I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on 2 Corinthians 9-13.

    Paul tells us that we should give generously to those in need, in particular to our fellow believers who are in need. In many ways what he writes here is a reflection of the guidelines to giving we can draw from Luke’s account of the sharing undertaken by the early Church in Acts. In Acts we were told that no one was under obligation to give of their wealth to help others. Here, Paul tells the Corinthians that their giving should not be under compulsion. We should cheerfully give as we are able. God is more than able to supply our needs and will do so. If we give generously, God will reward us generously…although we should not make the mistake of thinking that the reward which God gives us will necessarily be material. Nevertheless, the more generous we are in our giving, the more generous we will be able to be going forward. This comes to be in two ways. As we give generously God may reward us financially so that we can give even more going forward. However, even if He does not, the joy of giving will cause us to ferret out ways in which we can reduce our expenses so that we can give more.

    At the end of his letter to the Corinthian believers Paul makes a defense of his ministry against the teachings of other teachers whom some of the Corinthian believers were more impressed with than they were with Paul. His defense contains two lines of argument. He warns the Corinthians not to be impressed by the credentials and personality of people whose teachings contradict what they already believe. Paul does not go into detail about what these other “apostles” are teaching, but he makes it clear that even those who follow them acknowledge it contradicts what Paul taught. These teachers were building on top of the foundations of belief which Paul had laid among the Corinthian believers, yet contradicting his teachings. These “apostles” presented themselves as having great credentials and wonderful accomplishments. For the most part all the Corinthians knew about the credentials of these “apostles” is what they said about themselves. Which brings me to Paul’s second line of argument. Paul laid out to them his own credentials, credentials which had been attested to by others, many of which had been directly witnessed by Corinthian believers.
    From this we learn to judge teachers and leaders by how their teaching and leadership lines up with what we already know about the Gospel. A true leader or teacher from God should encourage us to go to Scripture for ourselves and see if what they are teaching is supported by Scripture. Any teacher who claims authority to interpret Scripture in a way which only those with “secret” knowledge would understand is suspect. The second part of Paul’s argument reminds us that we must occasionally explain to people how we came by our understanding and knowledge of the Gospel. We should not ask people to accept our understanding of the Gospel on the basis of “appeal to authority”, but we do need to remind them that we learned from authoritative sources. To put that in personal perspective: I have no special knowledge and have no authority to demand your obedience or agreement, but I have studied the Scripture and the Holy Spirit has guided my thinking.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on 2 Corinthians 5-8.

    At the end of yesterday’s passage, Paul wrote, “Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.” In today’s passage he continues that thought with a mixture of two metaphors. He compares our earthly bodies to tents which are temporary dwelling places which provide limited shelter from the elements and then compares our resurrection bodies to buildings which are permanent dwelling places which provide much better shelter from the elements. Just as a building is far superior to a tent as a place to call home, so our resurrection bodies will be far superior to our earthly bodies. Paul then transitions to comparing our earthly and resurrection bodies to clothing. He describes how our faith should lead us to desire death and resurrection, not as a desire to die and leave our earthly bodies but as a desire to enter into our resurrection bodies. Our only reason for desiring the death of our earthly bodies is to put on our resurrection bodies. Paul teaches that we should not seek death, yet we should welcome it when it comes, not just for ourselves but also for our fellow believers.

    A little further on Paul writes that a believer should not team up with an unbeliever. I remember when I was growing up this verse was often used to indicate that a believer should not date, let alone marry, an unbeliever. While that is very true, it is not what Paul is talking about here. This is a much more general instruction. I think that everyone needs to think about how this applies to their own lives, but I can think of examples of bands and business partnerships which foundered because believers partnered with unbelievers. As the band or business started to prosper, the believers and the unbelievers discovered that their priorities were in conflict. Paul continues on by describing how we are a temple to the living God. In light of this Paul tells us that we should cleanse ourselves of all impurity, of anything which could make us unfit to house the Spirit of God. By following Paul’s instruction to act out of our fear of God and work toward complete holiness we can go back and evaluate how Paul’s instruction to not team up with unbelievers applies in our lives.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on 2 Corinthians 1-4.

