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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Links & Recommendations

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

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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.

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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.

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Links & Recommendations

For more on this topic, check out this talk on Marriage from 1 Corinthians 7.

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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.

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Links & Recommendations

For more on this topic, check out this talk given at St Andrews Cathedral called Sexual Morality.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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If ever there is a passage of the Bible that has caused controversy and division today, it is 1 Corinthians 6:9—11. There is not much doubt as to what the passage says or means, yet the application of this passage in the church and in society has led to great conflict. In today’s episode, Peter outlines something of the background of the conflict within the Anglican Communion over the last two decades, before we turn to the real pastoral importance of this passage in the lives of the leaders.

Yours,

Phillip

Phillip Jensen: Before we get into this week’s episode, we would like to encourage you to invite your friends and family members to subscribe so that we can share the news of 1 Corinthians to a wider audience.

Last week, we looked at 1 Corinthians 6:1–8 and discussed the question of disagreements between brothers that require reconciliation. But this week’s passage is quite stark. 1 Corinthians 6:9–11

Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. 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.

Peter Jensen: That is confronting, especially in the age of the Sexual Revolution, and also due to the power of the warning. In other words, if you continue to practice these things, you will be lost.

Phillip: It says twice that they “will not inherit the kingdom of God.” It’s hard to be more explicit than that. This is the passage that got Israel Folau, a Rugby Union footballer, into trouble. After he read and discussed the passage in his church, the Rugby Union cancelled his contract. I know there are disagreements about the basis on which they did it, but we all know, underneath it all, he was making a point here about entering the kingdom of God that people objected to, particularly the homosexual community. Similarly in Melbourne 2 years ago, Andrew Thorburn was appointed as the CEO of the Essendon Football Club, and the next day was forced to resign because years before, the church in which he was a member spoke on issues of sexual morality and marriage. The Essendon Football Club took objection to this, and so he was forced to resign. We have this difficulty in that a subject that 30 or 40 years ago could barely be mentioned has now been one of such widespread or powerfully spread promotion that you can’t even express a disagreement without at least chastisement. In the early 2000s, our federal government ruled that marriage was between a man and a woman; by 2017, the federal government ruled that marriage could be between people of the same sex. Now, if you speak against that, you are in trouble in the community, and may lose your job. But this passage deals with something greater than losing a football contract. These are very important subjects.

Peter: They are. First of all, here is a list of sins seen by Paul to be so grave that to live in accordance with them has dire consequences; you will not inherit the kingdom of God. It is a life and death matter which has had a vast impact on many places, but particularly on the worldwide Anglican church in the last 30 years.

The Anglican Communion, as it’s called, is not like Roman Catholicism. It’s more of a worldwide fellowship of independent denominations, depending on the country you’re in, which share the same history and much of the same theological basis, structure and liturgy. In its present form, it traces back to the Reformation. Central to the unity which has been maintained has been a fellowship with the Archbishop of Canterbury. He has been seen as the first amongst equals, so to speak, thus he has the capacity to call a conference called the Lambeth Conference every 10 years of all the bishops around the Anglican Communion.

Phillip: The Anglican Communion is a bit like the gathering of a very big extended family, in that all of the Anglicans have come out of England.

Peter: Yes, and when I travel around the world as an ordained person, my ministry is largely accepted. So when I lived in England for three-and-a-half years, I was allowed to minister. There are applications of this that are not insignificant; for example, there’s the way in which the churches in more wealthy countries try to look after those in poorer countries with financial support and with personnel. It’s not simply that once every 10 years, the bishops get together in communion. As you pointed out, we also have a shared history, and so what goes on in England is still particularly important to us.

Phillip: I remember the Lambeth Conference in 1998 when the Sydney bishops returned delighted that the conference had rightly and overwhelmingly decided that same-sex relations were inconsistent with the Scriptures and were not to be accepted within the Anglican Church.

Peter: I also remember them coming back, and partly because their advice and wisdom had been part of creating the document that spelled this out. Yet within five years or less, some Canadians and particularly the United States Anglicans, who are called Episcopalians, had gone ahead to bless same-sex relations despite what the Lambeth Conference had said. The Lambeth Conference is not a legal entity, so it does not make laws, but it was overwhelmingly in favour of supporting the traditional view of sexuality.

With some difficulty up until then, the Communion had stayed together over the advent of female clergy. This was also a fairly disputed subject which caused division, but people stayed together because that was not a matter of life and death. I have dear women friends who have been ordained. I don’t think they’ve lost their salvation as a result, although I do disagree with them. But as we can see from this passage, the practice of same-sex relationships and other sinful relationships put you outside the kingdom of God. It threatens your eternal salvation, which makes it very significant.

Phillip: Before we look at the significance in this passage, we should continue talking about the Anglicans for a while. How did the Orthodox Episcopalians—the ones who believed in the Scriptures—respond to the acceptance of same-sex marriage?

Peter: About 100,000 Episcopalians decided that they could no longer stay in their denomination with a clear conscience, so they withdrew. They lost many of their buildings as they did so, but they preferred to bear such losses over staying in a denomination which had made this decision, which to their mind went against the teaching of God’s Word. Subsequently, the same thing has happened in New Zealand, in Brazil, in Wales, in Scotland, and other places.

Phillip: What happened with the property issues?

Peter: Most of the court rulings went against the leavers, and so they lost their property. I remember one minister telling me that he and his whole congregation had left their building. I saw this building once; it was magnificent. But this large congregation left to meet in the local school, and some years later, they built a new building.

Phillip: That’s hard because often, the building is paid for by the congregation, not the denomination.

Peter: Leaving a building can be heart-rending for that reason, but also because the building is where members of the congregation were married, or where funeral services took place. Nonetheless, people sacrificed for the sake of the Word of God. In fact, the minister said to me that he never felt more free than when he left and was able to preach the whole Word of God without it being damaged by others.

In the following 5 years after these congregations left, there were many efforts all around the Anglican Communion to get the Americans and the Canadians to repent, but they refused to do so. So when the next Lambeth Conference was held in 2008, the then Archbishop of Canterbury had an impossible decision to make on whether or not he would invite the whole of the bishops of the Episcopal Church who had agreed to this. He decided to invite them, and so a large group of us decided that we could not attend the conference, so we set up our own conference in Jerusalem called GAFCON. It was at this conference that we took the key step of disassociating ourselves from the offending churches as we saw them, and recognising those who are left as the true Anglicans. GAFCON recognised their Anglican authenticity, which the successive archbishops have never been able to bring themselves to do.

Phillip: It raises the question of what it means to be Anglican. Is my Anglicanism just a matter of birth, or is it a matter of confession? Is every Englishman a member of the Church of England, or only those who believe in the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ?

But first, can you tell me what GAFCON stands for?

Peter: GAFCON stands for the Global Anglican Fellowship Conference. But of course, this conference has now turned into a movement.

Phillip: What are the achievements of these last 20 years of GAFCON?

Peter: There are many, but the one that I think is most significant is that, when the true Anglicans had to leave their churches for conscience’s sake and at some sacrifice, GAFCON helped them to start their own Anglican churches. In other words, the real heart of GAFCON is fellowship and communion. Not having fellowship with those who have disobeyed the Bible on a clear and vital matter, but having fellowship with those who have obeyed it. Essentially, this demonstrates that the authority of scripture is preeminent.

Phillip: The genuine Anglicans are not cradle Anglicans, but confessional Anglicans. So GAFCON was born and goes on to this day.

There is a new Archbishop of Canterbury, however, and she has made it clear that homosexual practices and partnership has her support. What does that do for the crisis that’s been happening for the last 20 years?

Peter: In the past, we have called the Archbishop of Canterbury “he”, which has been the case for the last 104 of them, but now we call her “she”.

Phillip: Does that make a difference at this point?

Peter: The Anglican Communion before 1998 had women priests and had women bishops shortly thereafter. Though this created tensions, it didn’t break the Communion because it wasn’t, in that sense, a salvation issue. But the advent of the new Archbishop of Canterbury, who has made it clear that she is in favour of homosexual practices, has made a difference. The Church of England has not gone down this path as yet, although it’s been debating it in its synod. Perhaps it never will, because there’s a fair bit of objection to it, but there are also a large number of people agitating for it. I’ve discussed this at length to illustrate the sheer importance of the disagreements, which we call “salvation issues”: issues which put at risk your inheritance in the kingdom of God. It means that there are moments when we need to stand back from fellowship and call for repentance. It’s not that we’ve washed our hands of the Americans; it is that we long for them to turn back and adopt the biblical teaching once more.

Phillip: Just to be clear, we do have strong disagreements, for example, about a woman Archbishop of Canterbury, but GAFCON is not separating from Anglicanism or maintaining that Anglicanism is separated from us because of the female Archbishop. I’ve seen that idea in secular media, but it’s not true.

Peter: It is to do with the stand she has made on this key subject. Though it’s not necessarily a helpful phrase, this is what I call a salvation issue.

Phillip: However, having ordination of women and consecration of women as bishops has created enormous strains in how we operate together. It’s not like that’s nothing.

Peter: No, it’s not. As I said before, one of the features of the Anglican Communion has been that I can go to England, to Africa, to South America and be with my fellow Anglicans. The fact that I’m an authentic minister is recognised in those places. But now, because of the disagreement based on our understanding of Scripture, since the ‘80s and ‘90s there has been a tension in the Anglican Church of Australia. Certainly, the appointment of a woman Archbishop in Canterbury does create its own tension. For example, the Nigerian Church, which is the largest group of Anglicans in the world, do not agree with this. So if the Archbishop of Canterbury visits Nigeria, will she be able to conduct Holy Communion? How will she be recognised with respect to her office, but also with the desire to keep the teaching of God’s Word?

Phillip: We no longer have mutually acceptable orders. But given the explicit nature of 1 Corinthians 6, the issue of homosexuality is in the list of things that prevent you from being in the kingdom of heaven.

But the first thing to notice about this list is the word “deceived”. Sin fools us. We’re all fools at different times, but it’s sin which fools us. We’re warned by the Apostle that there are certain sins that have this deceptive quality. In Galatians 5:21, where he talks about the works of the flesh, he says, “I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.”

Additionally, in Ephesians 5:6, he says, “Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.” So these sinful things have a deceptive quality that lead people to accept them.

Peter: Why is that the case if they are fairly obviously sinful?

Phillip: Firstly, we fool ourselves into thinking that God’s grace is expressed in freedom from sin: that he will forgive anything and everything at all times. That’s a very poor understanding of the love of God which removes the turning aside of God’s wrath through the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ, as well as the repentance.

Secondly, so sinful are our hearts that we are very good at making exceptions and excuses for ourselves, finding a reason why God wouldn’t possibly condemn us: “What I’m doing is just natural to me because of the situation I’m in.” Therefore we can excuse almost anything. I’ve had friends excuse their adultery to me. They tell me that given how their wife had treated them, it’s not their fault that the girl in the office was now attractive to them. “It’s not really adultery because the marriage had dried up anyway,” they say.

Thirdly, the world is constantly telling me that sin is okay, and we succumb to the voice of Satan that is expressed in this world. In movies today, there is an acceptance of certain sexual immorality and of drunkenness. The world is not saying that if you do these things, you will be excluded from the kingdom of God; it is denying these very things. Sinful as the list looks, it’s fascinating how easily we’re deceived.

Peter: Indeed, and it’s important to underscore this because the discussion we’ve just had about GAFCON, which happens to be centred on one of the sins mentioned in the passage, may make it feel as though sexual immorality is what this is all about, and the Bible is denouncing this as the worst of all possible sins. But this passage is certainly not just about sexual sins.

