1 Corinthians Archives - Page 8 of 11

Washing Feet

Joe Harby on November 29, 2015

The Covenant Home 1: The Meaning of Federal Marriage

Joe Harby on August 23, 2015

Introduction

For various reasons, the word federal is grossly misunderstood today. But our word comes from the Latin word foedus, which means covenant. Thus a federal union, or confederated association, should be understood as one bound by covenant oaths and loyalties. As Christians who understand the importance of covenants in the Bible, we should set ourselves to understand the meaning of federal marriage. This is just another way of saying covenant marriage.

The Texts

“But I want you to know that the head of every man is Christ, the head of woman is man, and the head of Christ is God” (1 Cor. 11:3).

“For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church; and He is the Savior of the body” (Eph. 5:23).

The Face of Marriage Covenants

Some might want to assume that as Reformed Christians we simply have covenants on the brain, finding them everywhere in Scripture. You know, covenant peanut butter and covenant jelly. But this message is not an example of a systematic covenant theology running amok. The Bible speaks to us on this issue plainly.

The adulteress is described in Proverbs as one who forsook the companion of her youth, the covenant of her God (Prov. 2:17). The men in Malachi who complained to God about His lack of responsiveness to their prayers were told that it was because of how they treated their wives. Their wives were described as being their wives by covenant (Mai. 2:14). Marriage is described in the Bible as a covenantal institution. But much more is involved in this than just the word covenant.

The Meaning of Federal Headship

Closely related to the concept of the covenant is the idea of headship. The Bible gives us two important examples of what we might call federal headship. A covenant head is not the same thing as “a boss.”

First, consider what the Bible says about Adam. The relation that exists between us and our father Adam is a covenantal one. Because we are organically connected to him by covenant, when he sinned in the garden, we all sinned as represented in him. He sinned covenantally. “But like men [literally. like Adam] they transgressed the covenant; there they dealt treacherously with Me” (Hos. 6:7 ). And in his sin, we sinned.

We see the same thing with the second Adam. God in His mercy brought us out of sin the same way we were plunged into it. Because the sin of the first Adam condemned us, the obedience of the second Adam rescued us.

“Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who had not sinned according to the likeness of the transgression of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come. But the free gift is not like the offense. For if by the one man’s offense many died, much more the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abounded to many” (Rom. 5:14-15).

“And so it is written, The first man Adam became a living being/The last Adam became a life-giving spirit” (1 Cor. 15:45).

“For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive” (1 Cor. 15:22 ). When we put all this together, what do we see? Both Adam and Christ are described as the representative or covenantal heads of their people. This is how our sins can be imputed to Christ, and how His righteousness can be imputed to us.

Application to Marriage

Returning to our texts, we see that the husband has a comparable relation to his wife as the one which exists between Christ and His people. This relation Paul describes as one of headship. Because marriage is a covenant union, and because the husband is the head of the wife, this means that his headship is a federal headship. He is a covenant head. We must first grasp what this does not mean. Before authority in marriage can be understood, we must get free of all our individualism. In marriage, we do not have two separated individuals, with one of them in charge. Rather, we have an organic union which is instructed not to be schizophrenic. All “macho man” foolishness is inconsistent with what is described here.

This eliminates the blame game. It means that a husband can no more blame his wife for the state of their marriage than a thief can blame his hands. As Christ assumed responsibility for things He didn’t do, so husbands should be willing to do the same for their wives. How? The place to start is in your prayers.

This sheds light on the central duty of husbands, which is to love as Christ loved the Church. For many Christians this simply means that Christ loved the Church “a lot” and that husbands should strive to do the same. But what it means is that husbands should love their wives federally, the way Christ loved the Church. We may begin to point out what this means, but there will always be far more than this.

A husband’s love should seek to be efficacious love—Christ loved the Church in a way which transformed her. He should embody an incarnational love—Christ’s love for His

Church was literally embodied in His sacrificial life. He seeks to display a responsible love—Christ took on all the sins of His people, And last, it is an instructional love— Christ washes His Church with the Word, as should husbands.

Surveying the Text: 1 Corinthians

Joe Harby on March 15, 2015

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Introduction

The theme of this book is the battle between division and unity. But we must follow the wisdom of God. Not only are false division and true unity at odds, so also are true division and false unity at odds. Unity with idols is division. Division from evil is righteousness and real unity.

The Text

“For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom: But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the Greeks foolishness; But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men” (1 Cor. 1:21–25).