    I am so glad I have been writing this blog for these last several years because I keep seeing things I never noticed before, sometimes things which always seemed convoluted and strange. For example, when I read Paul’s explanation for why he changed his plans about stopping by Corinth on his way back to Jerusalem. This has always seemed convoluted to me and like Paul is saying, “I really meant to come by, but I was mad at you and did not want to talk to you.” In fact what Paul said here was that he realized he was too angry about what he had heard and if he went to Corinth he would say things he would later regret. So, instead of visiting he expressed his anger in a letter, where he could carefully choose his words and not risk saying something which inaccurately expressed what he meant to say. In today’s world of instant communication this is a lesson we need to remember. There are times when we should pause and communicate in a way which allows us to carefully consider our words. Of course, there are also times when we need to communicate face to face because written words can be misunderstood and it is easier to know what you are saying that your audience is misunderstanding when you speak in person.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on 1 Corinthians 15-16.

    In today’s passage Paul addresses the issue of resurrection from the dead. Paul tells the Corinthians, and through them, us, that the core of the Gospel is that Jesus died, was buried, and then rose from the dead on the third day. He immediately provides a list of witnesses to His resurrection. Paul makes it clear that he did not believe in some figurative or symbolic resurrection. Paul believed in the literal resurrection from the dead of Jesus Christ. Further, this belief was the basis of his belief that we would also be resurrected from the dead. If Jesus was not raised from the dead the whole of the Gospel is nothing but a fabric of lies. You cannot build a useful moral code on falsehood.

    I do not think it is possible to make too much of the importance of Jesus’ death and resurrection. Jesus’ death shows us the path to victoriously exercising the power of God in our lives. Jesus’ resurrection shows us that God’s power will be victorious, even after what seems like the ultimate defeat. Jesus’ willingness to accept death led to His resurrection. In the same way we must be willing to accept death in order to be resurrected. Paul’s discussion about how our resurrected bodies will be different from our earthly bodies expounds on this point. An acorn which is preserved as an acorn will never grow into an oak tree. In the same way, if we seek to keep our earthly bodies we cannot be encased in the bodies which God intends for us.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on 1 Corinthians 9-11.

    Paul makes the case that those who do the work of the Church, particularly pastors and preachers, should be paid by the Church. However, he also presents himself as a model of someone who refuses payment for doing the work of the Church. The Church should be prepared and willing to pay those who do her work, but there should be some (a relatively small number) who do so purely from the joy of doing so. I will also note that while Paul never accepted any financial support from the Corinthian Church, he does mention receiving such support from other Churches. It is also worth noting that it appears that the Corinthian Church provided financial support to some people who supported Paul’s ministry in other ways.