Phillip: The list goes: the sexually immoral, idolaters, adulterers, men who practice homosexuality, thieves, greedy, drunkards, revilers, and swindlers. There’s no hierarchy of sins. We mustn’t try and downplay it as if homosexuality is not in this list, but so is adultery, greediness, the love of money, drunkenness, swindling, and slandering. These, too, are sins that would exclude one from the kingdom of heaven. It is important to notice that it is about more than just sexual sins that we’re talking about, while at the same time not using that to downplay or exclude sexual sins. It is also important to notice that it is about committing these sins repeatedly. It’s not that you are excluded from the kingdom of heaven if you commit these sins once; it’s about being habitual, because he goes on to say, “Such were some of you.” It’s not talking about being drunk once, but about being a drunkard. It’s not talking about being greedy once, but about being a greedy person. It’s the very lifestyle of it.

Peter: There are many people caught up in this. Now, it may be that you are tempted by alcohol, but that doesn’t make you an alcoholic. But we’ve got to recognise that there are temptations to sin which arise from the heart, from the way we are. We need to be sympathetic to people in that situation and encourage them not to capitulate to a lifestyle which will only damage them and others.

Phillip: Yes. I’ve spent many years working with alcoholic friends and helping them, as Christians, out of what I see as an addiction. That is, there are certain sins that, when practiced enough, become addictive. They change the synapses of your brain to make it a difficult thing for you to renounce. Whereas some people can drink without ever getting tempted to be drunk, there are some people who, as soon as they start drinking, can’t help but get drunk. They’re different in those situations. The Bible doesn’t speak against drinking alcohol (I say that as a teetotaller myself) but it is speaking against those who drink and get drunk. Getting drunk is not of the kingdom of God. If that is your continued practice, then you should stop it, because you can’t be a drunkard and a member of the kingdom of God. However, if you’ve reached the third stage that I mentioned a few moments ago, namely becoming an alcoholic, not getting drunk becomes an almost impossibility. My alcoholic friends get tremors when they haven’t drunk. It’s physiologically an addictive practice that requires considerable help. And help is available, both in counselling or through Alcoholics Anonymous or Overcomers Outreach. Just because you may have this addictive characteristic to a particular sin, that does not mean you must and will always be there. Now, my alcoholic friends will never say they’re cured. The alcoholic always says, “I’m in recovery,” because he knows that should he lapse, he will lapse hard. So they are in recovery, but they are forgiven by Jesus Christ. They are no longer drunkards. They’re alcoholics because they’re addicted, but they’re not drunkards because they don’t get drunk anymore.

Peter: So there is hope. There is a way back.

Phillip: That’s true in the homosexual world too. Though people may have tendencies; I won’t go into the reasons why, because there’s considerable disagreement on this. Practising homosexuality is a different thing. There are many Christians who have same-sex attraction for various reasons, but who do not practice homosexuality. A few weeks ago in Malta, a man called Matthew Grech was finally declared to be not guilty of breaking the law. He gave testimony to his conversion out of the gay lifestyle into Christianity, but was accused of promoting gay conversion. Three years of court cases have finally settled that he was not guilty of such a thing by declaring that he has changed. Many people say that you can’t change, but he has demonstrated that you can, as many others have as well. Whether he continues to be attracted to men or not, he is no longer practicing. That’s the point: that the gospel has changed his life, and in the same way that my alcoholic friends love the Lord Jesus Christ and are no longer drunkards. But sadly, you also see people who are drunkards and who think it doesn’t matter, that it’s fun. You cannot have that; repentance and faith has to be serious. So you’ll notice the change, “And such were some of you.” That is the path of forgiveness and justification of adoption.

Peter: But what if a professing Christian falls away?

Phillip: Think back to where we started in chapter 5. There was a man who was practicing incest—he had his father’s wife as his sexual partner. The church was to take action in order to save him. There’s always a way back through the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ has paid for our sins, past, present, and future. But the way back starts with repentance. It involves turning to the Lord and leaving the sin behind. You can’t keep practicing the sin, because repentance is about turning back. It’s not simply remorse. The question is, are you turning away from that and finding the forgiveness that is in Jesus?

Peter: This has been an interesting and difficult conversation. But some of our listeners, I’m sure, may well be those who have found a habitual temptation arising perhaps from their personalities. What advice do you give?

Phillip: Firstly, all Christians are habitually tempted, so there’s nothing new or different about you.

Secondly, don’t try and solve the problem by washing away the idea that sin is sin. Don’t try and rationalise out of it. Recognise sin for what sin is, and recognise the dangerous grip that it can have on us, and worse, the exclusion from the kingdom of God. But recognising the power of Satan and his lies must be matched with a recognition of the far greater power of the forgiveness that comes through the death of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. And recognise that by his resurrection, the work of the Spirit is in our lives to bring us to repentance, change, and transformation.

So recognise that the sin is wrong. Turn to God and plead for the mercy that is available to us all in the death of Jesus. Ask for the power of the Spirit to work in bringing about the change. The fellowship of Christians is really helpful, for as we confess our sins to one another, we can encourage and build each other up in the gospel of the Lord Jesus.

Seek help, and do not accept the hopelessness that Satan will try and tempt you to believe.

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, listen to this talk given at Moore Theological College chapel entitled Israel Folau has Caused a Controversy in Australia.

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1 Corinthians 6 opens with a very challenging issue of disputes within the congregation. The Corinthians seem to have blown up these minor disputes into lawsuits against each other. This raises for us a plethora of issues about resolving disputes inside the church and when it is appropriate and right to take issues beyond the church into public law courts. I’m sure you will find this issue as complex as Peter and I discovered in our conversation.

Yours,

Phillip

Phillip Jensen: In this episode, we will be looking at the beginning of 1 Corinthians 6.

Peter Jensen: 1 Corinthians 6:1–8

When one of you has a grievance against another, does he dare go to law before the unrighteous instead of the saints? Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial cases? Do you not know that we are to judge angels? How much more, then, matters pertaining to this life! So if you have such cases, why do you lay them before those who have no standing in the church? I say this to your shame. Can it be that there is no one among you wise enough to settle a dispute between the brothers, but brother goes to law against brother, and that before unbelievers? To have lawsuits at all with one another is already a defeat for you. Why not rather suffer wrong? Why not rather be defrauded? But you yourselves wrong and defraud—even your own brothers!

This is a challenging passage. Once again, we are reminded the Corinthian church was far from perfect. The word ‘church’ to many people means ‘denomination’ – for example, the Anglican church or the Presbyterian church. But Paul is dealing here with disputes within the congregation, which is called ‘the church’. But what specific situation is Paul addressing?

Phillip: He’s not referring to the courts of the early Reformation period that just tried the clergy, but about grievances within the church. He speaks in terms of relatively trivial cases, such as disputes between brothers. Mind you, a dispute between brothers can entail being defrauded and suffering wrong, but generally speaking, it’s of small concern, and the matter can be settled by a wise person from within the ranks of the church. There’s the famous passage in Luke 12 where one man calls out to Jesus, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” It’s an appeal for justice, yet Jesus tells him not to be greedy, then teaches the parable of the rich fool. Similarly, in Matthew 18:21, a man asks, “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” to which Jesus says, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times.”

So why does the apostle regard taking things beyond the church as a shameful thing? Why is it so vital that we shouldn’t take things to court?

Peter: Before I come to that, I must add that sometimes these relatively trivial disputes within a congregation can be extraordinarily painful and can lead to bad results. We’re not saying they’re just trivial in the sense that they’re all minor matters about, for instance, where you park on a Sunday.

Phillip: But sometimes minor things are large because of our emotional reaction to them, when in fact they are very small. A parking spot can cause terrific fights.

Peter: That’s perfectly true. So the matter itself can be relatively trivial, but the emotions involved may not be. The apostle here mentions going to law before unbelievers, and he suggests that this is a shameful thing that brings the gospel into disrepute. You can imagine how this is true, especially in a village community where everybody knows everyone else. The matter becomes public, and in the wrong way. The fact of a dispute causing such passions as to be taken to court can do nothing good for the standing of the church. It says little for the wisdom of the saints that they can’t judge their own matters. If you’re a Christian, you have a clearer picture of what love, forgiveness and justice are, which ought to equip you to judge. But this raises some tricky issues that are very relevant to our own day in a way. What about criminal cases, for example? Has there been a tendency to deal with these within a denomination rather than taking them to the police or to the courts?

Phillip: Criminal cases should be reported and/or go before the governmental courts. But our problem is a little bit with this word ‘criminal’, because at the moment, the word is used with 2 different connotations. Technically, the word ‘criminal’ just means ‘against government legislation’. But government legislation can be immoral. Under our present government with its long Christian history, most of our governmental laws are of a Christian nature. But in a non-Christian society, we can have criminal behaviour which is godly, like preaching the gospel or praying publicly. But the word can also mean, ‘immoral’. In some situations, we may say something is criminal because it is immoral, even though it may not be against the law. However, if someone is doing something which is criminal because it is illegal and immoral, covering it up to guard the reputation of the ecclesiastical structure, rather than see the case dealt with, is a big mistake.

Our denominations have been doing this with the best intentions, but they absolutely should not be. God has given us government, as said in Romans 13, to deal with wrongdoing, and it’s to the government we should hand over matters of criminality. 1 Corinthians 6 says that in disputes between members of the congregation, we should be able to rule on those ourselves. But when you come to somebody committing a crime, we must take those matters to the courts to be dealt with properly. In recent decades, there have been many sexual abuse cases which have been covered up and not dealt with properly. What was done to the victims was wrong, and these cases should have been brought to court. Mind you, the church at this stage in the late 20th century was following the social norms of society. The police and the government generally underestimated the impact of sexual abuse upon children and did not deal with it properly. We’ve changed that attitude, and we need to continue doing so. But 1 Corinthians 6 simply deals with grievances between the saints.

But there are some matters that are tricky, like marriage breakdowns. Should divorce be settled between members of a congregation, or is that something to deal with externally?

Peter: This is a sensitive matter, because a number of our listeners will themselves have been through this or have witnessed it in their church. There’s every reason to think of a marriage breakdown pastorally, in the first instance, and to see whether the relationship can be restored. It’s a good thing if members of the congregation, particularly the pastor, can help to restore the relationship. This may involve recommending a counsellor, or the pastor may need to listen to both sides and offer biblical counsel on rights and wrongs. That is important, and it would fit in very much with this passage.

In a church I belonged to 50 years ago, there was a husband who was physically abusive to his wife. The chief pastor in the church rebuked the husband, advised the wife, and sought to bring peace and justice. In the end, the pastor advised the wife to consider leaving the husband because the man persisted in this abuse. He also gave up coming to church at the same time.

Phillip: But that crosses a line, because physical abuse is a crime that should be reported to the police.

Peter: It is nowadays, and it has become a crime because members of the public, households included, have not dealt with it very well. Sometimes, the person being abused may prefer it not to go to the courts, but the alternative would be that it goes on and the abuser is not brought to book as they should be.

Phillip: But it always was criminal. See, this is the trouble with this word ‘crime’. Physical abuse has always been a crime. We may not have recognised it as such as a society, but that was an error.

Peter: I agree with you. We have taken our freedoms and not used them well, which means that the law has to be far clearer and far more invasive on this issue. But sometimes there are decisions which flow from a breakdown, which may go well beyond the capacity of the saints to decide. There are decisions to be made about money, about property, and about who has the children. If these matters can be agreed to before the courts are involved, that would be good, provided the agreement is just. But it is a matter of secular law, for the marriage is registered by the state. So these issues may well need to go before the courts in order to be resolved in a way that can’t easily be resolved in a congregation.

Phillip: The law courts themselves are very big on trying to get people to discuss these matters before coming to court to settle them. The courts will reinforce the decisions that have been made in discussion with court appointed officers to come to some agreement. But within our society, there are people who are choosing not to get married, or there are people who are choosing religious marriages that are not part of secular registration. We know God doesn’t want divorce because divorce is always violent. It’s the breaking of a relationship of unity that God has created, and it damages children, grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins. Our government in 1975 changed the divorce laws in such a way as to undermine marriage, for the covenant by which we take one as a spouse, has now been undermined. The words we say at a wedding service no longer mean what they mean, because you say, “For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, until death do us part,” but you don’t mean that, legally speaking. The trouble is, God does unite us in marriage.