Brief Background

Around 50 A.D. the apostle Paul left Macedonia (northern Greece) and came to Corinth. An ancient city on that spot had been leveled by the Romans in 146 B.C., and was a pile of rubble for a century. In 44 B.C. Julius Caesar re-founded the city as a colony. The replanted city prospered, and by the time of Paul’s arrival there it was five times bigger than Athens, and was the capital of the province. The ancient travel writer Strabo (64/63 B.C.—24 A.D.) was the source of the report that the temple to Aphrodite there was staffed by a thousand sacred prostitutes.

When Paul arrived in Corinth, he moved in with Aquila and Priscilla (Acts 18:1-4). He was not confident when he first got there (1 Cor. 2:3). Silas and Timothy then arrived with good news from Macedonia (1 Thess. 3:6), which strengthened Paul’s preaching. At some point in their time here, Priscilla and Aquila risked their lives for Paul’s sake (Rom. 16:3). There apparently had been some significant trouble, such that God made a point of reassuring Paul in a vision (Acts 18:9ff).

The most likely reconstruction of Paul’s dealings with the Corinthians is this. What we know as 1 & 2 Corinthians are probably 2 & 4 Corinthians. A lost communication to the Corinthians precedes 1 Corinthians (1 Cor. 5:9ff), and another lost letter, a “severe letter,” was sent before our 2 Corinthians (2 Cor. 2:4. 1 Corinthians was probably written in 55 A.D. and 2 Corinthians was written in the autumn of the year after.

Summary of the Text

God determined that the world, with all its wisdom, would not be able to use that wisdom to come to know God (v. 21). Rather God chose to accomplish this great thing by means

of the foolishness of preaching (v. 21). Jews want a sign, and Greeks want graduate seminars in philosophy (v. 22), and God says no to both. The divine answer is the proclamation of Christ crucified (v. 23)—calculated by God to trip up the Jews and to seem like idiocy to the Greeks. God did not make this thing seeker friendly. This cross divides unbelieving Jews and Greeks from the community of the faithful. But to those who are called, Jews and Greeks both, Christ is both the power and wisdom of God (v. 24). In all this we see that God’s folly towers above man’s wisdom, and God’s weakness isstill omnipotent (v. 25).

Wrongful Division

The church at Corinth was full of factions. These factions were based on a number of false standards. They were divided over things like the status of various social groups, disputes at law, food issues, accommodation with idolatry, sex tangles, spiritual gifts, and the Lord’s Supper. Paul’s great concern is the reconciliation of these divisions between God’s saints, but in order to accomplish this, there must be division from sin. Unless you break with sin, you will eventually break with everything else. Unless you declare war on sin, you will eventually be at war with everything else. To make peace with wolves is to declare war on sheep.

The Divine Strategy

The plan for the church is a harmonious building. You are God’s building, Paul says (1 Cor. 3:9). The word is oikodome.
The plan for the church is a harmonious family. The phrase brother or sister is used by Paul around 40 times in this letter. This is clearly related to the theme just mentioned, that of a house or building.

In order to have this true unity, there has to be a sharp break from Egypt. The sea was divided, and so it was that Egypt and Israel were divided. But that division still needed to be pursued. Not only did there need to be an Exodus of Israel from Egypt, there also needed to be an exodus of Egyptian ways from Israelite hearts (1 Cor. 10:7ff). Otherwise, all we have done is plant a colony of Egypt in the wilderness.

To Return to the Text

In order to accomplish this great miracle of deliverance, Jesus had to die. Since it involved external bodies, a powerful deity like Zeus could have gotten Israel out of Egypt. But in order to get Egypt out of Israel, the Son of God had to die. Right after Paul warned the Corinthians not to fall into the same trap the Israelites had fallen into, he reminds us that the foundation of our unity as Christians is the fact that Christ was broken. “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? For we being many are one bread, and one body: for we are all partakers of that one bread” (1 Cor. 10:16–17). Christ was one, and was broken, so that we who were broken might become one.

What kind of sense does this make? It is the folly of preaching. It is the folly of the cross. God takes a glorious unity and breaks it on the cross so that all our brokenness might be placed on Christ, and in that breaking, be made whole. Christ crucified is Christ for the world. Christ crucified is the only kind of Savior that can help the world—meaning He is the only kind of Savior that can save.

Gospel First and Last

Joe Harby on February 22, 2015

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The Text

“Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand;

²By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain.

³For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures;

⁴And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures:

⁵And that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve:

⁶After that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep.

⁷After that, he was seen of James; then of all the apostles.

⁸And last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time.

⁹For I am the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.

¹⁰But by the grace of God I am what I am: and his grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain; but I laboured more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.

¹¹Therefore whether it were I or they, so we preach, and so ye believed” (1 Corinthians 15:1-11).

