In this episode of Two Ways News, we welcome back Tony Payne, because each of us has published a new book this year. Tony’s book entitled Let The Word Dwell Richly helps us understand the great importance of ministering the Word of God to one another. My new book Written on our Hearts seeks to recover the Ten Commandments for those of us who are saved and live by grace. This episode is not simply an advertisement for these two books, but a discussion between us about the central concepts of our publications. I hope you enjoy the discussion—and that you buy and read the books.

Yours,

Phillip

Tony Payne: Hello, I’m Tony Payne, and welcome to a special crossover edition of the Two Ways News podcast and the Centre for Christian Living podcast. So I suppose I should say welcome from the Centre for Christian Living podcast.

Phillip Jensen: And I should be saying welcome to Two Ways News. Which you are, and I hope that you feel it.

Tony: I hope so too. It’s nice to be back talking again with you. It’s been a little while.

Phillip: Why is your podcast operating?

Tony: I began my podcast when I started working for Moore College and stopped doing Two Ways News with you. Part of my role at Moore College is to direct the Centre for Christian Living. The main questions we focus on are:

1. How do we think about the Christian life and what it means to live it here at Moore College?

2. How does our theology play out in practice?

3. Could we bless the broader Christian community by talking about that, and by bringing it to all the different issues that we face as Christians?

So the Centre for Christian Living podcast consists of regular episodes where I interview someone about an aspect of the Christian life, and then from time to time, we do a deep dive into some more specific subjects. Last year, we did a mini-series on the smartphone and how it changes the way we live as Christians and how it disciples us. It was called ‘The Smartphone Disciple.’ We talked about how not to be discipled by your smartphone, but to be discipled by Jesus instead.

But what do you talk about on Two Ways News now that I’m gone?

Phillip: It’s much the same as when you were around, only we’re starting from the scriptures. So last year, we worked through Genesis 1–11. This year, we’ve been working through 1 Corinthians which we just finished last week in chapter 16. After this crossover episode, we will have a doctrinal mini-series in which Peter will explain why he’s a Christian, why he’s a Protestant, why he’s an Anglican, why he’s catholic, why he’s charismatic, and so forth. Afterwards, we’ll start looking at the book of the Bible for next year.

Tony: It’s a good description of how Christian life, ethics and the Bible work, because you start with scripture, and then you go out from what God says to live in the world. Scripture shapes the whole way we think. So to start with the Bible and think, “What does this mean for our world?” should be a foundational point. I suppose that’s why students are taught so much of the Bible here at Moore College. The scripture is expositional, but life comes at you topically as well. You say, “I’ve got this situation to deal with. What am I going to do?” And then you go back to the Bible. It’s important to learn how to go in that direction as well, which is what we’re doing.

We’re here today mainly to talk about your book, which is all about living the Christian life and especially the Ten Commandments.

Phillip: Well, I’m here to talk about your book, Let the Word Dwell Richly,1 on how to let the Word dwell richly in our conversations with one another.

Tony: I’m willing to do that briefly. You can ask me a few things about my book, but I mainly want to spend today talking about your new book, Written on our Hearts2 which is about the Ten Commandments. But what do you want to ask me about my book?

Phillip: Why did you write it?

Tony: I wrote it because I saw a gap in a particular area of knowledge about Christian life. I’d always thought that Christians are ministers of the word to other people, to each other and to their friends. In some ways, that’s been an assumption of much of the ministry you and I have done together over the past decades. But it was interesting when I came to think, “Where do I find that in scripture? And who else has written about this and explained what it means for us to have a ministry to other people as Christians?” I found that there was such a lack of investigation in that area. So I started a research project, which became a PhD and then a book on what it really means for us to speak the word to one another as Christians.

Phillip: But this book is not a PhD thesis. I’ve read PhD theses. They can be pretty boring—but this book isn’t boring.

Tony: I’m glad you think that. No, it’s not a PhD. It’s a completely freshly written argument based on the research I did, arguing that the words we speak to one another are, on the one hand, an essential element of the normal Christian life. To be a mature Christian is to change the way you speak: to have a new language, to have the words of Christ on your lips; to have that flowing out of your heart to other people. It’s a normal part of being a mature Christian. On the other hand, it’s a key means by which the church is growing, by which we build up and evangelise others. It’s both a marker of Christian growth and just the normal Christian life, and also a means by which God grows other people through us.

Phillip: That is an interesting observation, and it rings true when I hear it. It’s something which you and I have taken for granted for as long as we’ve known each other, and I was doing it when you were still a boy. The idea that Christian life is about ministering the word to each other—from Sunday school teaching to youth fellowship leading, to just personally sharing the gospel with the person sitting next to you—that was normal. But you’re right, there aren’t many books that explain and argue for it, let alone study the scriptures of it.

Tony: There are almost none. I was really surprised to find that. Obviously, people mention it here and there, but people don’t pause and think, “What does the Bible as a whole say about this, and how might we put this together theologically? How might we relate it to preaching and the vital role that it has?”

Phillip: But it’s all over the Bible. We don’t have many books on the subject, but it’s not because it’s obscure in the Bible; it’s because it’s assumed knowledge. I’ve become more aware recently that in the Bible, the pastor is never told to do anything.

Tony: There are not many instructions at all.

Phillip: No. But there are a lot of instructions on what Christians should do in the congregation. When we work through 1 Corinthians, we see that Paul wants the Corinthians to shape up in a whole range of areas. But there’s no discussion as to specific instructions like, “The pastor must discipline.” The congregation is meant to do it.

Tony: Yes. Of course, where the argument of 1 Corinthians lands in terms of Christian life together is in chapters 12–14, which are all about the way we speak to each other.

Phillip: Everyone comes to church with something to share.

Tony: And we don’t go speaking over each other in a chaotic way. Don’t come for your own sake. Don’t come trying to promote yourself or using verbal gifts that no one can understand, like speaking in tongues.

Phillip: But everyone comes bringing a verbal gift in 1 Corinthians 14, whether it’s a hymn, a revelation, a sermon, or a teaching.

Tony: You come with something to share for the edification of the body.

Phillip: I remember that when we both worked with Two Ways News—and both of us have been influenced by Colin Marshall and his Navigator background in this regard—the aim was to teach everybody in the congregation how to share the gospel using Two Ways to Live,3 and how to follow up with people using the Just for Starters4 Bible studies. This was so that everybody in the congregation would be trained with a basic ministry skill. Then there are specialist things like teaching Sunday school or youth groups, or leading a home group. But everybody should have some skill in speaking the Word. Now, some people don’t feel they’re very good at words.

Tony: Some people also don’t feel they’re very adequate to preach either, even though they’re preachers. In one sense, us speaking the Word to other people is an impossible thing to do. How can someone like me speak to other people about God? Humans speaking about God to other people is a natural impossibility, but it’s possible by the Spirit and work of God. So when God changes you, making you a new person and putting a new love in your heart, he gives you a whole new set of words, a whole new enthusiasm for what’s most important in your life. Then you start, amazingly, to share it in your own way with the people around you. God gifts us to do it in our own way. I assume that the reason the New Testament urges, encourages, and exhorts Christians so many times to share the word with one another, is that it’s something we can all grow in. It’s something that we’re all capable of, but we all have to start somewhere.

Phillip: The Bible might not tell pastors what to do, but I’ll tell pastors, “Get hold of Tony Payne’s book and work on it,” because you really need to lead the congregation in doing this. It’s a terrific book. One of the commendations I saw in the book was written by somebody who works for Crossway, an alternative publisher. Champ Thornton said, “This book analyses and synthesises, and its conclusions are exegetically rigorous, theologically rich, and profoundly practical.” That’s a book worth getting. In fact, why don’t you buy it for your pastor for Christmas? If he’s got 10 copies, that’s good, because he’ll be able to run a Bible study with 9 other people. It really is written for pastors. Though of course, it’s written for everybody.

Tony: If you’ve ever read The Trellis and the Vine,5 it’s written at that level. It’s just longer, because it’s making a longer argument. But it’s written for pastors, students, and parish council members. It’s for the keen, thoughtful layperson, but certainly it is for those who are leading the congregation and thinking, “Is this part of our congregational life? And if not, why?”

Phillip: Yes. But in the process, it opens up whole sections of the scriptures.

Tony: The book has been well-received so far. We’re in the early days of its release, but I do hope that many pastors and pastoral teams will read and think about the challenge it brings to the way we think about ministry and our people.

Phillip: To get all our people ministering by the Word will bring about a transformation of churches and evangelism in Australia.

Tony: That’s certainly my hope and prayer.

Your book is about the Christian life as well. It’s called Written on our Hearts: The Ten Commandments and the Radical Life of Grace. Why did you write it?

Phillip: The Ten Commandments are foundational and fundamental to Western civilisation. From them comes the idea that our civilisation is built on right and wrong, just and unjust. When God established his nation on Mount Sinai, that’s where it started. “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt. If you’re going to be my people, this is what you must do.” But in recent times, the Ten Commandments have slipped out of the mind of Western civilisation, replaced to some extent by the 7 deadly sins, which I’ve worked out aren’t 7, aren’t deadly, and aren’t sins necessarily. But even that’s slipped by. So we’re not sure whether Western civilisation has a concept of right or wrong anymore. There seems to be a rule in public debate that after 5 or 6 discussions, someone brings up Adolf Hitler, because Adolf Hitler is the only person whom we can all agree was wrong. We can’t deny that there is evil. So we have to recalibrate all discussions. The Ten Commandments tells us there is right and wrong, and tells you what is right and wrong. Our civilisation has lost this sense.

What worries me more is that our congregations have lost it, too. I was raised in the Prayer Book age where at Communion, which we had every week—though I’m not commending that in particular—we had the Ten Commandments read to us, slowly and deliberately, and we prayed after each one. In many old churches, they were written on a board at the front of the church.

Tony: Yes - they were written on stone tablets. Sometimes, the Ten Commandments were on one side and the Apostle’s Creed on the other side.

Phillip: The Lord’s Prayer was there too. As a child, I was taught to learn all 3 of these by heart. That was part of basic Christian teaching. But when I checked our congregational life about 20–30 years ago now, I found that hardly any Christians at university knew more than half a dozen Commandments, let alone having thought through what each one of them means for them. Their knowledge was, “Don’t murder, don’t steal…maybe something against adultery, but that’s old-fashioned.” I mentioned this to my brother, and he tried out the first-year Moore College team and found that the students weren’t much better here either. Of course, by the time they’d finished college under their great supervising teachers, they knew better. But it’s very sad when the Christian community doesn’t know the Ten Commandments, which are foundational for Western civilisation. We’re in trouble.

Tony: Indeed. It strikes me too that, growing up as a Christian in the period you’re talking about, I thought that the Ten Commandments were like a quaint relic of the Old Testament, of the former dispensation—because now that we’re under grace, we’re no longer under the Law. So I suppose I had a default understanding that the Ten Commandments weren’t that important, or that they were superseded or obsolete in some way, because we’re under grace now, not under law.

Phillip: The big problem of evangelism in Australia is getting people to understand that you’re saved by grace through the death of the Lord Jesus Christ, not by works of the Law. The average Aussie says, “I believe in the Ten Commandments.” When you ask them, they don’t know what they consist of, but they believe that they’ll be justified by keeping the Commandments—which they don’t keep, they don’t even know them. So we therefore rightly emphasise grace, mercy, forgiveness, the death of Jesus, and the resurrection of Jesus. But the death of Jesus doesn’t make sense if you haven’t got a sense of right and wrong and the justice of God. Jesus is the answer, but then you have to ask the obvious question: Jesus died for our sins, but what are our sins, and why are they sins? If you get rid of the Commandments, you unwittingly undermine the gospel of grace.

Tony: But in the first part of your book, you’re arguing not just that we need to understand the Commandments because they drive us to Jesus; you’re suggesting that, having been driven to Jesus and to his grace and to his salvation, the Commandments have a role in the Christian life. What is this role?

Phillip: Certainly they declare my sin and make me aware of it. Because of the Commandment on coveting, Paul knew about coveting. Without the Commandment, he would not have known about it. Though when he received the Commandment, it just increased his coveting, but that aspect is there nonetheless. However, we’re told in the expectation of the Old Testament prophets—Jeremiah 31 and Ezekiel 36, to pick on two key passages—when the people of Israel failed to keep the Commandments, they were destroyed by the Assyrians. They were sent into captivity by the Babylonians. So all the great work of God in rescuing them out of slavery in Egypt wound up in slavery in Babylon because they didn’t keep the Commandments.

