Postmode

A quick note here at the beginning, since I am hoping to snag the attention of the thousands of people stopping by, even if it’s only for the 15-20 seconds they have to stay here to earn a fraction of a cent. A large number of people have been coming through my blog for the last few days because of my friend’s website, Adverbux.com (and I thank him for the opportunity to potentially catch somebody’s heart here). If you can’t stand to stay here and read through this whole post and learn from God’s word, and you’re just anxious to get on with earning the .005 cents that you’re probably getting for this, please, I beg you to read at least this part at the beginning here since it is worth far more then the rest of the little bit of money you will earn by visiting other sites.

If you don’t want to spend the time reading everything here, it can all be summed up with the following: If you do not know Jesus, his wrath burns against you and you will be destroyed in the last day by that wrath. Why? You are born sinful from the moment of birth, which means that in your very nature, you do not seek to follow, love, honor, or glorify God. But God made all things and all things are for his honor. Therefore, if you are not honoring him with all that you have, you are robbing from him, and God burns hot in his wrath against you for this. Furthermore, you are sinful in such a way that you cannot, by your own will, seek to honor and glorify God. You are literally trapped into a life of sin, apart from God, ending in condemnation and suffering. But God is merciful and kind, and he himself sent his son, the God-man named Jesus, was born in a podunk town called Galilee about two-thousand years ago, lived a perfect life, and then was offered up as a sacrifice to save you from your sins by being unjustly murdered, by crucifixion. But since he was perfect and his murder was entirely undeserved, God raised him to life from death, and honored him. Salvation is only by his grace, and that grace is given to you in his death and coming back to life from the dead. If you don’t know God, please, it is not worth the few cents you could be earning right now to die and never know God. How does one get salvation? You don’t. You cannot earn it, and you cannot ever act in a way that is pleasing enough to God so that he will save you. Salvation is only by his grace. If you repent of your sin and have faith in Jesus to save you from his wrath, you can know with total assurance that Jesus has set you from what the Apostle Paul calls the "law of sin and death", which is basically the fact that you cannot do anything but sin against God. God puts his Spirit in you, in salvation, to make you alive even though were dead, and you are set free to live a life that is pleasing to Him. Anybody who is reading this, I am begging that you would repent of your sin and then follow Jesus. What is required of you, he gives freely to you, the undeserving. And if you do actually do this, please e-mail me (john.nicely@gmail.com) and let me know so that I can give you as much as I can so that you can grow in righteousness and faith in God. Thanks for at least reading this!

In New Jersey we have some wonderful little pizza joints. Any of these, if they were to expand and build more stores, would be instantly successful. But I digress. I was at one such pizza joint (Nellie’s Place in Waldwick, NJ; don’t miss the opportunity to visit it if you’re in northern New Jersey!) last night with my dad and some of the people from the worship team at the church he serves as a pastor of music. One of the guys, Frank, has been leading his family through Psalms and asked me how I would condense Psalm 109. Normally in the mornings I do devotions from the Old Testament (in Deuteronomy right now!) but I took some time out to work through Psalm 109.

That having been said, I will now unfold (hopefully well) what I believe Psalm 109 says, and what this means for daily living on our part. First, the scripture:

Psalm 109

Help Me, O LORD My God
To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David.
Be not silent, O God of my praise! For wicked and deceitful mouths are opened against me,
speaking against me with lying tongues.
They encircle me with words of hate,
and attack me without cause.
In return for my love they accuse me,
but I give myself to prayer.
So they reward me evil for good,
and hatred for my love.

Appoint a wicked man against him;
let an accuser stand at his right hand.
When he is tried, let him come forth guilty;
let his prayer be counted as sin!
May his days be few;
may another take his office!
May his children be fatherless
and his wife a widow!
May his children wander about and beg,
seeking food far from the ruins they inhabit!
May the creditor seize all that he has;
may strangers plunder the fruits of his toil!
Let there be none to extend kindness to him,
nor any to pity his fatherless children!
May his posterity be cut off;
may his name be blotted out in the second generation!
May the iniquity of his fathers be remembered before the LORD,
and let not the sin of his mother be blotted out!
Let them be before the LORD continually,
that he may cut off the memory of them from the earth!

For he did not remember to show kindness,
but pursued the poor and needy
and the brokenhearted, to put them to death.
He loved to curse; let curses come upon him!
He did not delight in blessing; may it be far from him!
He clothed himself with cursing as his coat;
may it soak into his body like water,
like oil into his bones!
May it be like a garment that he wraps around him,
like a belt that he puts on every day!
May this be the reward of my accusers from the LORD,
of those who speak evil against my life!

But you, O GOD my Lord,
deal on my behalf for your name’s sake;
because your steadfast love is good, deliver me!
For I am poor and needy,
and my heart is stricken within me.
I am gone like a shadow at evening;
I am shaken off like a locust.
My knees are weak through fasting;
my body has become gaunt, with no fat.
I am an object of scorn to my accusers;
when they see me, they wag their heads.

Help me, O LORD my God!
Save me according to your steadfast love!
Let them know that this is your hand;
you, O LORD, have done it!
Let them curse, but you will bless!
They arise and are put to shame, but your servant will be glad!
May my accusers be clothed with dishonor;
may they be wrapped in their own shame as in a cloak!

With my mouth I will give great thanks to the LORD;
I will praise him in the midst of the throng.
For he stands at the right hand of the needy one,
to save him from those who condemn his soul to death.

The first thing about this Psalm that is immediately applicable to each and every person is that it seems to contradict a command from Jesus that we have regular opportunity to do: "turn the other cheek". David is grieved for the sin that has been committed against him, and his response seems to be ungodly. He has been lied about (v. 2), spoken to maliciously and attacked without cause (v. 3), and betrayed (v. 4, 5). What is his response? He asks God to "Appoint a wicked man against him; let an accuser stand at his right hand…" and etcetera. This hardly seems to be the spirit that Jesus told us to have towards enemies. And not only does he pray in this way, but he also gives it to the choirmaster (v. 1). This musician is all sorts of crazy, right?

Wrong. Why does David write this Psalm? "But you, O God my Lord, deal on my behalf for your name’s sake; because your steadfast love is good, deliver me!" (v. 21). The apex of David’s request before God is that God be glorified. This provides us with fertile grounds for showing that David is not out of line with the spirit that Christ tells us to have. In fact, to the contrary, this Psalm and the spirit in which it is written, like so many other actions and words of Old Testament saints, points us to Christ. But we need to be very careful in saying this about Christ. Spurgeon says, "This Psalm refers to Judas, for so Peter quoted it; but to ascribe its bitter denunciations to our Lord in the hour of his sufferings is more than we dare to do" (Treasure of David, 436; see Acts 1:20 where the second passage that Peter quotes is from Psalm 109:8).

I said that this Psalm points us to Christ. What does this mean? It will be useful to offer a brief note on the way in which certain characters in the Old Testament (examples: Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David) can be called "types of Christ". To call someone a "type of Christ" is to say that in some way, they represent – they foreshadow - something about the character, nature, actions, and attitudes of God in human flesh. But when we do this we have to be careful, which is why I said that "in some way" they point us forward to Christ; the saints in the Old Testament are an only imperfect analogy to our perfect Savior. For example, Moses points us forward to Christ by showing us how Christ would intercede before God for those he would save, because Moses does the same thing for the rebellious people of Israel in Numbers 14:13-19. Anytime we see this going on (when we see that a certain person in the Old Testament points us forward to Christ) the next question we have should be, "How does this person not point us forward to Christ?" With Moses as an example again, it would be a denial of Jesus’ perfection to say that Moses also points us forward to Christ in Numbers 20:2-13, when Moses and Aaron have little faith that God will provide for Israel. Return to David, just like Moses’ actions, David’s words here in some ways point forward to Christ, but are not in every way a perfect representation of what Christ would pray about those who accused him.