Last week, I saw in the paper that de facto marriages, which are growing in great numbers in Australia, are now being seen in exactly the same terms as de jure marriages. So when people think, “We won’t get married, so we can divide up 50-50 if we break up, and we can make our own decisions,” the courts do intervene. These marriages are then considered to be equally legitimate marriages, and you can lose your properties to your spouse as much as if you’d gone through the legal processes, because the legal marriage recognises a reality that children have rights. In a divorce, the property needs to be divided in ways that are concerned for the welfare of the children as well as for the people. So the sinfulness is not dealt with by just avoiding marriage law, for the law recognises the sinfulness of people. The reality is that we don’t always live together in harmony because we are sinful people.

As 1 Corinthians 7 tells us, if you cannot live with each other, then be separate. God does not want you to be separate, but if it is impossible to live together, then you should be separate, but not so you can marry a third party. The command is to live separately, and if you can’t stand being separate, then be reconciled. The Bible doesn’t encourage this mentality that I can change partners to solve my problems.

Peter: It would be good if such matters between members of the congregation could be resolved internally. Not criminal matters, but those of defamation, for instance.

Phillip: These are civil matters rather than criminal matters in terms of our courts. While you talk of the case many years ago where a marriage was lost and where violence was involved, over the many years I’ve seen quite a lot of marriages at the breaking point that have been restored, and some that have not. You can be reconciled on minor disputes or on more serious matters like the breakdown of a marriage through Christian intervention and pastoral care.

Peter: That’s a win. It’s one of the blessings of belonging to a church, ideally, that others around you can be on the front line of advice, help, counsel, and mediation.

Phillip: Absolutely. When it comes to owning property, though, that’s where the problem moves into another category, for you must work out who gets what.

Peter: It may be worked out within the fellowship before it goes to the court, but then it has to be agreed to by the court.

Phillip: Yes, because the property is licensed on the title deed, which is a government title deed.

But there are times when Christians and non-Christians within the legal system are at odds. The issue of women’s ordination in Australia during the 1990s demonstrated the problem we have with law now, because we are shifting to judicial activism from non-Christian lawyers and judges. They think that the settlement should be X, which is from a non-Christian point of view a just answer, but it is not just from a Christian point of view. In previous generations where we had Christian judges, or judges operating on a Christian basis, we were able to have confidence in the government to make just causes. But this is now becoming more difficult.

Peter: I think so. Think of the legal fights that we saw between, as I call them, the leavers and the stayers in the Episcopal Church in America. This was a big debate over sexual matters, during which around 100,000 people left the Episcopal Church and set up their own churches; still Anglican, but away from the Episcopal denomination, which in their view had fallen over the cliff theologically. That led to questions of who owned the property. Could the leavers not keep the property that they owned? In the end, the courts decided that the leavers could not keep the property, so it went to the original denomination. While this was very painful for all involved, I’m sorry that it was taken to court. Whether they stay or leave, they will be preaching the gospel, and it’s better for them to be able to do that, perhaps by renting the church, than for us to go to court and take the church from them. The implications need to be studied carefully, and we must always ask ourselves, “Why are we doing this?” We must also think about whether a Christian mediator could help, or even whether I should accept the wrong being done to me, as Paul suggests here in this very passage. Perhaps the idea of mediation is closer to what the passage is suggesting than simply taking things up with the law. There’s a difference in where things were back then and where things are now, but these, I think, are some of the direct implications of this passage.

Phillip: I have a problem though. That is, the passage is talking about minor things like you and I having a squabble over a parking spot. It’s not over whether the denomination or the congregation owns the property. While you may be able to settle that through Christian mediation or through mediation generally, in the end, the title deeds on a property is a decision of the government and of the courts.

Peter: It sounds to me as though this merits a bigger discussion.

Phillip: Absolutely. I’m just worried about pushing this passage beyond its scope in the discussion. But I’ve got another question. Paul says that the saints will judge the world and even angels, as 1 Corinthians 6:3 tells us, “Do you not know that we are to judge angels? How much more, then, matters pertaining to this life!”

Where in the Bible are we taught this other than in this passage? I thought Jesus was the judge of the living and the dead. Why are we then listed as judges? What is this business about the saints judging the world and judging angels?

Peter: If this verse was the only reference, I’d be a little bit agnostic about it. I guess I still am, but the reference that comes to mind is Matthew 19:27–28

Then Peter said in reply, “See, we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?” Jesus said to them, “Truly, I say to you, in the new world, when the Son of Man will sit on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.

There’s a picture of shared judgement. The way I see it, it is a marginal reference. There’s also Revelation 3:21, which is relevant. But it fits in with the fulfillment of our humanity in Jesus as image bearers. That’s who we are. We have trashed it, but not lost it. Image bearers are those who rule, those who govern the world; hence when the age to come is upon us, we will be still working for Christ. We’re told that too in 1 Corinthians 5:9. Christ, of course, is the last Adam, the man from heaven in whose image we are. Therefore, I take it that we will share something of his work, because he gives us work to do, seen here as judgement. But I think on the broader front, that’s a way of looking at it. Whether indeed we will be judging the world on the day of judgement, I can’t deny it, but I am not sure what it exactly means.

Phillip: Can it be that we are judges like in the Old Testament Book of Judges?

Peter: Yes, you wonder about that, don’t you? Because we think of judges with white wigs, but the judges in the Old Testament have a more active role in working out the righteousness of God.

Phillip: Yes, because they’re sitting on the thrones; they’re not sitting on the bench.

Peter: They’re sharing Christ’s rule under Christ’s lordship.

Phillip: Yes, and if you’re able to do that, then you should be able to help people sort out minor matters, like King Solomon did with the baby who was claimed by two women.

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 The Gospel and Lawsuits.

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Christians in Western society have had a large say in public morality. When appointed the Dean at our cathedral, I was told by several people that my role was to be the moral conscience of society. I thought I was supposed to preach the gospel, but what is the relationship of the gospel to public morality and of the church to the rest of society? 1 Corinthians 5 raises these issues for us; I hope you enjoy our discussion.

Yours,

Phillip

Phillip: Today, we will look at the second part of 1 Corinthians 5. The first half was addressed last week in our episode The Arrogance of the Immoral as it told us how the Corinthian church was immoral and yet so arrogant. But the second half of the chapter, in a sense, is twisted around, and so we’re looking this time at The Arrogance of the Moral.

Peter: 1 Corinthians 5:6–13

Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people—not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler—not even to eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those outside. “Purge the evil person from among you.”

That all sounds fairly rough. We are to see that such a sin as the man of the previous passage has committed corrupts the whole church, and indeed as we saw last week it was a corrupt church which allowed it, and that as a result he is to be cast out. It reminds me of some of the stories that our father told us about the country town that he grew up in during the 1920s.

Our father attended the local Anglican church and it was a blessing to him, but he also noted that there was a general critical mood in the town towards those who were judged to behave in non-Christian ways. So no woman hung out her washing on a Sunday, for fear of being sharply criticised for breaking the Fourth Commandment in doing the washing on a Sunday. The word of those critics was pretty strong around town.

Phillip: He mentioned to me the whole issue of the Sabbath, which he found was the most difficult of the Ten Commandments to keep, and the one that caused the most division and unhappiness. For most people, the majority of the commandments are obvious: you don’t steal, you don’t commit murder, you avoid taking the Lord’s name in vain. But if, for instance, you played tennis on a Sunday afternoon (assuming that Sunday is the Sabbath), then you could be condemned. He spoke of people, of men in particular, who would avoid attending church rather than face being condemned for hypocrisy, because they knew they would go to work or organised sport on the Sabbath. What was going on in those days?

Peter: There’s an old word for it, which you and I are old enough to use: ‘wowserism’. But since no one 10 years younger than us knows what the word means, I’m going to call it the power of moralism, of acting superior and looking down at people who don’t do what they ought to do.

Phillip: What did the word ‘wowser’ mean?

Peter: A wowser was a person who went around telling other people what they were doing wrong, like hanging out their washing on a Sunday, and criticising them for it. It was an acronym which stood for We Only Want Social Evils Remedied.

Phillip: There’s a lovely quote I once came across, and though I can never remember who said it, it goes, “If all the moralists are to be believed, England has been in decline since 1066.” Moralism and wowserism are very negative, then.

Peter: Yes, although the moralist sees it as a positive, in the sense that through moralism there is good to be done. But 100 years ago, Australia was regarded by most citizens as a Christian country, regardless of whether everyone went to church. Throughout the 19th century, there had been several strong movements aimed at putting Christian ethics into the daily life of the nation. One of the most famous was the Temperance Movement, an attack on the abuse of alcohol. Some people allowed moderate drinking, while others were against drinking at all. But as a whole, the movement focused on calling for strict controls to limit its use, for drunkenness was addressed as a real social evil.

Phillip: It drove forth the movement of women having the right to vote. One of the key motivators for it was to change the character of government, and enable the regulations of life that would come about by women who were the victims of alcoholic excess, and who were believed to have superior moral values. So the push for women voting, which happened in Australia very early, came out of this moralism.

Peter: I believe it did. I also understand that there was a movement like this in the United States which led to the period called Prohibition. I haven’t researched that for this episode, but according to my memory, Prohibition led to an improvement in people’s health, in social cohesion and so forth, though the consequences in criminality were so bad that it didn’t last.

Phillip: It led to the improvement of people’s health and of criminals’ wealth simultaneously. But it wasn’t only an attack on alcohol; gambling, the breach of the Sabbath, and smoking were all considered to be very bad things. It’s fascinating, of course, that 50 years later the community came to agree on the issue of smoking, and now those who smoke are treated like lepers and hang around outside buildings looking guilty.

Peter: Indeed. Some in the movement even looked down upon going to the movies.

Phillip: There was also the attack on the wearing of make-up, and the implementation of blasphemy laws, which we’ve done away with; though there are new blasphemy laws coming in with a different god in terms of Islam. These attacks on those moral problems were quite successful in a way, though they of course never succeeded in abolishing sin in any of these areas. But to understand it, you do need to know the history of us Australians seeing ourselves as a national church. But were these the blessings of the gospel, or was it that as a nation we were obscuring the gospel?

Peter: My answer to that is yes and no, so the whole subject is worth the discussion. This moralism was based on the idea that we were broadly a Christian nation, but what it became, as people became more and more strong in their arguments, was a finger-wagging perversion of the gospel; the ‘wowserisation’ of the gospel, if you will. The danger is that being moralistic makes you feel good, particularly if you have a great cause to fight for, because then you have an enemy to defeat. You regard your enemy as self-evidently morally inferior, as a bad person. Who wouldn’t want to be a moralist under these circumstances? Remember, these were often good causes, but they became an obsession. As you pointed out, they didn’t, in the end, succeed. You can control gambling, but you will never eradicate it. A government that knows its business will try to control the ill effects of sinful behaviour, but will not think that somehow we are going to eradicate the problem. We haven’t eradicated smoking, for instance. At the same time, as you said, the gospel gets lost in this.

Phillip: Yes, because the idea of a Christian nation 100 years ago is different to our society today. I believe Australia is still a Christian nation because our foundations, our way of thinking, and our whole history are all founded and based in Christianity. But we’re not a Christian nation as they thought of themselves 100 years ago, where being a Christian was considered to be the norm. Back then, around 90% of the population, according to census figures, identified as Christian, whereas today it’s less than 50%. So the nation we live in today is a different kind of Christian nation to what it was 100 years ago. Back then, people disagreed about normative ethics, or the norms of life. How you observed the Sabbath, or what trading hours you would have for the selling of alcohol, or in terms of shopping, were all contested topics. People disagreed about the details of the rules and regulations of morality.