So then we’re promised that in the new age, we’re not going to have the Commandments on tablets of stone like we did in our church buildings. We’re going to have them written on our hearts, for which the title of my book is named. So when it comes to the New Testament and Jesus talking about the life of his disciples, of his fishermen, he talks in terms of keeping the Commandments in a completely new, radical, dramatic way, totally unlike the Pharisees; instead, he talks in terms of keeping them like sinful people.

Tony: What’s the new, radical way of keeping the Commandments?

Phillip: We can’t detach them from their wording in the Book of Exodus. But instead of looking to minimise any consequence, to define it so tightly that we have a chance of obeying it, Jesus opens up the maximum applications, to think then on the widest of ethical implications, consequences and ramifications. The classic example is when he says, “You heard you shall not commit murder. I say if you hate, then you’ve already committed it in your heart.” Whereas we want to define murder by first degree, second degree, manslaughter, accidental killing, et cetera. We ask questions like, “What about in warfare? What about this or that circumstance?” We want to define the Commandment so precisely so that we can possibly keep it. Jesus so defines the Commandment that we would never be able to keep it because it directs us to do what the Psalmist of Psalm 1:2 says; to meditate upon it, to think about it, to work out how it applies to our life in so many areas.

Tony: That would only be the case if the Commandment, “Do not murder” was just an arbitrary rule. Just don’t murder. There you go. There’s a rule. But it would only be the case if “Do not murder” says something about goodness and rightness. So it also means, “Do not hate. Do not show contempt.”

Phillip: It means, “Love your neighbour.”

Tony: Love your neighbour. Treasure and value the other person and treat them well. It’s a short Commandment, but the more you have it in your heart, the more it teaches you about the nature of the world, of other people, and about what right and wrong really is.

Phillip: The summary which the lawyer brought to Jesus, and Jesus commends, is Mark 12:30–31

And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: You shall love your neighbour as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these.

This is brilliant. But the trouble is, unless you know the Commandments, you don’t know what it means to love your neighbour. When you see the Commandments as Jesus saw them and as the Spirit motivates our hearts to keep them, then you can see that loving your neighbour means not to covet his family, not to covet his donkeys, not to covet anything. But it’s also about not bearing false witness. It means not stealing.

Each of the Commandments can be understood in a positive sense. “Do not covet” can be understood in terms of being generous. In other words, be content with what you have. Rather than wanting other people’s things, give them your things. “Do not steal” also means Ephesians 4:28, “Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.” Jesus’ ethics don’t contradict the Ten Commandments; instead, he shows us what is really meant by the Ten Commandments.

Tony: One of the things I liked about your book is that you start in Titus 2, and you talk about how the grace of God appears. It brings salvation. It teaches us to live a whole new life. It redeems us and cleanses us, and it finishes with this marvellous phrase: that we might be “zealous for good works”. The whole purpose of God’s salvation of us, and of Jesus making us his people, is that his new people will have a new heart that longs to work good in our lives. That’s the framework within which you start examining the Commandments as lenses into the good.

Phillip: Isn’t it interesting that he cleanses us from lawlessness in order to live this zealous, good life?

Tony: Yes. So the opposite of this good life is lawlessness, whereas the good life reflects the good law of God.

Why don’t we think of an example then? But we won’t go through all Ten Commandments.

Phillip: No, you’ll have to buy the book for that. In fact, the first third of the book is about how grace and law fit, but the other 2 thirds go through the Ten Commandments. I’ve found it’s helpful to read one chapter a week, so that you can meditate on it. You’ve got to work out what it means for you. It’s the kind of book that’s helpful to go through with a friend. Read the same chapter, then have a conversation with each other.

Tony: So read the first bit to get the sense of how this fits into your life, and why it’s so important to meditate on the Commandments, like the Psalmist who says in Psalm 119:11, “I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you.”

So let’s look at the Commandment on the Sabbath.

Phillip: The Sabbath is a good test case because I think there’s more controversy about it in the Christian community than almost any other one. How do you keep the day, and which day do you keep it, and why? The important part of the Commandment is not which day, because we will differ with that in Christian liberty, but that we take time off.

However, what I’ve noticed is that it’s addressed to those in authority, because you’re to make sure that your family, your animals, your servants, and your children are all to have the Sabbath day. So I think it’s addressed to our governments, who are desperate to do away with weekends because they want people working. They want industry to keep going all the time. They can do it with a 40-hour week. They can do it by getting different people to work on different days. But that undermines social cohesion. At the moment, we’ve got a royal commission on social cohesion, but they’ve got no idea how to create it. The Sabbath is a key part of creating social cohesion, because we all have the same day off with each other, and so we can spend time with each other. If everybody’s working and there’s no differentiation from one day to another, we undermine God’s good creation where he took the day off, and so we are to participate in his day together.

There’s lots to look at on the subject of the Sabbath. I found it the most challenging, the most interesting, and frankly, the most fun chapter to write.

Tony: Our tendency is to ask all those, Pharisaic-type questions. “How many hours do we take off? What am I allowed to do on those days? Which day is it meant to be?” Because law has the character of specification, we try to bring it across into our situation that way and say, “We need a set of specifications that codify precisely what’s required.”

But that’s not what Jesus does with the law. As we just said, he tells us, “Understand what goodness and love the law is driving you to, and maximise that. Go for that. Think of all the ways in which this liberates you to actually live differently, rather than trying to come up with a set of rules.”

Phillip: That’s right. We think individualistically rather than corporately, which comes out of the Sabbath rule. How did the slave in the New Testament days keep the Sabbath if he was working for a non-Christian boss? We tend not to think out the reality of Christian living through the teaching of Jesus on the Ten Commandments, motivated by the changed heart by the Spirit. It’s more than leading us to repentance and faith and coming to salvation; it also is leading us to living a different, holy life.

Tony: The Sabbath one is interesting, too, in that in the justification that’s given for the command in Exodus 20, it grounds it in the fact that God worked and rested. If God worked and rested, you can work and rest. That is, you and your household and everybody. It links it to something about the way God is and the way the world is, and not simply just an arbitrary rule.

Phillip: You see it in the nutty discussions that people have about “work-life balance” as if work is not part of life. How can you have a work-life balance? It’s a silly discussion. But it’s silly because they’re not really talking about work in the terms the scriptures are using, about God and the Sabbath.

We’re not created to work seven days a week, and to be a workaholic is a disaster. God has made it clear that we’re not to be like that. Yet our society pushes us in that regard.

Tony: It’s interesting that the Commandment says, “Six days you shall work.” Do your work for six days; there’s plenty to do. But the seventh day is the day for ceasing from work and for rejoicing in the fruit of your labour, in thankfulness to the God who’s made all this possible for you.

Phillip: And we do so with each other.

Tony: Yes. It’s a corporate thing. We think of Sabbath quite individualistically, as in, “I’ve got to have my ‘me’ time.” Some of us who are introverts find that particularly important, especially if our work is very people-focused. A bit of quiet ‘me’ time is very refreshing. But it is a social commandment as well. That’s just one small taste of how you tease out the meaning of the Commandment for our life, for our culture and society, as well as for our lives now.

There’s one final thing I want to ask you. It’s been a feature of your teaching and writing over the years that you not only put forward the truth and explain it, but also contrast it with the alternative. I like the way that, at the end of this book, you have an appendix contrasting our Christian approach to morality, goodness and rightness that the Ten Commandments plays into with atheistic ethics, which we bump up against every day. The contrast is very stark, isn’t it?

Phillip: Yes. You feel the contrast in the content of ethics, in what we’re told. We’re told, “Do not commit adultery.” Our society is very unsure of that now. In fact, there’s a website that encourages and enables people to commit adultery. There’s no restriction on that. So our society is confused about content, but much more importantly, our society is confused about the basis of ethics—about where it comes from.

If you do away with God, if you see the world is just but an accident that has happened, then there is no basis for ethics. If there’s nothing beyond this world, then there’s no right or wrong. So the ethical poverty of atheism needs to be exposed, because people are very moralistic, but the basis of their moralism is totally vacuous. Your morality should come out of the one who made you, who died for you and rose again, and who is one day going to judge you.

Tony: Thanks for writing this book. I really enjoyed reading it. I was involved in helping you shape it at different points along the way, but as per usual, the ideas and the structure were yours. It’s a marvellous book. Both of our new books have been put out by our good friends at Matthias Media, so you can go to their website, matthiasmedia.com in the States or matthiasmedia.com.au here in Australia, to find out all about these two titles. But Phillip, it’s been fun to get back together and talk again.

5

Colin Marshall & Tony Payne, The Trellis and the Vine, 2024 (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

Written on Our Hearts by Phillip Jensen is available here.

Let The Word Dwell Richly by Tony Payne is available here.

The Centre for Christian Living podcast Tony Payne produces for Moore Theological College is available here.

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Peter took over our podcast today and uncharacteristically cross-examined me on my belief. The topic is very important: that is, the relationship between law and grace. But I was expecting the doctrine lecturer to take the lead now that we have left 1 Corinthians. I hope you enjoy the grilling I received. If you did, don’t forget to remind others to listen to our podcasts which are provided free of charge by the generosity of others.

Yours,

Phillip

Peter: Today, we are moving away from what we’ve been doing for the last months in looking at particular passages in the Bible. Don’t worry, we’re not moving away from the Bible altogether; we are beginning a series in which we look at issues and doctrines throughout it. This episode’s topic is on the biblical teaching on the law. I don’t mean the law of the land—though that’s not irrelevant—but biblical law.

So let’s start with the beginning of things. How did law emerge as such a significant thing in the Old Testament?

Phillip: God, in his wisdom and character of righteousness, conveyed law in the scriptures. You can think of his discussion with Abraham, and the knowledge of righteousness that Joseph had in knowing that adultery was wrong. But it really comes to fullness in the Old Testament when he rescues the people out of Egypt and calls them to be his people. To be his people, they need to live his way, so the ‘Constitution of Israel’, if you like, is laid out in the law when God met Israel at Mount Sinai. He spells it out initially in the Ten Commandments, the prolegomena of the law; then he gives the details of the law, spelling out how they’re to be living as his people, particularly when they get into the Promised Land.

Peter: Salvation first? It’s a bit like creation: the world is created, then Adam comes, then the law is given. The Lord speaks and sets out the boundaries of what it is to be human.

Do you have any thoughts about why the first 5 books of the Bible are called ‘The Law?’

Phillip: We have a limited usage of the word ‘law’ in modern English. We think of the law just in terms of legislation passed in through Parliament. But there’s also, for instance, the laws of physics. The word has had a wider usage in previous generations, and you still get the overtone of that sometimes. The Torah—the first 5 books—reveals God and his ways to you in the events that he supervised and in the failure of people to live his way.

Peter: Yes, and so the law we’re given, being the Commandments, is given in this broader context of events, not least in the context of creation and salvation.

Phillip: Yes, and especially in the context of salvation. God first states that he is the Lord, Yahweh, who has rescued the Israelites out of Egypt. Then he commands, Exodus 20:3, “You shall have no other gods before me.” He has rescued them out of Egypt, they have been invited to be his people, and they have sworn that they would be his people in Exodus 19. So he lays out the details of the law for them.

But it’s not just for the Israelites. Deuteronomy 4 states that when the nations of the world see the way they live, then they will know that there is a righteous God. So while the law is for Israel, it has importance for the other nations too.

Peter: Nowadays for us, and for Western civilisation generally, the Ten Commandments are very significant. They used to be on the walls of churches. But when you look at Deuteronomy or Exodus, the Commandments themselves are surrounded by clarifications about how the law applies to specific cases. For example, what happens if someone breaks into your house at night? Are you permitted to kill them? If the break-in happens at night, the answer is ‘yes’, but if it was during the day, ‘no’. That seems strange to us, but we live in the world of electric light. I’m presuming that if someone breaks in at night when there’s no light, then the law of self-defence comes in. But during the day, you can tell whether a person is simply there to nick a few things or whether they’re there to murder you. In that case, self-defence is permitted. This is interestingly close to the law of the land here: that self-defence is justified if you are in fear of your life, but not just because someone is trespassing. But tell me, what’s the shape of the law we’re given? It’s not just the Ten Commandments.

Phillip: The Ten Commandments simply tell us, “You shall not.” You are told what God will do to you if you break one of the Commandments: his jealousy will rise against you for the third and fourth generation. But the shape of it is love. The great theme of the law that Jesus summarises is this: love God and love your neighbour.

