1 Corinthians Archives - Page 9 of 11

Gospel First and Last

Joe Harby on February 22, 2015

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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.

Church Discipline and Life

Joe Harby on August 3, 2014

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Introduction

A church that does not or cannot discipline errant members of the congregation is a church with AIDS. It has no means of fighting off infections—whether those infections are moral or doctrinal or both. The infections can be in the heart or the head, but the church has to be able to deal with them.

To change the image, the church is constituted by Word and sacrament. A large number in the reformation tradition have also added discipline to this, but I would prefer to think of the garden itself as growing Word and sacrament only. Discipline is the fence that keeps the deer out. Discipline is not part of the very definition of the church, but without a fence, you won’t have a garden for very long. Fences are essential to gardens, but don’t themselves grow in the garden.

Obviously, a message like this is being preached for a reason—we do have some possible discipline cases in process, and we wanted you to be prepared for this as a congregation. But know that we do not operate on a hair trigger, and we would be delighted to have this be a message that turns out to be more theological than practical.

The Text

“I wrote to you in my epistle not to keep company with sexually immoral people. Yet I certainly did not mean with the sexually immoral people of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. But now I have written to you not to keep company with anyone named a brother, who is sexually immoral, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner —not even to eat with such a person. For what have I to do with judging those also who are outside? Do you not judge those who are inside? But those who are outside God judges. Therefore ‘put away from yourselves the evil person’” (1 Cor. 5:9-13).

Summary of the Text

Christians often get this text exactly backwards. Paul says that of course we are going to have to associate with dissolute pagans—but we try hard to be prissy about that kind of thing. And he says that we must of course not associate with those inside the church who live like this. This is in fact what distinguishes Christian morality from dry rot moralism. The former guards inside, the latter guards against the other. Pay special attention to that phrase near the end—do you not judge those who are inside? But what happens if we are diligent in this? Trying to guard the church against hypocritical profession is a sure fire way to draw the charge of . . . hypocrisy. Think about it for a moment.

The Five Reasons for Discipline

First, we are to discipline in order to glorify God, and this occurs because obedience glorifies God. We know from His Word that God intends discipline for His church (Matt. 18:15-19; Rom. 16:17; 1 Cor. 5; 1 Thess. 5:14; 2 Thess. 3:6-15; 1 Tim. 5:20; 6:3; Tit. 1:13; 2:15; 3:10; Rev. 2:2, 14-15, 20). God tells us what to do, and because we are His people we are called to obey Him. This answers the objection, “Who do you think you are?” We do not discipline in our own name, or on our own authority.

In the second place, we are to discipline in order to maintain the purity of the church. If we measure the “success” of discipline by whether or not the offender is restored, we will be forced to conclude that sometimes it “didn’t work.” But conducted biblically, church discipline always purifies the church (1 Cor. 5:6-8). It also prevents the profanation of the Lord’s Table (1 Cor. 11:27). It always works.

Third, we are to discipline to prevent God from setting Himself against the church. If we have a choice to distance ourselves from sin, and we choose rather to identify ourselves with it, then what will a holy God do with us (Rev. 2:14-25)?

Fourth, we are to discipline in a desire to restore the offender. We are not promised that the offender will be restored, but this end is nonetheless one of our goals. But at the same time I put this reason fourth for a reason. This rationale is clearly set forth in Scripture (Matt. 18:15; 1 Cor. 5:5; Gal. 6:1). This answers those who think “discipline is harsh and unloving.” The goal is not to destroy the offender; the goal is a confrontation in which we formally protest the fact that the offender is destroying himself.

And last, we are to discipline in order to deter others from sin. The Bible teaches that consequences for sin deter (Ecc. 8:11; 1 Tim. 5:20). The objection here is that “people sure wouldn’t want to mention any of their spiritual problems around those elders!” But the issue in discipline is always impenitence. But if he struggles against sin, as all of us do, then he will find nothing in church discipline except an aid and comfort in that struggle.

Conclusion

Many misunderstand what is actually being done in discipline, or what discipline requires. Discipline is not necessarily shunning or avoiding. It is rather avoiding company on the other’s terms. The heart of church discipline is a refusal of the Supper, which is why church discipline is called excommunication. The person is exiled from (ex) the Table of the Lord (communion). So the individual under discipline is denied access to the Lord’s Supper, as well as that general communion which that Supper seals. The offender must not be denied kindness, courtesy, opportunity to hear the Word preached, the practical duties owed to him by others, or anything else due him according to the law of love. Fundamentally, he is being denied only one thing: the right to define the authority of the Christian faith for himself.

Discipline is inescapable. Either we will discipline those who love what is sinful, or we will discipline those who love what is righteous. But as long as the antithesis between the two exists (which is to say throughout history) we must choose one way or the other. A refusal to discipline those who are threatening the integrity of the church is actually a form of discipline directed against those who love the peace and purity of the church, and who labor and pray for it.