But when you move to a non-Christian society like Corinth, and to some extent now Sydney, we no longer disagree simply about the norms of society; we now disagree about the very nature of ethics itself, what the professionals call ‘meta-ethics’. We ask, “Is there such a thing as right and wrong? How do we determine right and wrong? Who says that right is right and wrong is wrong, and why should we believe them?” Moralists still exist, of course, and so we’re beset with all kinds of moralism. But now the nature of this moralism has shifted. The norms that are being imposed now come out of causes and fiery advocates rather than a total package of a moral system. Anyone who doesn’t share this enthusiasm at the moment is shamed on social media or ‘cancelled’ from the public square. Think of the #MeToo movement, the climate catastrophising movement, feminism, transgenderism, Black Lives Matter, Indigenous Rights, etc. In fact, some famous feminists have now come out against the transgender movement, and they are no longer welcome to speak on different university campuses. Nevertheless, there’s a whole range of these movements that are couched in very moral terms, even though our society has come to no agreement about what morality is.

Peter: In other words, these movements assume that we are moral creatures, and we therefore can respond to their morals, yet they do not agree on what the source of their morals is. I take it you’re not saying that these movements are necessarily all wrong, only that there’s a problem as to the question of where these morals come from, and the way in which some people exercise their morals in their finger-wagging, ‘wowser-istic’ way. When it doesn’t succeed, they demand for the government to do something in order to make things happen.

Phillip: One thing that moralists today and the moralists of Christianity in the past have in common is a tendency to focus on the minor issues. For example, we thought that alcohol was a problem in our society. The Temperance movement then took over, acting as if alcoholism was the only moral issue in society. When we base our morality just on causes—whether good, bad, Christian or non-Christian—we make rules about things, and we make the cause the totality of morality. With that being said, take us back to 1 Corinthians.

Peter: This passage raises the question, “How does a congregation relate to its social milieu?” For instance, Paul points out that the sin of the offender in 1 Corinthians 5:1 would be condemned by non-Christians. That is true of things that have happened in our own lifetime. Christians are likely enough, in fact, to face criticism from the world, for instance, due to our inability to cope with pederasty, which is child abuse. There is a lesson for us here: although a number of moralistic causes of our own time may conflict with Christianity and must be resisted despite criticism, there are a number of causes for which we should listen to what’s being said and change our ways. However, Paul makes clear that his strong words address the church, not the society in which they are living at this point. He’s not calling upon the church to become a little club or a sect cut off from the world; indeed, he expects Christians to live in their world, recognising, however, that sin is everywhere. But he does not call upon them to confront the sinfulness of the world with moral righteousness. Why not? Surely our love of our neighbour would mean we make a stand against things like sexual permissiveness, abortion, greed, and other sins by which people exploit each other. So why be so strong about a Christian brother needing to be chastised, yet so speechless about the world in which we’re living?

Phillip: I don’t doubt that the Christian ethic is for the good of society. Making sure that workers have the freedom to take a day off each week, for example, is a good thing for society. Furthermore, the abuse of alcohol and the prevalence of gambling in Australia has been a dreadful blight upon our society and ruined the lives of many people. Adultery, which is now semi-promoted in some circles, is a dreadful thing, causing untold damage to the lives of married couples, children, grandparents, uncles and aunts. But while imposing the Christian ethic would be good for society, Paul knows what our contemporary moralists don’t know—and frankly, the earlier moralists had forgotten this—that the power of Christian ethics is based on a relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ, not a performance relationship where you get rewarded or punished for your transactions. The basis of Christian ethics is the gospel of the Passover Lamb who has died for us and risen again, bringing us the grace of the gospel.

The moralists of today motivate people by finger-wagging and inducing guilt, and then they try to solve the problems through their government: throwing money at problems, changing laws and regulations, or through adding to the educational curriculum. But such moralists don’t understand sin and the gospel. Sin is the disease that gives rise to immorality, therefore band-aid solutions on the symptoms of sin don’t work. To make rules and regulations about certain sins, without addressing the issue of sin itself, will always fail, but the gospel brings atonement, forgiveness, relationship, and regeneration. These things change the hearts and minds of people, which in turn transform their lives.

Peter: It’s interesting too that the Christian gospel has had a very powerful impact all around the world on the social lives of people. It’s not as though the two things are not connected. It is just that if you forget the heart of the matter—loving God, loving your neighbour, and the need for grace and a new life—you will carry on about the causes, but you won’t have the essential insight into where this is coming from, what you call the meta-ethics. When I was in public office, I was not unwilling to enter into debates about the Sabbath, for example, because I regarded having the same day off each week as being important for Australian society; but I also tried on every occasion to link that back in to the gospel itself, so that people could see that it flows out of the gospel. The ethic has a source in the gospel of the grace of God, and the command to love God and love your neighbour. It is essential that people can see the gospel in the moralistic causes.

Phillip: The big problem of preaching the gospel in Australia is that people think we preach, “Good people go to heaven; bad people are punished.” That is because people have this moralist framework, and also because we address the morals of society. This is exacerbated by the fact that back in the days when Australia was a Christian country, we pushed our morals like the wowsers that we were. People then got very confused about the gospel, and I still find in evangelism that the fundamental obstacle for people coming to the Lord Jesus Christ is not atheism, nor doubting the existence of God; it’s that people think they’re Christians because they’re good enough, and that the gospel we’re preaching is simply about being good.

Peter: Returning to the passage, I notice that Paul is very strong in his condemnation of the sinner, but as you have pointed out, he is wishing that he repent and return to the fellowship. He loves the sinner. You have mentioned Galatians 6 and the way in which the failures of the Christian brother are to be treated in the fellowship. I think it is good to bring that passage to bear on 1 Corinthians 5 in order to help us to see the whole picture of what ought to happen in church.

Phillip: Galatians 6:1–5

Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted. Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. For if anyone thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself. But let each one test his own work, and then his reason to boast will be in himself alone and not in his neighbor. For each will have to bear his own load.

Those who are spiritual are to take action for those who are struggling with some sin. The aim of this action is restoration, as you are to seek to restore them. But you restore a person not in the spirit of judgementalism, but in the spirit of gentleness. We come alongside our brother or sister who is struggling with sin and gently point the sinfulness out and the consequences that are involved. But in the process it’s important to watch yourself for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, I must never think that the sin that my brother or sister is committing is beyond me to also commit. As they have fallen into temptation, I too may fall into temptation. So I don’t approach my brother or sister as though I am approaching someone who is morally inferior, because I accept that I have the exact same sinful capacity that they have. There is nothing beyond my capacity for sinfulness, and so I go with the spirit of gentleness, watching myself.

Secondly, I must not be aiming to boast over a brother or sister’s weakness. I go on the basis that I am nothing, because if I think I am something, I deceive myself. That is how I bear my brother’s burden: by helping him with his difficulty. But that’s also how I bear my own burden, because I do not take credit for my superiority over him. I am nothing, as he is nothing, and the two ‘nothings’ must help each other. Yes, we may see our brother or sister fall into sinfulness, and the church cannot tolerate sinfulness, so must seek to address it. But how we address it always has to do with seeking the salvation of the other person: not seeking to put them out, to rule over them, or to establish our own superiority by their failure.

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 Matthias evening church called New Morality or Old 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.

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Because of sin, immorality is universal. Sometimes it is so blatant that everybody can see it. But what happens if everybody can see it except for the church? In 1 Corinthians 5, Paul is dealing not only with immorality, but also with arrogance.

Yours,

Phillip

Phillip: Today, we will start off by reading 1 Corinthians 5:1-8

It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans, for a man has his father’s wife. And you are arrogant! Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you.

For though absent in body, I am present in spirit; and as if present, I have already pronounced judgment on the one who did such a thing. When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus and my spirit is present, with the power of our Lord Jesus, you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord.

Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

Peter: I would have thought we would delve into all of chapter 5, and maybe even chapter 6. Why are you reading only half of this chapter?

Phillip: That is because of the significance of what is said here, its current applications, and the care with which we need to think through the issues raised. Chapters 1–4 have focused our attention on ministry and the unity of the church, but chapter 5 confronts us with a very difficult question about the presence in the congregation of serious moral failings. These sins are not just sexual; later in this chapter he talks about swindlers, idolaters and drunkards. Therefore, we will discuss today what I would call the arrogance of the immoral. Do you think that’s a fair description?

Peter: It’s a confronting description, but it is fair. What you put your finger on is interesting: the problem, in a sense, is not the man who’s committed this offence, but the reaction of the church, in its arrogance. ‘Arrogance’ is an unpleasant word, defined by Macquarie Dictionary1 as “Offensive exhibition of assumed or real superiority; overbearing pride.” What we see throughout 1 Corinthians is that the first sin is not so much the highly immoral one, but the ethos and attitude of the church in Corinth. It’s already illustrated, for example, by the way in which they take sides with the different preachers in chapter 1. Furthermore, we have also seen a sharp critique by the apostle in 4:6, 8, and 18; and so too in 5:6. But when confronted with such a great sin as incest, why does Paul blame the church, and how is that a warning for us?

Phillip: ‘Arrogance’ is never a word that a person applies to themselves. But Paul applies it to the Corinthians in 5:2. They think they rule, they think they’re kings, and yet within the church, there is a terrible evil: this incestuous relationship of a sexually immoral character. We don’t know the details, only that “a man has his father’s wife.” But it’s such that the non-Christians, the pagans, wouldn’t accept such behaviour. It’s called ‘arrogance’, however, because of the church’s superior attitude. The church’s problem is that they’ve taken no action, instead tolerating what has been done. Tolerance is a good thing in some ways, but it becomes a very bad thing when it is used to accept sinfulness. So, while the church tries to cover themselves with glory, appealing to the ‘big name’ preachers that they’re following, their acceptance and tolerance of the sinfulness of this person means that the church as a whole is corrupt.

Peter: That is what upsets Paul. It’s interesting that he preaches the way in which God, in his extraordinary love, takes us enemies of God and makes us one with Christ, yet we can see the danger of grace when it’s misunderstood. Because there is such a thing, to quote Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s The Cost of Discipleship,2 as “cheap grace.” He says, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” But the misunderstanding of grace is in thinking that because we’re forgiven, we are free to act how we want. Cheap grace, therefore, creates arrogance.

However, the first act of worship that we engage in is faith. When you put your faith in someone, you are praising that other person. In essence, you are saying, “I haven’t got this, the other person has; therefore, I trust them.” When we put our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, it is our worship. But cheap grace enables you to become arrogant. Cheap grace, where you say, “I’m forgiven, therefore I’m free to behave as I wish,” is the opposite of faith. Grief, repentance and sorrow is our real act of worship.

But what does this passage tell us about the corruption of a church? Is it possible for such a thing to happen today?

Phillip: The gospel entry for us into church has to do with forgiveness. As we are forgiven, so we are always to have in our hearts forgiveness. The end of the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew chapter 6 speaks of the necessity of being a forgiving person, as a person who has themselves been forgiven. Therefore, it’s always good to approach others with forgiveness in your heart. But forgiveness without atonement, without payment, is acceptance and even approval of sin. Sin always has a cost. Sometimes we cannot pay for what we have done; the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ is about the wonder of God’s payment on our behalf.

One year, I came home during the Christmas holidays to find that the front fence of our house had been destroyed after a car had run through it. About half an hour afterwards, a father and his young teenage son came along and apologised to me. The son had been given a car for Christmas, and as he’d driven his first time around the block, he had wiped out our front fence. It was very painful for the young boy to repent, but the father was very quick to say, “We will pay for the new fence,” for the fence still had to be paid for. That was part of the forgiveness. For him to say, “I’m sorry, I hope you didn’t need a fence,” or “I hope you can afford to build your own,” would not be the way of forgiveness and repentance. The way of repentance is to at least offer if you cannot pay. But the wonder of the gospel is what God has paid for us.

But it’s not enough to preach forgiveness without also preaching repentance. As if, when you say “sorry”, I forgive you and it’s all forgotten, therefore we don’t have to worry about the woman that you bashed, or the child that you abused, or the money that you stole. That’s not grace. That’s accepting sin.

Peter: Yes, just saying “sorry” is not repentance. Repentance requires a determination to repair the relationship, to do the right thing.