That having been said, in what ways do these words of David point forward to Christ, and how do they not? First, I think that the major thing about David that does not point forward to Christ is his attitude of wanting vengeance now. Christ didn’t exhibit this attitude. Drawing ourselves back to the earlier mentioned command of Jesus, "turn the other cheek", let’s look at this in context:

Matthew 5:38-48
"You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you. You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect."

First, notice that this passage is not an encouragement to let sin go unpunished. Sin doesn’t go unpunished. Because God is just and sovereign, nobody who has deserved his wrath will escape it; even for those who bear the name of Christ and are his, God’s wrath has still been poured out, only in our case the one who bears the wrath of God is Jesus himself, and not we who justly deserve it. God does punish sin. Spurgeon again says,

"Nay, love, and truth, and pity lift their wounds to heaven, and implore vengeance on the enemies of the innocent and oppressed; those who render goodness itself a crime, and make innocence a motive for hate, deserve to find no mercy from the great Preserver of men. Vengeance is the prerogative of God, and as it would be a boundless calamity if evil were for ever to go unpunished, so it is an unspeakable blessing that the Lord will recompense the wicked and cruel man, and there are times and seasons when a good man ought to pray for that blessing. When the Judge of all threatens to punish tyrannical cruelty and falsehearted treachery, virtue gives her assent and consent. Amen, so let it be, saith every just man in his inmost soul.

Treasury of David, p. 438

God is just and will punish sin. So Jesus is not saying that we just let sinners off the hook. He is not denying "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth". This command, which appears in Exodus 21:24, Leviticus 24:20, and Deuteronomy 19:21. Now, check out each of these passages in context:

Exodus 21:22-25
"When men strive together and hit a pregnant woman, so that her children come out, but there is no harm, the one who hit her shall surely be fined, as the woman’s husband shall impose on him, and he shall pay as the judges determine. But if there is harm, then you shall pay life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe."

Leviticus 24:17-23
"’Whoever takes a human life shall surely be put to death. Whoever takes an animal’s life shall make it good, life for life. If anyone injures his neighbor, as he has done it shall be done to him, fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth; whatever injury he has given a person shall be given to him. Whoever kills an animal shall make it good, and whoever kills a person shall be put to death. You shall have the same rule for the sojourner and for the native, for I am the Lord your God.’ So Moses spoke to the people of Israel, and they brought out of the camp the one who had cursed and stoned him with stones. Thus the people of Israel did as the Lord commanded Moses."

Deuteronomy 19:15-21
"’A single witness shall not suffice against a person for any crime or for any wrong in connection with any offense that he has committed. Only on the evidence of two witnesses shall a charge be established. If a malicious witness arises to accuse a person of wrongdoing, then both parties to the dispute shall appear before the Lord, before the priests and the judges who are in office in those days. The judges shall inquire diligently, and if the witness is a false witness and has accused his brother falsely, then you shall do to him as he had meant to do to his brother. So you shall purge the evil from your midst. And the rest shall hear and fear, and shall never again commit any such evil among you. Your eye shall not pity. It shall be life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot."

The landscape changes remarkably when we consider a common feature of all these passages: In all three, there is a presumption that this is not one person informally hunting down the other to take eye for eye, tooth for tooth. It is always before the authorities that this is done (in the passages above, I highlighted the parts that lead to this conclusion). But is Jesus talking about this? Is he saying, "Don’t pursue justice before the authorities?" I don’t believe so. I believe that the reason he says what he does is that the people were committing a perversion of this command. Instead of bringing their issue before the judges and authorities, they were individually seeking vengeance on each other. And Jesus is answering the question, "Well, what about when there is injustice occurring and the authorities do nothing?" as can be seen from his comments on what they should do if they are sued. The implications are twofold: On the one hand, that if they are in the wrong and are being rightfully sued, they should pay back more than they were sued for; and on the other, that if they are in the right and are being wrongfully sued, and (God forbid) they are gypped out of what they rightfully own, they should treat the person with grace.

So when David asks for justice, this is by no means wrong, and moreover it is not a slight against what Jesus says. David is imploring God for justice; he is asking God to give execute justice now. But this is different from Christ, because when Christ says that we should treat those who have wronged us (and gotten away with it) with mercy, we are to keep in mind that "…for He makes His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust"; in other words, God is just, and he is provider, and he will work out all of these issues. We are to be patient in waiting for him to execute justice in his own time.

Now, in seeking for justice from God, this is where we see Christ revealed in his excellence. He did not seek for justice in the moment of his defamation and execution, and destroy everything that was made through (Hebrews 1:2) and exists in (Acts 17:28) him.. No, we read that,

Hebrews 10:11-13
"…every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet."

Jesus allowed himself to be put to death "for the joy that was set before him" (Hebrews 12:2, ESV). And the joy that was set before him was the joy of being honored as the heir of all things (Hebrews 1:2); this includes all of us, who are co-heirs with him. Furthermore, his joy was being glorified by the Father as he glorified the Father. By dying, the Son could rightfully say to all who are not covered by his blood: "You are condemned because you have not known me". Without his death, we are condemned; and by rejecting him in his death and resurrection, we remain condemned not only by the Father but by the Son and Spirit. The Father glorifies the Son by requiring him of all of us. Some will even come to him, saying, "Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?", and he will say to them, "I never knew you; depart from me" (Matthew 7:23, ESV). So Jesus is glorified in the judgment of these people because they never knew him. Therefore, Jesus himself seeks a justice that is horrible on those to whom it comes, but he doesn’t seek it now. This justice comes "on that day" (Matthew 7:22, ESV).

To conclude all of this, I want to say something on the tone in which David speaks. I quoted from Spurgeon above; he says, "This Psalm refers to Judas, for so Peter quoted it; but to ascribe its bitter denunciations to our Lord in the hour of his sufferings is more than we dare to do" (Treasury of David, 436). Spurgeon is correct in this, but we should be very careful here. Jesus does not seek for justice in the hour of his sufferings is more than we dare to do. But yet we read that Jesus and the Father are one and have one will and purpose (John 10:30) and that the Father "will swallow them [his enemies, those who hate him – 21:8] up in his wrath, and fire will consume them" (Psalm 21:9, ESV). God is fundamentally just, and every sin has to be paid for. In the moment of laying himself down, Jesus did not pray bitter imprecations towards his enemies, but be assured that his wrath burns hot against all who are dishonoring him by refusing to lay all before him. His wrath burns because only he is worthy to have all things; if we pretend that all things, including our lives, are our own – which is our natural state in our sin – then we rob him of his glory, and Jesus, like the Father, burns with wrath against that sinfulness. His mercy is great on those who love and obey him. For those who have been covered by his blood, he bears all of the punishment for that sin. But for all those who do not submit to him and give him the position of honor in all things, they are trying to rob him of his glory, and he will not allow that. His wrath burns hot; he will judge all things and condemn the treasonous wretches who try to take his glory, even if they think they are not attempting to do this.

I’ve kind of gotten to a point in studying theology where all of the general concepts make sense to me, and I have a general understanding of what is orthodox and what is unorthodox. But I also have a horrible memory and have done nothing to link my beliefs to scripture; essentially, if called upon to defend my theological persuasions, for a great number of them I could not (at least if my own knowledge is the key factor; I’ve actually had several experiences where God totally brought random pieces of Scripture to my mind, out of the blue, when talking with some people). I was talking with my friend Sean about this about a week or two ago, and I’ve decided that I really want to be studying these issues and at least be writing down a defense of orthodox beliefs that I would hold to but could not defend on the spot. This may not be the end goal I seek for, but it gets me a step closer and I would certainly be more likely to remember this stuff.