    Paul goes on to talk about eating food offered to idols, but he offers a guideline which can be useful in many areas. Paul accepts the premise of those who say that their freedom on Christ means that they are free to do anything. This reminds me of when I was preparing to make jalapeño mead. My friends told me, “Just because you can does not mean that you should.” Now, it turns out that jalapeño mead is delicious, but the advice they gave me is what Paul was saying here. Just because you are free to do something does not mean that it is not a bad idea to do it. Paul goes into a little more detail in his advice concerning meat offered to idols, and, as I said, this advice applies elsewhere as well. First he tells us that eating meat offered to idols as part of a service worshiping an idol is communing with the worshipers of that idol in the same manner as we commune with our fellow believers when we partake of the Lord’s Supper. You cannot be part of the body of idol worshipers and part of the Body of Christ.
    However, this prohibition does not extend to buying meat offered to idols. Many people believe that if you eat meat which was sanctified as part of worship you are taking part in that worship and acknowledging the power of that idol, even if you are unaware of doing so. Paul says that such thinking is nonsense and by that logic everyone who eats anything is acknowledging God’s authority over them since everything that is was created by God and belongs to Him. In this instruction on buying meat offered to idols Paul is telling us that we are not responsible for the actions of those with whom we purchase things (there is a caveat to this which is covered in Paul’s third category of eating meat offered to idols).
    Finally, Paul covers the circumstance of what to do if we are invited to eat with a nonbeliever, who in this context is assumed to be an idol worshiper. Paul tells us that if we wish to accept such an invitation we should do so and eat whatever is put before us. However, if someone, whether it be our host or someone else, points out that the food being proffered had been offered to an idol we should decline to eat of it. There are two parts to this. First, if the person who tells us is a believer, the fact that they are going to the effort of telling us it was improperly handled tells us that their faith is challenged by partaking and if we partake they may be tempted to do so as well, despite believing that by doing so they are doing wrong. The second part is if the person who tells us is our host. In this latter case they are essentially telling us that by eating we are taking part in their worship of their idol, we are telling them that their idol worship is “OK”. This same principle applies to buying something where someone tells us that it was produced in a manner which is immoral, or the profits from selling it will be used in an immoral manner. If we have reason to believe that what they are telling us is true, and that they are telling us because they oppose the immoral practice (as opposed to doing so because their reasons for wanting us not to do business with that vendor have nothing to do with the immoral behavior of that vendor) we should refrain from purchasing the product in question.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on 1 Corinthians 5-8.

    Paul starts off today’s passage by addressing a particular situation which was happening among the Corinthian believers. However, he extends his commands (I want to note that, unlike much of what Paul writes which is direction and advice, here he gives a command to the Church in Corinth) to a more general applicability. He tells the Corinthians that they must not associate with immoral people. greedy swindlers, or idolaters. He quickly clarifies that when he says this he is not referring to those outside of the Church. Instead, he is referring to those who call themselves followers of Christ yet do these things. It is not our place to hold those outside of the Church accountable for their behavior, but we are to take a different tack with our brothers and sisters in Christ. Not only are we to judge those in the Church who sin, and call them to repentance (Paul speaks more on this in his second letter to the Corinthian Church) we are to take our legal disputes with fellow believers before the Church rather than to government authorities. It is better to be taken advantage of than to take our disputes with fellow believers before nonbelievers for judgment.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on 1 Corinthians 1-4.

    When I first started reading this passage the first thing I thought I would focus on was Paul’s words about divisions in the Church. However, as soon as I started to read on to decide how to say what this passage says to me I was struck by the following:

For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

It immediately reminded me of an online conversation I had the other week where some of my Facebook friends completely missed the point of an article I posted about how Christians view death and dying in the context of the shooting during a worship service in Texas. If you do not believe and understand that Jesus achieved victory by dying on the Cross, there is no way you will understand that Christians do not consider death a punishment, let alone understand our willingness to suffer so that others do not. Call me a fool, and those friends of mine did, but I will continue to believe that obeying God is wise, no matter how foolish it seems to my fellow humans. I know that I cannot possibly explain how weakness can be stronger than power. Yet, I also know that I will work harder to do a good job on something for someone who is powerless than someone who threatens me. Even that fails to explain how God works. Ultimately, you must take it on faith that there is more joy in suffering and dying than in conquering the world. Once more I find my expression failing because Jesus conquered the world by suffering and dying.

    I am not sure that I ever noticed the connection Paul makes here between wisdom, foolishness, and division in the Church. If I thought about it I just put the placement of Paul’s comments about Godly wisdom vs worldly wisdom in the middle of his writings about divisions in the Corinthian Church down to flow of consciousness writing. While there is a little bit of that here, when Paul goes completely off track he makes a point of saying something along the lines of, “Now back to what I was talking about…” In this case, Paul shows every indication that his discussion of godly wisdom was part of his effort to stifle division in the Church. Paul does not address it directly here, but division in the Church is a failure of its members to remember what Christ teaches about leadership. Division in the Church comes about when people focus on what they get out of the Church rather than on how they can serve Christ and others. Those who seek to be acknowledged as wiser than others rather than just seeking wisdom.