Phillip: It has to do with going forward in a new way. But Jesus going forward in a new way is not enough either. There has to be a payment somewhere, and God in his kindness has paid the price for us.

Peter: Hence Bonhoeffer, “When Christ calls a man to him, he bids him come and die.”3 That’s not saying that we are to die in order to gain God’s grace. Rather, we “die” because having received God’s grace through the cross of Christ, we take up his cross daily and follow him. This is repentance. That presumably means that we all need to take account of the spiritual health of the congregation and be on the lookout for the tolerance which grows sin. This passage is not primarily about the sinner. It’s about the sinners, namely the congregation. The point of the passage is not to denounce the incest of the individual sinners, though we should do so anyway. It’s to denounce a congregation which, through arrogance, has practiced tolerance.

You mentioned ‘tolerance’ before, which is a popular word these days. In a sense, the greatest virtue of our society is tolerance, though I don’t see too much of it around. But is tolerance a Christian virtue? It could be, under certain circumstances. But always remember that the greatest Christian virtue is love. How do you best love the congregation, and the sinner within it? Paul addresses everybody in the congregation and is critical of all. For example, in 1 Timothy 4, he shows us that the teaching pastor is vital for the good health of the congregation, as the congregation needs to be taught. But it’s essential that we encourage, speaking the truth in love to one another, as is said in Ephesians 4, in order that we may live godly lives and build each other up. As congregation members, we must act positively and lovingly for the whole congregation, even if it requires rebuke.

Phillip: But the teacher is judged with the greatest strictness, as we’re told in James 3. 1 Timothy 4 also tells us that when an elder does something, public rebuke is required for the elder but not necessarily the whole congregation. The difficulty is when congregation members do something as outlandish as the person here in 1 Corinthians 5 is reported as doing. How do we handle it? There are two polar opposite approaches on the subject of church discipline that are difficult to negotiate. There is the desire to save members, and then there is the desire to have a pure church. But the pure church in this world is not going to happen, and we can’t always save members.

These conflicting desires are represented in the scriptures. Diotrephes in 3 John is the ‘patron saint’ of the pure church, as we see in 3 John 9–10

I have written something to the church, but Diotrephes, who likes to put himself first, does not acknowledge our authority. So if I come, I will bring up what he is doing, talking wicked nonsense against us. And not content with that, he refuses to welcome the brothers, and also stops those who want to and puts them out of the church.

Diotrephes is the man who kicks people out of churches. That’s not the way to go. Representing the other extreme, however, is Thyatira in Revelation 2. The letter to the seven churches addresses Thyatira’s toleration of heresy and immorality. Revelation 2:20–21

But I have this against you, that you tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess and is teaching and seducing my servants to practice sexual immorality and to eat food sacrificed to idols. I gave her time to repent, but she refuses to repent of her sexual immorality.

Then the risen Lord Jesus goes on to denounce Jezebel and the judgement that will fall upon her. So Diotrephes and Thyatire are the representations of the 2 extremes: those who always resort to kicking people out of churches, and those who are happy to accept an ongoing, unrepentant sexual immorality. Both of these are wrong, but negotiating between them is difficult. That’s where most of us have to live and move.

Peter: What does Paul recommend here in Corinth in the face of a terrible sexual sin, condemned by the word of God in a context of arrogance and outward displays of sinful behaviour by the church?

Phillip: His recommendations are to “deliver him over to Satan,” placing him outside the fellowship of the church. But there are several things to note here. Firstly, what the man is doing is a heinous sin, bringing the cause of Christ into disrepute. The punishment must fit the crime, and we’re dealing with something very great here. Secondly, the judgement is the activity of the whole church. Paul asserts that though he is absent, he has already cast his vote, and the congregation needs to agree on the action they will take. But I particularly like the aim of the action. It’s remedial, for they are still concerned for the sinner. They place him outside, back into the world, treating him as a tax collector and a sinner in order that he may come to his right mind, repent and be saved. When the congregation is involved in these activities, it’s not to protect ourselves so much as to save the sinner. Diotrephes is putting people out of the church because he thinks highly of himself as a moralist, whereas Paul is concerned about saving this man.

Peter: So love, not tolerance, is key. I like what you said about delivering him to Satan. That means putting him back into the world, so to speak, which is dominated by Satan, the god of this world. That is awful, but the action is intended to bring him to his senses and back to Christ. But in speaking about these things in church life, we do need to be careful about such things as defamation. Sometimes things are said publicly which leave people open to legal action, and perhaps rightly so. After all, Christians are not above gossip. So how do we navigate such difficulties?

Phillip: It is difficult; there’s no doubt about that. In one sense, in a litigious society such as ours, people race to the law to defend themselves. But in another sense, people shouldn’t be defamed. That’s why it’s right that there are laws on defamation. We mustn’t say that which is untrue of people, or present them in a bad light for our own satisfaction. That’s why sometimes confession is better than accusation; to have people admit to what they’re doing, so that we are not making the accusation, but they are accepting it publicly or privately.

But think back to Jesus and his teaching in Matthew 18 about what we should do when a brother is causing offense to us. It’s not all that different to what we do when we see someone fall into sin. It starts with the offended person talking to the other person about the problem. If they listen and repent, that is a great victory. If they don’t, the next step is to take a witness with you. Then, with the knowledge that other people are seeing the problem, and that it’s not just your prejudice that is giving rise to the question of their behavior, see if the sinner may come to their right mind and confess. But you must do that before you go to the church. The part about going to the church can confuse us. ‘Going to the church’ can mean taking the concern to the office bearers, but Paul is saying that we should take it to the congregational meeting. Taking problems to the office bearers of the churches has created church courts and the like, which have not had a great history.

Peter: No, but it’s tricky to make sense of this, because church is a public occasion. Anyone can come to church in our setup, but that was not the case back in Paul’s day. Thus we need to be careful here, to take the difference between the church then and now into account. We need to be careful about what we’re summoning here.

Phillip: But the church was still public in those days. The non-Christian in 1 Corinthians 14 comes in and hears them preaching.

Peter: That’s a discussion for another day.

Phillip: We’ll work out about how public it is another time, but certainly we are in a different society now which is much more litigious about these things in particular. But if we can have the sinner confess their sins to the church, then it’s easier to be able to have the discussion resolved in a congregational meeting. It’s painful nonetheless. On other occasions, I have dealt with this issue, given the complexities of our church life, by talking about it with groups in the church rather than the total church. If you’re in a large church where not everybody knows each other, it is better to take the issue to whichever group that the person is a part of: for instance, other families of the Sunday school children, or amongst the other people in a Bible study group. The aim is that the church will hear that there is a need for repentance. There is the offer of forgiveness and the need for the person to be rescued. However you do it, these are the goals that you need to be seeking to achieve, especially their salvation.

Peter: To sum up, what we’re talking about is the health of the church, preeminently. And the church can be arrogant in many ways. Next week, as we come to chapter 5, we will talk about how the church can be moralistically arrogant.

3

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.

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Links & Recommendations

For more on this topic, check out this Campus Bible Study talk from 1977 on 1 Corinthians 3-4 (the audio quality isn’t great but a great listen nonetheless!)

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Just as Western society is confused over the subject of identity, so we are confused over the issue of judgementalism. The modern push is to be a non-judgemental, inclusive society, but the reality is one of high condemnation and exclusion of people whose views or lifestyle differ from those in power.

Christians believe in the judgement of God, but what do these judgements involve? And what are the differences between discernment and condemnation? I hope you enjoy our consideration of 1 Corinthians chapter 4.

I remind you again of our point of contact, namely respond@twm.email.

Yours,

Phillip

Phillip Jensen: Last week, when reading 1 Corinthians 3, we followed a very unusual procedure in which we read through the beginning of the chapter, then the end, before finishing with the middle. This time, as we look at chapter 4, we will return to reading 1 Corinthians chronologically, as the Apostle Paul wrote it.

Peter: 1 Corinthians 4

This is how one should regard us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. Moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found faithful. But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court. In fact, I do not even judge myself. For I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me. Therefore do not pronounce judgement before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart. Then each one will receive his commendation from God.

I have applied all these things to myself and Apollos for your benefit, brothers, that you may learn by us not to go beyond what is written, that none of you may be puffed up in favour of one against another. For who sees anything different in you? What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?

Already you have all you want! Already you have become rich! Without us you have become kings! And would that you did reign, so that we might share the rule with you! For I think that God has exhibited us apostles as last of all, like men sentenced to death, because we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels, and to men. We are fools for Christ’s sake, but you are wise in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong. You are held in honour, but we in disrepute. To the present hour we hunger and thirst, we are poorly dressed and buffeted and homeless, and we labour, working with our own hands. When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; when slandered, we entreat. We have become, and are still, like the scum of the world, the refuse of all things.

I do not write these things to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as my beloved children. For though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel. I urge you, then, be imitators of me. That is why I sent you Timothy, my beloved and faithful child in the Lord, to remind you of my ways in Christ, as I teach them everywhere in every church. Some are arrogant, as though I were not coming to you. But I will come to you soon, if the Lord wills, and I will find out not the talk of these arrogant people but their power. For the kingdom of God does not consist in talk but in power. What do you wish? Shall I come to you with a rod, or with love in a spirit of gentleness?

Phillip: That is a great chapter in judgement. We now occupy a very judgemental society in which we regularly condemn and ‘cancel’ people. People are banished because of statements they make or their practices of life; at the same time, however, we are ‘anti-discriminatory’. Everybody is to be included, yet our ‘inclusive’ society keeps excluding people.

Furthermore, we Christians have a particular problem when it comes to the ‘celebrity Christianity’ that is around us. I remember being at a conference overseas where the speakers needed bodyguards because of the number of people who were pressing upon them. They needed bodyguards not to protect against someone who was going to shoot or stab them, but because so many people treated them as if they were pop singers. But these people keep on being caught out for their failures. I remember meeting Paul Cain years ago, one of the Kansas City prophets who was commended to me as the man who could tell me exactly what God thought on all kinds of topics. Paul Cain has died now, and the judgements that have come upon him because of his sexual immorality are just some examples of the many problems within the Kansas prophecy movement. In more recent times a great Christian writer, Philip Yancey, has now spoken of his 8 years of having an adulterous affair, during which time he was writing Christian books and his own biography. There are many of these kinds of people for whom we are judgemental, and indeed we should judge them, because they were exercising Christian leadership.

Peter: But the Lord said in Matthew 7:1, with words that are unforgettable, “Judge not, that you be not judged.” Yet, though I hardly know how to say it, judgement and discrimination is essential to being human and to being Christian. How do we chart these waters? How do we hear what the Lord says, but also live in a world where every moment we are called upon to make a judgement?

Phillip: “Judge not, that you be not judged” is one of the favourite verses of our inclusive society. It’s a part of the teaching of Jesus that people who have never read the Sermon on the Mount still know, because they love this message in isolation. But the full quotation warns you not to read it that way. Matthew 7:1-2

“Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgement you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you.”

What follows is the illustration of the speck in the eye versus the log in the eye. Therefore, it’s not saying, “Make no discriminations”; rather it is warning you that the judgements you make on other people are exactly the judgements that you will receive yourself, and that if you are harsh, then expect harshness towards yourself. If you are overly generous you may expect over-generosity, but the passage has got more to do with the word ‘judge’. That word carries the connotations of discernment, discrimination, and condemnation. Discrimination is essential in a fallen world, for you need to be able to discriminate between what is right and what is wrong. I had Paul Cain presented to me as the man who could tell me exactly what God was thinking. Do I accept that or not? That requires a discrimination. But that is different to condemning somebody for what they have done. I think of that passage in Galatians 6 which tells us that if anybody is sinful, then those who are spiritual are to restore them in a spirit of gentleness. You bear one another’s burdens, but you ought to look to yourself, lest you too be sinful.

