Daily Devotions

1 Corinthians 15 - Resurrection (Part 1) This is not an issue the Corinthians wrote about. Paul heard that some were saying there was no resurrection of the dead. He anticipates that some will raise questions concerning the means by which the dead are raised and the nature of the Christian’s resurrected body. Clearly the matter is connected with their conduct, for he commands them not to be misled and to stop sinning. As in 11:33-34 and 14:39-40, this chapter concludes with commands, v 58—stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, and the reason given, because you know that your labour in the Lord is not in vain. What has the resurrection of the Christian’s body after death to do with the works performed in the Lord in this life? Why do they need to be assured that they are not in vain? It is not the resurrection of Christ that was being denied, but the resurrection of the Christian’s body over against the pagan doctrine of the immortalit...

1 Corinthians 14 - Orderly Worship to build up the body The pursuit of love must be the priority in the Christian gathering. Repeating the statement in 12:31 and resuming the instruction eagerly to desire the greater gifts, Paul reveals that he has in mind the gift of prophecy. He indicates why this is so. Tongues are not directed to men but to God.  Prophecy on the other hand is directed to the people of God and meets three needs of the human heart—strength, encouragement and comfort. The Christian faith is unique in that it has used words which describe construction in its activity of seeking to fortify, encourage and comfort its members.  He repeats the edifying intention of the Christian gathering around God's word. Paul is arguing with those who apparently put such an emphasis on tongues by taking himself as the example. Unless he brings some revelation, knowledge, prophecy or teaching, what good will his ministry achieve? He provides two examples. Intelligibility i...

1 Corinthians 13 - Love that counts This magnificent song of Christian love reveals its fullest and most challenging meaning only when carefully applied into the community life of a local church. The chapter is frequently read at weddings or memorial services. It is often used on occasions which require lofty sentiments, literature of a high quality. But chapter 13 must be studied in the context of the rest of Paul’s letter to the church of Corinth. Otherwise it remains mere words—noble, even ennobling, but only words.  When applied to a local church, it becomes dynamite. It uncovers all the weaknesses, gaps, failures and sins in any Christian community. It is a particular challenge to any church which has seen outward success in its ministry. These words cut us down to size; they humble us, because we begin to see what really matters to God. They re-direct us as the body of Christ to our true calling. It is probably good for any congregation to assess its life together from t...

1 Corinthians 12:12-31 - Like a Body The phrase the body, introduced in verse 12, perfectly illustrates these two themes of variety and unity. Many members … one body is Paul’s summary of the matter. The way he ends verse 12 is highly significant. We would expect him to say: ‘Just as the body is one and has many members…, so it is with the church.’ In fact, he says, so it is with Christ. It is important not so to identify Christ with his church that we lose sight of his pre-eminence and transcendence. Nevertheless, Paul is clearly referring here to the way Christ today manifests himself by the Spirit to the world through his church. In verse 13 Paul can appeal, not just to an event, but to an experience in the life of every Corinthian believer. This event, this experience, transformed them from pagans to Christians, introduced them into the community of Christian believers. Paul now uses the human body to illustrate truths about life in the body of Christ. It is not an exact paralle...

1 Corinthians 12:7-11 - Examples of Gifts Paul now gives nine examples of the rich variety of gifts. In Romans 12:6–8, Ephesians 4:7–11 and 1 Peter 4:7–11 we have three other lists, which overlap but also delineate over twenty clear gifts of the Spirit. Classic Pentecostalism used to teach firmly that these nine gifts in verses 8–10 are the special, ‘supernatural’ gifts of God to his church. But it would seem wrong either, on the one hand, to confine the gifts of the Spirit to natural abilities harnessed and released by God, or, on the other hand, to assert that the real gifts of the Spirit are only those which are manifestly supra-natural. As both Creator of our natural abilities and Redeemer of our whole being so that we receive new abilities, God works in a variety of ways to produce many diverse examples of his grace in action in the Christian community. It is also implicit in the tense of the verb ‘is given’ in verse 7, which indicates firmly that such endowment is not necessar...

1 Corinthians 12:4-7 - Unity in Diversity How, then, does the Spirit of God underwrite and spell out the fundamental fact that Jesus is Lord? By enabling the church to embody his presence in the world in a variety of ways, through each individual member, but always pointing to Jesus as Lord. Paul expects the church, even the divided and arrogant church of Corinth, gradually to provide a model of Christian community. The church is the means by which Jesus Christ is uniquely present and distinctively expresses himself in the world. In the church there is a rich diversity both of people and of gifts. There are many members in this body, and each member is different. No person, no gift is a replica of another.  Any desire, let alone any effort, to extinguish or diminish this rich diversity is not inspired by the Holy Spirit. Paul now spells out this diversity.  There are, first of all, varieties of gifts. Paul wants his readers to understand that all the variety of God’...

