putting an idea that changes everything, but it’s a knowledge that puffs up, rather than love which builds up.

Peter: This leads us back to my questions. What is wrong with knowledge all of a sudden? Do I not teach knowledge? Isn’t knowledge a necessary good? What is the gospel if it’s not knowledge?

Phillip: We’re not going to read the Bible by protecting our own industry. Just because you’re a professional teacher of knowledge doesn’t mean you must now read the Bible that way. You’ve got to read the Bible in the sense of its own context. There is something wrong with knowledge. Here, knowledge can puff up. It’s got to do with what knowledge does, what it means.

How does it puff up? As you may know, you only have to hang around with academics for a little while to see the puffing that takes place. The sense of creating pride, even arrogance in what they believe, that they are of significance because they know something, or have got a degree somewhere that says they know something. But it’s not knowledge itself which is bad, but the use to which knowledge is put. It can puff up the ego when it’s supposed to love the brother.

Peter: I presume that means that not all academics are puffed up and arrogant in the way you’ve described. I was an academic administrator once, and my colleagues could not be described like that.

Phillip: Of course, many of them are not puffed up.

Peter: But it seems to me that, when we read this, Paul sees knowledge as true and as necessarily relational. Not that it’s subjective—in other words, it’s not, “I have my knowledge, you have your knowledge and we determine what is true or not.” There is such a thing as objective truth, of course. But this knowledge always comes in the context of our humanity, and we need to respect that. Firstly, we need to understand ourselves and realise our own weakness, our fallibility, and the limits of our knowledge; the partial nature of our knowledge which should lead us to humility, not to arrogance. Secondly, our knowledge should be put to the service of others. We can strut our knowledge and judge others for their stupidity or their weakness rather than loving others. Hence the contrast between the knowledge that puffs up and the knowledge which builds up. It’s not that love is the absence of knowledge; it’s that love is an essential character of one who has knowledge. You can’t separate the two, not least the knowledge of the gospel.

Phillip: That’s the point of 1 Corinthians 8:2, “If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know.” There is a morality to knowledge that he’s speaking about here. That morality to knowledge, as with all genuine morality, has to do with the important relationship we have with God. In becoming Christians, we turn to the Thessalonians; if you remember, they’re the model of conversion in 1 Thessalonians 1. We’ve turned from idols to serve the true and living God and to wait for his son from heaven, who rescues us from the wrath to come. Here, he’s saying, verse 3, “If anyone loves God, he is known by God.” It’s important to know God, but it is in a sense more important to be known by God. If you’re known by God, it’s because you’re a friend of God. God knows everybody, but to be known by God indicates a friendship. See, we all know the prime minister, but it’s completely different when the prime minister knows us. So the person who loves God is known by God, because that person is the friend of God. God’s knowledge of us is a profound relationship which precedes all our weak and partial knowledge that we may have. Knowledge is very important, but it has to be put in this context of a relationship if we’re going to know as we ought to know. That’s why knowledge will puff up, but love will build up.

Peter: Yes. After all, the Evil One knows that there is a God, and trembles. That’s real knowledge.

It’s interesting that the word ‘know’ in the scriptures also applies to the marriage bond. I think this may be the beginning of an interesting discussion which we might have one day on epistemology. But I think it impacts every discipline. What is knowledge? How do we acquire it? What is it? What are its limitations? What are we doing? Why are we doing this? What is this knowledge intended to do? To answer these questions, you need to turn to the question of love. I’m reminded of 1 Corinthians 13:11–12

When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

So we should abide by faith, hope and love. But the greatest of them is love.

Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Links & Recommendations

For more on this topic, check out this talk from St Andrew’s Cathedral called Freedom of Knowledge.

Please also see the Two Ways News episode on the origins of science that we produced as part of our Genesis series.

Freely available, supported by generosity.

If you enjoy Two Ways News, why not lend us a hand? Consider joining our Supporters Club—friends who make it possible for us to keep producing this article/podcast.

To join the Supporters Club, follow the link below to the ‘subscribe’ page. You’ll see that there’s:

• a number of ‘paid options’. To join the Supporters Club take out one of the paid ‘subscription plans’ and know we are deeply grateful for your support!

• also the free option (on the far right hand side)

Sign up to support us

For many years, Christians have been teaching on marriage and family life. But recently, the focus has moved somewhat towards singleness. This is in part because of our society’s movement away from marriage towards singleness, which is itself somewhat due to an attempt to correct an overemphasis on marriage.

This week in Two Ways News, we are discussing the issue of singleness not for either of those reasons, but because of Paul’s dealing with the subject in 1 Corinthians 7:25-40. So, following on from Paul’s discussion of contentment, we address the issues around whether we should marry and the consequences that flow from it.

Thank you for providing feedback. We are glad to hear how much you are enjoying our discussions, and are encouraged to think further by your questions and comments to us at respond@twm.email.

Yours,

Phillip

Phillip: The King’s Birthday is coming soon, on the second weekend in June. As usual, we will be holding our conference at Moore College on the afternoon of Monday 8th. This year, we will be looking at the topic of ‘Prophecy Today’. This is a great topic which teaches us how God relates to us by his Word.

Are there prophets today?

Why should we seek to prophesy?

What is it to prophesy?

If prophecy is preaching, should women preach?

If prophecy is not preaching, what is it?

Friends, we will be pursuing many questions as we explore this topic.

Registrations are now open – go to phillipjensen.com and register now; we reserve seats in the hall by registration number. For those living outside of Sydney we have a live stream you can register for, so why not get a group to come and watch with you?

Phillip Jensen: Last week, we left off at a cliffhanger. We were looking at 1 Corinthians 7:17–24, which dealt with the idea of being content with where you were when God called you in the area of married life. But now we come to the question of those who are not married. This brings us to a controversial and difficult passage in verses 25–40.

Peter Jensen: In Paul Barnett’s commentary on 1 Corinthians,1 he says that this is one of the most disputed passages in the New Testament.

1 Corinthians 7:25–40

Now concerning the betrothed, I have no command from the Lord, but I give my judgement as one who by the Lord’s mercy is trustworthy. I think that in view of the present distress it is good for a person to remain as he is. Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be free. Are you free from a wife? Do not seek a wife. But if you do marry, you have not sinned, and if a betrothed woman marries, she has not sinned. Yet those who marry will have worldly troubles, and I would spare you that. This is what I mean, brothers: the appointed time has grown very short. From now on, let those who have wives live as though they had none, and those who mourn as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no goods, and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it. For the present form of this world is passing away.

I want you to be free from anxieties. The unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord. But the married man is anxious about worldly things, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided. And the unmarried or betrothed woman is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to be holy in body and spirit. But the married woman is anxious about worldly things, how to please her husband. I say this for your own benefit, not to lay any restraint upon you, but to promote good order and to secure your undivided devotion to the Lord.

If anyone thinks that he is not behaving properly toward his betrothed, if his passions are strong, and it has to be, let him do as he wishes: let them marry—it is no sin. But whoever is firmly established in his heart, being under no necessity but having his desire under control, and has determined this in his heart, to keep her as his betrothed, he will do well. So then he who marries his betrothed does well, and he who refrains from marriage will do even better.

A wife is bound to her husband as long as he lives. But if her husband dies, she is free to be married to whom she wishes, only in the Lord. Yet in my judgement she is happier if she remains as she is. And I think that I too have the Spirit of God.

We’ve heard that this is a difficult passage. One of these difficulties is in figuring out the authority of what Paul is saying—for he contrasts his words with the words of the Lord, yet he seems to speak with authority, and at the end he claims to have the spirit of God.

Phillip: Yes, and he thinks of himself as somebody who, by the Lord’s mercy, is trustworthy. So it’s not as if he’s saying, “You don’t have to pay attention to me because I haven’t got a word from the Lord.” What he means is that he hasn’t got a word about what Jesus said on this subject.

Peter: There’s also the question of the word ‘virgins’ translated by the ESV as ‘betrothed’; which word is correct? And what about the main reason Paul gives for his advice—that they were living in times of distress, and that there will be the passing away of the present form of the world? Does that mean that he believes that the return of Jesus is imminent? Then there’s the question of marriage as opposed to singleness; he seems to favour the latter, but does he really? That is a vexed question in a world which can be given to the exaltation of marriage (which you refer to as ‘marriolatry’)—or among some, the exaltation of singleness.

Phillip: That contrast in the world today is very strong. Especially within our churches, there’s a great exaltation of marriage and family life, yet there’s also a growing exaltation of singleness in the community around us. This is also coming across in the church, for there are many people who are not speaking necessarily against other people getting married, but they see marriage and family life as overstated and so choose to be single.

In one church I was ministering in some years ago, there were 40 middle-aged single men within the congregation: some of them widowed, many of them divorced, some who never married. But fitting into a church, which is all about families, children, Sunday school, and youth group, is difficult.

Peter: There are mountains to climb here. To start off, we’ll deal with context, then move on to content. But I don’t want to give any impression that this passage is impossible, because difficult passages encourage us to dig deeper.

Phillip: I believe there are no difficult passages, just difficulties in our minds. Don’t blame the passage; blame our assumptions, our false thinking. That’s why I like difficult passages—they give me the chance to change my mind. I get the chance to discover the assumptions and presuppositions that I’ve made thoughtlessly, because what Paul is saying doesn’t fit with what I’m expecting him to say.

Peter: Indeed. We must first look at the context of this passage. In 7:1–7, the question of sex in marriage is addressed, indicating that, like the rest of Scripture, Paul is not anti-sex—so long as it’s done in the right place, at the right time. In 7:8–9 he talks about sex amongst the widowed and the unmarried; 7:10 mentions separation; 7:11–16 is on marriage to an unbeliever. Then as we saw last week, he seems to diverge in 7:17–24, giving a theological teaching on contentment, which is the undergirding theme of the chapter. Now we come to the topic of virgins. The passage itself could have been a topic raised by the Corinthians, for in saying “now concerning the betrothed”, he indicates that he is in conversation with them.

Some translations, including the NIV, say ‘virgins’; the ESV gives us ‘betrothed’. What does this mean?

Phillip: The actual word is ‘virgin’, but the choice of the ESV to use the word ‘betrothed’ is an attempt to help us understand what is being spoken of. A betrothed person is someone who is bound to a marriage. It’s like our engagements, although engagements can be broken. Betrothal, however, required a legal contract. It may be that most virgins were betrothed to somebody early on, because marriage in the ancient world was conducted very early and by family agreements. But the word in the passage is ‘virgin’, which I believe is meant to mean ‘unmarried’. That is because he goes on to talk about the unmarried, which includes widows or the word widow may actually mean ‘widower’.