One of the ways of dealing with somebody else who is sinful is to push them further down so that you can lift yourself up. “Well,” you may say, “I wouldn’t do that.” But the spiritual person says, “I would do exactly the same thing. Let me help you; let me lift you up.” It’s a different mindset in which we consider the other person. It’s not for us humans to condemn; that’s the Lord’s work, as is said in 1 Corinthians 4:4–5

For I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me. Therefore do not pronounce judgement before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart. Then each one will receive his commendation from God.

Essentially, he says, “I don’t even judge myself. I’m going to be judged by God, but that’s God’s work because he knows the secrets of the hearts. He knows everything, and so the judgement will be right and true and proper.” The message of chapter 4 is that we are to think about the other person, rather than condemning them.

Peter: Let’s take up this business of human judgement versus the Lord’s judgement as Paul talks about it. It’s interesting that he says in verse 3, “It is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court.” I can see the truth of it, namely that there are times when someone will judge us. It may well come from someone who loves us, or even someone who doesn’t love us, and from this experience we can learn. I can think back to such experiences that I’ve had myself. So what is the best way of putting it? In the end, can we learn unconcern about how others judge us—bearing in mind that the Lord is our judge—except where there’s something to learn?

Phillip: Indeed, but how we think about this has also got to do with what we are judged for. For instance, I run faster than you do. That’s a discernment that can be made, but it’s not of great significance, unless you’re going to enter a competition. It’s not that all people are exactly the same and there is no discernment to be had between people. But the judgement we’re talking about here can be 1 of 2 judgements in the Lord. The first is the judgement of salvation: the condemnation that Jesus has borne for us. The second is that we all stand before the judgement seat of Christ to receive our blessings for what has happened in this lifetime, to see the outcome of our lives in this. That is what Paul is speaking about here. So I don’t judge myself.

You can discriminate, saying, for example, “I’d prefer to have Fred preach, because I think he’s a better preacher for this situation than John.” But to say, “Fred’s a better person because he’s a better preacher than John,” is a different thing altogether. It would also be wrong to suggest that God couldn’t use John to bring about his purposes in ways that Fred wouldn’t. The Lord will judge. So I personally don’t care whether you think I’m a good preacher or a bad preacher.

But notice that the basis of this judgement is faithfulness. That is, the Lord is not going to judge me on how many words I can say in a minute; he’s going to judge me on whether I’m faithful to the task that’s been given to me. In saying ‘faithful’, I don’t mean to suggest that we shouldn’t look at the outcome. Remember the parable in Matthew 25, where a man gives 3 workers different talents (sums of money) and the first 2 put them to work, as was intended. When the man returns, they are able to give back the money with interest because they’ve put it to work; they are called faithful. Whereas the third man buries the talent, because he doesn’t want to lose it, and he is called faithless, because it was given to him to do something with. Likewise, God gives us gifts to use for the salvation of the people, for the glory of the Lord Jesus. The judgement will come on how faithful we were to the tasks of the commission that God has given to us. But God’s judgement is superior to the judgement of other people, because God can see the secrets of the heart.

Peter: I love those sorts of texts which are really troubling, because they speak to you in the end very deeply. I return to 1 Corinthians 4:4, “For I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me.” That is one of those troubling texts, which is a good thing.

Phillip: And to quote Jeremiah 17:9, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?”

Peter: Indeed. It reflects reality too, because there are times when I am not aware of anything against myself, but it may be due to my very poor memory, or my misunderstanding of what it is that I’ve done. The Apostle says that he does not judge himself, that doesn’t mean you should never reflect upon yourself; it’s that the final judgement is not yours. In the end, the final judgement belongs to God himself. We may have an assurance of our salvation which depends upon the blood of Christ. Some people are smitten by internal agony frequently, while other people drift along without a thought. But either way, we must come to the cross of Christ and say, “This is what we are trusting for our salvation on the Day of Judgement.”

Phillip: That flows on from the end of chapter 3, that my works may be burnt up. But it’s not a question of salvation. It’s just that I don’t want it to be the case that I’ve done nothing for the cause of the Lord Jesus Christ ever since I became a Christian 60 years ago.

Peter: Or worse, that you’ve done things which haven’t been so good.

Phillip: If I have done nothing, it will all be burnt up, but I will not lose my salvation at that point. It’ll just be that I have nothing to show.

Peter: What can we see here about Paul’s method in ministry?

Phillip: 1 Corinthians 4:6–7

I have applied all these things to myself and Apollos for your benefit, brothers, that you may learn by us not to go beyond what is written, that none of you may be puffed up in favour of one against another. For who sees anything different in you? What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?

You start to re-think the last chapters which talked about people claiming, “I follow Paul,” “I follow Apollos,” or “I follow Cephas”. When you come to the last few verses, you start to see that there were real people who were arrogant, but Paul says, “I’ll come soon, and then I’ll see the talk of these arrogant people.” Because this arrogance is all talk; it’s not the power of God. Instead of doing the gospel work and transforming lives, they’re building themselves up. Those who are impressed by men, or by themselves, are the real arrogant talkers.

The other day, I heard the North Queensland politician Bob Katter describing people as “Double-degree-do-nothings.”

Peter: I love Bob Katter!

Phillip: He’s a great one. There are the people who have all the qualifications under the sun, but they don’t do anything. Likewise in this passage, here’s this arrogance among the church, but rather than talking about them and therefore getting caught up in the politics of it, Paul has talked about a policy and about himself, so that you will follow the argument that has been written, rather than worrying about the particulars of these ‘super apostles’.

Peter: What method in ministry is he talking about? What can you see here which makes us think as ministers of the gospel?

Phillip: That he is concerned with how well people will understand what he is saying. He takes us back to the very principles of the gospel itself, and diffuses the personality issue of the church. But he also describes his method back in verse 14.

Peter: “I do not write these things to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as my beloved children.” That’s not insignificant. There’s a big debate about what the marks of the church are: preaching, sacraments, or discipline? If we’re going to accept discipline as a mark of church, we have to think of what it means. 1 Corinthians flows into that question, for as this verse points out, Paul is not trying to make the church feel ashamed.

What does that mean? Do we try to make people ashamed? We may. If our ministry is our real sense of our identity, and if we are driven by the desire to have power over other people, then we may well admonish others in a way that creates shame in the other person. But the apostle, in telling us here about ministry, says that this is not what he aims to do. What he aims at is to admonish them. We admonish children in order that they may learn from it and grow into the adults we want them to be. Likewise, the aim of admonition in ministry is not to make us feel superior; it is very deliberately for the blessing and usefulness of the other person.

Paul also uses the language of family in this passage. The way in which the Corinthians came to Christ was through Paul ‘fathering’ them. Additionally, he says that when Timothy comes, he will remind them of what Paul has done so they may imitate the Christian life as they saw it in Paul. It’s not that Paul is putting himself in the centre of things; rather, these are the earliest days of the Christian faith, and Paul as a man is expressing that faith.

Furthermore, as he mentions several times, the Corinthian church is not the only church. There is a universal brotherhood, if you like, of Christians from all of the different churches.

Phillip: I would like to highlight several key points that you mentioned which are important. Firstly, there is Paul’s claim, “I became your father.” ‘Father’ can be a powerful position. In fact, Jesus said, Matthew 23:9, “And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven.” That is because ‘father’ connotes this patriarchal power. But in this passage, it’s a term of love and commitment that is being expressed, to admonish your children out of responsible and loving care.

You also talk of the marks of the churches. As John 13:35 says, “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” Love, then, surely should be the key mark of the church.

Peter: I believe so, and too little is spoken of it. I can remember a lady who came to our church, and because we didn’t have prophecy from the front, she left as soon as she could. I said, “But we do love each other,” to which she responded, “It doesn’t matter; you don’t have prophecy.” Regardless, I think that Christian love in the congregation is immensely important, and is a sign of the presence of the Holy Spirit.

Phillip: A key aspect of 1 Corinthians, which we mentioned a few weeks ago, is that while it’s written to a specific context, it’s a universal letter. Therefore, what he’s saying to the Corinthians is true of all churches. There is a Christian way of living that is universal, at least in some elements. It may be that some church members differ in small ways such as attire, but Paul never implies that those things matter in the slightest. But there are certain things about love and care for others that are true everywhere. Likewise, arrogance and boastfulness about our ministries, skills and abilities are wrong everywhere.

The Corinthian problem seems to be their ‘over-realised eschatology’. That is, they think that heaven has already arrived, whereas the Apostle Paul knows that we’re still in this world; that the eschatology, the last days, have not yet arrived. So the ‘super-apostles’, the arrogant people who speak of their victorious Christian living, have missed the point. The apostolic reality is seen in 1 Corinthians 4:9–13

For I think that God has exhibited us apostles as last of all, like men sentenced to death, because we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels, and to men. We are fools for Christ’s sake, but you are wise in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong. You are held in honour, but we in disrepute. To the present hour we hunger and thirst, we are poorly dressed and buffeted and homeless, and we labour, working with our own hands. When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; when slandered, we entreat. We have become, and are still, like the scum of the world, the refuse of all things.

This demonstrates the contrast of the apostolic reality as opposed to the arrogance of people’s arrival, because in this world, our ministry is of the cross. You can’t be a preacher of the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ and be a conquering king yourself. Bearing the cross gives us the expectation of rejection and refusal.

Peter: Here is true wisdom. Judge not by what the eye sees; instead, judge in accordance with what God has revealed to us about himself, ourselves, and the world. In the end, leave the ultimate judgement to God in the assurance that Jesus died for us and that we are in Christ.

Phillip: You as a minister never rise above being a servant. William Cowper’s hymn, ‘God Moves in a Mysterious Way’, is one that I love. The last verse goes

God’s purposes will ripen fast,

Unfolding every hour.

The bud may have a bitter taste,

But sweet will be the flower.

Blind unbelief is sure to err

And scan his work in vain.

God is his own interpreter,

And he will make it plain.

That is what will happen on the last day.

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 by Phillip on 1 Corinthians 4. It’s called The Foolish Stewards of God.

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Today as we proceed through 1 Corinthians 3, we think of the pressing problem for modern Western culture: that of identity. Apparently, many people struggle with the questions, “Who am I?” or “What am I?”. This chapter answers these questions for Christians.

Yours,

Phillip

Peter Jensen: Today, we will look at 1 Corinthians chapter 3. Before we begin, what is the key theme of the passage?

Phillip Jensen: The theme is that of identity: the “Who am I” and the “What am I” questions that people ask themselves.

Peter: I’ve noticed that when I meet someone new, I often ask them what they do for a living. Why do we go for that question?

Phillip: I presume that is because one of the key ways in which we define ourselves is by what we do. We say, “I’m a lawyer,” or “I’m a carpenter,” or “I’m a surgeon,” or if we’re someone who really earns money, “I’m a plumber.” We’re very selective, though. We don’t identify ourselves, for instance, as being a prison officer, a garbage collector, or a street sweeper. We’re especially anxious that our children go into the top professions. There is a very clear pecking order of the things we can be proud of our children going into, versus what we’re slightly embarrassed about. But generally, we think that people are what they do.

Furthermore, what you do for a living can indicate your level of education, your status, wealth, and intelligence. It’s a women’s issue too: that is, getting women into the workforce was a way of establishing their place and their importance in society. The feminist drive for establishing you as a ‘real person’ is achieved through having a ‘significant job’, so that you don’t have to say, “I’m just a mum.”

Peter: I agree. It’s interesting that earlier generations generally identify themselves by family connections. We think, “I am who my family is.” I suspect that in many different cultures, the same thing would apply. In this understanding of human identity, the individual is less important than the family that the person belongs to. You are part of the clan, part of this wider group. You are the son of someone; you are the sibling of someone else; you are the father; you are the grandfather.

Phillip: This concept is applied in Russian names through patronymics. If you’re the son of someone, your name would include the patronymic ‘-ovich’ or ‘-evich’, meaning ‘son of’; if you’re a daughter, the name would be ‘-ovna’ or ‘-evna’. I’m sorry to our Russian readers if I have misunderstood this, but there is a code that determines where you fit in the family.