1 Corinthians 12:1-3 - Jesus is Lord As we examine the next subject brought to Paul by the Corinthians, Now concerning spiritual gifts, we need to remind ourselves of the pagan background from which most of the Christians in Corinth had been delivered. This was essentially based in the Greek mystery-religions, in which spiritual experiences were the norm. Such experiences were regarded, not merely as normal and to be expected, but as a clear authentication of the reality of the divine force involved. If there was no such clear manifestation of inspiration, the power of the relevant divinity was suspect. In line with his two-edged argument earlier about meat offered to idols, Paul asserts both the impotence (dumb idols) and the potency of the forces present in these mystery-cults. These forces were not in any sense what their exponents taught them to be - indeed in comparison with the truth as it is in Jesus, these idols were dumb. But Paul would have had great difficulty persuading ...

1 Corinthians 11 - Lord's Supper (part 2) The next aspect of corporate worship to absorb Paul’s attention were reports of what was going on at the Lord's Supper.  Although he had been free to ‘commend’ them for their observation of certain traditions he had passed on to them about public worship (v. 2), he cannot commend them now (v. 17, v. 22). The divisions  in the church at Corinth had reached schismatic proportions: there were now not merely personality-cults around certain figure-heads, nor were there differences of emphasis over food offered to idols; there were hints of a rather obnoxious kind of snobbishness between the rich and the not-so-rich. The church was badly splintered, and these schisms made their times of worship and fellowship so negative, that Christians went away in a worse state spiritually than when they arrived. When such schism actually penetrates the public worship of the congregation, the situation is scandalous. There seems to have been a peculia...

1 Corinthians 11 - Controversy (Part 1) We now move into the next major area of controversy between different groups at Corinth, ie. the Christian community at worship. There are two major themes in chapter 11, the behaviour of men and women in church and attitudes to the Lord’s Supper. It is a pleasant surprise to discover that Paul is able to commend the Christians at Corinth, because you remember me in everything and maintain the traditions, even as I have delivered them to you. He refers to these traditions explicitly both in verse 23, in recalling the institution of the Lord’s Supper, and in verse 1 and 3, in passing on the fundamentals of the gospel. It involves the twin process of hearing and of passing on, and is normally used to refer to those essential Christian truths which are at the heart of the gospel. These traditions were passed on orally from evangelists and teachers to new believers. This body of tradition became authoritative reproduction of apostolic truth. Consi...

1 Corinthians 10:14-33 - Don't Compromise the Truth (part 3) After his weighty warning to complacent Christians in danger of basing their eternal security on doing all the right ‘religious’ things, Paul urges them: shun the worship of idols. The Christian who revels in his God-given freedom in Christ, like many at Corinth, can so easily compromise the truth. Having asserted the priority of the Christian’s freedom, Paul now warns against a flippant, careless attitude towards the worship of idols—the particular problem facing the Corinthians, which he has investigated in some detail in chapter 8. Whatever his temporary feelings of impatience and intolerance towards these puffed-up hyper-spiritual experts, Paul’s sense of deep concern for them as his beloved brothers and sisters in Christ compels him to speak as plainly as he knows how: ‘flee idolatry’. The Lord is a jealous God, who brooks no rivals, no comparisons, no alternatives. There are dangers in presumptuousness and complac...

1 Corinthians 10:1-13 - Learning from History (part 2) Paul takes his lessons from the way God dealt with his people under the old covenant, during the time of the wanderings in the wilderness under Moses. In that generation, God’s people knew many blessings, but they also were guilty of many sins, for which they were severely punished. The people of Israel enjoyed many repeated blessings from the Lord: protection, guidance, sustenance, forgiveness. All these took place in a series of remarkable incidents, where God intervened to demonstrate his sovereign control of their lives. Paul chooses to concentrate on two particular facets of these experiences in the life of the people of God in the time of Moses. They 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 supernatural food and all drank the same supernatural drink. Paul’s very striking, but unusual, language in this passage emphasises the ...

1 Corinthians 10 - The Dangers of Freedom (Part 1) In dealing with the problem of food offered to idols, Paul has so far been spending much of his time addressing those with over-scrupulous consciences or simply defending his own voluntary self-limitation in the area of Christian freedom. In 10:1–22 he tackles the Corinthian libertines, who obviously reckoned that their approach to the whole subject, and to Paul himself, was the only really mature way of thinking. There was in their attitude, not only yet more evidence of their presumptuous arrogance, but also a very serious risk indeed of mixing true worship of the Lord with the worship of demons. These first two sections (10:1–13 and 14–22) contain some of the most salutary teaching in the whole letter, not so much for the content (which is straightforward), but because Paul does not pull his punches in addressing remarks to Christians at Corinth who, in all likelihood, reckoned these insights were more for ‘them’ than for ‘us’. ...