Furthermore, when Paul talks about virgins, is he talking about the betrothed or the father of the virgin? When he talks about the person's virgin, is he talking about what the man who has a wife betrothed to him should do? Or is it about what the father of a virgin, who has betrothed his daughter to another man, should be doing or not doing? There are translation problems and it’s in what translators think is the situation of life that leads to these translations. For example, he can be talking about right and wrong when he talks of the word ‘good’; he can be referring to good as opposed to sin, though other times he can be talking about good in terms of utility - a sensible, beneficial thing as opposed to a foolish thing. So we have a series of words here which may have different meanings.

Peter: What do you make of the “present distress” that he mentioned?

Phillip: The word ‘present’ could mean ‘impending’, but either way, it is referring to things like conflict, persecution, famine, or war. The great Australian writer Bruce Winter suggests that it’s referring to the famine that was there at the time. But Paul also says in verse 29, “The appointed time has grown very short,” because the distresses that we live under in this world are under the hands of God. What they’re going through is not the permanent state of life. But then verse 31 says, “For the present form of this world is passing away,” which makes us wonder whether he is talking about the end of the world. However, what he is really referring to is the present form: the culture and the practices of this world are coming to an end.

I haven’t yet answered the question.

Peter: No, but you’ve given helpful clarification, which is essential to have before going into the passage itself.

Phillip: We’ve got certain assumptions that give us problems in our reading.

Peter: Yes—for example, we read a passage like this too directly, as though we don’t need the background. We then think our situation is directly referred to in the passage, rather than listening to what the passage itself is saying and drawing out its principles. So we then get these things you’ve referred to already: the worship of marriage, as though all life’s meaning is found in marriage; or the worship of singleness, which is so common in our culture. Looking to a passage like this to find rationalisation is not very wise.

Phillip: There are those who think their life has no meaning unless they’re married. Then there are those who think that being single is the purpose and the meaning of life, and that marriage will distract them from it.

Peter: The topic of contentment is lurking here in the background. But let’s now look at the passage section-by-section, starting with verses 26–28.

Phillip: It’s all tempered by this phrase, ‘present distress’. That is, the present pressure, or the impending calamity. Given what we’ve been taught in verses 17–24 about contentment, he now says that it’s good to remain as you are. Bound or unbound, don’t change. That’s why ‘betrothed’ is not a bad translation at this point. If you’re married, don’t seek to be single; if you’re single, do not seek to be married. As you are called, so it is good to remain. But the word ‘good’ here, I take it, refers to utility, because as he goes on to speak about marriage, he suggests that it creates anxiety. Moreover, in verse 35, he reveals that he says this for our own benefit.

What he means is that in the circumstances of life where contentment is found in the gospel, the changes that you experience are a matter of benefit, and are of this world. Paul wishes to spare them of the troubles of the flesh—in other words, the troubles of this life. So I take it that in verses 29–31, he’s going to elaborate on the meaning of verses 26–28.

Peter: 1 Corinthians 7:29–31

This is what I mean, brothers: the appointed time has grown very short. From now on, let those who have wives live as though they had none, and those who mourn as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no goods, and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it. For the present form of this world is passing away.

What does he mean by “the present form of this world is passing away”? He’s likely referring to the world in the sense of the culture, the present schema, the outward form of the world; for example, the persecution being suffered by so many Christians then and now. So he’s saying that the time in which these things are occurring is short, and the present culture will pass. In this shortened time, the way to live is free from normal practices. But does that mean that we should be free from these practices forever?

The passage is addressed to the Corinthians at that time, and he’s already discussed and commended marriage. He is not declaring that under Christianity, there will be far fewer marriages, and that you should only marry if you must. I believe he’s pointing to the time in which they were living as being one where wisdom demanded a degree of carefulness about these matters.

Phillip: It’s hard to imagine that the permanent state of Christianity would be that those who have wives live as though they had none.

Peter: That’s not how it should be read.

Phillip: If you take “the present distress” to mean the end of the world, then you would think that until the Lord returns you should ignore your wife. But that’s the opposite of what he said in 7:1–5. He clearly is concerned that we should be concerned for our wife and for our husband.

Peter: Additionally, when he says, “those who mourn as though they were not mourning”, does that mean we can’t ever be in grief? No—he’s talking about the present time.

Phillip: Indeed, because in Romans 12:15, he says, “Weep with those who weep.” In Philippians 4:4, he says, “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice.” The Christian life is not to be lived as those verses would indicate, which is why I take it that the present distress, the schema of this world, the persecution, or whatever was happening or about to happen in Corinth, is governing what he says here.

Peter: Does that mean there’s no application for us?

Phillip: No, because in the next section he explains that he wants to spare us from anxiety, which can be applied to us. We just need to filter the message from Paul to Sydney via Corinth. In other words, we must think about it in terms of the context in which Paul was writing.

In verse 34, he says that married life carries with it certain anxieties, and those anxieties are increased dramatically in times of distress. I think back to what Jesus says in Mark 13:14–19

But when you see the abomination of desolation standing where he ought not to be (let the reader understand), then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Let the one who is on the housetop not go down, nor enter his house, to take anything out, and let the one who is in the field not turn back to take his cloak. And alas for women who are pregnant and for those who are nursing infants in those days! Pray that it may not happen in winter. For in those days there will be such tribulation as has not been from the beginning of the creation that God created until now, and never will be.

What is Jesus talking about? He can’t really mean the end of the world, because what would be the point of fleeing to the mountains at the end of the world? The mountains are going to fall upon us. Furthermore, what does it matter whether the end of the world comes in winter or summer? He’s talking about some impending distress, some future catastrophe. Is it the fall of Jerusalem with the destruction of the temple in AD 70, the crucifixion of Jesus, or the persecutions that will flow to the Christians?

There are certain times when those who are pregnant in particular have difficulties. See, Paul says that when we are married, we have a responsibility to please the other. But in the trials and difficulties of life, in times of distress, the necessity to please the other crosses against our desire to be pleasing the Lord. He’s not giving here a prohibition or restriction, rather he’s talking about the benefit of good order. He wants our undivided devotion to the Lord in all times, including the times of distress; but our devotion to the Lord, especially in times of distress, will be different for those who are married and those who are single. Knowing that some distress is about to come upon the Corinthian Church—or that they’re already in this present distress—he’s saying that it is not the time for marriage. But he speaks again of the form of this world, rather than this world passing away.

Peter: It’s helpful to understand the form of this world as an understanding of the times in which they lived, and to draw the principles from this knowledge.

Phillip: But we have principles. That is, as you take on more responsibilities in this world, you take on more anxieties for this world, and so your capacity to deal with difficult times is diminished. It’s not as if this has nothing to do with our life.

Peter: No. Additionally, notice the principle with which it finishes in verse 35: “To secure your undivided devotion to the Lord.” That is the great issue. Whatever situation you’re in, to be entirely devoted to the Lord Jesus is the key.

Phillip: Slave or free, circumcised or uncircumcised, married or single.

Peter: This takes us back to that key starting passage. What does Paul mean by “Not to lay any restraint upon you, but to promote good order”?

Phillip: I don’t know what is meant by “good order”, but Paul says these things for the benefit of it. That is, you can think of the prayer that Paul encourages us with in 1 Timothy 2:2, “That we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way.” That seems to be the good order that we can have in this world.

You and I live in the peace of Sydney. But there’s a war raging in the Middle East. Our biggest problem is whether there’s going to be petrol in our local service station. But think of the Christians who are living in that context, caught between the Jew and the Muslim in the crossfire, living under the bombs raining from different countries. Their life is not a life of good order. They are in the circumstance of great difficulties, and they increase their anxieties and difficulties entering into married life at this point in time.

Peter: That is helpful. Additionally, the idea of the schema, the culture that is passing away, helps with verse 36: “If anyone thinks that he is not behaving properly toward his betrothed, if his passions are strong, and it has to be, let him do as he wishes: let them marry—it is no sin.” Clearly, he is not raising an ethical issue. He’s talking about the times in which they live, and he’s giving us his wisdom about our present time. How can you best express your total devotion to Jesus in such a time as this? Verse 36 speaks of acting properly. In other words, if your passions are strong, you must act properly and do what needs to be done, namely to get married. An alternative to this would be that if the betrothed is getting on in years and needs to marry soon, then they should get married.

Phillip: We have a translation problem in verse 36. That is, it can be referring to being ‘oversexed’; that’s how the ESV takes it, and it’s a possibility. But the other translation, slightly closer to the Greek but a little bit less politically acceptable today, is that if she’s at a point where having children going to be difficult, then you should do the right thing and get married while there is that opportunity. That is a slightly more likely translation, though the ESV could be correct. Whichever the circumstance you’re thinking it is, appropriate behaviour is what is being spoken of. It’s not following the schemes of this world, but following the Christian scheme and thinking about the welfare of the other person.

Peter: Then it says in verse 37 that it’s better to remain unmarried in these times. But that’s a matter of conscience, and it’s got to do with the present distress. It’s not a law laid upon all Christians everywhere. There was a community who settled in Pennsylvania in the 19th century known as the Rappites, who had no marriage or children as they believed that Christians shouldn’t marry. It won’t surprise you to learn that they died out after 50 years.

Phillip: As the passage keeps saying, it’s not sin. It’s not a matter of right and wrong, but of the beneficial, appropriate thing to do in this circumstance. To turn singleness or marriage into the essential is to miss the point very seriously. Though if you detach it from the context, you could certainly turn it into an absolute.

Peter: How does the passage finish?

Phillip: The woman is bound to her husband, and vice versa. But when she’s widowed, she’s free to marry; though being a Christian woman, she’s only free to marry in the Lord—that is, a Christian husband. She may have, when she was called, been married to a non-Christian. But when he dies, she’s free to remarry in the Lord. But Paul says he thinks she’ll be happier if she does not remarry. But again, it can’t be turned into an absolute, because in 1 Timothy 5, he tells younger widows to marry. But in the general context he speaks of, the widow will be happier if she doesn’t remarry.

Peter: Then there’s a puzzling sentence at the end, “I think that I too have the Spirit of God.” What does this mean?

Phillip: The added word ‘too’ makes it sound as though there are people whom he’s been arguing with who are claiming to be ‘super-spiritual’. That calls back to 1 Corinthians 7:1, “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman,” for in that is a belief in a spirituality that is against the physicality of sex. He counters this by saying in essence, “They think they have the Spirit; I too have the Spirit.”

But the core of the passage is in verses 17–24, which tells us that changing your circumstances will not solve our problems, for contentment and godliness is found in the Lord Jesus Christ, not in the circumstances of life.

