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Core Theme
The Corinthian church is experiencing divisions due to a cultural drift towards worldly values of "spiritual" wisdom, knowledge, and power, which Paul contrasts with the cross-shaped, self-sacrificing love that defines true biblical spirituality.
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what is going on in corinth those of you
who are trainers will know that we often
talk about
setting the text in its context and the
whole book context
which gives to us of course the melodic
line eventually the whole book context
is going to help and strengthen us
as we come to this and other particular passages
passages
in the epistle what is going on in
corinth in one word
division that is what is happening
in the church there is a conflict
between the church and its apostolic founder
founder
there's a movement which seems to have
been initiated by the few
but which is beginning to infect the
many to move away from paul
and his teaching to what they are
claiming is a greater wisdom
and a deeper spirituality
and if you look carefully at the text of
these opening chapters
you'll find that there are four
buzzwords that are
very much the concern of the corinthian
congregations let me just give them to
you that you'll find they occur
many different times through the chapters
chapters
the first is spiritual pneumaticos what
does it mean
to be spiritual that's the big debate in corinth
corinth
the second is wisdom we'll look at that
especially tomorrow sophia
what does it mean to be wise where is
wisdom found what is the nature of wisdom
wisdom
the third is knowledge gnosis and the fourth
fourth
is power that great word dunamis the
ability to get the job done
the um strengthening to accomplish
the task spiritual wisdom
knowledge power these are the emphases
that come
from the opening chapters of corinth of corinthians
corinthians
and clearly come from the corinthian culture
culture
now we know that corinth was a
successful commercial
wealthy glitzy city it was a great port
lots of travel in and out of currents
lots of trade going on there
cosmopolitan city actually in paul's day
it was called new corinth it was only
100 years old because it had been refounded
refounded
and i guess everybody would have said it
was cool currents
if you wanted to be the place where
things were happening where
everyone was on trend current seems to
have been that sort of city
in the ancient world it was of course
also a byword for immorality
and for license and if you describe
someone as being
a corinthian you would mean that his sexual
sexual
morals were very loose and yet it was a great
great
center of religion some of the scholars
tell us there were more pagan temples
in corinth than perhaps you would find
ethnic restaurants in a great city today
and uh it was full of people who were
peddling wisdom
the celebrities of the ancient world in
the first century are the traveling
philosophers the sophists as they were
called and they were in and out of
corinth making a great killing for themselves
themselves
because people always wanted to hear
something new they always were
interested in what's the
what's the trend what's the cutting edge
and there were plenty of people around
with plenty of so-called wisdom
in that great cosmopolitan city welcome
to corinth
welcome to chicago welcome to london
it's no difficulty in making the connection
connection
in our own thinking now
of course the context in which we live
always shapes
the way in which we read the bible when
we teach people
truth and framework one of the things
that we need to remind them is that you
cannot avoid having a framework
we all of us read the bible through our frameworks
frameworks
and the pagan religion and background of corinth
corinth
uh thrived upon a spirituality that was based
based
on ecstasy the more incomprehensible and
out of your mind
the devotee became in pagan religion the
more spiritual the experience
and so mystical spirituality uh which
led to a denigration of the body because
it doesn't matter what you do with the
body so long as the spirit is
alive and being nurtured that led to a
sort of super spirituality which you find
find
all the way through the letter is what
paul is concerned about
what does it mean to be spiritual well
perhaps to have
ecstatic utterances perhaps to have guest
guest
gifts from god that are very clearly supernatural
supernatural
certainly they would claim it meant to
live above
the material plane of the present world
they were already experiencing the
blessings of heaven
many of the people in the church felt
they had a full measure of that
now when paul has to rebuke them in
chapter 4 and verse 8 if you just turn
over for the moment
you'll see how he says to them already
you've become rich
without us you've become kings
and would that you did reign so that we
might share the rule with you
in other words he's saying you've got
this vastly inflated view of where you
are as christians
your super spirituality which has puffed
you up and makes you think that you're
really with it
and paul is of course beginning to exp
expose to them that they are very far
short of what god
actually requires i i think if you're
looking for a melodic line in
corinthians the melodic line to me is
what is biblical spirituality
and the answer is it is cross-shaped
it is the self-sacrificing love of a
jesus who goes to the cross
and dies for sinners and that's why
chapter 13 is chapter 13.
and that's why it's so much the heart of
the letter
and it's not spirituality that's
impressive in its gifts and in its
sense of having arrived but spirituality
that is prepared
to tread the way of the cross so chapter
eight verse one
knowledge puffs up love builds up
and the wisdom that was taught by the
impressive public orators who
were always around in corinth that also
you see from the culture
impacted the church and they wanted to
have people who could uh
could do that sort of thing who were
famous for their rhetoric
rhetoric the art of public speaking was
the was the crown of a liberal
education in the greco-roman world in
the first century
and the orators were the media
personalities of their day
so eloquence was a primary requirement
and it was very big business if you were
a great orator you were a wealthy man
now you see how the culture affects the church
church
so the church is by the pagan influence
and of course it's always trying to
extricate itself from the down drag of
the framework
from the views that they had inherited
from childhood
these new converts comparatively knew
yes they've
come to know the lord yes the reality of
the gospel is at work in their lives
but that culture is always impacting them
them
and so the spirituality and the wisdom issues
issues
owe a great deal to corinthian culture
it will express itself differently today
but our culture of course
impacts us far more than we realize
so the culture of the church's big
business has
an impact on local church congregations
which will very quickly drift us away
from the gospel if we're not critical
about our cultural
presuppositions we need to come to judge
our culture
by scripture and god has given us this scripture
scripture
in first corinthians so that in every
generation of the church whatever the
cultural context may be
these criteria can be applied these ways
of looking at things
now i've just spent a few minutes on
that introduction because i want
in a sense to focus on the text and the text
text
in its context but you can see why paul was
was
so disappointing to them they are
strongly tempted away to a much more corinthian
corinthian
looking church we want super spiritual
gifts we want really impressive
orators because in glitzy corinth
nothing else is going to cut the ice and
paul is not impressive enough and he
seems to be committed to this offensive
message of the cross
which was offensive in the first century
as it still is
in the 21st century even though it's an
item of jewelry now and the cross has
been glamorized and become decorative
nevertheless when people understand the
real message of the cross
there is still great hostility towards it
it
and so paul this disappointing apostle
is now saying to the church that was
founded through his ministry
you're in danger of losing everything
and the divisions that are emerging
because of these
uh groups that are moving people away
from the centrality of the gospel of christ
christ
those divisions are not just unfortunate
they are life-threatening this is a letter
letter
that is written to sustain the life of
the church
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