I’m starting with discipline because it’s a topic I’ve been meaning to get a better grasp on for a while now. But it should be obvious that this isn’t necessarily a large issue of orthodox doctrine, as justification or penal substitutionary atonement is. Thus, accept that these are about orthodox doctrines even when it comes to the loosest of things. In this new category of posts on this blog, I want to consider anything that is true and has a bearing on or basis in Scripture or the Church.

I begin with discipline. I have begun studying the topic, and the first full resource (aside from articles and blog posts) that I’ve turned to is Jay Adams’ Handbook of Church Discipline. I don’t have the time or space to do a full outline of where all of this comes from in Scripture, but it’s all basically drawn out as an implication of a few select passages, mainly Jesus’ words on discipline in Matthew 18.

Discipline is a mark of the true church, commanded by Jesus (Matthew 18:15-20). It is a right of every professing believer, who receives the right by virtue of being in the church catholic, but by means of the church local. Furthermore, discipline is fundamentally a matter of educating believers. As Adams says, in Hebrews 12:11 the word discipline in Greek is paideia, which refers to the Greek way of educating children. Therefore, this context suggests that the author is saying that the goal in discipline is to teach. Teach who? Those who are either 1) unlearned (preventive discipline) or 2) sinning (punitive discipline).

Preventive discipline consists primarily of teaching believers the Word of God; secondarily it consists of administering the sacraments of water baptism by either immersion or sprinkling (as an infant if the parents are in agreement, or else as adults) and holy communion. In essence, our attempt is to equip members to hopefully be at a point where they will know what is sin, and not do those things that are sinful.

Punitive discipline consists of four stages. In all of these, the chief goal is that the person listen and repent. If at any point the person does repent (even if it is after having been removed from the church body) they are to be welcomed back, accepted, forgiven, loved, and most importantly assisted with the sin and effects of the sin they were struggling with. When calling a member to repentance, the member should be confronted as much as is necessary at one stage to confirm that the person has not listened to the call to repentance. This is not a once-a-step deal. This does not apply in all places, though; for example, see Titus 3:10-11. In such cases, discipline can be executed much more quickly so as to be in line with Paul’s commandment to Titus.

The first two stages of punitive discipline can be described as informal because it does not require the elders or congregation as a whole to have any part at all. In fact, from the “widening” scope of the number of people who find out about the sin in the system that Jesus has established for us, it is clear that keeping the issue confined to as few people as possible is a priority, which would mean that the elders or congregation not only are not required to know, but in fact should not know. The person’s reputation is to be protected unless it is necessary to discipline them within a wider group of people.

Informal discipline is done by calling the sinning member or group to repentance first on a one-on-one basis (e.g., one person calls a person or group to repentance), and if it is clear that the person or group has not listened to the call to repentance, this is escalated to include two or three witnesses going with the original confronter for yet another series of calls to repentance given to the sinning member or group. It is not necessary that these people have witnessed the person or group’s sin themselves; they are there to confirm that the member was confronted and called to repentance and did not in fact do so. This is evident from Jesus saying in Matthew 18:16, “that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses.” The word that I believe to be used for “charge” here, rhema refers to the words spoken or the subject matter discussed. So they are to be there to witness what is said to the person.

The third and fourth steps of punitive discipline can be described as formal, meaning that the leaders and entire church are involved. In these stages, the entire local church exercises discipline towards an errant individual or group. The third step of discipline consists of calling to repentance, in the presence of the entire gathered congregation (and them only) the member or group who is/are in sin. If they do not repent, the second stage of formal discipline is to cast the person out into the world and treat them as a Gentile and a tax collector (Matthew 18:17).

I think that one misunderstanding of what I said yesterday about Isaiah 5:13 could arise, mostly just from the sort of example I used to typify the problem that I see with a lot of the people I know. I said, “It frightens me that we lack knowledge and that some even adopt an attitude of rejecting (at least they think they reject) systematic studies of the character and nature of God and his works.” This seems to suggest that the problem I get distressed over is the fact that not all of the people I know want to break open Wayne Grudem’s (excellent, I might add) Systematic Theology and read through the section on penal substitutionary atonement, careful to memorize every jot and tittle. I want to make it clear that my problem is not that people do not do this. It’s not that people sometimes reject the idea of a system of studies on the character and works of God. This happens, and I think it is a problem to be addressed for some individuals who are explicitly against this, but it is only a symptom (not common among those whom I know) of the underlying attitude; my problem is with the willful ignorance that underlies this problem. So this is a very bad example because this does not typify the sort of willful ignorance I see in a lot of the people that I know; it is only one example, which is on the far end of the spectrum of this problem. This underlying problem of willful ignorance shows itself in much more common attitudes.

Since this misunderstanding could result, I want to provide a better example of the sort of problem I see. In order to do this, it will be helpful to consider how Psalm 1 characterizes the “blessed man”:

Psalm 1
¹Blessed is the man
who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,
nor stands in the way of sinners,
nor sits in the seat of scoffers;
²but his delight is in the law of the LORD,
and on his law he meditates day and night.

³He is like a tree
planted by streams of water
that yields its fruit in its season,
and its leaf does not wither.
In all that he does, he prospers. ⁴The wicked are not so,
but are like chaff that the wind drives away.

⁵Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous;
⁶for the LORD knows the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked will perish.

Psalm 1, ESV

In this passage, we are shown that there are two kinds of people: the wicked and the righteous. Some might be inclined to say that this passage only shows that it is far better to do the things that it talks about here because it begins with, “Blessed is the man”. They are inclined to believe that this means that this is not a characterization of the righteous, but that it instead is addressing the super-righteous people who are most blessed, or something along those lines. However, the entire conclusion of this Psalm, in verses 5 and 6, is aimed at contrasting the lives and fruit of the righteous with the lives and fruit (or lack thereof) of the wicked. It is said of the blessed man that all these things are true, and then it concludes with “So the LORD knows the way of the righteous”. In other words, the blessed man is being described as doing these things particularly because this is the way of the righteous. Yes, there are those who live in a way that is more righteous and there are those who live in a way that is less righteous, but what is being talked about here is a characterization of the righteous life - not people who are somehow the “most righteous”. So because of the conclusion, we can say that it is the righteous who do not walk in the counsel of the wicked, stand in the way of sinners, or sit in the seat of scoffers; the righteous who delight in the law of the Lord and meditate on it day and night; the righteous who are like a tree planted by streams of water, yield fruit in season, and do not wither; the righteous who prosper in all they do; the righteous who are not like chaff that the wind drives away.

Now, if this speaks of all the righteous, then it follows that what is said in verse 2 is true of those who are part of the “congregation of the righteous”. The righteous delight in the law of the Lord and meditate on it day and night. “Meditate” here means something along the lines of “ponder” (MacArthur) or “muse” (Strongs). In other words, the righteous have a fascination with the law of God and delight in thinking on these things day and night.

Now, when it comes to the people I know, this is much closer to what I’m talking about. The rejection of the the systems of studies of God and such is only a symptom of this deeper problem of willful ignorance. Willful ignorance shows itself much more often in not making it a priority to meditate and delight in the law of God. I hope that clarifies what it is that distresses me.

On his blog, Peter Leithart posted an article from Biblical Horizons (not available on the Biblical Horizons website) on what is going on in Jude 9. I very much enjoyed it, and he did a great job of tying Jude 9 into the context of the rest of scripture.