1

Paul Barnett, “1 Corinthians: Holiness and Hope of a Rescued People”, 2011 (Christian Focus Publications)

Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

---

Links & Recommendations

For more on this topic, check out this talk on 1 Corinthians 7 called To Wed Or Not To Wed.

---

Freely available, supported by generosity.

If you enjoy Two Ways News, why not lend us a hand? Consider joining our Supporters Club—friends who make it possible for us to keep producing this article/podcast.

To join the Supporters Club, follow the link below to the ‘subscribe’ page. You’ll see that there’s:

• a number of ‘paid options’. To join the Supporters Club take out one of the paid ‘subscription plans’ and know we are deeply grateful for your support!

• also the free option (on the far right hand side)

Sign up to support us

As we work through 1 Corinthians 7, we come to a paragraph that seems to have nothing to do with glorifying God with your body in love, sex, or marriage. Suddenly, there is a paragraph about slavery and circumcision. But this is the most important passage in the chapter, for it is simply using these topics to discuss contentment, which is the key to love, sex, and marriage.

I hope you enjoy this discussion. Please remember that Two Ways News is provided free of charge by the generosity of friends. If you would like to become one of our generous friends, at the end of the transcript are details regarding how you could contribute.

Yours,

Phillip

Phillip Jensen: The King’s Birthday long weekend is coming around soon, on the second weekend in June. As usual, we will be holding our conference at Moore College on the afternoon of Monday 8th. This year, we will be looking at the topic of ‘Prophecy Today’. This is a great topic which teaches us how God relates to us by his Word.

Are there prophets today?

Why should we seek to prophesy?

What is it to prophesy?

If prophecy is preaching, should women preach?

If prophecy is not preaching, what is it?

Friends, we will be pursuing many questions as we explore this topic.

Registrations are now open – go to phillipjensen.com and register now; we reserve seats in the hall by registration number. For those living outside of Sydney we have a live stream you can register for, so why not get a group to come and watch with you?

Today we are continuing our studies of 1 Corinthians 7, focusing this time on contentment. Peter, are you a contented person?

Peter Jensen: I would say that I’d be in an awful mood if I wasn’t a contented person. We are living through one of the wealthiest, and in a sense most peaceful times (in the sense that neither of us have ever had to go to war), in a magnificent city, in a nation with free speech and democracy, where it’s easy to get the most wonderful medical help if you need it. Let me add the personal blessings of knowing Jesus, of Christian fellowship, of a happy and long-lasting marriage, and much more. For me to be discontented, therefore, would mean that I am not grateful for my many blessings.

Phillip: The answer you’ve given touches on being correct. You say your contentment is in the circumstances of your life, but can you be content and not have such circumstances? Or can you be discontent even when you have all things going for you? Paul says that he had to learn to be content not only in the hard times, but also in prosperity. So you’ve had a very prosperous life, but you still need to learn to be content.

This week’s passage in 1 Corinthians 7 is in the context of marriage and sex, as the whole of chapter 7 is, but it talks specifically about contentment.

Peter: 1 Corinthians 7:17–24

Only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called him. This is my rule in all the churches. Was anyone at the time of his call already circumcised? Let him not seek to remove the marks of circumcision. Was anyone at the time of his call uncircumcised? Let him not seek circumcision. For neither circumcision counts for anything nor uncircumcision, but keeping the commandments of God. Each one should remain in the condition in which he was called. Were you a bondservant when called? Do not be concerned about it. (But if you can gain your freedom, avail yourself of the opportunity.) For he who was called in the Lord as a bondservant is a freedman of the Lord. Likewise he who was free when called is a bondservant of Christ. You were bought with a price; do not become bondservants of men. So, brothers, in whatever condition each was called, there let him remain with God.

The passage may strike us as being a bit odd in the context of chapter 7, speaking as it does of contentment, circumcision, slavery and such. After all, the whole passage begins with Paul asking the Corinthians, “Is it good for a man not to touch a woman?” So far it has developed as a response to this, dealing with marriage, separation, and divorce. But it’s not untypical of Paul to apply gospel truths to what he’s saying. For example, chapter 12 is about the gifts of God and the one body of Christ. Chapter 13 seems strangely out of place in talking about love. But as you read through chapters 12, 13, and 14, you find that it’s not out of place, for it makes perfect sense to have the great love chapter in the midst of this other discussion.

You’ve pinpointed the word ‘calling’ as being key to this passage. Can you explain this?

Phillip: It’s not a word commonly used by Paul, but it occurs about 5 or 6 times in this paragraph. Paul is using the word ‘calling’ possibly in 2 different senses, though the one we use very frequently is the minor one rather than the major one. That is, since the time of Luther we’ve been using the word ‘calling’ to refer to one’s vocation in life. Your calling could be that you’re a nurse or a mechanic, a shop owner or a professional, or a pastor; yet the emphasis of Luther was to bring the vocation of everyday life back into the forefront of Christian living, rather than requiring you to go into a monastery in order to actually be a Christian. That’s the emphasis that we’ve carried in our Christian community for the last 500 years. It possibly means a calling in the sense of verse 17, “Let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called him”; or verse 20, “Each one should remain in the condition in which he was called.”

But in verse 24, Paul uses the word ‘calling’ to refer to our conversion, our calling to Christ. The opening of the letter back in 1 Corinthians 1:2 reads, “To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints.” Likewise, verse 1 Corinthians 1:9 tells us, “God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son.” Throughout this passage, he keeps talking about “the moment of your calling”, meaning the calling into the kingdom, the summons to belong by the power of God’s Spirit into new birth. I don’t want to deny the sovereignty of God over the rest of our lives, but if we were living in the 15th century, our calling would have been for us to be printers, because we are the sons of a printer. Back then, the calling was something that was given to you by your circumstances in life. It’s right to recognise that God is sovereign over every aspect of our lives: our family, our nation, the suburbs we grew up in, the education we’ve received, and the jobs that we are doing. But what Paul is speaking about here is the calling of the gospel.

Peter: So we’ve been called by God. We have been assigned to be his, and we’re to walk in that way. It’s the new creature, the new creation, then conversion and justification and sanctification. It’s the walk of the new creation coming out of this call by God, through the gospel and the power of the Holy Spirit. So it strikes me that Ephesians 2 speaks of, if you like, the power of the call. Ephesians 2:8–10

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

But back to the question, why have you picked ‘calling’ as being key to the 1 Corinthians 7 passage?

Phillip: We’ll come to that in a moment, but in the meantime, I would like to ask: why do you think he mentioned circumcision and slavery, and what is he saying about it?

Peter: That’s interesting too, because these don’t seem to be the issues that the Corinthians were raising. Presumably he’s using these subjects as illustrations to lay the foundation of what he wants to say about marriage and sex.

Phillip: He does talk about circumcision and slavery elsewhere, for example in Galatians. It’s a big issue for him, but this is the only reference to it in 1 Corinthians.

Peter: My guess is that he’s mentioned these issues, which are fairly big in his mind, so they won’t divert people into fresh arguments. By doing so, he makes some important points about both topics for ongoing Christian understanding. The key to both is that you don’t have to change your situation in life to be a full-on, true, born-again, new-creation Christian. In the case of circumcision, he is referring, as we know from elsewhere, to a controversial topic amongst Christian Jews: basically, the question was, “To what extent must I remain Jewish, and should Gentile Jews join us as Christian Jews through circumcision?” His answer brilliantly bypasses the controversy; namely, he tells them not to make an issue of this. It’s no longer important. The Old Testament’s ceremonial legal requirements are now fulfilled in Christ and we are free from them to keep the real heart of the law: that is, the commandments to love God and to love your neighbour.

Phillip: The change in situation once you become a Christian is not in being circumcised, but, as Paul writes, in being content, whether you’re circumcised or not.

The circumcision symbolised that you were under the law, but the symbol of being under the law is not the same as truly being under the law. It’s like the symbol of wearing an Oxford University t-shirt. It doesn’t necessarily mean you studied at Oxford; it can mean your auntie was a tourist who travelled through Oxford and brought one home for you.

Peter: I’m reminded that even in the Old Testament itself, circumcision was used as a way of talking about true repentance. That is to say, it is an outward sign which has now passed away, but it represents a deep inner truth which must remain.

Phillip: The case of slavery is slightly different though. Both slavery and circumcision have a permanence to them, though a slave could be set free. But Paul is now saying that, just as in Christ, the circumcised and the uncircumcised can now be under the law—and if you are in slavery, you are under freedom. You’re set free in Christ, even though you are a slave, because Christ himself became your slave for your salvation’s sake. He enslaved himself that you could be free. So you seek to please him now in all things, whether you’re a slave or free, whether you’re circumcised or not.

See, it’s interesting that he says of this freedom that where possible, you should take it, because slavery was a bad thing. Paul talks in 1 Timothy 5 about the yoke of slavery. There’s no joy in being poor, nor is there joy in being a slave. These are not good circumstances of life, yet you can be poor and content as a Christian. Likewise, you can be a slave and be content as a Christian. So the Lord is now the real person whom you seek to live under. If you’re free, you’re still a slave of Christ; if you’re a slave, you’re a free man in Christ. Our circumstances in this world remain the same, but spiritually and personally, we have been radically changed. The free man has now become a slave; the slave has now become free. Our contentment is found in our situation in the kingdom of God, which enables us to cope with both freedom and slavery.

We do not use our freedom to indulge the flesh, as Paul would put it in Galatians 5. We now use our freedom to enslave ourselves to Christ. But he does say that slavery is a bad thing, and he warns us never to enslave ourselves to a human. If you’ve got a chance to free yourself, take it, and do not put yourself into the position of becoming a slave to someone.

Peter: I love the gospel. The more you think about it, you realise that it is a summons to be the people, the men and women that God intended us to be, which is where our real freedom is to be found. It’s to be found in our slavery to Christ.

You used the word ‘content’, which takes us back to my question from the beginning of our conversation. Is Philippians 4:11–13 close to what Paul means here by ‘content’? Philippians 4:11–13

Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned, in whatever situation I am, to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me.

I take it that this is what you mean by ‘contentment’.

Phillip: That’s what Paul means by ‘contentment’. It’s your attitude to the circumstances of life. It’s easy to see why someone who is poor or enslaved needs an attitudinal change to be content because their situation is one of disappointment, difficulty and hardship. But on the other side, the very rich are not content in their hearts and in their minds. They’re never satisfied with what they are doing; we know they are greatly disillusioned. Australians are not content people.

Peter: This reminds me of a silly commercial that’s on at the moment about retirement. It talks about how for your whole life, you go to work and get paid, over and over again. Then one day, you don’t go to work, but you still get paid. That is when you have entered the glorious state of retirement. It’s obvious they’ve never heard about arthritis. It’s so absurd, you’re right; contentment is elusive if you’re relying upon the world around you, your wealth and so forth.