Peter: Surely, that’s better than identifying yourself by your work. It’s not wrong to tell people what your occupation is, but to identify yourself by what you do is a little worrying. But are either work or family enough to identify yourself by? It can become, in either case, a form of pride which is not helpful.

Phillip: I definitely think it’s better to identify yourself by family. Rather than asking ourselves, “Who am I?”, we should ask, “Who are we?” Individualism is one of the weaknesses of Western culture. Other cultures of the world have held family as a more important way of understanding oneself, which is the way God has created us, too. He’s created us through family, through the unity of the father and the mother. But you’re right; we can still fall into the trap of pride in family. This shows up especially in aristocracy, for instance.

Peter: Indeed it does, or at least it used to. Additionally, in the cultures where family is everything and the individual is subservient to the family, it can be a very imprisoning sort of context to live in.

Phillip: Yes, the cultures that practice family identity are the cultures that also practice control by the shame system, which is dreadful. Tribalism is another one of the weaknesses of our society, and family is a part of tribalism. For instance, the countries in Africa, where tribes are a foundation of society, have their problems. But you mentioned pride, which leads us into 1 Corinthians 3.

It can be tempting to have pride in what we do in the ministry of the gospel. Frankly, that’s worse than having pride in achievements or in family. We need God’s wisdom to understand and evaluate ourselves and our ministries. This applies to full-time ministers, to Sunday school teachers, to youth fellowship leaders, to home Bible study group leaders, and every other kind of ministry. We need God’s wisdom, and that’s what 1 Corinthians 3 gives us.

Peter: 1 Corinthians 3:1–4

But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready, for you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way? For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not being merely human?

Phillip: This follows on from chapter 2, where we saw the contrast of two wisdoms: the wisdom of the world, which wound up crucifying the Lord of glory in its folly; and the wisdom of God, which was made known by the Spirit of God. The passage has arisen from strife in the church: the intrusion of the wisdom of the world into the church in Corinth. The Corinthians had not been Christians for very long, therefore they were still carrying over the wisdom of the world. As a result, parties arose as people claimed as their heroes various Christian teachers. So we’re essentially dealing with the same issue through chapters 1, 2, 3, and into 4.

Peter: Is this division a marker of identity for the Corinthians?

Phillip: Yes; it’s in a sense like identifying as a Lutheran or an Anglican.

Peter: Interestingly, Paul is speaking to Christians about their lack of wisdom. These are Christians who have been drawn to God by the Spirit of wisdom. Despite this, he has some pretty harsh things to say about their behaviour and what leads to it. He says they’ve been fed with milk. They allow the flesh to dominate their thinking and behaviour; therefore, they’re going to be fed with milk again because they haven’t developed beyond that. We certainly aren’t dealing with a perfect church here. Of course, we never are. But this church was marked by jealousy and strife. Were they real Christians?

When I was a new Christian, as a young person, I was reading some books about holiness that were doing the rounds at the time. I was taught in some of these books that this passage meant that there are 2 sorts of Christians: the ‘carnal’ Christians (‘carnal’ meaning ‘of the flesh’) and the ‘Spirit-filled’ Christians. According to the books, you needed a second blessing, as it was called, to become a Spirit-filled Christian. What would you have said to my young self back then?

Phillip: I would say that you mustn’t follow that kind of teaching. This letter to the Corinthians is written, as it says in 1 Corinthians 1:2, “To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours.” These are Christian people, and to divide Christian people is a fundamental error. Paul is not saying that there are two kinds of Christians, the carnal and the spiritual. All Christians are spiritual; if they weren’t spiritual, they wouldn’t be Christians. What he’s saying is, ‘I can’t talk to you as the spiritual Christians. You are acting childishly, and so I can’t talk to you as adults. I’m having to talk to you as if you are still children.’ He is adjusting his speech to the Corinthians as if they’re babies.

He’s using the arguments of this world, if need be, to remind them to think as adults. In fact, he uses the same imagery in 1 Corinthians 14:20,

Brothers, do not be children in your thinking. Be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature.

Here, he presents the problem. It’s not a question of there being 2 kinds of Christians; it’s that there are two kinds of wisdom, and these Christians are showing the world’s wisdom. So Paul reminds them to turn their minds to that which is of God, rather than the things of this world.

Peter: This is the summary at the end of chapter 3. 1 Corinthians 3:18–23

Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is folly with God. For it is written, “He catches the wise in their craftiness,” and again, “The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are futile.” So let no one boast in men. For all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours, and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.

Phillip: The wisdom of the world has the profound quality of deception. When you achieve the wisdom of this world, it puffs you up. But that kind of worldly wisdom, that kind of arrogance, is a deception. You start to think you are something when you are nothing. God’s wisdom is quite different. So our boasting is never in human achievement. The thing that we have to boast about is that we are in Christ. Frankly, what we boast about in Christ is infinitely more valuable than the things the world boasts about. For instance, I recently saw an Olympic athlete win their gold medals, yet I couldn’t remember their name. It was a thing of which they could boast, which really is of no significance. But to be in Christ Jesus gives you everything in this world to have. Therefore, the wisdom of this world is deceptive because it tells you that having wealth, a great house, a great education, and a great job makes you significant, when in reality, you are not. It says, “You have Christ, you have eternity. You have the temple of God. So what?”

Peter: The presenting problem in Corinth, of course, is one that’s not atypical in our churches. That is the worldly problem of following the great leader: in this case, Paul or Apollos or Cephas. We are constantly, even in our circles, invited to identify ourselves with some great leader, past or present, like Calvin or Wesley. We may even identify ourselves pre-eminently with a denomination, like Anglican or Orthodox, rather than Christ. Of course, we owe much to others who have been our teachers and friends. I am not unhappy to be an Anglican, but we must remember that we are not disciples of these great ones; we are disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ, and we learn from him above all. That is true wisdom. Let’s then go back to the middle of the chapter.

Phillip: 1 Corinthians 3:5–17

What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor. For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field, God’s building.

According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw—each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.

Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.

Peter: Indeed. This is particularly addressing those in ministry, but as Phillip has said, in a way, we’re all in ministry. Please remember that this is written to all the Corinthians, not just the leaders. But anything we achieve for God goes back to his grace, mercy, kindness, and love, undeserving as we are. It’s interesting to see the description of God’s work here: that the result of preaching his Word is described as a field and also a building in verse 9. Then finally, Paul says, “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?” We take that to mean the church, but of course, it’s also true of the individual. You are the temple of the Lord in whom the Spirit dwells. But the work of God comes from his grace. It makes nonsense of the misreading that we referred to before of verses 1-4, about there being 2 sorts of Christian, because he declares that all are indwelled by the Spirit of God. What then do we learn here about the workers in ministry?

Phillip: If we’re in this world’s wisdom that sees our identity in our work, we will think of our identity and value in the work of ministry that we’re doing. It sounds more pious to say, “I’m a Sunday school teacher,” rather than “I’m a shop owner,” or “I’m an engineer.” But it’s the same philosophy of identity in what one does. It is fascinating that according to verse 9, we are ‘God’s fellow workers.’ There’s no higher status than to be God’s partner. Yet we are nothing. The one who plants and the one who waters are nothing, because although God is our partner, he does the work. Yet God uses our work to do his work. So we are God’s skilled and masterly servants.

It’s not as if humans are only puppets. We’re more than that, for God gives us wisdom. God gives us an ability. That’s an extraordinary phrase which is difficult to translate. We have great abilities; we water, plant, and we lay foundations. Yet it is God who does the work through us. Therefore, while I am God’s partner, which is a terrific status, I am not anything, because God is working through me.

Furthermore, we’re united in the fact that there is one building, one foundation stone upon which we lay, yet we are diverse. Verses 6-8 speak of our diversity: being a planter, a waterer, a builder. We are doing different things, because we are individuals. This takes us back to what we were talking about earlier. It’s not just about individualism or anti-individualism, or about communalism. We work together as individuals, for as God’s partners we are assigned different tasks. Therefore, God is working through us in different and varied ways, but nobody is to think that he or she is better or worse than anybody else, because we are all working towards a united effort.

Our tasks all come from the grace of God, or the gift of God. But as individuals, we must take care of what we are doing, because we are working on the temple of God. The foundation is in the Lord Jesus Christ, as verses 10-11 say, and our task is to take care of it. We will receive wages, and we will receive a reward for our labour, because when the judgement day comes, what we have done will be revealed. If we have built with shabby materials—wood, hay, stubble—our work will be burnt up, and we’ll see that what we’ve done was of no great significance. However, if we build with the precious stones that come through the fire, then what we see will be of great significance.

Phillip: And so our work will be seen. Though we’re not talking here about salvation judgement; rather, we are talking about the judgement of our Christian life. We will be saved, but what will our life have added up to? Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 2:19–20

For what is our hope or joy or crown of boasting before our Lord Jesus at his coming? Is it not you? For you are our glory and joy.

The work we do has eternal significance, and will be seen for its significance. But it’s the quality of the work that we’re doing that matters. It’s not that I am the preacher as opposed to the musician, or the person who cleans the building, because God uses us all to bring about his purposes. It will be seen on the last day how we’ve shared in the purposes of God. Given this, we will go back to our first topic on Christian identity.

Peter: In listening to you, I’ve been thinking about life in ministry. There are times when, being the minister of a church, everyone smiles at you, and everyone compliments you (although what they say behind your back may be different). Over time, it is easy to get the impression that you are somebody, and to draw your identity from this rather than from the Lord himself. We need to be careful in saying this, of course, because there are moments when the Lord uses another person to encourage us when we need to be encouraged. But there is the danger of believing the smiles that everyone gives us and drawing our identity from that, rather than drawing our identity from the grace of God and the ultimate fact that we are in Christ Jesus.

Phillip: So when you stand before the Lord on the last day, are you going to stand as a bishop?

Peter: I’m just putting my trust and confidence in the Lord and knowing that there will be things which I have done, and things that I have failed to do, which will be drawn to my attention. It may well be that there will be people that I now think little of who are ahead of me in the kingdom that is to come, and I will rejoice in this because I’ll be a better person. But my only trust is in Jesus.

Phillip: To bring up one of our heroes, how did John Newton perceive himself and his identity?

Peter: The last words of John Newton, whose influence goes on to this very day, were, “I remember two things: that I am a great sinner and that Christ is a great Saviour.”

Phillip: That doesn’t mean that what we’ve done has no eternal significance.

Peter: No. I plant, others water, and God gives the growth. But that’s not my identity.

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 1 Corinthians 3 on The Work of God.

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We do appreciate comments and feedback, and even questions from our many subscribers. Sadly, we haven’t got the time or resources to be able to answer each question; however, two of the comments that came in to us on the Acts 17 passage we thought would be very helpful to air in this episode of Two Ways News, before we look at the two wisdoms contrasted in 1 Corinthians chapter 2.

Yours,

Phillip

Phillip Jensen: Today, we will speak on 1 Corinthians chapter 2, a great passage about the two wisdoms. But before we start, we must go back to some previous episodes. I would like to take this opportunity to thank those who have written to us, and to respond to some of the questions and comments that have come through. We don’t reply to every comment, but we do read them all and take careful note of them. But there are two pieces of feedback on Acts 17 that we should pick up on.

The first piece of feedback came from our dear friend Barry, who said that he enjoyed hearing about ‘the unknown god’ regarding Acts 17:23 . However, he informed us that the ancient Greeks didn’t have a concept of religion, according to Edwin Judge, since for most people, all of life was what we would term ‘religious’. A more accurate translation of what Paul said regarding the Athenians’ understanding of spirituality might be something like, “I perceive you are very careful in your piety.” For the Greeks were so afraid of offending any gods that they built altars to unknown gods, one of which caught Paul’s eye.

Peter Jensen: Personally, I agree with this viewpoint, particularly if it’s held by Edwin Judge, the great ancient historian to whom we owe so much.