From the post…
Jude 9 raises several difficulties (though not insuperable difficulties) for conservative commentators. The event that Jude recounts does not seem to be drawn from the Old Testament, and most scholars claim, based on statements of Clement of Alexandria and Origen, that Jude borrowed this story from the Assumption of Moses, an apocryphal work. If true, this raises the question of the status of apocryphal literature in general. We can, of course, defend the inerrancy of the canonical Scriptures even if this is the case. The Spirit, after all, might have led Jude to refer to this story, even though it came from a noncanonical book. But questions continue to nag at us. Is the story historical? Or, does Jude quote from a popular legend simply to support his theological point?

Link: http://www.leithart.com/2008/04/07/michaels-dispute/

Therefore my people go into exile
for lack of knowledge;
their honored men go hungry,
and their multitude is parched with thirst.

Isaiah 5:13

One of the biggest things that I pray for the church in general, and in particular for my friends and family in the church, is that God would give them a heart to drink deeply from his word, not only for the emotional impact it has on them, but more importantly to our own culture, for their own benefit in hard study. Calvin says in his commentary on this verse, “…he charges them with gross and voluntary ignorance, as if he had said that, by their madness, they brought down destruction on themselves. The meaning therefore is, that the people perished because they despised instruction; whereas they might have been preserved if they had listened to good counsels…” (here). It frightens me that we lack knowledge and that some even adopt an attitude of rejecting (at least they think they reject) systematic studies of the character and nature of God and his works. I say that they think they have rejected this because they actually haven’t; everyone has a system of theology. What differs is what that theology consists of. In this case, they have a theology of ignorance and are content to leave everything at a simple level; all belief and no understanding. But belief without understanding is belief without substance. Belief without understanding is an attempt to have unintegrated belief, which ultimately doesn’t hold up to anything.

I’ve been watching The Moment of Truth on Fox since it started airing, and I’m still not sure how to feel about it. On the one hand, I think that there is a place for truth to be told and that we should honor and thank God for those who are not only truthful, but more importantly have nothing to lie about. The only flaw in this concept, for Fox and America, at least, is that honesty doesn’t equal entertainment. We’re a nation of gossippers, and I think that The Moment of Truth has capitalized on this in its selection of contestants. Of all the contestants I’ve seen so far, only one didn’t have anything that was truly overtly shameful, a guy named Ray. Aside from lust, he was truly an honorable, honest man.

But even in myself I find that the thing I like about everyone else is seeing the hidden, inner parts of their lives revealed on national television. It tells me something about myself and about culture. In talking about this, it is necessary to consider the “long face” of “moral disenfectant”. Please note that I’m noticing this sort of sinful attitude in myself here, not trying to excuse it. Doug Wilson said in “Serious Filum” last month on his blog:

At any rate, here is the thought that came out of this, and is related to something C.S. Lewis said somewhere, I think describing the oeuvre of D.H. Lawrence (oeuvre is a fancy French word to describe the work of self-important people). Lewis said that there is a common fallacy out and about that thinks that a long face is a moral disinfectant, that basic moral considerations do not come into play just so long as you take whatever it is you are doing seriously. According to this odd theory, the sin is not found in the sin itself, but rather in any frivolous response to it. What we need around here is a furrowed brow, intensity of purpose, a willingness to talk about how “Americans need to become more comfortable with our bodies,” the tapping of the front teeth with a thoughtful pencil, and a desire to tie sexual liberation in with justice concerns for coffee growers in Central America.

These movie producers [Note from John: see the blog post for more about what he’s talking about here] were (or at any rate, wanted to be) serious artists. They were working with the contours of narrative (all rise!) and making art, you see.

The same thing happens with other professions too. This is why a blowhard like Bill O’Reilly can be waxing indignant about the moral degradation of (let’s make something up, but not far-fetched) having some pole dancer give a talk to a high school jobs fair assembly somewhere, and to prove his indignation is real, he shows us multiple clips of pole dancers prancing around in their skivvies. When Maude from Wisonsin [sic] writes in to say something along the lines of, “Hey!” he will respond that what he is doing is “just journalism, madam.” This is serious journalism, and it justifies what seriousness always justifies these days, which is whatever we have around here that needs some justifying.

I don’t think it’s immoral to be honest about the subjects that The Moment of Truth is dealing with in many cases. But I do think it is immoral not just to make entertainment and show out of it, but even more so to pretend it’s OK because we have the “long face” of “moral disinfectant” on. Hence, all of my comments below perhaps proceed from a sinful indulgence of maintaining this straight face and pretending it’s OK to be entertained by all of this. Yeah, I laughed at some of the things. Who wouldn’t laugh at a guy’s confession of padding his underwear to look better endowed? (Not that I think that this is necessarily sinful, although certainly concerning…)

What I can’t get over with all of this is that every single episode has an announcer saying, “Watch as he/she destroys their family…” Is this what we should be doing? The truth needs to come out, and it will destroy families in some cases because of the indiscretions and sins of man, but why in the world are we glorifying this? What is it about our society that we get an rise out of hearing that somebody’s next question is going to continue to destroy their marriage? It’s despicable.

But nevertheless, ignoring this it has been very interesting to see some of the things on the show. So far, to the best of my knowledge, there have been two separate Mormon contestants on the show. Neither of those contestants had not struggled deeply with sin. In the case of the one man, he had been a drug addict and was sexually unfaithful according to Scripture. And in the case of tonight’s finale, the Mormon woman said that she had lesbian fantasies and would pose nude in an adult magazine for several hundred-thousand dollars. (Correction: She lied about whether she would pose for $100,000, and lost. She said in her defense that she would do it for several hundred-thousand. Haha, sucker.)

It’s a given that people will struggle with things like these. But both of them, from what the show seemed to convey, had not made any progress whatsoever in getting past this. And in tonight’s finale, the Mormon woman said things that stuck out to me. She said that if her husband left the Mormon church, she would not stay with him. This is obviously unscriptural because Paul says that the believers should stay with their unbelieving spouses, because who knows how God will use the believing spouse? Is it any wonder? It is just evidence that they don’t believe what God says in Scripture. And Scripture says that if we have the spirit in us we will produce the fruits of the spirit: that is, our mindsets will be conformed to the image of Christ, so that we have love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; and our hearts will be changed so that we seek to please and glorify God. Shouldn’t we think that this means something when we aren’t seeing this fruit? But I digress.

I wish, however, that I could say anything different of the one holy and catholic Church (i.e., not Mormons; I’m not Mormon…). There is nothing that differentiates us from the culture around us. So few of us seek to glorify God in our minds or in our actions. I myself struggle to do this, and it is bitter. How often have I been snappy and rude, without grace for the smallest thing? Is this what we’re called to? I think - although I don’t know and can’t confirm this from any extensive experience - that being grieved over sin as God is grieved and taking joy in God as God has made us to take joy are two sides of the same coin. In both cases, inherent in doing this is understanding not only how deeply we have sinned against God in our entire beings, but also understanding how great and amazing is his grace in having forgiven us and made us righteous before him. We need to understand this. But it is true of many in the church today what Christ said, that on judgment day he will say to those people, “Depart from me, for I never knew you.”

In many cases, the people explained (perhaps tried to excuse) their answers afterwards. But in the case of this woman and one other before her, their whole approach was to say, “Well, everyone does it at some point…” And above, I even asked with the joke I cracked about the guy padding his underwear to look more well-endowed, “Who wouldn’t laugh?” But this is just trying to make it sound as if we’re not that bad. “Oh yes, there are those people who are really horrible nymphomaniacs, but I only had sex with five people outside of marriage.” This is the fruit of a hard spirit that is not submitting itself to God.

As with everything, the answer is Christ. If we’re honest, the answer is the Gospel: that we once lived in covenant fidelity to God, that we screwed it up and in Adam inherited a sin nature that is corrupt, fallen, and cannot do anything good of itself, and so as a consequence we sin and incur God’s wrath on ourselves. And if we’re honest, we also say that the free gift of God is grace in Christ Jesus. But even once we have been saved by the blood of Christ, if we’re not grieved over sin and taking joy in the grace of God, we are shamefully sinning against God and need to repent of that. These things should not be happening here; this is not how it should be. But I thank God for his grace.