Phillip: We have something bigger than the world around us.

Peter: Indeed, and we are still so thankful to God for the world.

So you’re saying that the secret of contentment is our relationship to Jesus, and that enables us, as Paul says, to do all things necessary. He is talking from his own experience, which is vast. He’s known abundance, he’s known poverty, prison, beating, and who knows what else.

Phillip: Where you were when you were called, stay there. You don’t have to change your circumstances in life to find contentment.

Peter: Back to the first question then: where did this passage come from? Why is it here in the middle of this discussion about sex, marriage and all the rest?

Phillip: That is because he is dealing with the questions that people are asking. 1 Corinthians 7:1 reads, “Now, concerning the matters about which you wrote,” which indicates that he is directly addressing people’s questions. He’s gathered up a series of matters about marriage and about sex, and so in verses 1–7, he talks about sexual relationships within marriage. His message is that you don’t need to change your situation to live in contentment in Christ. If you are widowed or unmarried, stay as you are.

Mind you, if you are now living in sexual immorality, you should fix that by getting married. Likewise, if you are already married, you should remain together. If you can’t live with each other, by all means be separate. But if you can’t be separate, come back together again, because your marriage is the place in which you exist as Christian people.

If you are married to a non-Christian, you should not free yourself from the non-Christian. But if the non-Christian wishes to leave, let them go. You can’t save them by hanging on to them. But if they’re willing to live with you, stay married to them because, as you were when you were called, so remain in that place and find your contentment in the gospel, in your changed life, rather than in the circumstances of life.

That’s going to take us on to what the rest of the chapter is about, because the next question that he answers is about what to do if you’re betrothed to someone.

Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Links & Recommendations

For more on this topic, check out this talk entitled Sexual Contentment.

Freely available, supported by generosity.

If you enjoy Two Ways News, why not lend us a hand? Consider joining our Supporters Club—friends who make it possible for us to keep producing this article/podcast.

To join the Supporters Club, follow the link below to the ‘subscribe’ page. You’ll see that there’s:

• a number of ‘paid options’. To join the Supporters Club take out one of the paid ‘subscription plans’ and know we are deeply grateful for your support!

• also the free option (on the far right hand side)

Sign up to support us

A church established through missionary work has many basic Christian morality issues to resolve. The old culture, not built on the gospel, will have practices inconsistent with the gospel. But as with most cultures, these practices are assumed rather than thought out. The gospel revolutionises all cultures, and Paul the Apostle is dealing with the marriage cultures of Corinth in 1 Corinthians 7. This episode of Two Ways News is a difficult unravelling of Paul’s advice on several complex issues.

Yours,

Phillip

Phillip Jensen: The King’s Birthday long weekend is soon with us, on the second weekend in June. As usual, we will be holding our conference at Moore College on the afternoon of Monday 8th. This year, we will be looking at the topic of ‘Prophecy Today’. This is a great topic which teaches us how God relates to us by his Word.

Are there prophets today?

Why should we seek to prophesy?

What is it to prophesy?

If prophecy is preaching, should women preach?

If prophecy is not preaching, what is it?

Friends, we will be pursuing many questions as we explore this topic.

Registrations are now open – go to phillipjensen.com and register now; we reserve seats in the hall by registration number. For those living outside of Sydney we have a live stream you can register for, so why not get a group to come and watch with you?

Last week, we spoke on marriage, but we only looked at the first 6 verses of 1 Corinthians 7, which is just the beginning of a long chapter on the subject. It is important to look beyond these verses into the rest of Paul’s teaching about marriage and the complexities of married life.

Peter Jensen: 1 Corinthians 7:7–16

I wish that all were as I myself am. But each has his own gift from God, one of one kind and one of another.

To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is good for them to remain single, as I am. But if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to burn with passion.

To the married I give this charge (not I, but the Lord): the wife should not separate from her husband (but if she does, she should remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband), and the husband should not divorce his wife.

To the rest I say (I, not the Lord) that if any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she consents to live with him, he should not divorce her. If any woman has a husband who is an unbeliever, and he consents to live with her, she should not divorce him. For the unbelieving husband is made holy because of his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy because of her husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy. But if the unbelieving partner separates, let it be so. In such cases the brother or sister is not enslaved. God has called you to peace. For how do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband? Or how do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife?

Phillip: We’re tackling a mountain in teaching this passage. It’s a key one for biblical teaching on the subject, but we’re not helped by some of the translation problems here. There has been (and rightly so) a push for ‘dynamic equivalence translation’, which looks for and translates ideas rather than simply words. It is helpful to convey one idea written in Greek into the language of the same idea in English, but it does require an accurate understanding of the original ideas. A failure to properly understand the original ideas in Greek will lead you to a translation which is inaccurate, and a failure there leads to compounded failure in our English translations.

But please do not be worried about your translations as if they’re done in mischief. Though there are some that have been done in mischief, such as the Jehovah’s Witness Bible, in general our translations are done in sincerity by a large and very skilful scholarship behind them. But professional Bible teachers need to know enough Greek and Hebrew to understand and evaluate the translation. I don’t think that every congregation member needs to, but certainly those who would be Bible teachers do, for theological education requires a proper understanding of the original languages. I say this because this passage is one in which I personally failed.

Years ago, in a book I wrote with Tony Payne called Guidance and the Voice of God,1 we failed to check the Greek properly. Some years later a great friend, John Richardson, corrected us in his book, God, Sex and Marriage.2 If Matthias Media ever reprints our book, we’re going to correct our errors.

Peter: What was the problem?

Phillip: It wasn’t just a single problem, like a mistranslated word—though there are several in most modern English translations. It’s the problem of us not travelling from Paul’s context to our Sydney context via Corinth. In other words, we didn’t take into account that the church in Corinth had many unsorted problems, common in missionary churches where the old culture hasn’t yet been Christianised. We live in a very Christianised culture, even though we’ve got so many non-Christians pushing against it. This means that we are familiar with our Christian words and concepts; but when you go back to a non-Christian culture such as in Corinth, when people become Christians, it takes time for them to sort out the false view of life that they have previously held.

Peter: This helps us to understand how we should approach the passage. What are the issues being dealt with here?

Phillip: There are 3 issues brought up: extramarital sex, separation and divorce, and marriage with unbelievers. They all require a Christian view of marriage, which values faithful, monogamous, lifelong families. How the Corinthians wrestled with these topics is slightly different to how we’re dealing with it today, but nevertheless what Paul tells us here, gives us the basis for how we’re to do so.

Peter: Paul gives us principles which we can apply in other situations as well, but we must see them in the light of what he’s talking about. Before coming to these issues, he starts us off with 1 Corinthians 7:7

I wish that all were as I myself am. But each has his own gift from God, one of one kind and one of another.

Usually, people understand the first part as referring to Paul being single, but we know that it’s not his wish that all people should remain single, because he encourages certain people—for example, the younger widows—to get married. He’s not saying that singleness is the ideal Christian pattern, because marriage is also something that he recommends.

Phillip: Telling young widows to get married in 1 Timothy 5 is almost a command. At the end of 1 Corinthians 7, he talks to widows generally about marrying only in the Lord. But what we have here in verse 7 is a general statement.

Peter: Yes; in the first half of the verse, “I wish that all were as I myself am,” we see this distinction between ‘all’ and ‘each’. What Paul wants for all is going to be spelled out for us in verses 17–24, which is best summarised as ‘contentment in Christ.’

But in the second half of the verse, he poses the question as to whether singleness is a gift, or if the gift is marriage. He is not talking here about an internal desire to be single or married. The gift is contentment in the station of life God has given you, whether that’s being single or being married.

Phillip: Contentment is the right way of living, but surely the situation is the gift in a sense, rather than the contentment which we should have with our gift.

Peter: God is in charge of your life, and he has brought you to the state that you’re in at the moment. This is the gift of God, and so he tells us to be content. But it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get married if there’s an opportunity.

Phillip: No. Verses 17-24 talk about being content in slavery, but that part also tells you that if you get the opportunity for freedom, by all means take it. But Paul also has to learn contentment, both when he has plenty as well as when he has very little. It’s something to learn, and that’s what he’s talking about here.

I agree with you about verse 7 in that the ‘all’ is different to the ‘each’.

Peter: Yes, it doesn’t mean that Paul is saying here, “I have decided I will never get married.” Rather, singleness is in the role to which God has called him, and in the life experience he’s had, so he learns to be content within it.

Peter: What does he mean by, “I wish that all were as I myself am”? Does that mean ‘contented’?

Phillip: Yes. But then we turn to 3 particular problems.

The first is the issue brought up in verses 8–9 of extra-marital relationships, addressed to the unmarried and the widows. 1 Corinthians 7:8–9

To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is good for them to remain single, as I am. But if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to burn with passion.

But the original Greek says, “But if they’re not exercising self-control, they should marry. For it’s better to marry than to burn.” So the key here is the mistranslation of the verb, and the addition of those two final words, “with passion.” Paul is not talking about people being unable to exercise self-control, but about people who are not exercising self-control. It’s not a hypothetical problem about an internal struggle; in Corinth, there were unmarried people and widows, and possibly widowers, who were having extra-marital sex. Why they weren’t getting married, we don’t know. It is possible that remarriage was considered to be ‘unspiritual’, as we talked about last week regarding asceticism. But Paul’s direction is that, if you’re in a sexual relationship already, you should get married. For it’s better to do that than to burn.

What could he mean by “burn”? Our translation adds in “with passion”, but that’s because they’ve already added in the concept of lacking self-control and being tempted internally. It could mean “burn with shame,” or “burn in punishment.” But it’s extraordinarily helpful advice for pastoral decisions in an evangelistic setting. Here in Sydney these days, many people who get converted are already in sexual relationships. What do we say to them? Do we tell them to separate? Do we tell them to stop it? Do we tell them to get married? Or do we say, “It’s all right, stay the way you are”? In previous generations, it wasn’t really a pivotal issue; but today, any pastor who’s in an evangelistic church will see couples who are living together. What should they do? Paul’s advice is to get married.

Peter: How about the second issue of separation and divorce?

Phillip: 1 Corinthians 7:10–11

To the married I give this charge (not I, but the Lord): the wife should not separate from her husband (but if she does, she should remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband), and the husband should not divorce his wife.

Again, the rise in divorce in our society over the last 50 years has made this a much more pressing issue for us pastorally. The troubled waters of Christianity in this new age have made it one of the most painful and difficult pastoral areas within congregational life. Here are 7 points that I would like to raise:

1. This is addressed to Christians who are already married. It’s not to divorcees or to the unmarried. The unmarried have been dealt with in the previous verses.

