Daily Liturgy and Scripture

Paul continues to equalize Jewish and non-Jewish believers by remind them what Abraham, the great patriarch, had as his distinguishing trait. It was, of course, his faith. That is what made Abraham great, and would also be the common factor among all who follow Christ.

It must have been difficult in the early days of the Church. Jesus was a Jew, the early church started from a group of Jews, but Christianity was a very different thing. Paul was also a Jew, and a well-read scholar. In helping the early church understand what the role of Jews and non-Jews was, he somewhat cuts to the chase: God made the Jews the people of the promise that is fulfilled in Jesus. No...

Paul opened by talking a bit about the wrath of God, but now he defines the people of God. It is not an outward mark or a birthright that makes a Christian, but rather a state of the heart. Our identity is in Christ, and so is our future.

It's sometimes difficult to reckon with the wrath of God, because we so often think of God as love. God is a God of love, but wrath is also one of God's qualities. The love God shows for his people is complete only if he cares for them, and preserves them. Wrath is the measure of preservation that turns against those who turn against his people.

The gifts of the Spirit are intended to create a single body, the Church. This is where God brings gifts together and continues to move among his people. There is no hierarchy in these gifts (the "higher gifts" are those that most directly bring honor to God and not the gift holder, remember that he spent a LOT of time talking about humility), and love is what really binds the body toget...

Yesterday, we dove into Paul's ridiculous notion that weakness is a strength, and today he doubles down. He does take a moment to tout the accomplishments of another, then returns to his "foolishness," coming back to say that God even purposely gave him weakness so that Christ's power could rest on him.

What does Paul brag about? He flips the "boasting in the way the world does" by boasting about the things that make him appear weak, in order that the power of Christ might show even more. This flew in the face of the bragging of his day, and very few of us today would probably lower ourselves in the same way.

Humility is a quality Jesus held which we should try to copy. Paul was an alll-star in his time, but he was slow to toot his own horn. Commending us is God's job, and waiting for that approval is part of our discipline.

Monetary support was not an unfamiliar topic in the early church. Acts opens with several stories about it, and Paul brings it vividly into the picture with this passage. Money is both a practical need and a spiritual discipline, as it provides something physical to pass among the members of the body of Christ.

As we remember today the apostle James, we are left with mostly the legends of his life. (This isn't the man who wrote the book of James.) His Father was a fisherman (wealthy enough to hire help) and his mother came to Jesus in Matthew 20 to ask Jesus to put her sons in positions of authority. He may have been a little spoiled, maybe? James was also the first apostle to die (documented in Acts...

Sorrow isn't something we love to live in, but Paul sees value in it, because it produces repentance and a drawing of the people closer to God. Of course, sorrow isn't our end goal. There is also joy in the Lord, but also in one another. Paul mentions the experiences of Titus particularly, who was working with a difficult church plant.

Paul takes a very different approach to his struggles: he claims that the negative things that happen to him are the very thing that legitimizes his ministry. A weak person does not create barriers for others, because they are empty of their own capacity to make things happen, so they are open channels. In Paul's case, that is a channel of love, the movement of the Spirit.

That Jesus had women in his group of core disciples is a pretty revolutionary idea. Women were not commonly brought into discipleship under a rabbi or religious leader, but Jesus made no such discrimination. Mary Magdalene particularly had a reason for loving him, since he had freed her from so great a demon possession.

Yesterday we talked about glory and veils, today we're talking about frailty and strength. The glory does indeed belong to God, but the strength that we have is also in him. With life eternal and resurrection bodies in our future, we are indeed uncrushable.

Lots of talk about glory and veils today. Glory is God's presence shining out; the veil is used when that presence leaves. Moses used the veil because his face was changed when the presence departed. Now, we can live always in the Spirit, so the presence never leaves. God is where the Spirit is, and the Spirit is always among us.

Life in Christ is shared with both the Spirit and our brothers and sisters. This isn't a "me and Jesus vs. the world" kind of thing. Not only are we learning to be more like Jesus, we are learning how to live with one another. This requires mistakes, and it also requires grace and forgiveness. People are not Jesus, we are the faulty parts of his body in this advance effort to bring t...

Paul is finishing his first letter to the Corinthians, and it's all about unity. He gives extra attention to the topics of supporting one another and the Jerusalem church, being loving and affectionate toward another, commending those who have been faithful co-laborers. These were the pillars of the first churches, and the should remain at the forefront today.

Something as wild as resurrection bodies might be an easy fixation to get hung up on, but Paul cautions against it. While we are part of that future alongside our Savior, our current bodies still matter. Bearing God's image in our physical bodies and bearing the resurrection image in our resurrection bodies are both creations of God, and neither should be diminished.

The resurrection is everything. Not only because it proves Jesus as God, but also because it is our future. It is foundational to the believe in what Jesus came to do, and that is the thing that makes the Kingdom of Jesus truly unique: it will never end.

Continuing the conversation about speaking in tongues, Paul now turns generally for the need to maintain an orderly worship. There are a lot of pieces in this portion of the letter that, once again, could have benefitted from our knowing what their questions had been. In general, though, the point is to remember that God is the object of worship, and not us.

Gifts of the Spirit aren't just for show, they're for the building up of the church. Speaking in tongues is used here by Paul to show that it's important to keep that focus, and bring one's spiritual family along instead of going on like a lone wolf spiritual giant.

This famous passage from 1 Corinthians about love is often quoted in sermons and at weddings. While love is certainly the foundation of a marriage, that is not really what Paul is talking about here. In previous chapters, he has been talking about a new kind of community, and the building of the body of Christ. Just prior to this, he mentioned a list of gifts from the Spirit. Now, he is explicit a...

It's difficult to be part of a group where there are differences. Wouldn't it be easier if we were all the same? Not so in the body of Christ. There are different gifts given by the Spirit, so being aware of the Spirit's working in us is critical. If we don't know our part, we might find ourselves trying to use our eyeballs to walk!

There is a LOT of cultural context going on in this verse, but perhaps a good gist might be this: when at worship, the point is not ourselves, but Christ. This includes not putting the emphasis on ourselves in dress and in the Lord's Supper. Paul remembers the liturgy of that meal, a sacrament left to us by Christ himself, to remember his sacrifice and our connection to God. We are also connec...

Paul comes back to his point about eating meat sacrificed to idols. Not only does he want to encourage the believers to avoid participation in demonic ceremonies, he also wants them to lead others in a way that ends in Christ instead of in idolatry. Not just because they are being observed by others, but also because God's glory should be their objective.