Notice that the early Commandments are about loving God. You shall have no other God but him; you must have no idols; honour his name. The later Commandments pertain to loving your neighbour: do not kill; do not steal. I think that the Commandment about the Sabbath pertains to both loving God and loving your neighbour. It’s also the trickiest of all those Commandments.

Peter: When Jesus tells us to love God and love your neighbour, he is simply quoting the Old Testament. It’s not a new thought.

Phillip: That’s right. Then there’s this other principle of “If this, then that,” which I believe forms the basis of case law. One of the beauties of our Australian legal system is this idea of case law: that as you come to different individual moments within the diversities of life, the judges and the courts are called upon to adjudicate what would be the fair, right, and just solution, which then creates the precedent upon which you can argue the next time a case comes. Life’s complexities are far too great to be able to just have a series of government-established decrees. I believe the Old Testament does that. But the laws given in Exodus and so on give you certain principles. For instance, Deuteronomy 25:4 commands, “You shall not muzzle an ox when it is treading out the grain.” This expresses the great principle that the labourer is worthy of his hire. God does it with the ox; how much more is it meant with the human?

So we are given a principle, and we are to meditate on it. We have to work to see what principle lies behind the particulars of the law, which has its application for a variety of cases that come before the courts.

Peter: So I guess then you shall not kill, but you are permitted to kill in certain circumstances.

Phillip: Yes. In fact, they’re directed to kill in circumstances such as war, or with lawbreakers.

Peter: Or someone breaking in at night.

Phillip: Yes, and they make distinctions within the law between murder and manslaughter, which we have today.

Peter: So why does God say that you shall not kill?

Phillip: Because there is an absolute, fundamental, knee-jerk reaction to murder. Killing always has to be justified. “We should not kill” is God’s basic command.

Peter: So we have the statute law, so to speak, of the Commandments. But what should I do if, say, my ox were to fall into a ditch on the Sabbath?

Phillip: That’s an easy question to answer, because the solution is in the text. You should dig the ox out of the ditch on the Sabbath because the life of the animal is more important than your preservation of rest on that day. In fact, you’re to give rest to your animals, and the cow in the ditch is not at rest.

Peter: So you can break the law in order to keep the law?

Phillip: Yes, but in doing so you are keeping the law.

Peter: I presume that’s the law of love. So you need the law, the Commandments, and love—all 3 of those things must work together. But what if I’m in a situation where 2 of those things conflict? In 1 Samuel 21, David and his men were starving to death. There was food available, but it was in the temple. David was not a priest, and so he was forbidden from touching the food of the temple—but he went and received it anyway. In Matthew 12, Jesus referenced this and said that it was the right thing for David to do.

Phillip: That was an extraordinary situation. But then David was an extraordinary person in the history of Israel.

Peter: That is true, but David was keeping the law still by determining that under these circumstances, the law of love dictates what you must do. Is that a fair way of putting it?

Phillip: You’re not told that in the New Testament use of that illustration. You’re on safer ground talking about the cow in the ditch.

There is the issue of determining that love wipes out what the law says. The other issue is that you can then pretend to keep the law by redefining the wording. With the situation of the cow in the ditch, you can, for example, call your farm ‘The Ditch.’

Peter: Yes. But the Lord knows the heart. So it’s no good being legalistic and saying, “This is a necessary moment for me to break the law.”

Phillip: One essay written by G.K. Chesterton expresses this point very well. He points to a situation in which a woman was told that in the rented accommodation she was in, she was not allowed to own a dog or a cat, but she was allowed to own a bird. So she went out and bought an ostrich.

Peter: You can’t beat G.K. Chesterton.

Phillip: Indeed. But you also can’t be the person who wants to avoid the law. The law is an ass at that point.

Peter: Yes, because the law cannot in itself defeat sin.

Phillip: It can’t govern the heart.

Peter: Indeed, and we’ll come back to that. But before we get there, the 39 Articles of Religion talk about the law of the Old Testament as being moral, ceremonial, and civil. The moral law has to be kept, while the ceremonial law is fulfilled in and through Jesus, the great high priest. His sacrifice takes the place of all the animal sacrifices and so forth. At any rate, do you remain happy with that distinction from the 16th century?

Phillip: I think that broadly it is a very useful analysis of the diversity of the law, but it is also an oversimplification. There are civil laws which are expressions of moral laws, like the cow in the ditch. There is a moral law lying behind that which we would call at this point a civil law, because it’s not one of the ceremonial laws, and it’s not put forward as the great moral law like the Ten Commandments. It’s more complicated than that three-pile division. But on the other hand, it is a very useful distinction.

Peter: Yes, and civil law reminds us that Israel was a theocracy, ruled by God. Australia is not a theocracy, but a democracy. The civil law of the Old Testament was for a particular time and space of their nationhood, but it can still speak to us today.

Phillip: Yes, there are certain elements of it which we don’t live by today. For instance, we do not put false prophets to death, and we shouldn’t be doing that as a civil, non-theocratic state.

Peter: I have one last question before we move from the Old Testament. Psalm 119 speaks about things like loving the law. Do you love the law?

Phillip: Yes. And we should love the law. You mentioned Psalm 119, but I think of Psalm 19:7–11

The law of the LORD is perfect,

reviving the soul;

the testimony of the LORD is sure,

making wise the simple;

the precepts of the LORD are right,

rejoicing the heart;

the commandment of the LORD is pure,

enlightening the eyes;

the fear of the LORD is clean,

enduring forever;

the rules of the LORD are true,

and righteous altogether.

More to be desired are they than gold,

even much fine gold;

sweeter also than honey

and drippings of the honeycomb.

Moreover, by them is your servant warned;

in keeping them there is great reward.

The Psalmist clearly has that love of the Lord, and I see no reason why the Christian shouldn’t have the same love of God’s very Word to us.

Peter: Indeed. What is the attitude of Jesus to the law? Does he repeal it?

Phillip: Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5:16–17

In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.

Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfil them.

We need to unpack what it means to “fulfil them,” but certainly Jesus upholds the law. He goes on to say, Matthew 5:19–20

Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these Commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

So Jesus upholding the law in that paragraph, which is so central to the Sermon on the Mount, gives us no reason to set aside the law because he’s come. You mentioned earlier that the ceremonial law has been fulfilled in Jesus, but that’s not because Jesus has said, “We don’t need temples, priests, or sacrifices.” It’s because Jesus is the temple, the priest, and the sacrifice, so we keep the ceremonial law through Jesus.

Peter: I agree with that, but doesn’t Jesus add to the law in Matthew 5?

Phillip: No. Though in other parts of the gospels, he calls upon people to deny themselves, take up the cross, and follow him, and I don’t find that quite in the Old Testament—at least, not expressed like that. But he’s not adding to the law; he’s explaining and expounding it. In fact, the Sermon on the Mount starts off discussing the righteousness of the law, and then in Matthew 7, the sermon comes to an end where he talks about the law and the prophets. So most of the sermon is about the law and the prophets, and Jesus fulfilling it. The key fulfilment he has in Matthew 5 is not in adding to the law, but showing what the law itself means.

Peter: It raises another issue: he constantly criticises the very ones who are doing their utmost to keep the law. The word ‘Pharisee’ to us is a very nasty word, but back then, the Pharisees were widely admired in the community as those doing their best to keep the word of God. Therefore, his criticism of them is all the more astounding. He’s really taking on the people who are widely regarded as being the best people in the community. How come?

Phillip: It’s the hypocrisy of their law keeping; their pretence to be keeping the law, while at the same time inventing ways to minimise its requirements for them. It’s their failure to be law-keepers while still proclaiming to be law-keepers. Think back to the case of the woman and her ostrich: she’s a Pharisee.

There’s a wonderful joke I’ve heard being told by the rabbis, which I think is their sending up this Pharisaic hypocrisy. According to their law, you can’t travel on the Lord’s day more than a certain distance, unless you’re over sea. So therefore, they say, if you must travel a long distance in a car, get a hot water bottle and put it underneath your seat, so you’ll be travelling over water. One of the beautiful things about our Jewish community is their sense of humour in sending themselves up. But Jesus is challenging this kind of law-keeping, which seemed to be fanatically concerned with keeping the law more than anybody else, but in fact, by cleverness, they undermined it. I suspect that when the disciples first heard Jesus saying that you must surpass the law of the Pharisees, they thought, “That’s impossible!”

Nowadays, we don’t think that. We must be clearer about the Pharisees in order to understand the impact of this. Calling the Pharisees ‘the best law-keepers’ is like calling the Philistines ‘unsophisticated’, because the Philistines were the most technologically advanced people in the time. Likewise, the Pharisees seemed to be fanatic law-keepers, but in their keeping of the law, they undermined it.

Peter: Because if you believe that keeping the law leads to salvation, and so attempt to do it, you can’t, and so you lower the standard. You translate the law into more ‘doable’ things, and you say, “God couldn’t possibly have asked me to keep this law in what seems to be the full amount. He can only ask you to do things that you can do.”

Phillip: Indeed. For instance, the law says, “You shall not kill.” But what about warfare? What about execution? What about someone coming into my place at night? The Pharisees would say, “Let us work out when killing is permitted and when it isn’t.” But Jesus says, “‘You shall not kill’ means that you must live in harmony with your neighbour.” Instead of trying to work out the minimum requirement, Jesus turns it on its head and seeks the maximum application: no anger in your heart; no despising your neighbour.

Peter: But what about the Apostle Paul? Did he put law and gospel into conflict? We often think that the Old Testament is about law, while the New Testament is gospel. When I was in Sunday School, my teacher, who was 13 years old, told us that God tried 2 methods of salvation. The first was the law, and then when people failed to keep it, God sent Jesus. That was her take on the theology of law and gospel.

Phillip: That’s not accurate. Paul says something important, which Jesus also says in a different way. That is, you cannot be saved by law-keeping because you cannot keep the law. The law will condemn you. It will not justify you. To see law-keeping as the means of salvation is to deny the gospel. But the law is still consistent with the gospel. He says in 1 Timothy 1:9–11

The law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine, in accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted.

The law is not inconsistent with the gospel; it accords with the gospel.

Peter: Indeed, he’s very positive about the law.

Phillip: Romans 7:14 says, “The law is spiritual.” It is of the Spirit of God, given by God, and it is good. The problem is I am unspiritual, and I am not good.

Peter: So is the law like a mirror that tells you the truth about yourself?

Phillip: Yes, it is like a mirror, and I would like to say it’s like one of those curved mirrors that misrepresents me. But in fact, it’s not like that at all. It is a straight mirror under good lighting, revealing exactly what I’m like, which is not a pretty sight.

Peter: That was one of the points that Jesus made, I presume, in Matthew 5. He tells us what the law is really saying. It’s not just the outward display. It’s the heart that matters. Once you talk like that, then you can’t be Pharisaic.

Phillip: Martin Luther pushed this very clearly. He insisted that we have justification by faith, not by the law; but the law had a very important part for Luther. Its purpose is to show us our sinfulness and our need for the Saviour through whom we’re justified by faith in his name. Amazing Grace is an interesting and wonderful song. It recently occurred to me that unless you know that you are a wretch, you do not know how amazing grace is.

Peter: It’s funny to hear all sorts of people singing it who don’t have that doctrine. They love the song, but they don’t understand what it’s saying. “Who saved a wretch like me! I once was lost, but now I’m found.”1

Phillip: If you preach to the public that they are wretches, there will be protests. But without knowing you’re a wretch, you don’t know God’s grace, especially how amazing it is. The law shows me what a wretch I am.

Peter: The gospel comes, and with it comes justification by faith. So is the law out of date?

Phillip: No. Of course not.

Peter: But are we meant to keep the law from which we have been released?

Phillip: Yes, we are meant to keep it now, not in order to become citizens of the city of God, but because we are citizens of the city of God. We are to keep the law because the law reflects the righteousness of God. It is the way God wants his people to live, to be seen as his people by the world. They may see our good works and glorify God, not because we’re good, but because God is at work in us, seen in our works of law-keeping.

I think of Jeremiah 31. I also like Ezekiel 36, the parallel passage, because it tells us the mechanism by which Jeremiah 31 speaks. That is, God will not only cleanse and purify us, but he will send his Spirit to write the law on our hearts and move us to keep it. So it’s the same law, just in a different location.