2. This is a command from the Lord. Paul is not saying that his other points don’t matter; in fact, he later on goes to say that he has the Spirit of God. But this is something that he has a clear word on, for we know from Matthew 5 and Matthew 19 that Jesus says you should not divorce.

3. The command, according to the Greek, is “not to separate,” or “not to put away.”

4. There are occasions, such as in cases of domestic violence, when it’s the right course of action to separate.

5. The word ‘divorce’ in English means ‘the right to remarry’, whereas the phrases ‘to separate’ or ‘to put away’ do not necessarily convey that idea. Here in this passage, it is explicitly stated that separation does not mean that you have the right to remarry. The phrase he uses for the husband is ‘not to put away’ which is slightly different to the phrase used for the wife, ‘not to separate’. Maybe that is because the husband had greater financial legal responsibilities or different rights within Roman law. But given the rest of the New Testament, it cannot mean that either the husband or the wife have the right to remarry.

6. Therefore, the purpose of the separation is not for marrying somebody else. It does not mean you can say, “Husband A is not doing too well for me, so I’ll drop Husband A and move to Husband B.”

7. When you separate, you are to stay single; if singleness is too hard, then you’re to seek reconciliation with your husband. So the concept of divorce in the modern English sense of the word is not what is lying in front of us in the passage. It talks of separation. The question of divorce and the right to remarry is an important subject, but this is not the passage to find it in.

Peter: You haven’t mentioned adultery. If a husband leaves his wife and then marries someone else, is she free to remarry?

Phillip: Yes, but that’s because of Matthew 5, not because of 1 Corinthians 7.

Peter: That’s why you’ve got to look at the whole subject, not just this passage.

Phillip: Yes. When Christians are married to each other, they shouldn’t separate. But if they do—for there are some relationships that can’t be sustained—then they should stay single. If they can’t stay single, then they should get back together rather than seeking another partner. Because marriage is a lifelong commitment, whether you are conducting it while separated or while being together.

Paul accepts the fact that there are some relationships that can’t be mended, but each party still has responsibilities. There are still the oaths that you’ve given, which you should stick to even if you can’t work out how to be reconciled with your spouse. It’s a hard passage.

Peter: Indeed, and we probably need to think through this independently because the passage doesn’t answer every question.

Phillip: No, but it is central to the whole subject, for it answers the question of what we say to Christians who are married. The answer is, “don’t separate,” because marriage is for life.

However, what do you do when the marriage is between a believer and an unbeliever? Especially in an evangelistic context, one spouse may get converted while the other spouse remains unconverted.

Peter: I’ll follow your example by providing 5 points:

1. Paul’s advice is given because, as he is at pains to points out, Jesus didn’t speak of this situation. This doesn’t mean that his advice is not the word of God, but he carefully distinguishes between what he says himself and what Jesus has said.

2. The fact that there is an unbelieving spouse is not grounds for separation, so we’re told not to initiate it.

3. Rather than the contamination of defilement flowing from the unbeliever to the believer, as it would if you were attached to a prostitute, it is a real marriage and it must be treated as such. Marriage is universal; it’s all around the world, and whether it occurs in a Christianised society or not, it is a valid marriage and must be thought of in those terms. So even if you become a believer and you are married to an unbeliever, your marriage is valid and must be conducted in the way that the Bible teaches us. So in that sense, Paul is saying that the holiness flows from believer to unbeliever. That doesn’t mean that the unbeliever is suddenly saved without even knowing it—it’s only that the marriage is still valid. Consequentially, your children are holy; that is to say, your children have access through you to the gospel and possibly to the church.

4. If you are married to an unbeliever, your children are not illegitimate. That may strike those who listen as odd, but there have been occasions in previous generations of children being labelled as illegitimate when they weren’t. For instance, in our family 100 years ago, a marriage was conducted between a Catholic and a Protestant, and their little boy was told by one of the grandparents that he was illegitimate, because it wasn’t a ‘valid marriage’. But what the Apostle Paul tells us here is that, even if an unbeliever is married to a believer, the children are not illegitimate, and they do have access to the gospel.

5. If the unbelieving spouse wishes to separate, then it is permissible to do so. You are not legally bonded under those circumstances, because God has called you to peace, not to warfare. You have no knowledge of whether your spouse will be saved or not, therefore you are entitled to do so if the marriage breaks down, and if that is the wish of the spouse. If you are a Christian and your unbelieving spouse leaves, are you free to remarry? It seems as though the idea of not being enslaved allows us to say that you are free to remarry, but we need to be careful here as usual, because Pharisaism is close to the surface, and some people declare their spouse to be an unbeliever so that they can marry another. But what he is saying here is that if a spouse is truly an unbeliever, and then leaves, you are free to remarry.

Phillip: You may argue that, in the case of the marriage between the Catholic and the Protestant, the marriage was invalid. The Catholic view of marriage being sacramental means that it would have had to be conducted in the Catholic Church, and so a marriage like this, conducted outside the Church, was not a marriage. But the Bible would say that creation is the basis of marriage, rather than church and sacraments.

Peter: Yes, and I’m not sure that too many Catholics would take this line these days. But in those days, they did. Nevertheless, a marriage, even if it’s between two unbelievers, is valid and should obey the laws of marriage.

Phillip: Then there’s the point you mentioned about the unbeliever wanting to separate. I can well remember a situation in which one of my alcoholic friends, after finally getting sober, went home rejoicing to his wife and she was pleased. Through the process, he became a Christian, but when he told his wife that he’d become a Christian, she said, “I’ll put up with you as an alcoholic, but I’m not going to put up with you as a Christian,” and walked out.

Peter: What an awful story.

Phillip: Indeed, it is. You see, Paul is writing about a real church in Corinth that has only been going for a little while. The more you’re involved in evangelism in a fresh new church, and in a very pagan culture, the more you see that 1 Corinthians is very important to understand and to analyse carefully.

So what we’re told about this issue is, “Don’t hang on. You’re not called to warfare. You can’t know whether they’re going to be converted or not, for that’s beyond your knowledge.”

Peter: Remind us what the general teaching here is.

Phillip: The general teaching is monogamy. Its application in the situations of life which are so varied and diverse requires wisdom: the wisdom of God given to us here in this scripture.

The other general principle, which we’ll go into next week, is the one in verse 7 that you spoke of: contentment. My singleness, or my marriage, is part of God’s sovereignty, part of the gift of God. How do I live in contentment with that?

Peter: I believe that is based on the end of 1 Corinthians 6, “For you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.”

2

John Richardson, God, Sex and Marriage, 1998 (St Matthias Press).

Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

---

Links & Recommendations

For more on this topic, check out this talk on Marriage from 1 Corinthians 7.

---

Freely available, supported by generosity.

If you enjoy Two Ways News, why not lend us a hand? Consider joining our Supporters Club—friends who make it possible for us to keep producing this article/podcast.

To join the Supporters Club, follow the link below to the ‘subscribe’ page. You’ll see that there’s:

• a number of ‘paid options’. To join the Supporters Club take out one of the paid ‘subscription plans’ and know we are deeply grateful for your support!

• also the free option (on the far right hand side)

Sign up to support us

When Paul wrote to the Corinthians, he had to deal with many issues, some of which were raised by the Corinthians themselves. Several of the issues related to the subject of sexual morality. Chapters 5 and 6 of 1 Corinthians conclude with the importance of serving God with our bodies, and chapter 7 opens with the issue of how to serve God with your body in the face of sexual immoralities. The answer is not in celibacy, but a right understanding of sex in marriage. Peter and I are going to take several weeks to discuss the many issues raised in 1 Corinthians 7. This week, it’s sex in marriage, verses 1-6.

Yours,

Phillip

Phillip Jensen: So far, we have been working through 1 Corinthians, and we are now up to chapter 7.

Peter Jensen: The last 2 chapters have largely been about sexual morality, with good reason: the Corinthian world and the Roman world in general was, in many ways, quite permissive in sexual matters. Men virtually could do as they pleased, and they were fairly loose when it came to things like marriage, the only requirement for it being that you had to be married to one woman, and she had to do certain things. Basically, marriage was not seen as a stoppage to people carrying on as they pleased.

It’s not unlike our own world. We have this extraordinary prevalence of de-facto marriages, same-sex marriages (if that’s indeed what they should be called), child-free marriages, open marriages, and we have virtually free divorce. Someone once said, “It’s easier to free yourself from a partner than it is to leave a company.” So our world may not be exactly the same, but it is very much like the Corinthian and Roman world. That creates very practical difficulties for the younger generation, particularly those who want to get married, where real estate prices make it very difficult to get married, and those who do marry do so later because they must first establish their careers.

Phillip: The Corinthian situation was in some ways more explicitly sexual than ours, in that the great temple in Corinth is said to have had up to 1000 prostitutes. But prostitution has been legalised and promoted within our society. You mentioned real estate being a factor in declining rates of marriage, which is an interesting issue. In Australia, we’re now building 2-bedroom home units with no intention for housing families. Families are not where the money is; the money is to be found in two bedrooms. In this way, we’re making it harder for people to get married. But while marriage is under attack from all sides around us, there’s been something of a reversion lately amongst certain elites who are commentating on this issue. One of them is, of course, Louise Perry who wrote her book The Case Against the Sexual Revolution.1 The last chapter in this book is on marriage, and her advice for young women is “Marry a dad, not a cad” and “Listen to your mother.”2 But at the heart of the Christian view of marriage, something which was culturally accepted up until the 1960s, are the principles set out in 1 Corinthians 7.

Peter: In 1 Corinthians 7, Paul is setting out the principles for marriage quite directly, and he is addressing the attack on the Christian view in those days, helping us to see how corrupt the contemporary view of sexual relations is. By ‘corrupt’ I mean that it’s against God’s word, and it’s unethical, but also that it goes against our humanity. It does not lead to joy, to happiness or to living well; it’s dangerous to the wellbeing of people, for it’s not how God has designed us. In fact, 1 Corinthians 6 ends with these great words, “For you were bought with a price.” He’s talking of the cross, of course; consequently, you are to “glorify God in your body.” We are not to give up the body, nor turn against it, but to glorify God in our body. One explicit example of how we glorify God in our body is to avoid connecting with prostitutes. So “Glorify God in your body,” is how we move into chapter 7.

Phillip: 1 Corinthians 7:1–6

Now concerning the matters about which you wrote: “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.” But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. Now as a concession, not a command, I say this.

Why would Paul start this discussion on marriage in terms of not having any sexual relations with your wife? That just seems to defeat the very purpose of marriage.