I’ll end on this note: Jars of Clay has a great song called “Oh My God” from Good Monsters that I think mirrors what I’ve been expressing here part and parcel. This song is epic not only in its musical brilliance but also in its lyrical profundity; observe:

Oh my God, look around this place
Your fingers reach around the bone
You set the break and set the tone

Flights of grace
And future falls
In present pain
All fools say
“Oh my God”

…

Sometimes I cannot forgive
And these days, mercy cuts so deep
If the world was how it should be
Maybe I could get some sleep

While I lay, I dream we’re better
Scales were gone and faces light
When we wake, we hate our brother
We still move to hurt each other

Sometimes I can close my eyes
And all the fear that keeps me silent
Falls below my heavy breathing
What makes me so badly bent?

We all have a chance to murder
We all feel the need for wonder
We still want to be reminded
That the pain is worth the thunder

Sometimes when I lose my grip
I wonder what to make of heaven
All the times I thought to reach up
All the times I had to give

Babies underneath their beds
Hospitals that cannot treat
All the wounds that money causes
All the comforts of cathedrals

All the cries of thirsty children
This is our inheritance
All the rage of watching mothers
This is our greatest defense:

Oh my God
Oh my God
Oh my God

The ancient Jewish and early Christian idea of personal resurrection represented a new emphasis on individuals and the importance of embodied existence beyond the mere survival or enhancement of the soul, although there was debate about the precise nature of the post-resurrection body. Some seem to have supposed it would be a new body of flesh and bones, closely linked to the corpse in the grave but not liable to decay or death. Others imagined a body more like that of an angel. But whatever its precise nature, the hope of resurrection reflected a strongly holistic view of the person as requiring some sort of body to be complete. With ancient Jews, early Christians saw resurrection as an act of God, a divine gift of radically new life, not an expression of some inherent immortality of the soul. That is, the dead don’t rise by themselves; they are raised by God and will experience resurrection collectively as one of the events that comprise God’s future redemption of the world and vindication of the righteous.
- Larry Hurtado, “The Curious Idea of the Resurrection”

This morning in the Romans Bible study that I’m part of, we went through the latter half of Romans 8. This passage sticks out like a sore thumb for people who want to emphasize some sort of spiritual existence after death. How can we exist as disembodied spirits when in the resurrection of the dead we are given new bodies?

For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.
- Romans 8:19-25, ESV (emphasis mine)

The idea of a soul is an innovation of the pagan gnosticism that was prevalent in the culture surrounding the early church. This sort of gnosticism stresses that the spirit is good (true), but that the body is not good (false). Christianity has a holistic sort of view of all these things: both the body and spirit are good, and both will be redeemed. Those who are in Christ Jesus have already experienced the redemption of the spirit. No longer are we spiritually dead and living in sin; instead, we have been made alive by the Spirit of God in the atonement of Jesus on the cross by the will of the Father. But we still wait and look forward, as all creation does, to the redemption of our bodies. It is not the body that is bad, but the indwelling sin that has also corrupted all creation and that causes creation to look on longingly for our glorification. It is in the hope of the redemption of the body that we look on towards Jesus, because in this we receive our glorification, and this points to Jesus receiving all glory and honor for his power and dominion.

Angels are not the cutesy little figurines you buy down at the local Christian bookstore. In the Bible, when you saw an angel, you wet your pants.
- Al Mohler at Together For The Gospel 2006, “Preaching With The Culture In View”

Now after the Sabbath, toward the dawn of the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. And behold, there was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow. And for fear of him the guards trembled and became like dead men. But the angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid…”
- Matthew 28:1-5, ESV

This is from a Bible study some friends of mine and I are doing on Friday nights at 8:00pm. We meet for dinner and then get into this stuff… Anybody and everybody is welcome to join us on Friday nights. I just need to know how much food to make, so if you’re going to come send me an e-mail at john.nicely@gmail.com to let me know, and to get directions if you don’t know where my house is.

Paul, called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus, and our brother Sosthenes, to the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
1^st Corinthians 1:1-3

In preparing to talk about Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, it’s my goal to do three things here. First, I want to give a brief overview of who Paul was, of who the Corinthians were, and why Paul was writing to the them. Second, I want to show what I think is a good partial explanation of why the Corinthians were struggling with the things that Paul wrote to them about. And finally, I want to talk about the relevance of the situation that the Corinthian church was experiencing in comparison to our own culture, because the church in America finds itself in very much the same situation. We struggle with the same sins, and we struggle with the same attitude, which is one of adoption of worldly wisdom to our own view of God, life, and scripture. We tend to view all of our lives through worldly lenses, instead of looking at life in terms of what God says about us.

Context
The Apostle Paul
Before his conversion to Christianity and the beginning of his ministry to the Gentiles, Paul was a Jew and a Pharisee who boasted in himself as being holy according to all the things that he thought indicated holiness. In his own words, he was somebody who had every reason to have "confidence in the flesh also". He says in his letter to the Philippians,

Look out for the dogs, look out for the evildoers, look out for those who mutilate the flesh. For we are the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh - though I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh also. If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ.
Philippians 3:2-7, ESV

Paul is saying here that before he knew Christ, he had every reason to count himself among the holiest of the holiest, for the reason that he was blameless according to the law, and because he was of the people of God.

Of course, we know that God wasn’t happy with this. In the course of doing the things that he thought were pleasing to God, Paul persecuted the church. Starting with Stephen and then the rest of the church in Jerusalem, Paul persecuted the Christians there, to such an extent that all the Christians in that city with the exception of the twelve apostles left to go elsewhere.

And there arose on that day a great persecution against the church in Jerusalem, and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles. Devout men buried Stephen and made great lamentation over him. But Saul was ravaging the church, and entering house after house, he dragged off men and women and committed them to prison.
Acts 8:1-3, ESV

As Paul says of himself, as for his zeal, he went so far in serving God that he persecuted the church, killing many. Now, since the Christians left Jerusalem, I image that what Paul does next is a result of this fact. Having few left to persecute as blasphemers of God, in Acts 9, we’re told that Paul obtained permission from the high priest in Jerusalem to go to the synagogues in Damascus, find any who were followers of Christ, and take them to Jerusalem.

But Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.
Acts 9:1-2, ESV

But while he was on his way to Damascus, Jesus appeared to him, blinding him and demanding that Paul explain himself. When Paul asked who Jesus was, Jesus told him: "I am the one you are sinning against by persecuting my followers" (Acts 9:4-5). Following this, Jesus commands Paul to go to Damascus, where Paul stayed for three days without eating or drinking. God told a follower of his named Ananias (who from what I can tell probably had a spiritual gift of healing) to go to Paul, and upon coming to him Ananias laid hands on Paul, and Paul had "something like scales" (Acts 9:18, ESV) fall from his eyes and he was able to see again. Following this he was baptized, ate, and became and adamant proclaimer of Christ crucified and risen again for our salvation.

That’s who Paul is. He later described himself when writing to Timothy, whom he called his son in the faith, "The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life. To the King of ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen." (1 Timothy 1:15-17, ESV). Paul identifies himself as a follower of Christ, and his former life put him into a unique position because he was the chief of sinners. When somebody’s been at the bottom, they are in a unique position to relate to those who are close to where they were. The Corinthian church is just such a group of people.

Paul eventually became known as the apostle to the Gentiles, and the entirety of the rest of his life was spent preaching the incarnate Christ as fully God and fully man, who lived a perfect life, was crucified, and resurrected from the dead.

