I am so grateful for the unity and harmony we have in the life of our church.
I do not take it for granted.
Have you ever been involved in a church conflict? They are the worst. Why? Because the stakes are so high. Christ's honor is at stake. The dear people for whom He died are often "biting and devouring" each other. The wounds and carnage are dreadful, often affecting generations of people who get disenfranchised from the church as collateral damage.
Paul's letters to the Corinthians, according to the ESV Study Bible introductory notes, have one dominant concern. "Paul wants this church, divided because of the arrogance of its more powerful members, to work together for the advancement of the gospel. He wants them to drop their divisive one-upmanship, build up the faith of those who are weak, and witness effectively to unbelievers."
Apparently, the church was plagued with serious problems of division, sexual immorality, and social snobbery (1:10; 5:1; 11:18). It also seems that Paul received a letter from the Corinthians displaying considerable theological confusion about marriage, divorce, participation in pagan religions, order within corporate worship, and the bodily resurrection of Christians.
What does he do? He calls them to build up the church in practical ways: he tells them that they should be sensitive to those of fragile faith. They should win unbelievers through culturally sensitive evangelism. They should conduct worship services in such a way that unbelievers present might come to faith. Their corporate worship should use spiritual gifts, not for personal display, but to build up the church. Sexual relations should be between a man and a woman, confined to marriage. The bodily resurrection of Jesus and his followers overshadows everything in this life.
Then he helps them appreciate, once again, the holiness that God requires of his people. (Of course, usually in a church conflict both sides are feeling pretty "holy" and usually need deep self-analysis submitting to the advice of Jesus: "Take the log out of your own eye first, and then you can see clearly to take the speck out of the other person's eye." Easy to say, but hard to do.)
He explains to them that they are to be "set apart" -- people marked off from their culture -- displaying the reality of God's Spirit within each believer, and demonstrating the new unity that believers have with the resurrected, living Christ. In the midst of it all is the call to love one another. 1 Corinthians 13 is a special passage that makes clear something every Christian must take to heart:
"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."
Musing’s from Pastor John, February 14, Click to Email Pastor John