One last thing—the encouragement that is found in this. The doctrine of adoption should be precious to us. And the Bible teaches that absence of discipline is a serious indication that God has not adopted us—which is far more terrifying than the prospect of discipline. This truth applies equally to congregations as to individuals.

“Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin. And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children, My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him: For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not? But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons. Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live? For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure; but he for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness. Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby. Wherefore lift up the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees; And make straight paths for your feet, lest that which is lame be turned out of the way; but let it rather be healed” (Hebrews 12:4–13).

What then should our response to discipline be? God is our Father, Christ our brother. Therefore, lift up your hands that were hanging down. Strengthen your feeble knees. Walk on the straight path, with Christ just ahead of you.

Why Children Matter #4

Joe Harby on December 1, 2013

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Q&A

Introduction

Biblical parenting is much more than a bag of tips and techniques. Techniques are helpful if you are learning to paint-by-numbers, but that is not the kind of thing we are doing when we are bringing up little children. Godly parenting is a function of becoming more like Jesus in the presence of little ones, who are also in the process of becoming more like Jesus.

The Text

“For though ye have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet have ye not many fathers: for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel. Wherefore I beseech you, be ye followers of me. For this cause have I sent unto you Timotheus, who is my beloved son, and faithful in the Lord, who shall bring you into remembrance of my ways which be in Christ, as I teach every where in every church” (1 Cor. 4:15-17).

“Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ” (1 Cor. 11:1).

Summary of the Text

The word translated as follower in both texts is mimetes—imitator. In this passage, we learn that real Christian discipleship is driven by a paradigm that is much more familial than it is like a lecture hall. One father is worth ten thousand instructors (v. 15). For that reason, Paul pleads (because he knows the example is good) for the Corinthians to be his imitators (v. 16). This is why he sent Timothy to be with them—he was a beloved son, which meant that they could imitate the grandfather, Paul, through the son. The son would help bring them into remembrance (v. 17). In our second text, we learn that we are imitating an imitator (1 Cor. 11:1). The pattern was not set by Paul, but rather by the Lord Jesus. He imitated Christ, and we are to imitate him. One of the central things we must imitate is the pattern of imitation itself.

Two Kinds of Imitation

Last week I said that true progress in godliness is something that occurs through imitation. But because human beings are necessarily imitators, the same thing is true of ungodliness. We make progress in that by imitation also. We learn by imitation, but we envy that way too. We have to learn how to copy without ego-comparing. If the whole process is occurring “in Christ,” then we are safe. Outside Him, everything is deadly.

Another tell is this. When we are imitating biblically, the more we do it, the more we become like ourselves— naturally, easily, and as a heavenly grace. The more we ego-copy, the more tangled up we get, the more envious we become, and the more like to lash out we are. The first are last, and the last are first (Mark 9:35).

The Authority of Imitation

We are all familiar with the jibe embedded in the saying, “Do as I say, not as I do.” But we sometimes think that hypocrisy in an authority simply provides the one under authority with an argument to use when he is caught doing something. “Well, you do it too.” It does provide this argument, but something much deeper is going on. The example is the true catechism; the example is what has the true shaping authority.

This means that when parents are confronted with a challenge, their first reaction should not be to “put a stop to this,” but rather to prayerfully ask if the Lord is revealing something to them about their behavior and pattern of life. Is it possible that God is using this occasion to hold up a mirror so that parents would begin their correction with repentance?

Some Examples

Suppose a child is guilty of bad manners at the dinner table, and his father snaps at him. The child has bad manners, sure enough, and his father said not to have them. But . . . it is plainly authorized to have bad manners at the table here—snapping at children is far worse than playing with your potatoes with your knife.

Suppose a child ignores a mother’s pleading, even though she has repeatedly asked, “How do you think this makes me feel?” The child is not learning to give to his mother. Rather, the child is imitating his mother, and it making all his calculations based on how things make him feel.

Take a positive example. Suppose instead of a father saying, “Go help your mother clear the table,” he says instead, “Come, let’s help your mother clear the table.”

Parents have a tendency to mislabel the lesson. Say that a toddler is standing at the coffee table, and repeatedly wants to mess with the vase. Too often parents think the lesson is entitled “How Not to Mess with Vases,” when the actual lesson is called “How Not to Get Exasperated with Other People.”

Deep Imitation

There are many occasions when imitation is right on the surface. It is harder to keep your kids from smoking if you smoke. It is harder to keep them from anger if you are constantly angry yourself. But there is another way of opening the way to ungodly imitation, even if your kids never see you doing whatever it is. God is present, remember, and God sees what doors you are opening in your household, what locks you are leaving unlocked. For example, a father with a secret porn habit can’t be shocked to discover that his son develops the same problem—even if his son didn’t know of the father’s sin. This is because the father is granting “covenantal permission”—he is saying, before God, that this kind of behavior in his household is all right with him. In other words, secret sin can be imitated also.

All You Need is Love

This truism is quite true, but not really the way the Beatles meant it. Love is at the center of the way God is, and God is Lord over all things, and so His way of loving is connected, wonderfully, and authoritatively, to absolutely everything. God is love (1 John 4:8). This is why, if we detach love from whatever it is we are doing, the result is spiritual bankruptcy. If I have mastered all the parenting techniques, if I lead a bunch of seminars, if I keep my kids from squirming in church, but have not love, I am nothing.