The Corinthian Church
Now, in the course of doing this, one of the churches and cities that he worked in was Corinth. I said that Paul was an apostle to the Gentiles. What does the word "apostle" actually mean? An apostle, in one sense, is a messenger. There are other further distinctions that made Paul one of the apostles, but we can speak just as truly of him in the general sense of being an apostle and thus say that he was a messenger bringing the Gospel to pagan Gentiles who didn’t know God. In the process of being the apostle to the Gentiles, Paul made four missionary journeys, and it is in the second of these that he first visited Corinth. When he went to Corinth, Paul started, as was his custom, preaching first in the synagogue of the city where all of the Jews worshiped, telling them about Jesus. In the meanwhile, he also began working with two Jews who had come from Rome because the ruler had kicked the Jews out of Rome. These two individuals were Aquila and his wife Priscilla. He began working with them because they did the same sort of work, tent-making.

And he went to see them, and because he was of the same trade he stayed with them and worked, for they were tentmakers by trade. And he reasoned in the synagogue every Sabbath, and tried to persuade Jews and Greeks.
Acts 18:2-3, ESV

The idea of being a "tentmaker" in its less-than-literal sense comes from what Paul did: while he was preaching the gospel, at the same time he plied his own trade to support himself financially. And the reason for this, as we will get into as we get further into First Corinthians, is that he didn’t want to make himself a stumbling block to any people in the city. Think of Benny Hinn, or Creflo Dollar. These guys are men who take advantage of people and their beliefs for their own monetary gain. Avoiding this impression of himself was one of the reasons that Paul worked to support himself.

But after a while, the Jews kicked Paul out of the synagogue and rejected Christ, and Paul says to them that their blood is on their own heads – and yet even the ruler of the synagogue came to believe in Jesus as the Messiah.

Crispus, the ruler of the synagogue, believed in the Lord, together with his entire household.
Acts 18:8, ESV

So what does Paul do next? As is his custom, he starts preaching to the Gentiles.

And many of the Corinthians hearing Paul believed and were baptized. And the Lord said to Paul one night in a vision, "Do not be afraid, but go on speaking and do not be silent, for I am with you, and no one will attack you to harm you, for I have many in this city who are my people." And he stayed a year and six months, teaching the word of God among them.
Acts 18:8-11, ESV

The basic relationship between Paul and the Corinthians is that Paul himself had founded the church in Corinth. These people in the city of Corinth who are believers knew Paul personally, many of whom he had preached the gospel to, resulting in their salvation.

A further confirmation that Paul was at least very involved in the church, although not a sufficient proof of having founded it if we ignore Acts 18, is apparent from some of the problems that the Corinthian church was struggling with. One of these was that they were dividing themselves into groups who said, "I follow Paul, I follow Apollos, I follow Christ." In other words, some were sinfully identifying themselves as followers of Paul and Apollos with little regard for their nature as followers of Christ, and others were following Christ exclusively with little or no regard to the fact that nevertheless Paul and Apollos had authority to teach and command them. But this problem didn’t arise in a vacuum, and what I mean by that is that there is little reason for us to think that they magically began following Paul without ever having known him. So Paul can be seen to have founded the church (from Acts 18), and was involved in the life of the church:

I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment. For it has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there is quarreling among you, my brothers. What I mean is that each one of you says, "I follow Paul," or "I follow Apollos," or "I follow Cephas," or "I follow Christ." Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, so that no one may say that you were baptized in my name. (I did baptize also the household of Stephanas. Beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else.) For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.
1^st Corinthians 1:10-17, ESV

He was now writing to people whom he knew very well.

Why Paul Was Writing to the Corinthian Church
Paul writes to the Corinthians to correct four major problems that the church was struggling with, and we want to pay careful attention to this because our culture and church struggles with the same things.

First, as I already mentioned, the Corinthians were struggling with division among their ranks. They were forming sects who were calling themselves followers of Paul and Apollos, or who were calling themselves followers of Christ. Now, let’s make it clear. Both of these groups had problems. It’s easy to see where the problem might arise with Paul and Apollos. If we’re following Paul and Apollos, are we following Jesus? Can we say that we’re serving and loving and honoring and glorifying Jesus? If our entire focus is on following Paul, then no. We aren’t following Jesus. But it might not be as easy to understand why it was an issue that some were splitting off and following Christ. What’s the issue?

This is the best explanation that I in my limited knowledge can provide. It seems to me that what Paul is addressing here, for all of the believers, is the same problem, operating at different, extreme ends of the same spectrum. That spectrum is the answer to the question "Who should we be following?" The answer is that we should follow Christ as the supreme authority, but we also should follow our elders as those who have been given to us to act as under-shepherds of Christ. Think of it this way: You work at a large company. At this large company, you have a direct supervisor that you report to. You are responsible to report to them, to do what they say, and you can be punished for not obeying what they say. But at the same time, you’re also under the authority of the owner of the company. If you don’t do what he says, his authority has much more weight. Accordingly, your chief responsibility is to follow the owner, not the supervisor - but this does not negate the authority of your supervisor, although it does mean that the authority of your supervisor is subject to the authority of the owner. The supervisor can be held accountable to the owner, and if the owner says one thing while your supervisor says another, your job is to listen to the owner.

This analogy will help us understand the error of the Corinthian church much more easily; it should be evident now, if we put it in these terms. When some said that they followed Paul or Apollos, I think the problem was that they were saying this as if Paul and Apollos were their supervisors and there was no such thing as this fabled "owner". They were ignoring the commands of the owner and instead paying attention to one particular supervisor. In this case, they were sinning because they weren’t keeping in mind the authority and lordship of Jesus. On the other hand, though, there were those who refused to see the supervisors as having authority from the owner himself, and so they ignored the supervisor while claiming to honor the owner. But this is obviously an error. You can’t refuse to obey a supervisor who has been given authority to rule by the owner. If you do this, you’re not obedient to the owner either. These people were in sin because in rejecting the authority of Paul, Apollos, Cephas, and others, they weren’t following Jesus either. They thought they were, but they weren’t. This is the first major class of things that Paul addresses.

Second, Paul was writing to address issues of sin and immorality, which included, among other things, rampant sexual immorality; refusal to exercise sound, Godly discipline; and submitting themselves to Godless standards to resolve conflict among themselves, instead of submitting themselves to the authority of God and determining everything by his word.

Third, Paul was writing to impart wisdom on certain matters of practice, including wisdom regarding marriage, the sound practice of Christian liberty, how spiritual gifts should be used in the church, and what worship in the church should look like. All but the first of these I think can also be reduced to another, more basic sin that Paul was addressing, which was that the Corinthian believers were widely self-centered, and they were sinning by being self-serving. In the case of Christian liberty, the believers in Corinth were doing things that they knew they were free to do under God – eating meat sacrificed to pagan idols – without any consideration for other people in the church who may stumble because of their actions. In the case of spiritual gifts, they lacked wisdom as to how to use them correctly, and Paul teaches both them and us that these gifts should be used in public worship for the edification of the other saints. Finally, in the case of how worship should be conducted in the churches, he was responding to the Corinthian church being disorderly and unkempt, not practicing sound worship but instead everybody butting in during worship and be unruly and selfish towards the rest of the church.

Finally, Paul was writing to warn them to not even think about rejecting the doctrine of the resurrection of Christ. I’ll get into this later, but the short version is that Paul says that the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, in particular Christ, is central to all that we believe as Christians. If we reject this, we have no hope for what we say and we are still living in sin, to be judged by God as sinners and condemned on the last day. Thus, if we truly believe that we have had our sin removed, we cannot also say that Christ did not live a perfect life, die, and resurrect from the dead. It is an essential doctrine of Christianity. Without Christ’s resurrection there is no salvation.