Peter: That line is a quotation from the Corinthians. Essentially, after embracing the gospel, they drew from it the implication that sexual relations are forbidden, even between husband and wife. They heard Paul’s summons to abstain from sexual immorality, and they read it as a summons not to have sex at all. It may be an expression of another idea prevalent in the ancient world: that is, the expression of asceticism.

Phillip: What does that word ‘asceticism’ mean?

Peter: It’s a spiritual and religious idea that you must revolt against the body in favour of the spirit. In practice, you may fast constantly, or you may go out into the wilderness and not have very much at all in order to be in communion with God. One such aspect of asceticism is total celibacy, as though the body can be brought under control by being starved of food and sex. In some cases, it involves things like flagellation, beating yourself or being beaten by others. This is not unknown today, where people are beaten in order to give up sins of various types. That’s asceticism.

Phillip: Does this idea lie behind monasteries, nunneries, and the like?

Peter: Somewhat, but not entirely. But the Corinthians may have thought that this kind of asceticism is what is meant by the commandment to glorify God in your body.

Phillip: It’s almost like a ‘super-spirituality’ in that regard. But Paul’s answer here is quite clear. It’s not to abandon sex altogether. Rather, Paul is putting sex into the right context—that of husband and wife. He also speaks on the right way to conduct the marriage. It’s one thing to limit sex to marriage, but then how do we enjoy sexual relationships within the marriage? Paul speaks about that too, for in marriage, the husband and wife have each other and act out their mutuality. It’s an extraordinary passage in terms of this mutuality, because those who have attacked Christian marriage have for a long time spoken as if marriage was as the pagans would have it: that is, the husband owning the wife. But this passage speaks of the wife owning the husband as much as the husband owning the wife. Throughout this passage, what is said to and of the husband is equally said to and of the wife. That is, we don’t have to wait till the 21st century to discover that women have sexual needs and pleasures. It’s here in the 1st century, written by Paul, whom the world wants to tell us was a woman-hater.

It’s also in the Book of Common Prayer that the reasons for marriage are, firstly, to have children; secondly, because of our temptations to sin; thirdly, our companionship. It’s very interesting to see how modern prayer books still speak in terms of having children, (although that’s muted somewhat), and they certainly in terms of companionship, but they often completely omit what Paul is concerned about here when he talks about sinfulness. In fact, in the original Greek, it doesn’t say “temptation to sin”; it says “temptation to immorality”. So the Corinthians’ suggestion is that “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.” But sexual immorality is occurring, and so the solution is to have sex within the context of marriage. Our view of marriage now has been so overwhelmed by romanticism that it omits some of the fundamental factors of what marriage is about, in terms of having children and in terms of our sexual needs. But this mutuality is exactly what feminists would say that Paul is against.

Peter: Yes, you mentioned the description of Paul as the “woman-hater”. In Ephesians 5, Paul calls upon the wife to submit to her husband or to obey him. This has been taken to mean that the Bible regards women as inferior to men, and gives men a green light to become nasty or even abusive. But in this reading of it, the context of Ephesians 5 is disregarded, as Paul in the very same passage summons the husband to love his wife even to the point of giving his life for her. So yes, there is an authority vested in the husband, but it’s an authority as is usual with authority: it is in the interests of the other person, or the other persons when the marriage is blessed with children. So this passage gives us a recognition of the different roles of husband and wife within marriage, which is based, among other things, on the differences in physical strength. Therefore, the calling of the husband is not to boss the wife around, but to defend and provide for the wife and the family. And here in this passage, to the astonishment of those who criticise Paul, he speaks of each equally owning the body of the other. What do you make of this?

Phillip: It’s not just Paul who acknowledges those kinds of differences; Peter says much the same thing in 1 Peter 3. And while we may not actually be sure of Paul’s marital status—whether he’s a widow or whether he never married—we know that Peter married because he had a mother-in-law. But this passage is a great illustration of Paul’s view of mutuality. The ESV translates it as “conjugal rights”, but I think the NIV’s translation as “marital duty” is better; or the Holman Bible, which speaks of responsibility. That is because what we’re dealing with here is a command. It’s not a piece of counselling advice, but something that is owed, because sex is integral to the very act of marriage itself. I’ve met people who have tried to have sexless marriage, which defies the very point of marriage.

So verse 4 doesn’t start with the word ‘for’, despite the translations that try to put it that way. We don’t have something that is causal here, but rather an explanation. In our translation, it says, “For the wife doesn’t have authority,” but the original text just tells us, “The wife doesn’t have authority.” He’s not giving a cause for verse 3; he just gives the explanation of what marriage is about. Thus, what he’s saying is that this mutuality is exclusive. Our bodies belong to each other, to our husband or to our wife, and not to some other person. The very character of this relationship is that we have our body for our spouse and no other. Furthermore, authority is not by conquest, but freely given, in the consensual marriage of two persons, a man and a woman. Yet this mutuality is not egalitarian in the context of Paul and of Peter; it’s complementarian. The husband and the wife are not the same. One is a man, the other is a woman. They have different sexual drives and sexual needs, but each is provided for the other, and each is to provide only for the other.

Peter: Indeed, and verse 5 offers another explanatory statement about what he’s been saying. 1 Corinthians 7:5

Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.

This is an explanatory statement of what you’ve been saying: don’t deprive each other of the sexual relations agreed upon when you entered into marriage, except by agreement between the two of you. Paul does not say that it’s just the husband who is the boss, for the decision is to be made by agreement between the husband and wife. Furthermore, it is to be for a limited time, so that people are not moving into asceticism. Prayer is mentioned here as a reason to abstain, but there are other possible reasons: it could be illness, for example. There are also times when sexual relations in marriage are simply not possible, and it is important to know that it’s not the norm, but it is necessary. In these moments, self-control needs to be exhibited here. But then, Paul tells husbands and wives to come together again once they can, in order to avoid Satan’s temptation to indulgence and lack of self-control.

Phillip: The marriage bed is not to be a place of warfare, but a place of mutual agreement and of consent. One is not to withhold for the sake of winning an argument or anything like that. Sex is a part of married life and our provision is for each other. This passage is a description of mutuality in decision, the importance of not sinning, an indication of the reason for marriage—not only to have children—and the reality of sexual motivation. These are all caught up in these wonderful few verses. But notice verse 6, where Paul describes this as “a concession, not a command.” You don’t have to deprive one another for a season if you don’t want to. It’s not as though when you pray, you mustn’t have sex with each other. It’s a concession he’s making. If you choose to do this, provided you’re choosing it together and for a season, it’s a choice that is available to you, which is right and proper.

Peter: Yes, so let’s go back to the beginning. How do you best glorify God in your body? It’s not to stop having sex.

Phillip: No, it’s certainly not. It’s in finding God’s way to have sex. It’s a funny way to put it, but not if you believe in the Creator who’s created our bodies, and that sex is part of our creation. In this case, within marriage, God’s way to have sex is in the right place, at the right time, in the right way, with the right person. The commandment is not simply to get married. It’s to get married in order to live as married people do under God, rather than as the pagans who abuse the relationship.

2

Ibid.

Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

---

Links & Recommendations

For more on this topic, check out this talk given at St Andrews Cathedral called Sexual Morality.

---

Freely available, supported by generosity.

If you enjoy Two Ways News, why not lend us a hand? Consider joining our Supporters Club—friends who make it possible for us to keep producing this article/podcast.

To join the Supporters Club, follow the link below to the ‘subscribe’ page. You’ll see that there’s:

• a number of ‘paid options’. To join the Supporters Club take out one of the paid ‘subscription plans’ and know we are deeply grateful for your support!

• also the free option (on the far right hand side)

Sign up to support us

The commandments of 1 Corinthians 6:15-20 are obvious: flee sexual immorality and glorify God in your body. However, Paul does not simply give commandments; he gives the rationale behind them. The rationale has to do with the meaning of the body in his thinking in terms of our creation, our resurrection, and our marital union with Christ. This densely argued paragraph provides for us a Christian understanding of ourselves as well as our motivation to live Christianly. I hope you enjoy hearing Peter and I struggling to grasp Paul’s reasoning.

Yours,

Phillip

Phillip Jensen: Today, we’re going to focus on the last part of 1 Corinthians 6. 1 Corinthians 6:15–20

Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never! Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, “The two will become one flesh.” But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. 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, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.

It’s interesting that 3 times, Paul asks, “Do you not know?” He’s appealing to the Christian knowledge that this church, caught up in immorality, is supposed to have. But there are many twists and turns in this passage.

Peter Jensen: Yes, it’s like listening to someone talking on the phone, and only knowing what the person on one end is saying. It’s no wonder that, according to the experts, this is one of the most difficult passages of Paul’s writings. Even the Apostle Peter says, in 2 Peter 3, that there were some things in Paul’s letters which were hard to understand. If the Apostle Peter found them hard, then it’s not surprising that we do too. But in fact, this passage is filled with significance and richness, so let’s continue to unpack it as far as we are able.

Phillip: Well, in the last episode, we discussed the importance of context. In that instance, the context was that despite their sinful old culture, the Corinthians were now washed, sanctified, justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the spirit of our God. In a theological fashion, you pointed out that in addressing their problems, Paul appeals to the context of the biblical teaching as a whole: creation, sin, redemption, and the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. The two words you used last week were ‘Christology’ and ‘anthropology’. How does that all work here in verses 15–20?

Peter: Let’s begin by thinking about the body, because that turns up repeatedly here. In the part of the passage we looked at previously, Paul reminds us that God created all things to be good, which includes food and the body. Even though they pass away, the resurrection of Jesus shows us that our future is embodied. In the resurrection of Jesus, our future has arrived.

Phillip: He’s still embodied, which I believe many people don’t grasp. But it wasn’t that he just became bodily for a few days to show his disciples, for the Ascension of Jesus is the ascension of a body.

Peter: Indeed, and Acts 17 tells us that the judgement will be conducted by a man whom God has appointed by raising him from the dead. This therefore tells us that our future is embodied, not merely spiritual. But we’re also told that our bodies are the domain of Christ. In other words, he rules over us: body, soul, and spirit, if you like. Our bodies belong to him, and of course, that is where we find true peace, true assurance, and true freedom. But the ongoing language of the body is quite puzzling.

Phillip: The body is more than just your physical organs: it’s you. You just mentioned “body, soul and spirit,” but the New Testament doesn’t differentiate those in any consistent pattern. The 3 go together as one person, and the language of ‘body’ is present throughout the Scriptures. It’s not just that the spirit is meant for the Lord; your body is also meant for the Lord. Christ made you in body, that you will serve him, that you will be his. But the Bible’s view of the body then is creational and resurrectional.