You mentioned putting the law up on the walls of churches, and I believe the church we grew up in had the Commandments on the wall. There’s nothing wrong with doing so, but it’s much more important to have it on our hearts and to have the Holy Spirit moving us to keep the law. My sinful heart does not move me to keep the law; it moves me to avoid the law. Whereas the spiritual heart moves us to keep the law of God.

Peter: There’s a beautiful insight in the parable of the Prodigal Son, who comes home and is received joyfully by his father. The older brother, in protest, quotes the good works he has done, but the father talks about their relationship. It is the relationship that is important, not the law-keeping. Of course, this parable is addressed to the Pharisees.

In talking about the law being put on the walls of churches, I’m not suggesting that the past was some kind of golden age. No, there are many problems with the past. However, we grew up knowing the Ten Commandments by heart. Learning them by heart was part of the Confirmation preparation. But more than that, it was in the Holy Communion service, and it was always there until clergy wanted to be quicker, and so replaced them with the summary: “Love God, love your neighbour.” This summary is true, of course, but the Ten Commandments don’t seem to be considered as important nowadays. When I was teaching at Moore College in the 1990s, I would ask a class, “How many here know the Ten Commandments?” Very few people indeed could tell me the Ten Commandments. Have we lost something?

Phillip: Yes, we’ve lost a lot there. It’s a real mistake.

Peter: Even to this day, it’s very rare for someone to be able to tell me what the Ten Commandments are.

Phillip: Yes, and of course the vacuum is filled in by error. Today, more people know about the seven deadly sins than they know about the Ten Commandments. But the seven deadly sins are not deadly, and some of them aren’t even sins. That Catholic impact in our society has been a great error, and the fact that we fail to know the Commandments is a great sadness.

I liked the prayer book because it was so biblical. We prayed, “Lord, have mercy upon us, and write all these thy laws in our hearts, by thy Spirit.” Praying that every week when you have the Commandments declared to us was what Ezekiel said would happen. It’s asking for the very gospel things to take place. The summary of the Commandments, though the Lord Jesus was the one who summarised them in these words, only works if you know the content. Because without the Commandments, you don’t know how to love your neighbour as you ought. With the Commandments, you know that you mustn’t covet your neighbour’s wife or your neighbour’s house or your neighbour’s donkey. It tells you that love goes deeper than just stealing. It’s important to have the Ten Commandments.

Peter: That leads us to the reason why I have chosen this subject for our first episode of this particular series, and that’s because I’m reading a book on the subject called Written on Our Hearts2 by Phillip D. Jensen. Phillip, you’ve written a book!

Phillip: I have. You’ve only read the first third of it so far—that is, the section called Grace and Law. In fact, the subtitle of the book is The Ten Commandments and the Radical Life of Grace. But the rest of the book takes us through the Commandments one by one to see how a citizen of the Kingdom of God—by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, inspired by the Spirit to keep the law on their heart—would approach keeping the law now. For example, Sabbath-keeping is so difficult in a society where some of us work seven days a week. How do we keep the Sabbath when we’re not in a theocratic society that acknowledges that Sabbath? That’s a significant issue, but we can’t just set aside the Sabbath as if it doesn’t matter. It mattered to God. He kept the Sabbath when he created the world. So how do we keep the Sabbath today as Christians? And then what does it mean to covet? I don’t think coveting is sin. In fact, coveting is a good thing in most cases. So why is there a Commandment on coveting, and what does it mean to covet? The two-thirds you are yet to read, Peter, have many surprises yet to come.

2

Phillip D. Jensen, Written On Our Hearts, 2026 (Matthias Media).

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

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For more on this topic, check out this talk given at Camp MMM called The Great Commandments.

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It is a preacher’s foible and failing that we like to have alliteration, so today’s heading of Money, Men and Manners is an attempt to unite Paul’s concluding chapter in his first letter to the Corinthians. There is more teaching and challenge in the scriptures about money than almost any other ethical topic. Our attitude to money is one of those distinctive qualities of Christian life for we know of the impossibility of serving both God and money. However, there is very little teaching in the scriptures that is exclusively addressed to manliness, and 1 Corinthians 16 gives us the challenge to be manly. As you read this week’s episode, I will leave you to find the importance of manners. I hope you enjoy it—or should I say, please enjoy it.

Yours,

Phillip

Phillip Jensen: In this episode, we are dealing with the very last chapter of 1 Corinthians. There are so many issues raised in this one book, and today we will look at some very unusual and controversial topics: the doctrine of work, the work of the Lord, and the work for the Lord.

I would like to remind our listeners and readers that in 2017 at our Queen’s Birthday Conference, Al Stewart and I spoke on the work of the Lord and the work for the Lord, and you can find those talks here.

This passage also talks on the nature of manliness, which is such a controversial subject for today. If you want to follow up on the subject of manliness, I gave a series of talks at the Katoomba Men’s Convention back in 2001, which you can find here.

So we’ve dealt with these topics in other contexts, but they both come out here in 1 Corinthians 16, which is, I suspect, not your favourite chapter.

Peter Jensen: I was a bit hesitant about this one and wondered if we should jump over it. I can give you a running commentary, just out of my head, on all of the chapters that lead up to it, culminating in 1 Corinthians 15. But I couldn’t think of a single thing to say about 1 Corinthians 16. It seems to be the postscript at the end of a letter. But after reading it again, I have a different point of view. I suppose I was hesitant because it’s rather historically bound, which calls into question its relevance for us today. But I should have known better; the word of the Lord is relevant all the way through. Its historical provenance is obviously important. We’re reading a real letter here, not a series of unrelated proverbs or maxims. It enables us to see the people that Paul is talking to. But of course, it’s God’s Word; it’s God speaking to us. As we hear what he has to say, its relevance happens to be quite significant at various points, as you’ve already said. There are some pretty forthright challenges, as we’ll see in 16:13–14, and then again in 16:22.

Phillip: I would like to pick up on what you’ve said on the historical provenance of these things. It’s easy to take it for granted as Bible readers, but one of the difficulties with the Qur’an and with Confucius, for instance, is they’re just maxims, and maxims without any historical context can be made to mean quite different things. Whereas you can understand the Bible more easily because it does give this clear historical context. It is a real letter written to real people, and as we can see, this context enables us to understand with greater confidence what the author was saying to the people.

Peter: The first 2 words of the chapter, “Now concerning,” are very important. He’s repeated that same phrase in chapter 7, chapter 12, et cetera. That is, there were topics that the Corinthians were raising with him, and he would answer them one after another. Likewise, in saying “Now concerning the collection for the saints,” Paul raises this last issue. It seems unimportant at first, but as we’ll see in a few moments, it is still significant, for the great climax at the end of chapter 15 and its application to life still filters through to chapter 16.

So 15:58 is said in the light of the resurrection: “Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.” Similarly, he says in 16:13–14, “Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. Let all that you do be done in love.” The end of chapter 15 flows through to chapter 16, even though he’s raising a particular subject at the beginning of 1 Corinthians 16

Now concerning the collection for the saints: as I directed the churches of Galatia, so you also are to do. On the first day of every week, each of you is to put something aside and store it up, as he may prosper, so that there will be no collecting when I come. And when I arrive, I will send those whom you accredit by letter to carry your gift to Jerusalem. If it seems advisable that I should go also, they will accompany me.

I will visit you after passing through Macedonia, for I intend to pass through Macedonia, and perhaps I will stay with you or even spend the winter, so that you may help me on my journey, wherever I go. For I do not want to see you now just in passing. I hope to spend some time with you, if the Lord permits. But I will stay in Ephesus until Pentecost, for a wide door for effective work has opened to me, and there are many adversaries.

When Timothy comes, see that you put him at ease among you, for he is doing the work of the Lord, as I am. So let no one despise him. Help him on his way in peace, that he may return to me, for I am expecting him with the brothers.

Now concerning our brother Apollos, I strongly urged him to visit you with the other brothers, but it was not at all his will to come now. He will come when he has opportunity.

Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. Let all that you do be done in love.

Now I urge you, brothers—you know that the household of Stephanas were the first converts in Achaia, and that they have devoted themselves to the service of the saints—be subject to such as these, and to every fellow worker and laborer. I rejoice at the coming of Stephanas and Fortunatus and Achaicus, because they have made up for your absence, for they refreshed my spirit as well as yours. Give recognition to such people.

The churches of Asia send you greetings. Aquila and Prisca, together with the church in their house, send you hearty greetings in the Lord. All the brothers send you greetings. Greet one another with a holy kiss.

I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand. If anyone has no love for the Lord, let him be accursed. Our Lord, come! The grace of the Lord Jesus be with you. My love be with you all in Christ Jesus. Amen.

Peter: Let’s begin with the discussion of the financial arrangements, because there are some interesting remarks. In 2 Corinthians 8–9, he has a great deal more to say about this very subject. He also says some interesting things in Acts 20 to the Ephesian elders about finance and giving, and quotes the Lord Jesus in Acts 20:35, “Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’”

Returning to 16:1, “Now concerning the collection for the saints,” it’s important to note that he doesn’t say, “the collection to support the ministers.” That’s dealt with elsewhere in the New Testament. The saints, in other words, are all the Christians. In the light of 2 Corinthians 8–9, the Jews in Judea were suffering particularly for their Christian faith at that time, so it may be referring to the collection to support them. But we’re more interested in the principles at stake here. Notice too that he made the same appeal to the churches of Galatia. The churches were networked, and they looked to each other for support. What happened in one church should have happened in the other.

Phillip: But there was a sense that the Gentiles in particular should have been giving to the Jews, because in Acts 11, there was a famine in Judea for which they were collecting money. But the collection was about more than just relief for people in poverty.

Peter: There was a sense of gratitude for the way in which the Jews were the ones who preached the gospel first.

Phillip: They had given the spiritual blessings for which, therefore, it would have been right to bring the physical blessings. But it’s also part of that Old Testament sense that in the end, all the nations of the world will pay tribute to God’s people of Israel. I’m not talking of the modern state of Israel; I’m talking of the true Jew.

Peter: That’s an interesting thought. You’d also turn to Romans 9–11, which refers to the way in which we are merely grafted into the tree of the original.

Phillip: Which is the true Jew, the one who follows the Lord Jesus.

Let’s return to 1 Corinthians 16. This first bit is about the organisational system.

Peter: Yes. It’s worth mentioning that this giving is not merely spontaneous, but organised. Although spontaneous giving occurs; that is the giving you may do in the street when you see a beggar, or when you’ve heard an appeal for money. But that ought to be a byproduct of your organised giving, which is what Paul is talking about here. He tells them to give on the first day of every week, which is a tantalising thing to say. Did he choose the first day of the week because that was the day on which they would meet?

Phillip: Yes, it may mean that. For those of us who believe in gathering on the first day of the week, which you and I have been doing all our lives, you naturally read church into it. But the passage doesn’t mention church. It could be that they’re paid on the last day of the week, and so Paul is saying, “Before you start spending on the first day of the week, put aside the money that you should.” We don’t know for sure, so it is important to be reticent in any application of this.

Peter: That’s very fair. I personally think it is referring to church, but you’re right in saying that.

Phillip: Though in our church now, a very small percentage of our regular congregation put money in a plate.

Peter: We don’t pass the plate.

Phillip: We still do at our church, but it’s almost an embarrassment because it looks like only 2 or 3 people actually use it, when in fact a lot of people are giving by electronic transfers.

Peter: Yes. I don’t think the point of the passage is that your giving has to be done on the first day of the week; rather, it ought not to just be spontaneous. By all means, spontaneous generosity is a wonderful thing, but it ought to be also planned, so that you give generously to those in need. I think that’s a fair deduction from what he is saying here.

The other thing that he mentions here is the accreditation of those who carried the gift to Jerusalem. 16:3, “And when I arrive, I will send those whom you accredit by letter to carry your gift to Jerusalem.” When I used to visit various churches, I would make a habit of going into the vestry after the church service to observe the counting of the money there, which still happened in many churches back then. I would see that 2 people were counting the money instead of just one. Why was that?

Phillip: That would be because of this passage, but also because of the rightness of this practice. Being sinful people, we must never encourage people into situations where sinfulness will have its way. So when auditing accounts, it is good to have 2 people counting money in order to make sure that everything is financially proper. It goes back to Paul, you see; in chapter 9, he’s insistent that he’s making the gospel free of charge, that it’s a generosity that lies at the back of it. In 1 Timothy 6, he warns about people who are lovers of money and who minister because of their love for money. It’s therefore very important that we, who live in such a financially greedy world, minister like the Lord Jesus Christ, who, as it says in 2 Corinthians 8:9, “Was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.” So the ministry of the gospel must always be absolutely above board in terms of financial accountability, and more importantly, must be an expression of generosity over and above financial accountability.