Why The Corinthians Were Struggling With These Things
One thing that sticks out about what Paul writes to the Corinthians is that so much of it is geared towards addressing sin that was arising from selfishness in the members of the church. This happens in two ways. First, John Calvin noted that when Paul writes to the Corinthians, he was writing to correct them on matters of doctrine where they had perverted the gospel and twisted it to their own ends. In the introduction to the first volume of his commentary on the letters to the Corinthians, John Calvin writes,

During Paul’s absence false apostles had crept in, not, in my opinion, to disturb the Church openly with wicked doctrines, or designedly to undermine sound doctrine; but, priding themselves in the splendor and magnificence of their address, or rather, being puffed up with an empty loftiness of speech, they looked upon Paul’s simplicity, and even the Gospel itself, with contempt. They afterwards, by their ambition, gave occasion for the Church being split into various parties; and, last of all, reckless as to every thing, provided only they were themselves held in estimation, made it their aim to promote their own honor, rather than Christ’s kingdom and the people’s welfare.
John Calvin, "The Argument" - Commentary on Corinthians, Volume 1
(click here to read this chapter on CCEL)

Now, I’m not sure if this is true of only those who were coming into the church from outside and yet were not saved, or if these people were also Christians and nevertheless were very spiritually immature. From the fact that Paul treats the church itself as if it is spiritually immature it seems that this is possible. He says, in 3:1-3, "But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready, for you are still of the flesh." It is not difficult to assume that they were spiritually immature and so the believers were experiencing this kind of selfishness.

On the other hand, as I am inclined to believe, it could just as easily be said that these were people from outside the church who were coming in and perverting it. Calvin says that the people who crept into the church were seeking to glorify themselves and that they looked upon the seeming simplicity of the Gospel with contempt, and that this was happening because they prided themselves "in the splendor and magnificence of their address" and were "puffed up with an empty loftiness of speech". There is a notable difference between the Greek and American cultures that will explain the significance of this. Take this with a grain of salt; I gained this knowledge during a class on ancient Greek philosophy with Kevin O’Neill, and I can’t say with 100% confidence that this was still how things were in the time of the early church. But that having been said, it is possible that this explains very well what is going on in Corinth.

In American culture, we have all kinds of bling-bling that we use to adorn ourselves and make people be impressed with us. Everything from braces to necklaces to clothing to cars is part of what goes into conveying an impressive image of the self to those around us. Not so in Greek culture. You had two major things that you could use to your advantage: your body, and your ability to speak. You gained popularity by being a drop-dead sexy naked guy, or by having an excellent voice. The ability to speak well was what gained Socrates a lot of popularity within his locale; he is widely attested to have been fairly ugly. So in this culture, it seems that it is possible that Corinthians from outside the church were either coming in from outside and seeking to promote themselves with their magnificent speech.

The reason I think that these people were from outside the church is that Paul says of these sorts of people in 1:18, "For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God." So Paul treats as perishing those who have found the Gospel a stumbling block because of its simplicity. This doesn’t necessarily confirm that these people weren’t members of the church, but it could point in that direction.

In any case, whether these people were members of the church or not, the overarching theme in their character is that of selfishness. If saved, they were still spiritually immature, divisive, and selfish; if not saved, they were selfish and ambitious in promoting themselves. This selfishness marked the culture and was obviously finding its way into the church.

The second thing that points to this problem of selfishness is Paul’s correction of the Corinthians in their use of their Christian liberty, spiritual gifts, and meetings for worship by telling them that all of these things need to be used to edify the church. Now, first a note on what edification means. The word in Greek is actually two words used together: oikodomeo. The two words used are oikos, which means "house", and domeo, which means "to build". So when Paul tells these people to do what we today call "edification", he’s telling them to build each other up, as if building a house. The reason he’s telling them to do this, is that until this point they have been separated and divided, each working against the others. This is one of the attitudes he’s correcting in chapter 12. He gives a picture of the church as a body, and then says that a hand can’t say to itself, "Well, I’m a hand… Guess I’m not part of the body." Likewise, he says that the eyes cannot say to the hand that there is no need for the hand. All the parts of the body are there for a reason, and they were selfishly saying that others were unnecessary and they themselves were of chief importance.

Our Culture
In closing all of this, I want to do the last thing I set out to do, and that is to show how we are very similar to the Corinthian church, in two ways: first, we are living in a culture that is similar to theirs, and second, we are responding to the culture in many of the ways that the Corinthian church did.

In Greece, Corinth was known for the general debauchery of the people of the city. They were recognized throughout Greece as being immoral. We see a glimpse of the sort of immorality that was present there in that city in what happened to the Corinthian church: they were selfish and they struggled with sexual immorality, even to the extent that some were doing things that even the people of Corinth looked at and said, "That’s insanely immoral." But Corinth had all other kinds of sinfulness. In chapter 6, Paul is going to list certain things that mark those who will not inherit the kingdom of God, what he elsewhere (Galatians 5:19) calls "works of the flesh": sexual immorality, idolatry, adultery, homosexuality, theft, greed, drunkenness, and swindling. This list provides a good overview of the kind of sin that occurred in Corinth. And then Paul says,

And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
1^st Corinthians 6:11, ESV

This kind of sin marks our culture as well. Looking at our culture, this is where we are at. First, we’re very sexually immoral. Fornication, adultery, and homosexuality are hallmarks of our society and in some cases are even glorified and put into a position of honor. To a certain extent, we have even institutionalized sins like homosexuality, and the same thing is beginning to happen with adultery as well (for example, I’m thinking of dating sites that cater specifically to married individuals). In the case of adultery, I don’t think we even understand how widespread this is. Sure, a lot of people have sex with people other than their wives or husbands when they’re married. But as we’ll see later when we get into 1^st Corinthians 7, when we have a divorce rate as high as 50% in America, a lot of that divorce is also adultery.

In our culture, greed itself is a way of life: in America, we see our chief task in life to be self-fulfillment, and the way that many of us try to accomplish this is through always trying to accumulate more wealth. This attitude is so prevalent that many individuals have even wrote books in which they use coined the term "affluenza" (from "influenza", an infectious disease, and "affluence", wealth) to refer to our obsession with obtaining and consuming material wealth (for example, see De Graaf, Naylor, and Wann, Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic or James, Affluenza).

Drunkenness is fairly common and is elevated among college students to a position of honor, so much so that it’s practically considered a hallmark of college life. It doesn’t help that as a culture we banned alcohol for a while, because this just made the problem worse because this was also a refusal to honor God when it came to alcohol as well.

And finally, swindling. Swindling isn’t a word we use to describe this a lot, but it’s basically defrauding people of their assets. We have con-men, and unfortunately, some of them even obtain positions of power in churches or under the pretense of spiritual leadership. Benny Hinn, for example, is a swindler. He preys on people to obtain their trust by pretending to worship God, and then convinces them to part with their money. He’s an extreme example of this, but it’s happening in cities all across America as well. I know pastors who model this same attitude and are not only defrauding people of their money and possessions rightfully earned, but even their salvation by fooling their sheep (we must always remind ourselves that sheep can be very stubborn and unwise) into believing a false gospel. They lead people astray.

So it can definitely be said that not only are we embedded in the same type of culture, but that as the church we also have modeled our culture in much the same way that the Corinthians did.

What’s the problem here? The problem, I would argue, is not that we do these things. These things are just an outworking of sin in those who are yet unsaved by God, and in those who are, it is us conforming to our old nature rather than to the son of God who became human and died for us. And what leads us to this?

Christ is described by the apostles as fulfilling three offices, and I think that with many of the errors that we fall into as a church can be tied back to rejecting one or more of these three offices of Jesus.