We’re not a spirit without a body, but a spirit-animated body. We believe in the resurrection of the body. Jesus still has bodily existence in heaven and we too, with our bodies, will be with him. What we do with our bodies, therefore, is what we do with ourselves. But there’s more to it than that in the Bible. For in marriage, a husband and wife become one flesh with each other, so that Paul speaks in Ephesians of a man’s wife as his body. It’s in this way of thinking that Paul speaks of the church as the body of Christ, because the church is the bride of Christ. We are united to him as his bride, which he purchased by his blood that was shed for us. These days, we don’t like thinking of brides being purchased, but that is part of the idea that, by his death on the cross, Christ purchased his bride. As such, we are individually members of his body.

But our unity with him is not in sex, but in having his Holy Spirit within us, animating us. So our bodies are the temple, or the home of the Holy Spirit. So, given that background, we come to the context of marriage that Paul is writing about: the issue of sexual immorality, particularly the problem of joining our bodies to a prostitute. For to unite yourself to a prostitute is to unite a member of Christ’s body to a prostitute, which is to unite the temple of the Holy Spirit to a prostitute. To do such an action is to sin against your own body, the body that is for the Lord. Instead, we are to glorify God not only in our spirits, but also in our body. I would like to note here—because our society is today very worried about the demonisation of prostitutes—that what is being spoken of here is sexual immorality in a broader sense. I think that the same would be said by Paul if the issue was of fornication rather than joining with a prostitute. But here, he is speaking of the uniting of your body, a member of Christ and the vessel of the Holy Spirit, with someone who is in an inappropriate relationship for you to unite yourself to them.

Peter: You’re saying that we are members of the body of Christ. Is that in a metaphorical sense?

Phillip: Yes, in that we are members of the bride of Christ, which is a metaphorical way of understanding the relationship that the church has with Christ.

Peter: How does that impact our understanding of our physical bodies?

Phillip: My body is symbolic of the relationship between the church and Christ, and it is part of that bride of Christ.

Peter: In Corinth and perhaps even more in our own society, there’s an immense amount of permissiveness around sex; for instance, people don’t think that a sexual ‘hookup’ is all that significant. Is it?

Phillip: Of course a sexual hookup is significant, because the sexual union is that. It is something fundamentally different to all other sins, because it is the connection of one body with another. Within marriage, this is a good and wonderful thing that God has created us for, which is symbolic of Christ and the church, as our prayer book wedding service spells out for us. But outside of marriage, it is an expression of our sinfulness, and it is a sin against our own bodily integrity.

Peter: Thus, the culture which allows for all sorts of sexual relations to occur is damaging to those involved. It’s creating a profound, deep relationship which will later be discarded. It is a travesty, a destruction, a corruption of relationships.

Phillip: It is the abuse of the relationship in the first place, because that is not how the body is to be used. Furthermore, going back to last week, there is an element of slavery too, because the more you commit this act, the more you will be enslaved by it. The very nature of sexual relationships is undermined by their frequency, therefore, as opposed to their loving consistency.

Peter: Verse 17 uses this strange expression, “But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him.” You might expect Paul to say “one body”, but instead, it’s “one spirit”.

Phillip: Yes, because in our relationship with Jesus Christ, we are not one flesh in a sexual relationship with him; we are one flesh in that we have his Spirit within us. To be Christian is to be born again by the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ, and so we are united to him because we are the temple of his Spirit.

Peter: In this instance, should the word ‘spirit’ have a capital or a lowercase ‘S’?

Phillip: Here’s the problem with our English translation: in the Greek, everything was written in capitals, and so our translators always have to work out whether to use upper case, to indicate that they’re referring to the Holy Spirit, or lower case to indicate that it is our spirit. In the instance when the passage talks about us being ‘one spirit’ with him, I would stick with the lower case.

Peter: That’s interesting. It reminds me of 1 Corinthians 15, which talks about our resurrection body as a spiritual body. That doesn’t mean our bodies are not physical, rather our bodies will be ruled by the Holy Spirit.

Phillip: That’s right, but it’s also an eschatological figure you would like to know. That is, the Spirit is the age to come. The first part of 1 Peter 3:18 tells us, “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God.” It’s a lovely verse, and at that point I would want to end the sentence, but Peter goes on, “Being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit.”

This doesn’t mean that Jesus died physically and then spiritually rose, because the Old Testament makes it quite clear that he rose bodily. So what does it mean to say that Jesus rose and was made alive in the spirit? I take it that the flesh is symbolic of this world, while the spirit is symbolic of the world to come. You find the same thing in Revelation 1:10, where John was “In the Spirit on the Lord’s day,” meaning that he’s in the age to come, the age of the Spirit. When we come to chapters 12–14 of 1 Corinthians, we will be dealing with the spirituals, which has this overtone of the age to come that is broken into this world. And Jesus, though dying in this world, was also raised in the world to come.

Peter: You’ve demonstrated a key point in my thinking; that is to say, eschatology, which is the doctrine of the last things, infuses the whole New Testament, particularly as the resurrection in a sense is the beginning of the end. But that’s for another day.

For now, what are the implications? I go back to Christology, pneumatology (the doctrine of the Holy Spirit), and anthropology. “Such were some of you,” he says earlier in the passage, but now they are owned by the Lord Jesus Christ. He owns us through his death for us on the cross, expressed in our union with him and foreshadowed in his resurrection from the dead. That’s the first thing, Christ’s Lordship. Then we come to what it says about the Spirit. We have the presence of the Spirit who brings with him the Father and the Son, and we are temples. We all know about Solomon’s temple, one temple in one place at one time; but we are temples indwelt by the living God, the Spirit being the gift of God. That’s an astonishing thing to say of any human being, and it’s true of all Christians. Therefore, both in the present and in the future, we don’t own our bodies. This is our anthropology. When we repent, we don’t just have remorse; we have repentance. In repentance, you turn to the Lord Jesus Christ and you trust him, and he becomes Lord of your life, as this passage says. Our bodies are his domain. Of course, the law is still important in the Christian life: “Love God, love your neighbor,” is the summary of the law. But at the heart of it is a relationship with God. It is because of the grace of God, and all the things that he has done, that our aim in life is to glorify him in our bodies.

Another way of saying it is found in 2 Corinthians 5:9, “We make it our aim to please him.” The aim of your life is to please God. To find out what pleases God, you read his Word. So we express our freedom by an obligation to love God and to love others. Here, and here alone, is purpose, meaning, hope and joy of true freedom. Here is a doctrine of humanity which goes to the heart of the truth. It’s about relationships, not legalism, important though the law may be. Nor is it about anarchy, doing whatever we want. Our aim in life is to please him and express that in our love for others; particularly our other brothers and sisters, but not only them. So if those are the implications, what does this mean for Christians living in the age of permissiveness?

Phillip: That’s the background in our thinking and understanding, which is so important to stop us from just being rule-keepers. But the trouble with just the theological reflection is that people can have their reflection and still ignore the rules. Here, there are two commands which are made absolutely clear: flee from sexual immorality, and glorify God in your body.

What do we mean, “flee from sexual immorality”? I always think of Joseph; when he was in Egypt and his master’s wife sought to seduce him, he ran away naked. Like Joseph, we must flee. We tempt ourselves by our discontentment in our relationships, but if we’re in a relationship, we must walk a country mile away from any physical intimacy with anybody else. If we’re lonely, we need to keep our minds on what is pure and what is holy. If we’re in the company of people, we must beware of the adulterer, as the book of Proverbs warns us of. If we’re already in adultery, we need to get out of it, and we need to get out of it now, not in the future. We will say more on that later, when we come to 1 Corinthians 7.

We must glorify God in our body, because our body, being the temple of the Holy Spirit and members of the bride of Christ, symbolises something so important. I think of 2 Corinthians 11 where Paul, talking about heresy and about people moving away from the Lord Jesus Christ, uses the language of betrothal, which was a legal contract. 2 Corinthians 11:1–4

I wish you would bear with me in a little foolishness. Do bear with me! For I feel a divine jealousy for you, since I betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a pure virgin to Christ. But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ. For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough.

Here’s a great error: we’ve been betrothed to Christ, and so we must glorify God in our bodies as members of the bride of Christ, and as the temple of the Holy Spirit.

Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Links & Recommendations

For more on this topic, check out this sermon from St Matthias Evening Church called The Gospel and Sexual Liberality.

Freely available, supported by generosity.

If you enjoy Two Ways News, why not lend us a hand? Consider joining our Supporters Club—friends who make it possible for us to keep producing this article/podcast.

To join the Supporters Club, follow the link below to the ‘subscribe’ page. You’ll see that there’s:

• a number of ‘paid options’. To join the Supporters Club take out one of the paid ‘subscription plans’ and know we are deeply grateful for your support!

• also the free option (on the far right hand side)

Sign up to support us

Hard passages of the Bible are great passages. The reason that they are hard is because we are not thinking biblically. Wrestling with these hard passages gives us the opportunity to change our thinking in order to be aligned with biblical thinking. 1 Corinthians 6:12-20 is notoriously difficult, and over the next two weeks, Peter and I are going to try to unravel some of its complexities. We start today by looking at the context.

Yours,

Phillip

Phillip Jensen: Today we’re going to be looking at a small passage in the second half of 1 Corinthians 6.

Peter Jensen: 1 Corinthians 6:12–14

“All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are helpful. “All things are lawful for me,” but I will not be dominated by anything. “Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food”—and God will destroy both one and the other. The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by his power.

Phillip: This passage is only 3 verses, but it is difficult.

Peter: It is. Brian Rosner describes it in his commentary, The First Letter to the Corinthians, as being, “Widely acknowledged to be one of the most difficult passages in Paul’s letters.”1

Phillip: In my view, the hard passages are the important ones. In one sense, there are no hard passages; there are just confused brains. They’re hard for us because we’re not thinking in the way in which the author was thinking, and so we are forced to ask questions about our understanding and assumptions.

What are some of the issues we have with this passage?

Peter: Regarding the beginning of verse 12, who is saying, “All things are lawful to me”? Is it the apostle or is it the reader who says it, and why? Furthermore, what does Paul mean in saying, “Not all things are helpful?” ‘Helpful’ is a rather uncharacteristically weak word. In addition, particularly in the face of such blatant antinomianism (lawlessness), why make such an obvious point about food and the stomach, and then have it turned into threatening words about God destroying both food and stomach? And then there’s this strange skip to sexual immorality. Where did that come from?