Peter: It is also a reminder that we are all sinners, and so we need to do both those things.

Phillip: Dreadful things in human history, and even today, have come by churches not following these practical examples of the Apostle Paul. Remember that in his day, there were people who preached for money as a pattern of life, and so he made sure he was not like them. But those who push the prosperity gospel, I’m afraid, bring disrepute upon the generosity of gospel sharing.

Peter: The other thing that comes up in talking about his travel arrangements is the impression we sometimes have that the Apostle is, in a sense, ‘spirit-led’. I’m not saying this impression has any relationship with the scriptures, but we sometimes think that Paul moves solely by some instinct of the Spirit’s leadership, or something like that. But it’s interesting to see him saying, 16:4, “If it seems advisable that I should go also, they will accompany me.”

In other words, he uses his common sense, and he takes into account the opinion of others. He does what we do as human beings in making his travel arrangements. That’s also to be found in other bits and pieces of the passage; for example, 16:7, “For I do not want to see you now just in passing. I hope to spend some time with you, if the Lord permits.” That is, he’ll wait and see what happens. Notice, though, how he says, “If the Lord permits.” In other words, he’s fully conscious that his life is under the sovereign control of the Lord. He doesn’t just make up his own mind, but he’s aware of the Lord’s provision. Please notice here too, in the conduct of ministry, his real affection for them. For one thing that ought to be true of Christians, and pastors in particular, is the love, affection and care of those who receive your teaching. Teaching is not something that’s done simply online, so to speak. That’s why I hope the church will never again meet online as we did during COVID, because it is a matter of a relationship with real affection. That is why Paul says, “I want to spend some time with you.” We spend money, but spending time is also a very important thing.

Phillip: Notice 16:24, where he finishes, “My love be with you all in Christ Jesus. Amen.” It’s a very strong part of his thinking. It reminds me of James 4:13, in which James tells people not to say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit,” for you don’t know what tomorrow holds. Instead, you should say, “If the Lord permits.” But that doesn’t mean that you don’t make any plans at all. It means that you make plans, but recognise that they will happen if the Lord permits. You make the plans. If the Lord permits, that will happen.

You mentioned COVID and meeting online. This will upset some of our readers and listeners, I know, but I suspect you will agree with me on this. That is, theological degrees online are second best, at best. Learning online is fundamentally different from learning properly. People doing university degrees online are missing out on a university education, and theological teachers being trained online are missing out on the loving and affectionate relationship with their teachers, which is so fundamental to training in ministry. Now, in an age of poverty, in an age of difficulty, it still can be done. But we shouldn’t ever see it as the best way to do it. It’s second best, at best. I’m afraid that sometimes I see it as third and fourth best.

Peter: It’s happening especially in the United States. People think, “I can do this while I’m still living at home.” I can understand that. But as you say, you don’t have church online, and there’s a sense of overlap between the seminary, the place that shapes you, and church. Because you’re shaped not just by information, but also by the very people who give you the information, their lives, their love, and their prayers for you—and you miss out on your relationships with fellow students. I still meet with people I came to college with in 1966. We still meet and support each other. So yes, this is a controversial thing to say. I understand, and people will be offended, I’m sure. But I think it’s something we need to just step back and think about, without being swamped by our instincts at this point.

Phillip: I talked to a man the other day who told me that he got his arts degree during COVID. He did 3 years without ever going on the campus because of COVID. But he worked out at the end of his first year that he didn’t need to spend much time at home because he could listen to his lectures at double speed, and there were only so many lectures he had to listen to. So in his second and third year, he had a full-time job while doing his degree. He told me that at the end of it, he realised he had not been to university at all. He just had a degree from a university. It’s a deception to think that you can learn without teachers. AI is only going to reinforce this problem for us because it depersonalises the relationship between teachers and students. Throughout chapter 16, you see the love that Paul has for Timothy, for the relationship he has with Apollos, and his relationship with Stephanas.

Peter: Let’s now discuss what he says about ministry arrangements.

Phillip: This passage challenges me because of my egalitarianism as an Australian citizen and because of my anti-clericalism as a Protestant. Both of those things need to be qualified. Notice Paul’s care for Timothy in 16:10–11,

When Timothy comes, see that you put him at ease among you, for he is doing the work of the Lord, as I am. So let no one despise him. Help him on his way in peace, that he may return to me, for I am expecting him with the brothers.

Paul commands them to care for Timothy and help him on his way because he’s doing the Lord’s work. It’s not as though he’s simply saying, “My little brother Timothy is coming, so please look after him.” It’s more than that.

Then we turn to 16:16, “Be subject to such as these, and to every fellow worker and laborer.” That is, submit yourselves not to the teaching of people, but to people. Submit yourself to those devoted to the service of the saints. Likewise, 16:18, “Give recognition to such people.” I still am pretty, anti-clerical, and you read every now and then about cults where submission to the cult leader is demanded, and it is horrendous. I want to underline that we mustn’t encourage that. But we also mustn’t go to the other extreme and say, “Your pastor doesn’t matter. He’s no different to any other member. The missionaries who came bringing the gospel to you are just like any other human being.” No, those who are labouring for the Lord do need to be recognised.

Hebrews 13 speaks of it again, reminding us that we need to have some degree of recognition for those who teach the gospel. Take the word ‘Reverend’ which of course contains the word ‘revere’. You revere the person. But I don’t think people understand that the only people who call me ‘Reverend’ are people who don’t know me, like funeral directors. “I’ll carry your bag for you, Reverend,” they say. But they don’t revere me. The people who do revere me call me Phillip. But they revere me not because I am great, but because the gospel I preach is great. But it’s important that you revere not just the gospel, but the person who brings that to you. So Timothy, like Paul, is doing the work of the Lord. Stephanas and the others are devoted to the service of the saints; he’s a fellow worker and labourer.

Peter: Indeed. I’ve always thought that the temptations of ministry are, among others, greed. It is possible for ministers to make money out of their ministry. I’m not going to go into the details of how, because I don’t want to tempt anyone, but I’ve seen it. It’s possible also for ministers to be besotted with power. Even leading a small congregation means that you’ve got power over them. While it is right to honour the minister, it is wrong for the minister to turn that honour into a means of receiving self-approval, and then to exploit it in a way which is ungodly over the people whom God has given him.

It’s very beautiful when Paul says here that we are to do the work of the Lord, and that those to whom they are to be subject are devoted to the service of the saints. Because as you say, it is right to revere the minister, but we are in service to the Lord and his people. Unless the minister sees that they are in service, they are in danger of falling into this sin of power which is so unpleasant.

Phillip: It’s interesting that the recipients of the gospel should honour those over them, while those who are over them should see themselves as under them in service. Both sides must not fight for power, but give power to the other.

Before we finish, let’s look at the challenges given to us in 1 Corinthians 16:13–14

Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. Let all that you do be done in love.

Peter: Be watchful against the evil one and against false teaching. Stand firm in the faith. That is to say, we need to guard the faith, and we need to act out the faith. This is very important, because again and again, Christians have become vulnerable by not standing firm in the faith, and vulnerable to the words of this world which have seduced us into ways of life which are unscriptural, and made us feel as though we need to be more popular than we are.

Phillip: Take 1 Corinthians 15:2, “Hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain.” The entire book commands this of us, not just this verse. But what about “act like men”?

Peter: Bearing in mind that this is addressed to men and women in the congregation, I presume this means that there’s an aspect of manliness which we can all practice. I see it personally as being that aspect of manliness which is to take responsibility. Specifically, we are to be responsible for the gospel and for those who believe in the gospel. I take it that it’s true for all of us, male and female alike.

Phillip: So women need to be like men?

Peter: In that respect. What do you make of it?

Phillip: I think men are supposed to be men. There is a certain masculinity that is right, but it’s not the masculinity of Andrew Tate and those influencers who see masculinity in the size of their biceps. It’s the masculinity of taking responsibility. There is a sense in which some men do bear that masculinity, which must be committed to the Lord Jesus Christ. But men, it’s time to stand up and be men for the Lord Jesus.

Peter: So you see it as being addressed particularly to men?

Phillip: Yes.

Peter: Therefore you’re not saying women should be manly. You’re saying, “Come on, men, be men.”

Phillip: Yes. 1 Timothy 2:8 tells us, “The men should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarrelling.” Because men are great at fighting, but they really need to be manly in prayer.

Peter: So 16:14, “Let all that you do be done in love,” is presumably addressed to all?

Phillip: “Be strong,” is the next phrase. But yes, it’s addressed to all. However, it’s not just women who should do things in love.

Peter: Certainly not. It’s part of our manliness. I’m presuming that women want us to be manly in the right sense—and then men and women must do all things in love.

Phillip: Yes. Whatever it is you do, do it in love. Let’s run down to the other challenge, because it’s tougher than that one. 16:22, “If anyone has no love for the Lord, let him be accursed. Our Lord, come!” The word ‘cursed’ here is a translation of the Greek word ‘anathema’; that is, “Let him be no more. Let him be damned.” This is not what the pastoral care and gentility of the 21st century could possibly be encouraging, is it? There is a sense in which we need to speak of hell, though it is never a joy to do so. The only hellfire preacher in the scriptures is Jesus, but here is one of the few occasions in which Paul speaks of it, like he does with Galatians in the first chapter of that book. And who is it that he’s accursing? Those who don’t love the Lord Jesus. When he appeals, “Come, Lord Jesus,” he’s appealing to that judgement when ‘anathema’ happens. So 16:22 is one of the harshest verses of the scriptures. I don’t know many that are as harsh as that. It is calling upon God’s judgement and making it clear, as we said last week, the contrast between the man of dust and the man of heaven. Humanity is divided like that. There are those who love the Lord Jesus and those who don’t, and that terrible division now is a division of eternal consequences.

Peter: And why would we love Jesus?

Phillip: Because his love for us is overwhelming. But you’ll notice while 16:22 is so harsh, 16:23–24 are lovely verses, for they speak of the grace, generosity, and the love of the Lord Jesus. Then you see it in Paul himself: his love for the Corinthians, who are such a pain to him. The whole book has been involved in the controversies, difficulties and hostilities that he has received from them, yet he loves the sinner as the Lord Jesus loved the sinner. So while we know the end consequence of sin is judgement, we also know that the gospel is of Jesus overcoming judgement, not because we deserve it, but because of his grace and his 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 given at St Andrew’s Cathedral called Let All Be Done In Love.

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People’s attitudes towards their bodies can be quite diverse: from those who are embarrassed, to those who are proud; from those who hide their appearance behind excessive clothing to those who glory in their display of flesh. Within the ancient world, and still amongst ‘super spiritual’ people, there has been the desire to be free of our bodily limitations. Yet Christians boldly proclaim the resurrection of the body of our Lord Jesus Christ, and more than that, of our future hope of the resurrection of our own bodies. But the obvious question comes about the nature of our future resurrection bodies—will I still be limited by my imperfections, or at a geriatric age? Paul was addressing the doubters in 1 Corinthians 15 when he spoke of our glorious body which will be like unto Jesus. I hope you enjoy this discussion on this vital teaching of Christians about the resurrection.

Yours,

Phillip

Phillip Jensen: Peter, are you looking forward to your resurrection?

Peter Jensen: I am.

Phillip: That’s good, because today we’re talking about just that. This is the fourth episode of our mini-series in 1 Corinthians 15. We started off by looking at the first part of the chapter, where you see that the great basis for the resurrection lies in the history of the gospel itself. Then we went to the end of the chapter, thanks to your advice, where you see the great promise of eternity that flows from the belief in the resurrection. Last week, we looked at the problem raised in the middle section about people who profess to be Christians, but have difficulties with believing in the resurrection. The question raised last week was this: if you don’t believe in the resurrection, what are the consequences? If there is no resurrection, then Christ has not risen, and you are still in your sins. This is spelled out as Paul argues for belief in the resurrection.

But now, the people who were doubting the resurrection have come back with another question: what kind of body are you going to have in your resurrection? So again, Paul chastises them, but gives the answer to our benefit. I too have pondered what kind of age I would like to be in my resurrection body. Would I want a resurrected 80-year-old body, or a 20-year-old body? I certainly wouldn’t want to be a teenager again.

Peter: 1 Corinthians 15:35–49

But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?” You foolish person! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body. For not all flesh is the same, but there is one kind for humans, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish. There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is of one kind, and the glory of the earthly is of another. There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for star differs from star in glory.