Phillip: Religion is a funny thing. I have used the language of today in my referral to the ancient Greeks as being ‘religious’. We have a general understanding of what is meant by ‘religion’—temples, sacrifices, priests, holy buildings—but it is important to acknowledge this point, because the word ‘religion’ is something that has developed over time. This word, as it is used today, comes from the 19th century, when the Raj in India had to differentiate followers of Christianity, Hinduism and Buddhism. However, the word became especially useful in Western society when Holyoake and others invented the term ‘secularism’. At that point, religion became what was not secular, and that then defined how we refer to religion today. Our 21st-century word ‘religion’ is frankly unhelpful, because it implies that anything ‘secular’ is the norm, and anything other than a secularist worldview is a religious worldview, which is oftentimes deemed ‘irrational’ and ‘superstitious’. When we refer to the scriptures, that division between secularism and religion does not appear; therefore, we need to be careful not to impose it onto the Bible when we read it. So thank you Barry for raising this point. We need to express clearly that ‘secularism’ is atheism, a modern invention, which then created ‘religion’ as a modern invention.

Peter: It’s worth noting too that the word ‘secular’ in itself doesn’t mean ‘without religion’. It means ‘things of this world’. There are secular priests, for example.

Phillip: The Catholic Church has secular priests who are “out in the world” as opposed to being monastic.

Peter: Indeed. It’s also important because here in the state of New South Wales we have what is called ‘secular education’, but that doesn’t mean it is anti-religious or even unfair.

Phillip: No; it just means education about the world.

Peter: Now onto a point raised by Sharon, which is again very helpful indeed. Sharon recently visited Greece, during which the tour guide drew her attention to the fact that there is an existing extra-biblical ancient source explaining the origin of the altar to the unknown god. She refers to Diogenes’ ‘Lives of Eminent Philosophers’, in which he recounts the philosopher Epimendides setting up several altars to the unknown gods near the Areopagus at around 600 BC. This certainly corroborates the evidence in Acts 17, although it seems to suggest that the altars were for several unknown gods rather than one. Regardless, this is particularly relevant because Paul also quotes from Epimenides later in the same speech. I might add that this point is made in the commentaries by David Peterson and F.F. Bruce, for those who are interested. But we would like to thank Sharon for this very enlightening and helpful comment.

Phillip: Indeed. The question is, though, do I believe it now because the history books refer to it, or do I believe it because the Bible says it?

Peter: That’s an important question because there’s been much dispute around this topic. For example, there was previously no reference to King David outside the Bible, leading to skepticism over whether he existed. However, a recent archeological find has revealed that David did exist. But we didn’t need that archeological find to know he existed; we have the Bible.

Phillip: A similar thing happened with Pontius Pilate. In the 1960s, archaeologists discovered a stone with his name and title. But I believed in Pontius Pilate before then.

Peter: What we need to recognise is that even the greatest historians only know about a small fraction of what happened in the past. If I could spend a week in Israel at the time that Jesus was there, how much more would I know about what life was like?

Phillip: The old saying goes, “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” It’s important to remember this when people say that because there is no evidence for something other than the Bible. The Bible is evidence.

However, we must come to today’s passage in 1 Corinthians 2 about the two wisdoms that we deal with. Part of the contemporary attack on Christianity is about the notion that it’s anti-intellectual. Indeed, some Christians are profoundly distrustful of learning to the point that they attack modern science, modern education, and other areas of the wisdom of this world. But is Paul’s attack on wisdom in line with this anti-intellectualism?

Peter: Not if we see in the second half of the chapter the embrace of the wisdom he’s talking about. There are two wisdoms: that of the sinful world and that of God.

Phillip: 1 Corinthians 2:6–16

Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But, as it is written,

“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,

nor the heart of man imagined,

what God has prepared for those who love him”—

these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.

The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.

Peter: So the wisdom of God is not opposed to great human thought. Paul quotes the philosophers, thereby demonstrating that there are wonderful things that occur through human thought; that’s the way God created us. But the wisdom of God does differ from that of sinful human culture in thinking about fundamental issues. How do we experience this? What do you think is the best way of describing it?

Phillip: Take the Tower of Babel for example. There was great wisdom and great foolishness in what the people were doing. For they used technology. They understood how to make bricks without stone, which was impressive. Indeed, God, when he views what they’ve done, says that they will be able to do anything. The wisdom demonstrated here is described as “the wisdom of this age” and “the rulers of this world”. Every age has its rulers who impose their wisdom, and whose wisdom passes away with them. From the late 19th century through to the late 20th century, the wisdom of eugenics was imposed upon our societies. In the hands of Adolf Hitler, of course, it did incredible damage to the whole world, but it didn’t just show up in Germany. It was here in Sydney and Melbourne, too. It was this way of thinking that gave rise to a whole host of terrible social problems, such as the Stolen Generation amongst the Indigenous people.

But of course, these rulers didn’t understand God’s hidden wisdom. Now, the rulers that Paul is talking about in Corinthians demonstrated their wisdom in their execution of the Lord of Gory. Here were men and women, face to face with the Prince of Life, and they killed him. But that was God’s hidden plan: that he who was the ruler of the world would become a man rejected by humans, in order that he may pay the price for our sinfulness.

Peter: Indeed. Human wisdom can accomplish great and terrible things. We are surrounded by advances in medicine, but we have also created atomic power. But the Apostle speaks here of fundamental wisdom. Wisdom is defined relationally, as being the true knowledge of God: the fundamental wisdom without which all other wisdom is lost. It’s a wisdom which is secret and hidden. The wisdom of God is God’s determination for our glory. It is hidden, but it is eternal in God. Furthermore, it is the wisdom which rules the world, and which we need to discover. But we can’t discover it because we are sinful people. So how does that relate to the way in which human beings, as God’s image-bearers, achieve so much in the world?

Phillip: I am happy with that way of putting it, and that God has a plan for our glory. What lies ahead of us? The world doesn’t know. But God tells us what lies ahead of us: our glory, that he planned to bring about through the death and resurrection of his son. That was a great secret. The wisdom we have is built on a lie. The scientific revolution has been a wonderful thing, but of course, neither rationalism nor the scientific revolution of empiricism can ever tell me what’s on your mind and what’s in your heart. If you can’t tell me what’s on a human’s mind or heart, you certainly can’t tell me what’s in God’s mind or heart.

Peter: Do you accept that the true wisdom that we need, the fundamental wisdom, is relational?

Phillip: It is, because it’s God’s wisdom of revelation: not of rationalism or empiricism, but of knowing the mind of God.

Peter: It’s not just general revelation, but the revelation of a person.

Phillip: It’s knowing the mind of a personal God as opposed to knowing the functioning of an impersonal force. Physicists may understand the functioning of a force, but no one will understand the mind of a personal God. But the difference is very great. What we have from the personal God is his plans for us, for the universe that he’s made, but also for the future. Plans which involved hiding his wisdom so that the rulers of this world could kill his son. In Acts 2:23, Peter says, “This Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.”

There’s the great plan of God: our glory through the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ through his death and resurrection, which the rulers of this world did not understand, otherwise they would not have put into effect the plan of God. But the mind of God is very personal, for he’s a personal God. Therefore, the way in which we know him is by the revelation of the Spirit.

Peter: I like the way you have put things, particularly in comparing God’s wisdom with ourselves. It’s very difficult to know another person. You can tell certain things about them, but having a deeper understanding of them requires a disclosure from them. This is what we call ‘revelation’: God’s disclosure of himself without which we could not know him. This is connected with the doctrine of the Holy Spirit.

Phillip: That is what 1 Corinthians 2:6-16 is about.

Peter: We learn a great deal about the work of the Holy Spirit in that passage, because the Spirit knows what humans cannot know. The Spirit knows the mind of God, because he is God. So in this new age of the Spirit following the resurrection of Jesus, it means that the Holy Spirit reveals what the spirit of this world has never understood. Even given the remarkable things that human beings do, even the most brainy person cannot understand the things of God unless it is revealed to them. That is because of human sin, particularly.

But we do know God. It comes to us through the Spirit-inspired words of the gospel, found in the Bible, and it’s received by us through the illumination of the Spirit.

Phillip: But it’s more than just sinfulness. It’s also that as creatures, we cannot know the mind of the Creator without revelation. I can’t know your mind without you speaking to me. You are human, you are personal, therefore I cannot know what you’re thinking.

Peter: So whenever God discloses himself, he does it in a way that he doesn’t have to, but he chooses to out of his grace. This is wonderful.

Phillip: It’s marvellous. But there are two sides to this. One side is the public revelation of himself through Jesus’ death and resurrection. The other is the opening of our minds to understand what is being said.

That illumination is the work of the Spirit. For here is the great divide between the elect and the non-elect by their reception of the gospel. For the natural person hears the gospel and calls it folly, whereas the person enlightened by the Spirit hears the gospel and sees it as the truth by which to live. He hears the wisdom of God rather than the folly of the preacher. Then the spiritual person judges all things from this worldview of wisdom that comes from God, which is so contrasted to the worldview that comes from the rulers of this age. The key to evangelism is this enlightening work of the Spirit, which in turn gives us the key to our wisdom.

Peter: Phillip, you have the gifts of an evangelist. So what difference does it make in your evangelistic work to know what 1 Corinthians 2 teaches us?

Phillip: It makes a lot of difference, in terms of the salvation of people and how the gospel goes forth, but also in the activity of day-by-day preaching the gospel. Firstly, it makes you prayerful, because it’s the work of the spirit that makes the difference in people’s hearts, rather than the quality of your presentation or anything like that. It drives you to your knees that God would open the hearts and minds of people. That gives you humility, because when people are converted, you know that it’s not because of your own gifts.

I remember giving the same exact talk at 2 separate university missions. At one university, hardly anybody was converted, but at the second, many people were converted. They were the same talks given by the same preacher. The difference was the great plan and the purposes of God: that is, the work of the Holy Spirit in the opening of minds. So when people get converted, I’ve got no grounds for calling myself a great preacher. In fact, if they were converted because I was a great preacher, I suspect they weren’t truly converted.

You must have humility as an evangelist, but this will also give you confidence, because there is nothing so simple as the gospel that, under the Spirit, can convert the greatest and the least of minds. So I know God has his people who he’s calling through the gospel. My job is to call; he will bring that message. It’s this hidden message. 1 Peter 1 tells us that the prophets of old didn’t know what they were preaching. They preached faithfully, but the sufferings and the glories of Christ were hidden from them. Again, in 1 Thessalonians, Paul knew that the Thessalonians were chosen because they responded positively to the gospel. Romans 8:5–8 says

For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

Plain and simple is our message. But the power of God is in the message to transform, to enlighten the hearts and minds of people, and the fear of the Lord is the beginning of that wisdom that enables people to see everything differently.

Peter: There are 2 points I would like to add. The first is that even the elect may resist the gospel to begin with, but then comes the moment when they accept it. So the fact that people may reject the gospel now doesn’t necessarily mean that they won’t accept it in the future. That means you must persist in speaking.

The second point is that the 1 Thessalonians passage you refer to illustrates not only God’s great work and the elect people, but also the way in which he uses us to do his great work. It’s very kind of him to do so. The passage also talks about the way that the Thessalonians responded. It’s as if God works through human responses and human obedience, even though he doesn’t need to.

Phillip has been talking as an evangelist, and I want to conclude by mentioning that I teach doctrine, and 1 Corinthians 2:6-16 is great for christology, the teaching about Jesus Christ. It is also great for teaching the grace of God, for it tells us that our salvation depends upon him. Additionally, it is wonderful in teaching anthropology: our doctrine of humanity, our understanding of sin, and the inability of human beings to understand the fundamental truth of the gospel. Furthermore, it informs us about pneumatology, the doctrine of the Holy Spirit.

Apparently Phillip Jensen has also written a book on pneumatology, The Coming of the Holy Spirit,1 which is so helpfully written. About half of it is taken up with appendices on different subjects to do with the Holy Spirit, but the first half provides an exposition of the motion of the Holy Spirit.

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.

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Links & Recommendations

For more on this topic, check out this talk from St Andrews Cathedral City Night Church called The Secret Wisdom of God.

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Freely available, supported by generosity.

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