Godly teaching, godly character formation, godly discipleship is simply this: loving God and loving the thing you are currently, in the presence of another, whom you also love. Imagine a father and a son in the presence of an unsplit cord of wood. What is the father’s duty here? It is to take two axes, hand one to his son, and to love God, and to love a morning of splitting wood, and to do so alongside his son, whom he also loves. That is it. Love God, love what you are doing, and love the people God gave you to do it with.

Gospel Presence II: Gospel Center, Gospel Edges

Joe Harby on April 7, 2013

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Introduction

The gospel message provides a hard center for our lives, but we must make sure that we do not understand this as an isolated hard center. We want the gospel to be a taproot to the entire tree, and not an isolated boulder in a field of scattered boulders. The litmus test is whether you can find yourself moving from a conversation about anything to the gospel without changing the subject.

The Text

“Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand; By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain. For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures: And that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve: After 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. After that, he was seen of James; then of all the apostles. And last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time” (1 Cor. 15:1-8).

Summary of the Text

The gospel is something which can be declared, preached, and (clearly) summarized (v. 1). It is also something which can be received, and the person who receives it can take a stand in it (v. 1). This message is capable of saving those who remember it, not counting those who believed it in vanity (v. 2). Paul delivered to them what he himself had received, which is that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures (v. 3). He was buried and raised to life, also in accordance with the Scripture (v. 4). This resurrection was witnessed—first by Peter, and then the twelve (v. 5). After that were 500 people, most of whom were still alive when Paul wrote this (v. 6), then James and all the apostles (v. 7). Finally He was seen by Paul (v. 8).

The Taproot

The Scriptures use the word gospel to describe this center. But it is a center that is connected to absolutely everything else. We can see this in other, broader uses of the word gospel. For example the four gospels are called gospels (e.g. The Gospel According to Matthew), and while they contain the facts that Paul points to in our text, they also contain much more. For example, the fact that Jesus went to Capernaum is part of the gospel (Matt. 8:5). Or take the fact that God preached the gospel to Abraham by telling him that through him all the nations would be blessed (Gal. 3:8). Or again, then author of Hebrews says that the law of Moses, given to the Israelites, was gospel (Heb. 4:2). Jesus arrived in Israel, preaching the gospel, but He clearly was not presenting the gospel the same way that we would (Matt. 4:23).

No False Choice

So in Scripture, the word gospel is as narrow as the cross, and is as wide as the world. We must be faithful to both uses. Liberals abandon the center—Christ crucified for sinners—and want to put some kind of happy face over the whole world. Sectarian conservatives guard the center fiercely, making sure that it remains disconnected from everything else. Seeing it as connected might bring the gospel into contact with sinful stuff, and we wouldn’t want to get our gospel dirty. But we have forgotten the power of the cross. When Jesus touched lepers, the healing went out . . . the leprosy did not contaminate Him.

A Fatal Error

One of the first steps in disconnecting the gospel from the world is the step of disconnecting “gospel” verses in the Bible from other kinds of verses (as we imagine them). For example, it is a very easy mistake to try to divide the Bible up into law verses and gospel verses, as though God had divided the Bible up, with happy faces next to some verses and frowny faces next to the remainder.

No. To the unregenerate, the whole thing is law. To the regenerate, the whole thing is gospel. What is more “law” than the Ten Commandments, but what does the preamble declare? God is the one who brought them out of the house of bondage (Ex. 20:2). And what is more “gospel” than the message of the cross—and it is the stench of death to those who are perishing (2 Cor. 2:16). The divide runs, not through the Bible, or through the world, but through every human heart.

Reconciling All Things

God’s purposes in the gospel are cosmic. Christ shed His blood on the cross, and why? So that He might reconcile all things to Himself, whether those things are in Heaven or on earth (Col. 1:20). Now that means that everything is related to Him.

But we do not “connect the dots” by reading big, fat books of theology. They are not tied together with abstraction string—they are all coherent because of the blood of Jesus. So we begin this glorious process by being reconciled ourselves, by receiving forgiveness for our wicked works (v. 21). And as we saw just a few verses before this, Christ is the one in whom all things are integrated (Col. 1:18). He is arche—the foundational beginning, the cornerstone, the axle.

He is therefore the center toward whom all the edges run. He is the sovereign Lord over all. He is the bedrock underneath all things. He is the root. He is the Head over all things. We noted a moment ago that everything is related to Him, and related in Him. But take a moment to reflect—what does that include? That includes carpentry, novel writing, weather reporting, roly poly bugs, lawn mowing, cake baking, leaf raking, software writing, star gazing, doctrine parsing, child teaching, and everything else that men might do. And since He is the one in whom all these things tie together, why can we not detect His presence in these things—a gospel presence—and live in the awareness of that presence as we deal with those who do not believe.