So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.

Phillip: That’s a fantastic passage. But is the question concerning what kind of body we will have still relevant for us?

Peter: I believe it is. Their question, which Paul quotes in 15:35, is not inquisitive, but scornful. In essence, they are saying, “You claim that there’s going to be a resurrection. Tell me what sort of body there is.” To my mind, it comes out of something which we still experience, that we are abnormally sensitive about our bodies. We’re often deeply dissatisfied and self-conscious with our appearance and our abilities. We think, “You’re not looking at the real me when you look at my body in the way it is.” It happens particularly as you age, of course. Ageing embarrasses and alarms us. We’re aware that people judge us by our looks. So the body matters, but it often disappoints us. Even people who glory in their bodies will one day have this sense that it’s not the real them. What does Paul therefore tell us about our future?

Phillip: He tells us of the resurrection of the body. Because of the way I was raised in biblical understanding, I’m never dissatisfied with my body. I think it’s got to do with the belief in the creation, that God has created our bodies to suit his good plan for this world. Though it is disfigured by an impending death, it is still a glorious thing that we have.

But the question here is about raising this body to a new life. The Corinthians are still questioning whether it can be done, but God is perfectly capable of raising the dead, even the long-ago dead, those who have turned back into dust and ashes. It’s like the rest of the Bible; it’s a celebration of the one true God and his power, for he is the creator of everything, even the creator of everything out of nothing. He sustains everything by his powerful word. So the idea that he could raise people from the dead does not seem far-fetched for the God who is the creator of all. He’s the Lord of nature and of history, and he created us for a purpose. Take the biological processes that we know: God takes an insignificant little seed and turns it into a glorious and huge tree. So he who is able to turn a little seed into a massive tree will have no difficulty turning our human body, in all its death, into a glorious body. In fact, the seed has to die in order to turn into a new life, and so as we are buried in death, so we are getting ready for that which God is quite able to do and does frequently: that is, bring us to a new bodily state which will be greater than anything that we’ve had so far. So what do we see about God’s power to achieve this? We know he does it from his wisdom.

Peter: He does. Paul talks about the world around us, remembering, as you’ve said, that the world is a part of what God has declared to be good. He is not against nature, or against matter; they are his creations, which he has declared to be good. If in the world to come, there is a body, we ought not to be surprised by that, for the body is what God declares to be good.

It’s interesting to see how we are connected with the seed and the tree. That is to say, it’s not as though our present body is just completely done away with. There is a connection between who we are and who we will be, but the connection is as similar as the seed and the fully grown plant. So by God’s power and wisdom, we see death transformed to life. The transformation into splendour and glory is what he calls a ‘spiritual body’. This is a rather puzzling phrase. What’s your take on the idea of the spiritual body?

Phillip: I don’t think that in saying ‘spiritual body’ he is referring to a non-body. That would make nonsense of everything that he’s been saying up until this point.

Peter: Yes; after all, Jesus was resurrected from the dead. He wasn’t a ghost.

Phillip: No—he went out of his way to point out he wasn’t a ghost in Luke 24. So what does he mean by ‘spiritual body’? It’s got to do with Paul’s use of this word ‘spiritual’. That is, this world is the natural world; the age to come is the spiritual world. So the body that we’re looking at now is the natural body of this world, but the resurrection body that is to come is the spiritual body: the body of the age of the Spirit that lies ahead. So our body will be both natural and spiritual. It is natural now, and it will be spiritual when Christ returns. The natural world is dominated by death, and so our natural bodies are dominated by death. That is, we are perishable. Our bodies are dishonourable and weak. It’s the nature of this world that we are indeed perishable. But in the age to come, the new body will be imperishable. Instead of dishonour, we will have glory. Instead of weakness, we will have power.

So the 2 are being contrasted. This happens elsewhere in 1 Corinthians, where Paul contrasts the natural body at the end of chapter 2 with the spiritual. In chapter 3, he mentions the fact that he can’t talk to the Corinthians as ‘spiritual’ because they’re still living as if they’re ‘natural’. There’s also a wonderful passage, 1 Peter 3:18, “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit.” It’s not that Christ’s body is dead, but he goes on in spirit. What he’s saying is that in this age, Christ was put to death; in the next age, he comes to life. So when he talks of the ‘spirit’, he is talking of the age to come. That’s why in Revelation, John says a few times that he was “in the spirit” when he had the revelation, because in the age to come, he sees what is taking place in this world now. So ‘spiritual’ does not mean ‘bodiless’; ‘spiritual’ means ‘the next age’.

Peter: It brings in eschatology, the doctrine of the last things: that there is an age to come, which we’re already in at one level. But we’re waiting for the age of the Holy Spirit, in which the Spirit will be fully operative, so to speak, in our lives.

Phillip: The coming of the Spirit into this age on Pentecost is the breaking in of the eternal age now, seen in the resurrection of Jesus.

Peter: Indeed. Eschatology, the idea of the last things, penetrates the whole New Testament. You must recognise it at all sorts of points to understand the New Testament properly.

So we’re dealing with God’s power and wisdom, but we’re also dealing with the overall plan of God in this passage. To teach someone, you move from what they know to what they don’t know, so Paul appeals to the natural world in order to explain the world to come, like the seed and the tree. He’s referring back to the great truths of the Christian gospel, with which they should be familiar; there’s the contrast between the first man and the last man. The first man, Adam, is a failure, and we are in Adam. He is called “the man of dust.” It’s an interesting description of humanity. As he’s said before, “In Adam all die.” But then comes the last man—the new first man, if you like. He is the ‘telos’, meaning ‘the end’—the one to whom everything is pointing—and he becomes the head of the new, redeemed human race.

Phillip: Is that why he’s called the last Adam?

Peter: Yes.

Phillip: It seems unusual to call Jesus ‘Adam’. He goes on to talk of the first man from the earth, and the second man from heaven. But he speaks in terms of the first Adam being “a living being” and the last Adam being “a life-giving spirit.” It’s the new Adam heading up the new humanity in the spiritual world.

Peter: God’s plan has always involved not just the removal of the entire human race, but rather the redemption of his people. And the head of that people is the last Adam. The last Adam, the real Adam, the one to whom the whole thing points, I would say. So the second man has immense victory, and we also share in this victory. 15:42, “What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable.” It is “sown in dishonour” because of sin, of course, which leads to shame and dust. “Dust to dust, ashes to ashes,” yet we are raised in glory.

So we are put to death in the natural body, then raised in a spiritual body. The first man, Adam, becomes a living being. The last Adam becomes the life-giving spirit. The first is from the earth, the ‘man of dust’; the second is from heaven. 1 Corinthians 15:48–49

As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.

What a tale! So our future is not to be a disembodied soul, perhaps rising beyond the moon or being sent to Hades below, as in the ideas of that ancient world. Our future is to be resurrected in this extraordinary redeemed race of humanity of which the head is Jesus.

We can’t describe the resurrection body yet. I think words would not permit. He’s given us as much as he can to show us what it will be. First, he describes it as ‘glory’. It always reminds me of that wonderful phrase in 2 Corinthians 4:17, “For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.” ‘Glory’ here is meant in the sense that the sun shining is glorious, but it’s also got a sense of weight, like gold.

He’s not just saying here that all glory belongs to God. That’s true, but God shares his glory with us. C.S. Lewis preached a sermon on this once, in which he pointed out the fact that if you could see yourself now as you will be when resurrected, you would bow. Yet it’s not as though the glorious creature is pictured as strutting the earth and achieving worship, because this glorious creature who we will be is shouting out, “Glory to God, from whom all glory comes!” We will be God-centred in the way that we were designed to be, and we will find our fulfilment in being God-centred.

In 15:49, Paul says something which I find to be deeply comforting and helpful: “Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.” The image of the man from dust has brought us to dust. But the person I wish to be like is Jesus, and that’s our future. The first man is made in God’s image, of course, but the last man, Jesus, is the image of God, and we shall bear his image. The Apostle here is speaking about the unspeakable. Human words are not enough to describe what he’s talking about, but I think he’s given us enough to assure us, and give us confidence even in the face of the horror of our last enemy, death.

Phillip: Yes, because our bodies disintegrate as we age towards death. You don’t die of old age; you die of disease in old age. And the diseases disfigure and demolish our bodies into their weakness. So people can be dissatisfied with their bodily existence: aches, pains, sickness, frailty, that we may have convinced ourselves at 21 we didn’t have, but at 81 it becomes more difficult to continue to believe.

So are we to be satisfied with our bodies?

Peter: Yes, because they are what God has given us. But we have to see that this is only the mere beginning, and our true identity is that we belong to Jesus, the man from heaven. Our final goal in life is to be like him in body and spirit: possessed by the Holy Spirit, redeemed, and given this extraordinary body.

Phillip: There is this sense of our death, of weakness and frailty, yet the body that God knit together in our mother’s womb is pretty extraordinary. So if it is this magnificent now, how magnificent is the glory of which we’re speaking here? Running through the passage is this contrast: that everybody is ‘the man of dust,’ but some will be ‘the man of heaven.’ It raises the question of our own personal future. His victory in death and resurrection is our victory if we’re in Christ Jesus, not because we deserve it, but because of his grace and generosity. He has forgiven our sins. He has overcome our death. Yet death is still the wages for sin. But thanks be to God for the victory that is in Christ Jesus, that can free us from our sinful bodies of this world into the glory of our spiritual bodies in the next.

Peter: 1 Corinthians 15:50–58

I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:

“Death is swallowed up in victory.”

“O death, where is your victory?

O death, where is your sting?”

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.

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 Man From Heaven.

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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Two Ways News is freely available and we encourage our subscribers and regular listeners to advertise it freely amongst their friends and associates. It is freely available because it is provided by the generosity of others. If you would like to share in being generous, the details on how to contribute to this ministry are found at the foot of this transcript.

Today, we are looking at 1 Corinthians 15:12–34, which talks about the inconsistency of those who want the gospel of Jesus without his resurrection. It is a vital passage to see the significant and important consequences of Jesus’ resurrection for life now as well as the future.

Yours,

Phillip

Phillip Jensen: Today, we will be looking at the resurrection of the dead in 1 Corinthians 15:12–34

Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.

But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. For “God has put all things in subjection under his feet.” But when it says, “all things are put in subjection,” it is plain that he is excepted who put all things in subjection under him. When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things in subjection under him, that God may be all in all.

Otherwise, what do people mean by being baptized on behalf of the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why are people baptized on their behalf? Why are we in danger every hour? I protest, brothers, by my pride in you, which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die every day! What do I gain if, humanly speaking, I fought with beasts at Ephesus? If the dead are not raised, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” Do not be deceived: “Bad company ruins good morals.” Wake up from your drunken stupor, as is right, and do not go on sinning. For some have no knowledge of God. I say this to your shame.

Peter Jensen: As you can see, you can be diverted in this passage by a number of tricky bits within it. But if you put your focus on the tricky bits, you’ll miss the main message, which can be summarised in one word: ‘hope.’ Hope is generated by this passage, and it matters always, but especially when we confront the death of one close to us, or our own death.

Phillip, you’ve had a lot to do with funerals over the years. What was your experience?

Phillip: When I was first involved with funerals, there were many things which startled me. The first was how small they were. The majority of people who died, of course, were aged, but by the time we come to old age, the number of friends and family we have left are very few. When I’d gone to funerals of young people, or Christian funerals, large numbers of people showed up. But when someone rang up and asked for a minister to take the funeral, I would see gatherings of 20–30 people, sometimes even smaller. The other thing I noticed was that the Christian funerals stood out as being so different not just in terms of numbers of attendees, but because of the hope that was present. They do not grieve in the same way that the non-Christians grieve. Peter, grief is one of those issues that you’ve thought about a lot.

Peter: I have, over the years, in listening to people, observing, and experiencing grief, because this is something we all experience, Christian or not. It can be overwhelming. It affects the body, the mind, the heart, and the conscience.

In the body, you can feel physical pain, or uncontrolled weeping. You can have difficulty speaking. The senses are bereaved. The poet Lord Tennyson once wrote, “O, for the touch of a vanish’d hand, and the sound of a voice that is still!”1

In the mind, the imagination goes into overdrive. “What would he be like now?” or “What would she be doing now?” are very common questions if the person has died young.

You remember the person clearly at first, then you find suddenly that your memory of them is fragmented. You don’t remember everything about them as you once did, and you doubt your memory. “Have I got it right?” you ask yourself.