1 Corinthians 9:19-27 - Single-minded Discipleship The rest of chapter 9 spells out Paul’s position, both in terms of his personal relationship to all sorts and conditions of men (19–23), and in terms of his own personal self-discipline (24–27). In both he provides a stimulating incentive to single-minded discipleship as a free man in Christ. He was completely free, but he did not intend to allow that freedom to provide him with an excuse for the indulgence even of an odd personal whim or two. Why? I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings. Every encounter, every personal habit, was now overtly under the control of Jesus Christ as Lord, because the gospel dominated his whole life. He was living his daily life in the light of eternity, and that meant evangelism with integrity, relationships with adaptability, and personal holiness with single-mindedness. Paul wanted, like his master, to lay down his life. He had learnt that ‘happiness lies more in givi...

1 Corinthians 9:1-18 - Rights There were those at Corinth, as we know, who were constantly questioning the authority of Paul, especially his claim to be an apostle. They reckoned that they had far better credentials than he. They claimed to be apostles on far stronger grounds. They saw Christian leadership in terms of being masters, not servants. So Paul explains precisely how he sees his freedom in Christ, especially how he has deliberately, and freely, chosen to restrict his freedom for the benefit of others. This, he maintains, is a sign of strength, not of weakness. Throughout the passage Paul is talking of his rights as an apostle, rather than as any ordinary Christian. He has seen Jesus our Lord, and the sheer existence of the church at Corinth evidences the authenticity of his apostolic activity - these Corinthian Christians are, in fact, the seal of his apostleship in the Lord. He was the first to come all the way to them with the gospel, albeit with much fear and trembl...

1 Corinthians 8 - Knowledge and love (part 2) On the question of food offered to idols, Paul points out that there are Christians at Corinth who have not really grasped the fundamental truth and freedom of the gospel. Such people think that the idols are real and can therefore contaminate the eater. Because their contact with such idolatry has been long and comprehensive, Paul does not argue the point: he argues very strongly the need for the ‘strong’ (i.e. knowledgeable) person, not to please themselves, but to consider the weaker Christian. Having said that, he unambiguously states the spiritual principle in verse 8: “food does not bring us near to God; we are no worse if we do not eat, and no better if we do.” The ‘weak’ Christian in this discussion is the person who is hypersensitive on such matters - the over-legalistic, rigorist Christian who tends to cut out anything and everything doubtful, just in case it might harm their relationship with God. Paul clearly wants such a ‘w...

1 Corinthians 8 - Knowledge and love (part 1) Let us remind ourselves of the two groups at Corinth: the legalists said ‘Do what the law says’; the libertines respond, ‘We know better—be free.’ Paul’s essential answer is this: love is what matters, not knowledge of the one (negative and legalistic) kind or of the other (permissive) kind. Paul is not here condemning ‘knowledge’ outright. He is concerned that true love should control and characterise their knowledge. The spirit in which we say what is right is as much part of the truth as the knowledge we articulate. Knowledge on its own, particularly of the kind paraded by these Corinthian experts, only puffs up, leaving its possessor like an inflated balloon. Knowledge is important - we all possess some - but on its own it is inflated and empty. A Christian needs to be filled with love, because love builds up. When a Christian’s character is controlled by God’s love and is growing in true knowledge, they are no longer concerned so muc...

1 Corinthians 7 - Godliness (part 2) In 1 Corinthians 7:25, Paul turns to his attention to those who have not yet had any experience of marriage. Paul defends the goodness of singleness as it enables a person to be less distracted in the pursuit of the Lord’s affairs (vv. 32-35). Paul’s thinking behind the advantages of singleness seems to be particularly motivated by “the present distress” (v. 26). It is unclear exactly what this “present distress” is: it could refer to sexual immorality within the church (and therefore Paul is keen for as many as possible to have self-control in the area of sexuality) or it might refer to persecution. In the light of verses 29-31, the latter interpretation is seen by most as more likely. Whatever the specifics, Paul’s point is still clear: singleness is good because it allows one to live with “undivided devotion to the Lord” (v. 35). The key lesson of the chapter is nestled in the middle of Paul’s teaching about marriage and singleness. In verses ...