Phillip: Context, context, context! We must always look at the context. Yes, these 3 or 4 sentences seem to jump from topic to topic, but the key is to look back at the context. Chapters 5 and 6 have been referring to flagrant acts of sexual immorality of all types. But notice how the chapter ends: by addressing sexually immoral people inside the Corinthian church. It seems that some members of the Corinthian church were doing what the world did and running wildly into sexuality; back in chapter 5, one person was doing something so immoral that even the world wouldn’t have approved of it. They seemed to be justifying their behaviour through an appeal to a twisted version of the gospel about freedom. Their thinking was, “I’m free from the law now, so I can do what I want.”

Peter: On the subject of context, I believe it’s worth observing Paul’s great words just before this passage. As he says in 1 Corinthians 6:11, “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.”

Phillip: How does this context help you in reading this passage?

Peter: It paves the way for the fundamental theme of what Paul is saying here. He is not a moralist. That is to say, when we’re talking about freedom from the law, he is not saying that people must keep the law of Moses in order to be saved, nor does he merely tell people to stop breaking the law. Rather, he models an approach to living as a Christian. I would say that he appeals to biblical Christology; that is to say, the teaching of the Bible about Christ and about anthropology. Further, he appeals to what the Bible says about these 2 great subjects to expose the weaknesses in the other approach that was being endorsed in Corinth.

Phillip: In the next passage, Paul says, “Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never!” In one sense, he sounds like a moralist for simply forbidding this action, yet he gives a reason for this view. In other words, he doesn’t just chastise people for this error, but he explains why it is wrong.

Peter: Indeed, and just as he told them their lives were utterly changed by the work of Christ and the Holy Spirit, so he applies the gospel to their situation.

Phillip: That then brings us to the aspect of Christology that we’re talking of, being the resurrection of the body in the Lordship of Christ. 1 Corinthians 6:14, “And God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by his power,” deals with, as you would call it, anthropology. It’s got to do with our bodies being raised as Jesus’ body is raised. Inherent in this anthropology is our creation, especially in relationships. We were created in relationships: in relationship to God, and in relationship with each other, male and female. And the great value for us here is that we live in this world, in Sydney, in the same world in which the Corinthians lived in Corinth. That is a world where we’ve been created bodily, in relationship with God, and we are coming to a time of the resurrection when we will be again like the Lord Jesus Christ. But right now, we are living with him as our Lord. Just as the Corinthians were seduced back into sexual immorality, into living in a way inconsistent with their creation and their salvation, so our society is pushing the same sexual immorality. We do need to hear what the Apostle Paul has to say, not just in rules and regulations, but in rationale.

Peter: Yes, and that’s seen right here in the opening. Most translations put the statement, “All things are lawful for me” in inverted commas to denote a quotation from another source. In other words, it’s used by the Corinthians as a slogan, and interestingly, it fits our contemporary world perfectly, as we encourage each other with slogans like, “You do you,” and “Do what pleases you best.” I presume, based on what we read elsewhere in Paul’s writings, that this is a sort of perversion of his preaching of justification by faith. Some Christians, having heard that they are justified by faith alone, now abuse the doctrine as though it is a charter for self-centred lawlessness.

Phillip: Lawlessness is always condemned in the New Testament. It’s one thing to break the law; it’s another thing to place yourself outside the law. The sovereign citizen movement, for instance, places people outside the law, so that it no longer has any application to those within. But justification is not about placing yourself outside the law, nor is it simply about God ignoring the law, forgiving everybody for everything no matter what they do. That kind of forgiveness is not forgiveness, but acceptance, and when you are willing to accept anything anybody does without punishment, that’s just approval of bad behaviour. Instead, God justifies us.

The very word ‘justified’ has a legal overtone. God justifies us by his Son fulfilling the law for us, and paying the penalty for our failure to obey the law. In that way, the law is upheld while genuine forgiveness is secured at the supreme cost of the death of Christ. But I’m surprised at what looks like a very weak response from Paul, in the phrase, “not all things are helpful.” ‘Helpful’ seems like a pretty weak moral term.

Peter: That’s what struck me too. Other translations use the word ‘beneficial’, which is slightly better, but it doesn’t push us much further. But I believe that what the Apostle is appealing to is one of the points made before, namely that our standing with God is relational. That is, true freedom is not simply the abandonment of law and so forth, because the New Testament tells us that law is good. People didn’t understand then what freedom means, nor do they understand it now. The Corinthians, by saying that all things are lawful, have failed to love. When Paul says “It is not helpful,” what he means is that it is not beneficial to the fellowship, to others. Therefore, those who say “All things are lawful for me,” do not keep the heart of the law, which is an obligation that we all have, not in order to be saved, but as people who have been saved and are now living as God wants us to.

So relationships, as you pointed out, are integral to the theology of the passage. And that is where their view of freedom, and our contemporary views of freedom, are exposed as absolutely shallow and indeed inhuman. You see, Paul also says, “I will not be dominated by anything.” Freedom is not the ability to do whatever you want to do, for that simply leads to domination by sin. As Jesus said in John 8:34, “Everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin.” Rather, true freedom is a discovery of who you are meant to be, and the capacity to live according to who you are designed to be.

I always loved the great illustration used by the American poet Robert Frost, who said that, “Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.” That is to say, true freedom—the true capacity to play tennis, in that case—depends upon a limitation to freedom. Who we are, therefore, determines what freedom really is. For us, our true freedom as human beings is found where we were designed to find it: in submission to Christ. Freedom depends on finding the best Lord, and in Christ, you find the Lord who is the greatest of all, and he will set you free.

Phillip: Indeed. The phrase, “All things are lawful for me” is said twice in that verse. The first response to it is “Not all things are helpful”, but the second response ups the ante: “I will not be enslaved by anything.” So while ‘helpful’ may feel like a weak word, ‘enslaved’ feels like a very powerful word. Because while we may think freedom means that we can do what we want, in reality, what we want to do will enslave us, for that is the character of sin itself.

Peter: It is not a true picture of what freedom really is. How does this all fit in with references to the stomach and to food?

Phillip: Context is still key. You see, Paul could be referring to the context of the Corinthian situation, because in chapters 8 and 9, the discussion of legalism and freedom comes up again as to whether people are free to eat food offered to idols, or whether that will bring them into condemnation. Part of the answer to that has to do with your earlier point about relationships. That is, in this situation, the Corinthians had failed to ask, “What is in the best interest of others for my liberty to be exercised in eating food offered to idols?” So Paul in chapter 6 could be laying the foundation for that later discussion, although it’s slightly more likely that he is again quoting the Corinthians. “Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food.” Again, our translation here puts this phrase in quotation marks, meaning it’s likely that the Corinthians are saying it.

In that case, they’re arguing in a way like Aristotle, who saw that the purpose for something gave it its meaning and its morality: the eye is for seeing, the ear is for hearing, and so on. Likewise, the stomach is for eating. And according to the Corinthians, as the stomach is for food and food is for the stomach, both of them are going to be destroyed by God, so it really doesn’t matter what you eat. It’s neither here nor there. From which you can then make the next argument, “The body was meant for sex.” Then it doesn’t matter what you do in that regard either, because as the stomach is going to be destroyed, so will the body be destroyed. So your sexual relations don’t matter any more than what kind of food you eat.

Peter: And they were arguing that this is Christian?

Phillip: They were Christians who were arguing for this behaviour. It takes a time for Christian thinking to change the Christian person. We come as Christians in an Australian culture, and it takes some time for the absolute understanding of the gospel to whittle away the Australian culture that we’ve just taken for granted. The same applies to the Corinthians.

Peter: Referring back to this idea of the body being destroyed and so forth, is Paul’s point that it is the spirit that matters, not the body?

Phillip: No, that’s not right. The Greeks did not like the body; to them, the spirit was everything. The body was seen within certain aspects of Greek philosophy as a prison, as an evil thing in itself. But we are not created as embodied for no purpose and no future. The body is the person and the person has a Lord. We are creatures, created bodily, and we therefore need to look at the purpose of the body. In doing so, we look back to creation, which gives us the biblical attitude of both the matter and the spirit. The purpose of the human body—that is, the purpose of the human person—is to serve Christ. I do not serve him bodiless. My body is me and I am my body. For all things, including your body, soul, and spirit, were made for him.

Peter: And the fate of Christ after death was not merely to live on as a soul or spirit; he was resurrected.

Phillip: Yes, and this idea that we believe in the resurrection of the body is so central to Christianity. Not the reincarnation into a different body, nor just a soul somehow being amalgamated into the spirit world. God raised Jesus from the dead bodily, and he will also raise us up by his same power, bodily. The bodily resurrection of Jesus and of Christian people is one of the fundamental distinctive characteristics of Christianity itself, and of course is very much at the heart of the gospel. The death of the Lord Jesus Christ for our sins, and the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ who is victorious over death, sin and Satan, must never be diminished. The resurrection is important, but it is a bodily resurrection. The tomb is empty, and Jesus’ real body appears. In Luke’s gospel, Jesus eats fish in front of the disciples as a demonstration that his body is a real body. He tells Thomas to reach out and put his fingers in the marks of his hands where he was crucified. Thus, Jesus’ body is a real physical body, the same body resurrected. And as Jesus’ body is resurrected, ours is to be resurrected. So while the stomach will be destroyed, it is to be resurrected into eternity.

Peter: It’s a revolution. By the way, please notice too that Paul digs deeply in this passage into Christology and anthropology—the doctrine of Christ and the doctrine of human beings respectively—to answer their questions and correct their worldly ideas. Of course, you rightly pointed out that context earlier, but we need to summon up our theological context, what the Bible as a whole teaches about these things, in order to see the whole truth emerge from a passage like this.

Phillip: ‘Context’ is a wonderful word, because it refers to the grammar of the sentence, the paragraph, the book in which it is written, the Testament in which it is, and the Bible as a whole. All of that is caught up in the ‘context’ of a passage. So I would say that Paul is laying here some very important foundations for the challenge he’s going to give to the Corinthians in the next few verses about their sexual immorality with prostitution.

1

Brian S. Rosner and Roy E. Ciampa, “The First Letter to the Corinthians”, 2010 (Eerdmans)

Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

---

Links & Recommendations

For more on this topic, check out this talk on 1 Corinthians 6 given at St Andrew’s Cathedral on the topic of Sexual Immorality.

---

Freely available, supported by generosity.

If you enjoy Two Ways News, why not lend us a hand? Consider joining our Supporters Club—friends who make it possible for us to keep producing this article/podcast.

To join the Supporters Club, follow the link below to the ‘subscribe’ page. You’ll see that there’s:

• a number of ‘paid options’. To join the Supporters Club take out one of the paid ‘subscription plans’ and know we are deeply grateful for your support!

• also the free option (on the far right hand side)

Sign up to support us