There can be the sense of an absent presence. The person is absent, but you feel their presence. A number of things can spark that up, like a dream or a particular smell.

There’s the wounded heart of grief, the broken-heartedness, the abiding loss of ultimate separation.

There are decisions now made alone which used to be taken jointly. “When will we have the holiday?” “Where will we go this time?” Every decision creates a new and different life from what it was, but we don’t want that.

The poet Wordsworth, in his sonnet, Surprised by Joy,2 wrote

Surprised by joy—impatient as the Wind

I turned to share the transport—Oh! with whom

But Thee, long buried in the silent Tomb,

That spot which no vicissitude can find?

Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mind—

But how could I forget thee?

The person to whom the poem is addressed—his daughter—is still alive in his mind. But the truth is that she is not alive.

So, you can have conscience. You can feel the things that you’ve done wrong, particularly if it’s your own death that you’re confronting. What I want to know is this: how can you face grief without hope? The wonderful thing is, of course, that as Christians we do grieve, as we’re told in the Bible. We grieve, because we are human beings. We don’t face grief, however, as a Stoic might, stony-faced and insisting, “I am not going to suffer the pain of death, so I will contain it all.” Neither do we face death in a romantic sort of way. At some funerals, the dead person is romanticised with a sort of emotion-fuelled optimism. As the Apostle says elsewhere, we grieve, but not as those without hope.

So what we see in this passage are the grounds of our hope. It’s not just optimism, but a real hope. So we reject the stupidity of those who would rob us of it by diverting the gospel, by changing it to rob it of its hope. As Paul says in 15:12, “Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?” The Ancient Greeks had a dreamy sort of belief in life after death, but it wasn’t the resurrection of the dead.

Phillip: That belief is optimism. Optimism doesn’t really have a basis in anything other than your personality. There are people who are optimists, who look on the sunny side, and then there are pessimists. Furthermore, Stoicism may sound like a great thing, but it is dreadful, because the way the Stoics were taught to go through pain and suffering was by avoiding all attachments. If you don’t love anything, if you’re not attached to anything, then losing it is of no consequence. If I don’t love anybody, then I won’t be hurt by grief when they die. But that means life is loveless, of course, and that also is a very central part of Buddhist thinking. You avoid pain by avoiding life. But that is not how we live as Christian people. It’s very difficult for anybody to live this way because when we come to death, grief follows because we do love, we do care, and we are attached in relationships with people.

What I find strange, though, is that these people who rejected the resurrection of the dead are supposed to be Christians. In 15:1–2, we see that they have heard the gospel and accepted it, although he is warning them that they must stand firm in what they’ve believed. But now it seems that they’re denying the resurrection. I presume that means the general resurrection, the sense that the day comes when all will be raised to life. But once you start doing that, there’s this incredible list of negative consequences that Paul rightly argues for. That is, they’re demonstrating by their position that the blessings that come from the resurrection are fraudulent. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:13–14

But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised.

If that’s the case, then the sin problem is unresolved, for there is no justice and there is no mercy. There is no salvation from our sin. So those who have died are not asleep awaiting the Lord; they are lost. There are so many inconsistencies in the ways that people then live. For example, Paul picks on people who are baptised for the dead. He says that that’s a waste of time and energy. He then says that if the dead are not raised, his life of suffering for the cause of the gospel is stupid. If there is no resurrection then the only way of life left is, 15:32, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” But because of the resurrection, Paul tells them to reject this thinking. So the whole of life is dramatically changed when you acknowledge that Christ Jesus has risen from the dead.

Peter: His list of references here is very helpful to them and also to us, because we can see what the hope was based on. What do you think about his reference to baptism for the dead?

Phillip: One of the books I’ve read said that there were 40 alternative explanations to this. But the Greek is straightforward in its translation. People try to get around the meaning of it by asking questions like, “What is the meaning of the word ‘baptism’? What’s the meaning of the word ‘for’? What’s the meaning of ‘the dead’?” It is right to raise these questions. After all, baptism does not necessarily refer to Christian baptism; the Jews conducted baptism, and the Pagan religions practiced washings and baptisms too. So we don’t really know which kind of baptisms are being referred to. You’ll notice that in 15:29, he’s not talking about the Corinthians, or even Christians. He’s just talking about those who are baptised for the dead, whoever they are.

Peter: Are there any other Bible verses that might throw light on this for us?

Phillip: No, and that’s part of the problem of understanding this issue. It’s a practice we don’t know much about either in the Bible or outside of it, but the implication of the practice is that there’s some blessing available after death. But if you do not believe in the resurrection, there is no blessing.

Peter: There are points even in this letter where Paul refers to practices that were going on in the Corinthian church. Some people had a religious diet, so to speak, and Paul doesn’t forbid it; he just says it’s not important. So he can refer to practices which he doesn’t agree with, but he’s just pointing out how inconsistent it would be to do such a thing.

Phillip: Yes, it’s the inconsistency of beliefs that is being pointed out here. But I’ll give you another illustration. There are people who practice ‘grave sucking’.

Peter: I beg your pardon? What is ‘grave sucking’?

Phillip: It’s a practice which is supposedly based on 2 Kings 13, where someone gets placed in the grave of Elijah and comes to life again. So there is a group of people in California who lie on the graves of great Christian figures to try to “suck the spirit” up from the grave. Like the Apostle, the fact that I can refer to grave sucking is not an indication that I agree with it, or a suggestion that you should do it. I’m just saying that you can’t practise ‘grave sucking’ unless you believe in the spirit. You can’t do that unless you believe that you can be influenced by the dead. Likewise, you can’t be baptised for the dead unless you believe in the resurrection, which is the inconsistency that Paul is pointing to. We need to be wary of the Mormon belief in baptism for the dead, because Mormons do practice this, and they’re very focused on gathering up the names of dead people so that it can be practiced for them. But there’s no promise here that there’s any benefit from doing so.

Peter: Coming back to our main topic, we see that as the passage develops, we see that through Jesus, God is destroying the evil powers, defeating death, restoring humanity, and bringing in his kingdom. What a great thing.

In 15:22, Paul says, “For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.” Christ is truly and always man, and he is truly and always God. That is to say, he’s being regarded here as the head of a new race. He is the first Adam and the last Adam. He is the last Adam not in the sense of being the last person ever; he is the new Adam who is going to be the real head of the race.

Phillip: Christ is the firstfruits. That is, at harvest time, the firstfruits were an indication of the quality of the harvest to come. In other words, it’s the beginning of the new.

Peter: This calls back to last week’s passage and the wonderful description of the victory there. 1 Corinthians 15:51–53

Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality.

That wonderful passage is the direct consequence of the victory of Christ over death, and our union with him.

Phillip: Jesus is the image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15), and as the true image-bearer of God, Christ destroys all the enemies. And the last great enemy he destroys is death.

There comes a point in a soccer game where, say, one team is 10 goals up. The outcome is fairly certain at that stage of the game. 10 goals in a soccer game is fairly extraordinary. Well, death comes to us in Genesis 3, making life hopeless as Ecclesiastes says. It’s the wage that sin pays in Romans 6:23. It brings to us the sting of the law here at the end of 1 Corinthians 15. Everyone’s appointed to die once, and after that, there is the judgement as is said in Hebrews. But right at the end of the Bible, in Revelation 20:13–14, death itself is finally done away with. In the new age, death is of no longer any significance to us. It’s a great victory. But ultimately, Jesus is the head of the church, as is said in that Colossians passage I mentioned, because his redeemed people will always be alive. He will hand over all things to his Father; his triumph, his victory, his redeemed new mankind, and humanity are all to be handed over so that God will, in the end, be the ruler over all things.

The resurrection is importantly physical, because the physical is good. God has created this world and our bodies, and what he sees in his creation is that it is good. Therefore, our bodies will be redeemed. In fact, the creation itself will be redeemed in Revelation 21, but there will also be a new heavens and a new earth. In Romans 8, there’s an extraordinary little passage, Peter, about the whole creation groaning, waiting for our redemption so that it can be liberated from the frustration of death that it is living under.

Peter: Yes, and the sons and daughters of God will be revealed. This will be the moment of immense joy in creation.

Phillip: And so we must watch out, making sure that we don’t turn spirituality into being anti-creation and anti-physical, because the spiritual world is still a world. It is created by God. There are 2 misconceptions which are prevalent today.

1. The first is that there’s no physical recreation of our body; we will be like ghosts and spirits.

2. The other is that we are to be involved in recreating the world. Our ecological disasters on this world are a failure to recognise God’s valuing of the created order, and we must work to somehow bring about the new heavens and the new earth.

Both of these ideas are strange because the reality is very simple. There will be a new heavens and a new earth when the Lord Jesus Christ returns. There will be a physical world with a physical resurrection, and that’s when everything is to be handed over to God the Father. Even the Son himself is then subject to his Father.

Peter: That last point seems a very strange thing to say.

Phillip: It’s strange because we have such weird egalitarian ideas nowadays that no one should be subject to any other person because we are all equal. Of course, that is nonsense. Submission and subjection are good things, but in our sinful corruption of mind, we always see it as being connected with inferiority. We think that if I’m submissive to somebody else, I’m somehow inferior to the other person, even sometimes on an ontological level. Whereas we know God the Son is as much God as God the Father is. Yet one submits to the other as a son does to a father. So, the problem here is not the problem of the text, but of our minds.

Peter: Yes, and if you read the commentaries, you’ll see dozens of pages on the subject. But it is a reminder to us that there is one God, not 3 gods. It also reminds us of Philippians 2:10–11, “At the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

At the end of the passage he quotes what looks like a proverb, “Bad company ruins good morals.” Then he calls upon them to “Wake up from your drunken stupor. Don’t go on sinning.” What’s going on?

Phillip: The thing that gives us hope is Jesus and his resurrection. It helps us deal with the whole subject of grief and of death, of meaning and of life, of where the universe is going under the lordship of Jesus Christ. There are people who have embraced the gospel back in 15:1 but who are now trying to say that they don’t believe in the resurrection of the body. To that, Paul is saying, “Not only is your position inconsistent, erroneous, and destructive, but you really need to stop because the end point of it is a loss of everything in the gospel. So stop sinning. Stop rejecting the gospel itself. You cannot continue in Christ and deny the resurrection of the body.”

Peter: The power of fellowship is brought into it too. “Bad company ruins good morals” is a reminder to us that we are very powerfully affected by groups of people, and so we forget that the most important fellowship we can have is with the Lord.

Phillip: This is especially so with the thought bubbles of today. There are algorithms that work such that the machine thinks that you look at this document, read this article, watch this movie, or listen to this podcast, based on what you’ve shown an interest in. This way of forming groups of people into bad company is very dangerous. It happens theologically too; instead of reading the scriptures and living under the word of God, we can live in a fellowship community that may well deny the very things that are in the word of God. It’s important that you live in a community that reads and teaches the Bible, and that’s not necessarily the one that’s going to be warm, friendly, happy, and gregarious.

2

William Wordsworth, Surprised by Joy, 1815 (Longman & co).

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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For more on this topic, check out this talk called A Futile Faith.

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Last week, we started our series in the Resurrection Chapter, 1 Corinthians 15. Naturally, we started at the beginning, but today, we are jumping to the end. For the Resurrection is the end to which the world is heading, and we don’t want to wait until after the doubter’s arguments before hearing the great proclamation of the victory of the risen Lord Jesus.

Don’t forget to mention this podcast to your friends—it is provided free of charge by the generosity of others.

Yours,

Phillip

Phillip Jensen: In this week’s episode, we are discussing the wonderful chapter of 1 Corinthians 15. Peter, you wanted to go to the end of the chapter before looking at the middle. So how about you read 15:50–58 for us?

Peter Jensen: 1 Corinthians 15:50–58

I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:

“Death is swallowed up in victory.”

“O death, where is your victory?

O death, where is your sting?”

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.

Phillip: Why do you want to go to the end first?

Peter: We want to know where we’re going with this passage, to know what the stakes are. Afterwards, we’ll go back to the middle of 1 Corinthians 15 and see why it’s the case, what the resurrection body means, and the other points made in this great chapter.

Phillip: Death and resurrection is not what our culture likes to talk about, although we still have public holidays for Easter and Christmas, because our government will keep on giving us those holidays for their commercial values and interests. Yet it is a bit strange. I mentioned last week the Sydney Morning Herald, which always has an editorial on Christmas and Easter. But as the years roll on, less and less of their editorial is actually about Jesus, his birth at Christmas, or his resurrection. In fact, some of the editorials are almost perverse in their ability to write about the season without any reference to Jesus himself at all, let alone the very fact that he died for our sins and rose again.