1 Corinthians 7 - Godliness (part 1) We live in a society confused about its attitude to singleness and marriage. On the one hand, being single is to live in the land of the free - you are able to do whatever you want without being stifled by others. We see this on television all the time, and now more and more shows revolve around groups of friends instead of married couples and families. On the other hand, movies like Sleepless in Seattle depict singleness as being sad and lonely. Marriage is a thing to strive for, and having a partner means enjoyment, fulfilment and romance. We have reached another important turning point in the letter. The two topics before this (divisiveness and sexual immorality) were raised at Paul’s initiative. But now Paul starts to address topics which the Corinthians themselves have raised (v. 1). This means that a degree of caution is required when approaching the text. No doubt Paul shaped his response according to the question he was originally asked....

1 Corinthians 6 - Purity (part 2) Paul wants to rectify the misunderstanding that sexual immorality is of no consequence. All things may be lawful but not everything is helpful (v. 12) because: 1. the body was not made for immorality (v. 13); and 2. the body is not destined for destruction but for resurrection (v. 14). Therefore we must conclude that what we do with our bodies matters. This is especially true for sexual activity, since the sexual union is such an intimate act. For this reason, Paul finds it incomprehensible that a member of Christ’s body (i.e. a member of Christ’s church) would unite himself with a prostitute. To unite with Christ means that we do not unite with others in sexual immorality. The intimacy of sexual activity also leads Paul to observe that “Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body” (v. 18). This is a difficult verse to understand. At the very least, it is saying that sexual sins ar...

1 Corinthians 6 - Purity (part 1) In Chapter 5 Paul has dealt with a particularly unpleasant incident of sexual immorality. So far, he has offered three reasons why this matter is so serious that the offender should be expelled from the church: 1. So that offender might repent; 2. So that immorality might not spread to others in the church 3. Because the saints have a role to play in judgement. In the second half of chapter 6 Paul advances a fourth reason: because we should honour God with our bodies. Corinth’s reputation for sexual promiscuity and degeneracy was legendary all over the ancient world. In the opening verses of this section, Paul wants to emphasise that such immorality should be a thing of the past for Christians. Through the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Corinthian Christians are now pure, holy and guiltless before God—washed, sanctified and justified in the name of Jesus and by the Spirit of God (v. 11). As a consequence, they ought to be pure and holy in the way they l...

1 Corinthians 5 - Sexual Immorality Up until this point, Paul has been concerned with the problem of divisiveness and quarrelling within the church. He now turns to a second problem within the church: sexual immorality. This issue will take centre stage until the end of chapter 6. God is concerned about our sexuality because of his love for us. Sexual immorality is an incredibly destructive force because it goes against God’s intended model for good relationships. Paul now addresses a particularly unpleasant example of sexual immorality within the Corinthian church. A man is having a sexual relationship with his father’s wife. Most assume that the woman is the man’s stepmother and not his biological mother, otherwise Paul would have said “mother”, rather than “father’s wife”. Alternatively, it may be that the matter is so unsavoury that Paul cannot bring himself to express it fully. Whatever the exact situation, it is blatant immorality which Paul says would make even the pagans baul...

1 Corinthians 4:8-21 - Faithfulness To ensure that the Corinthians understand the importance of faithfulness in ministry, Paul now uses irony to describe both himself and the Corinthian church. In worldly terms, the Corinthians may have seemed wise, strong and honoured, while Paul appeared weak, foolish and dishonoured. This, however, does not take into account God’s perspective. To God, Paul’s poverty and lowliness are, in fact, the very marks of his success! They testify to his faithfulness in preaching the gospel without fear or favour (vv. 8-13). But Paul does not want the Corinthian church to misunderstand his use of irony. Paul is not carelessly mocking them; he is lovingly correcting them. Paul wants nothing but the best for his precious church at Corinth, and so he calls on them to imitate him in being faithful to the gospel, irrespective of what it brings them. This brings to a close Paul’s response to the divisiveness and quarrelling within the Corinthian church. The amoun...

1 Corinthians 4:1-7 - Faithfulness Paul has just pointed out that Christian leadership is about humbly serving the church, giving credit to God for any growth and realising that leaders will have to answer to God for the quality of their work. This understanding of leadership leads Paul into a discussion about the faithfulness or truthworthiness of church leaders. When do you find it hardest to be faithful to God? How can we help each other during these times? In the opening verses Paul explains the importance of faithfulness, and then in the rest of the chapter he spells out some of the implications of this lesson for the Corinthian situation.  Paul opens the chapter by summarising much of his argument so far. Servanthood and the secret things of God have both already been mentioned in previous chapters. Paul has depicted himself (and Apollos and Peter) as servants who have been entrusted with the message of the cross (3:5). People are saved by the power of Go...