1. First, he is our prophet. This means that he speaks to us the words of God and they should be accepted as such. The typical person who models the rejection of this is the liberal guy who doesn’t believe that Jesus actually meant that he was God, or that he didn’t mean that there was actually a real Hell where the unsaved will burn forever, but that he just came to preach to us about free love and smoking the chibba.
2. Second, he is our great high priest. What this means is that he acts as a mediator for us between us and God. When Jesus says of himself, "I am the way, truth, and life; no one comes to the father but by me", this is what he’s talking about. He’s saying: "I am the access to God and you cannot access God any other way." In doing this, Jesus does at least two things for us. First, he serves as God’s express image for us, so that we can see the character of God in a human like us, who is nevertheless also fully God. And second, in coming before God the father, we have the stain of sin on ourselves. But God is holy and just, and he can’t have anything to do with us. To accept us as we are would be a rejection of his own nature as just. But God is also loving and in his mercy he wants us to be with him and in his presence - but without being perfect we cannot do this, and this is such a problem because we cannot be perfect before God. We are stained with sin. But God himself came in human flesh and lived a perfect life, being given as a sacrifice on the cross for us. When we come to faith in Jesus, we are covered over with his blood and we are counted as righteous even though we have no righteousness of ourselves. So when God looks at us, he sees Christ and counts us righteous and allows us into his presence on the basis of Christ’s righteousness. That is the second thing that Christ does for us as great high priest, in mediating between us and God.

   I didn’t realize this when I was first writing this up, but my friend Matt pointed out that the biggest way that we see the church rejecting Jesus as mediator is in the Catholic church. So many people don’t see Christ as their mediator and as actually accomplishing their salvation. Also, I think one could argue that Arminianism in some ways rejects Christ as mediator. If it’s our work of accepting Christ’s atonement that leads to us being justified, then Christ is only part of the story.

3. Finally, Christ is our king. To call Christ "king" means at least two things, although these two things are far from being the sum of all Jesus does and is as sovereign king. First, Christ being king means that he has the right to say, "Do it" and have it be done. And second, not only does he have the right, but everything is in fact done by his command, as the apostle John says
   

   In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.
   John 1:1-3, ESV

   An even more clear statement of Christ having created not only all matter but also all time and history is found in Hebrews. The author says in Hebrews 1:2 that the Son is the one "through whom also he created the world", the word used here being the Greek aionas, which indicates the ages and all time, instead of kosmos as in John 3:16. So, using scripture to interpret and limit the meaning of scripture, when John says that through Christ "all things" came to be that were created, Hebrews 1:2 shows us that this "all things" doesn’t just mean the physical state of the universe at the beginning. It means all things: all matter, all time, all space, all histories, all allegiances, all nations, all of our actions towards or against God, and so much more… To be precise (and oxymoronic), everything. Even history itself was created through Jesus at the beginning of time, and this is what it means for him to be our King in the second regard. To summarize it, Christ is sovereign king in his rights and abilities.

Where do we go wrong with our culture when it comes to this? Ultimately, the problem is that we are constantly turning back to our sin nature and refusing to acknowledge and live according to our identity in Christ. But this still leaves us with the explanatory task of how we get from there to our particular sins.

In the evangelical church, which makes up a lot of the church in America, we do not so much struggle to see Jesus as a prophet or as a priest. This struggle is there, but for most of these churches we refuse to see Jesus as king. I think that this was true of the Corinthians as well. They not only forgot, ignored, or denied that Jesus does ordain all things by his decree, but they also refused to acknowledge that he had the right to make all such demands upon us for our allegiances, loves, actions, and attitudes – everything that we are and they were. It is no small wonder, then, that they lived as if they were not children of the King. And how do we explain why do we fall into so much sin against King Jesus? Because we ignore or deny the "King" part.

In closing, I want to add one additional thing to these layers of sinful attitudes that lead to us rejecting Jesus as King. I first heard this idea preached about by Al Mohler in a sermon during the conference "Together for the Gospel" in 2006, and I think he probably nails the central issue here (you can listen to that sermon, "Preaching With The Culture In View", by clicking here). Our problem is more fundamental than not seeing Christ as king. This idea arises from another, more simple idea that gets us closer to the central issue of not realizing the spiritual reality that Christ has declared of us in our atonement.

Mohler talks about Augustine’s view of culture, which is basically that in all things, there is a city of man, which is the earthly city in which we are born, live, and die. But at the same time, for those of us who are followers of Christ, there is also a spiritual, heavenly city that we become citizens of when we become disciples of Christ. The problem that leads us to not view ourselves as subjects of Christ, and consequently causes us to not view every act of sin as treason against his demands, is that we are constantly viewing ourselves as citizens of the city of man. We treat this place as our home. But this is a faulty view of culture and life. In chapter 3 of 1^st Corinthians, Paul writes,

What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor. For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field, God’s building.
1^st Corinthians 3:5-9, ESV

What is underlying Paul’s view of our life here is that we are citizens of a heavenly city, which is our home. Our culture is not our home. It is God’s field, it is God’s building. We are here to be the means of harvest from God’s field, to be the means of the building up of Christ’s kingdom. If we are followers of Christ, we absolutely must view everything through this lens. We are not citizens of the earthly city, we are God’s subjects.

This raises two important questions: "Why are we here, and what should we do?" The answer to this is that we are to live and work within this earthly city of man because this is where find those who do not know God. On the one hand, we are citizens of God’s kingdom, but the implication of this is that we are put here to do God’s work. But part of this, evangelism, can only be done where the sinners are, and this is the earthly city. We are here because we are born citizens of the earthly city; we remain here until death because there are other citizens of the city of man who must be made citizens of God’s kingdom.

This is what Paul is writing about. He says that he and Apollos are both God’s fellow workers, and the people in Corinth, and everyone else, are God’s field, God’s building. One of the reasons that Paul wrote to the Corinthians was to correct their view of life and culture. He wanted them to realize that this is not our home, that this is not our permanent dwelling place.

So these are the things that I want you to keep in mind as we go through First Corinthians. Paul is correcting them in matters of practice, but he is also correcting them when it comes to their view of culture. If we want to faithfully live in the world and serve Jesus, we need to obey his commands because he is our prophet and priest, and ultimately, our king. A good summary of this can be found in Colossians 1:28: "Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ." We and the Corinthian church both need to be mindful that in all things we proclaim Christ as Lord and live accordingly.

Much thanks to the following individuals for informing what I said here:

• Mark Driscoll, for his exposition of the three offices of Jesus in Vintage Jesus.
• Al Mohler for his sermon “Preaching With The Culture In View” at Together for the Gospel 2006.
• John Calvin’s Commentary on Corinthians, graciously provided for public use on the Christian Classics Ethereal Library website.
• Arthur W. Pink’s commentary on Hebrews, Exposition of Hebrews (particularly chapter 3, where he comments on Hebrews 1:2). My understanding of the word for “world(s)” in Hebrews 1:2 came from here. You can read this chapter on my website.

As an American I think that I deserve so much, I deserve: great schools, financial help in a bad economy, health, good insurance, a life free of fear, low gas prices, social mobility, “The American Dream”, I deserve to be the master of my life. In actuality, I deserve far less. God would be totally just in condemning me. God does not owe me anything. If he destroyed me in his wrath it would merely be to the exaltation of his glorious justice. I am a sinner. Too often my actions seek to dethrone God to organize a cosmic coup where I seek to take his throne and rule myself and others. Yet God rich in mercy does not pour out his wrath on me for my sin. No, he poured out his wrath on his Son, killing Christ in my place. I deserve nothing and I have been given everything. So fundamentally, my lack of contentment shows a deficiency in my understanding of the gospel.

What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?

- Phill Crust, “The Grace of God in Good Sermons”