There’s no other story which is so overwhelmingly against our sense of autonomy—our sense of godlessness, so to speak—in this world. But the autonomy we have is not just against God; over time, living a life of autonomy inevitably is going to lead us to a society of individuals, and individualism is going to lead us to aloneness, and you’re never quite as alone as facing death. It’s fascinating how when people want to write about a good death, they write, “He died with his family gathered around the bed.” In contrast, the image of a horrible death is one of people being found alone. But we’re not willing to discuss death very much. People avoid thinking of it as much as possible. I remember our dear friend John Chapman who used to say that in the middle of a dinner party, he’d say to the hostess, “Have you ever considered your death? Have you been thinking about it recently?” It stopped the conversation.

I’ve reached the age and stage of reading obituaries. Interestingly, they too have dropped in prominence inside newspapers; they’re not done nearly as much as they used to be. But I read one just the other day about a man whom I’ll call Jack. Jack had 2 stated aims in life: to avoid the certainties of death and taxes. His quest for the latter led him to live in Guernsey; his quest for the former was focused around his desire to discover the magic pill that would cure his Parkinson’s, a disease that ailed him for the last decade of his life. Alas, certainties are certainties for a reason. Vale Jack, a full life well-lived. We cannot avoid death, but he lived his life to do so. It’s nonsense, isn’t it? And they could see that it was nonsense in the obituary because, well, it was his obituary.

Peter: Yes, there are a number of reasons why our thinking about death has largely disappeared. Though I can’t remember what it was called, I remember reading a book which gave the following reasons:

1. We don’t personally kill our food anymore.

2. We don’t see or experience death regularly as our ancestors did all the time (I think I was in my 40s before I ever saw a dead body).

3. We live for a very long time compared to our ancestors.

4. Our bodily health is far better than it was for our ancestors.

5. Our leisure time is large, and our capacity for entertainment likewise, which takes our minds away from the end.

6. When we go to a funeral these days, they are usually without bodies, and they verge on entertainment, but they do little for grief.

Phillip: That’s an interesting set of factors which you’ve mentioned. In our lifetime, the average life expectancy in Australia has increased by 10 years, so old people are less obvious in society around us. We also don’t walk through cemeteries to enter church as we used to, though there’s a church at Randwick with a cemetery right at the front door. You can’t get into that building without walking through the reminder of death, whereas we usually have it all removed from us.

Peter: Indeed. We’ve replaced it, but now we don’t have purpose and meaning because we have no goal. Instead, we have a widely noted anxiety, fear, and dread of death, which of course is a subject that’s out of bounds. We’re not allowed to talk about it. But if we did, we would discover that our experience of dread is a fear of the unknown, our present grief over loss, and our anxiety about the possibility (though some of us may regard it as remote) that justice lies beyond death, as the Bible says it does.

Phillip: There’s a glamorisation of death, though, in the promotion of euthanasia. They call it ‘Voluntary Assisted Dying’, and we’re being told over and over how wonderful it is. There is this argument that people protest too much in what they’re saying. Death is discussed in terms of the theatre of the absurd. Death can be made fun of. But picking up observations like that of Ecclesiastes, one of the problems with death is that it creates meaninglessness and purposelessness. Because if we all wind up in exactly the same way in the same place, then what is life about? What were my achievements all for?

Churches place big signs around the walls commemorating people who in previous generations, served the congregation, as Sunday school teachers or church wardens, for instance. We do not remember them, which is why the memorials are put up.

Peter: The memory of people soon lapses. Even the most famous people are forgotten. How many people do we remember who lived in the 19th or 18th centuries? In the end, we don’t remember even the most prominent and famous people, because death brings end.

Phillip: Though I’ve seen written on gravestones, “Always remembered.” They are remembered by God, but not by the people who were left, because they too will die and their memory will go.

Peter: What a contrast between what we’re discussing and what this passage talks about! One is filled with hope; the other is hopeless. I think eulogies are the closest we can get to saying ‘heaven.’ It’s like we are resurrecting the dead person by talking about them in that way, or building a verbal statue to them.

So what is the truth that the Bible confronts us with? That is justice, the hidden sting of death. All of us, Christian or not, long for justice. We deliver it constantly in our moralistic criticism of others. We appeal to a standard outside ourselves, which other people are meant to understand as well.

Phillip: Yes, and this is especially true with the worst criminals. “Death is too good for them,” we say. “It wasn’t fair that Pol Pot died. He never faced justice.” Or “Some of the people in the Nuremberg trials took suicide pills, and so they didn’t actually face the justice of being executed.”

Peter: As I say, a eulogy is, in a sense, a preempting of judgement done through speaking well of the deceased.

Phillip: Eulogies really are silly. When I was an assistant minister at Manly, we conducted many funerals. There would be eulogies during the service, where people would say wonderful things about the deceased, then we’d get into the cars to go to the gravesite. I learned that in the car directly behind the hearse, no one said anything. A couple of cars further back, people would reinforce the eulogies. In the cars that were even further back, people would scorn everything that had been said in the eulogy, and they would tell you what the person was really like. The further back you got in the procession, the more you heard the dirt. So the eulogies were wishful thinking about people’s lives. It was very sad. In fact, the word ‘eulogy’ itself means ‘to speak well.’ And at the person’s death, you may as well speak well of them; there’s no point in speaking ill. But the trouble is that at death, the ill that you’ve done is being faced.

Peter: Yes, the sting of death is sin. What makes death so horrible is the fact that you die always as a sinner, and sin leads to judgement. Death is God’s judgement and leads to God’s judgement. After death comes judgement, as Hebrews reminds us.

Phillip: I always remember that Jesus knew he was going to raise Lazarus from the dead. But when he went to the grave of Lazarus, we read in John 11:35, “Jesus wept.” Death itself is a horrific thing because it’s the victory of sin. It’s the victory of Satan over us. It’s not just that death is the wage of sin; the sting of death is sin. Because in death, the condemnation of the law on sinners finds its fulfilment. We face judgement in death because death is our judgement—but in fact, there’s judgement beyond death. It’s what anxious people facing death really think about sometimes.

Peter: I’ll never forget a lady saying to me in her final hours, “Peter, I have done so much wrong.” It was something that she hadn’t given much thought to until that moment, and understandably so. It’s no accident that the Apostle in 15:26 calls death “The last enemy.”

But 15:50–58 seems strange, because it gives us hope. “For the trumpet will sound,” it says. In other words, “We don’t think death is the end.” Is it just a mere delusion, a hopefulness that it may be so?

Phillip: No, because the resurrection of Jesus is the great evidence of the resurrection starting, and what we are seeing here is a great victory call at the end of the chapter. So let’s move to the more positive thing that the gospel actually gives to us. The trumpet call will herald the arrival of the King of Kings, the Kingdom of God, and he shall reign forever and ever.

I’m not ready for it at the moment; my flesh and blood, my perishable, mortal, old, sinful body is falling apart. But then there’ll be this transformation. The dead will live, but not like I am living at the moment in my perishability, in my mortality, my sagging, bagging, wrinkling, balding body. We’ll be raised to an imperishable life, death and sin will be swallowed up, and we will be living in the way that is fit for God’s future. Our bodies, not just our spirits, will be transformed into this resurrected state: glorified in the likeness of Jesus, imperishable.

We’ll all be resurrected, but not all of us will be saved. Some will be resurrected for judgement and condemnation, and others for salvation. But for now, what does that mean for us?

Peter: One of the marvellous and extraordinary things about the New Testament is the way in which it introduces us to the idea of the end having arrived. The resurrection of Jesus isn’t merely one of the great miracles; it is the beginning of the end. He is the firstfruits of those who fall asleep. His resurrection is going to be the resurrection of all in due course. But the end has already occurred in the first resurrection of Jesus. We’re living between the first and second coming of Jesus. We’ve been living in the Last Days since Jesus left, and it’s this age in which the new life has come.

It’s interesting that in Colossians 3, the Apostle tells us that we have been resurrected. Spiritually, we are now alive with Christ in the heavenly places. In other words, your resurrection is so certain that the essence of it has occurred. He’s using that phraseology there at the very beginning of chapter 3: We have eternal life, but we will have eternal life. We are the children of God; we will be the children of God. We have been resurrected; we will be resurrected. It’s that sort of interesting language of the New Testament that fills our hearts with hope because we can see these things have begun already. We are standing between the first and the second resurrection, and now looking forward to our own resurrection. If we die, we go to be with Christ, but we’re waiting for the resurrection. I think that’s the best way of putting it.

Phillip: Colossians 3 says that our raised life at the moment is a hidden life. But when Christ appears, we will appear with him in glory. So I’m not going to heaven when I die; I’m in heaven already. But when Christ appears, I will be seen as a heavenly citizen. That’s going to take a transformation of my body.

Peter: It is. In the meantime, how do we live in this time? The Apostle says, 15:58, “Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.” So make no compromise with the world. That is, if you think that the cultural challenge is overwhelming, and it seems hard to be a Christian today, just think how impossible it was for the apostles to preach a crucified Saviour. It’s a ridiculous gospel. They would say, “And he was raised from the dead,” and the audience would roar with laughter at such a suggestion. That’s the gospel they preached back then. But this counter-cultural message which they preached has changed the world. We’re constantly being pressed to get around the Word, to change it, to ignore it. Don’t compromise. The hope we have is built upon the truth we have, and in the meantime, abound in the works of the Lord, especially in commending Christ.

Phillip: When we come to Ecclesiastes, we read that life is really meaningless. Because if death is the end and there’s no other meaning, then there is nothing. But we have this great resurrection promise that lives on its certainty.

On the ABC, our national broadcaster, there was a television show called Q&A. One time, there was a Festival of Dangerous Ideas in Sydney, and so the host asked, “What’s the most dangerous idea that you would ever want?” A Christian man, Peter Hitchens, happened to be on the show that night, and he said, “The most dangerous idea in human history and philosophy remains the belief that Jesus Christ was the Son of God who rose from the dead, and that’s the most dangerous idea you will ever encounter.” The host found this really difficult, because the other dangerous ideas spoken about were radical ideas of social engineering. But just talking about the resurrection didn’t seem to fit with the question. So the host said, “We can’t leave it there. Why is that dangerous?” This shows that he hadn’t understood the resurrection, because Peter Hitchens replied, “Well, I can’t really leave it there, because it alters the whole of human behaviour and all our responsibility. It turns the universe from a meaningless chaos into a designed place in which there is justice and there is hope, and therefore we all have a duty to discover the nature of that justice and work towards that hope. It alters us all. If we reject it, it alters us as well. It’s incredibly dangerous. It’s why so many people turn against it.”

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 15 entitled Our Victory.

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

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

Yours,

Phillip

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

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

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

Phillip: Alright. What is the whole chapter about?

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

Phillip: Did they believe in the afterlife?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Phillip: 1 Corinthians 15:1–11

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Links & Recommendations

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

Freely available, supported by generosity.

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

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

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

Yours,

Phillip

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

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

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

Peter: 1 Corinthians 14:20–40

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Peter: Paul wants prophecy under those circumstances.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Phillip: Yes, especially regarding mothers of young babies.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Phillip: Yes, that’s prophesying.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3

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

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

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

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

Yours,

Phillip

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Peter: What is your summary of this section?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2

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

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

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Links & Recommendations

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

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

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

Yours,

Phillip

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

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

1 Corinthians 12:27–13:13

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

And I will show you a still more excellent way.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Links & Recommendations

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

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

Yours,

Phillip

Phillip Jensen: 1 Corinthians 12:12–14

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And I will show you a still more excellent way.

What do you think?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1

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

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

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Links & Recommendations

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

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

Yours,

Phillip

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

1 Corinthians 12:1–13

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1

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

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

---

Links & Recommendations

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

---

Freely available, supported by generosity.

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

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

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

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

Sign up to support us

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

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

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

Yours,

Phillip

Peter Jensen: 1 Corinthians 11:17–34

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1

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

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

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

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

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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.

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

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

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

Yours,

Phillip

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

1 Corinthians 8:7–13

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

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

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

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

How does this knowledge “puff up”?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Links & Recommendations

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

Freely available, supported by generosity.

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

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Sign up to support us

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

This week, we look at knowledge.

Yours,

Phillip

Peter Jensen: 1 Corinthians 8:1–6

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Links & Recommendations

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

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

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