Mission, Vocation, and Body Life

Joe Harby on February 15, 2015

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Introduction

As you have heard here before, mission is not something the church does on the side. Mission is at the heart of what the church is. And so, outreach, mission, evangelism, church planting all amount to the same thing. In this fallen world, the church should be about two things—birth and growth, and mission encompasses both of these. This is what Christ told the church to do in the Great Commission. Mission is why we are still here. But we need to be careful with this emphasis because there are some pitfalls.

The Text

“If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where were the smelling? But now hath God set the members every one of them in the body, as it hath pleased him. And if they were all one member, where were the body? But now are they many members, yet but one body” (1 Cor. 12:17–20).

Summary of the Text

The apostle Paul is discussing spiritual gifts, and in this section is describing what it means to be a member of the body. His use of member is taken as an illustration from the human body, and this means we shall have to think carefully about what it means to have something in common, including having a particular mission in common. If the entire body were an eyeball, then how could we hear (v. 17)? If the entire body were an ear, how could we smell (v. 17)? But God, instead of doing this sort of thing, has placed a number of different members into one body, according to his own good pleasure (v. 18). And, at first glance, it appears that an ear, an ankle, a liver, and a fingertip have very little in common. God did this because He has a higher unity in mind. If we had one big ear only, we would have no body (v. 19), and nothing would get done. In God’s wisdom, we can have multiple disparate parts, and yet have them all working together . . . on a mission (v. 20). But as mentioned earlier, we have to be careful because hand/eye coordination is not as easy as it looks.

Apparent Unity, Deep Unity

A policeman’s eyes and the eyes of the criminal he is chasing can have a great deal in common. They can both be blue, for example. They can both be nearsighted to the same extent, requiring the same prescription. They might go to the same optometrist. And the policeman’s eyes and the policeman’s heart apparently don’t have anything in common— except for the fact that they share the same vocation, the same calling, the same mission, which right now is that of chasing the criminal with the blue eyes. Both the heart and the eyes are doing their part to help catch the criminal. The eyes of the policeman are not thinking about their shared solidarity with the blue eyes of the criminal. But if we were giving a test to third graders, we might have a picture of the policeman’s right eye, the criminal’s left eye, and the policeman’s heart. What would happen if we told the kids to circle the two items that had the most in common? Right. A mistake would happen.

Another Illustration

Think of a submarine at war, with an assigned mission to seek out and sink ships in an enemy convoy. On that submarine you will find sailors who are part of the fire control team directly—the torpedo gang, say, and you will find sailors who are not a direct part of that team—the cook, say.

How does the cook advance the mission of the submarine? He does it by doing the best job that he can at his assigned post. He does it by cooking eggs. At the same time, he is not permitted to be uninterested in the mission of the submarine as a whole. He cannot detach his interests as though they were identical to his job description—as though he were somehow separate from the rest of the crew. He is part of the mission and must share an interest in that mission.

And yet, at the same time, he is not permitted to be so interested in what is going on in the torpedo room that he winds up being a bad cook. That’s no help either. If someone is called to a vocation—then the first thing to do is to be excellent at that calling. If your job is sweeping out a warehouse, and you spend your time leaning on the broom telling everyone else about Jesus, then what you are doing is stealing in the name of Jesus. Doing a poor job in the name of Jesus is a refusal to talk about Jesus honestly.

The two extremes are these: there are evangelism zealots who want every sailor to be part of the torpedo gang. And there are quiet, stay-at-home types who want to cook eggs and never, ever think about the war.

Yes and No

Should all Christians be prepared to share the message of the gospel to those who might ask? Yes, of course. In an exhortation that applies to all Christians, Peter says this: “But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear” (1 Pet. 3:15).

At the same time, should every Christian be an evangelist? At the end of our chapter, Paul asks a series of rhetorical questions about various gifts. The implied answer to these rhetorical questions is no. Is everyone an apostle? How about a prophet? Is everyone a teacher? No. Now the gift of evangelism is not mentioned here, but it is included in similar lists of gifts elsewhere (Eph. 4:11), and the body life argument applies. Paul and Barnabas were both missionaries, even though Paul did the bulk of the speaking.

So “evangelism proper” is not something that every part of the body shares in common. We all must have in common a love for God, a love for our neighbor, a dependence upon God’s word, a liberty in prayer, etc. This is what every member in the body should have, provided it is alive and healthy. But the ear doesn’t have to see. The elbow doesn’t have to hear.

At the same time, the elbow has to be interested in what the eye is seeing. The eye has to be interested in what the elbow is doing. This is because the eye and ear are not seeing and hearing for themselves alone. They are performing their functions on behalf of the whole body.

How do you show interest? Every part of the body is to pray for evangelism. Every part of the body participates in the energy. You can pray, and you can give. You can ask questions about how it went. And of course, the reason we want this body to function smoothly in this way is because it is the body of Christ.