1 Corinthians "Depart From Sin and Live Godly"
Each book in the Bible gently guides God's people into a more intimate relationship with their Creator, as He knows must occur, for His people to receive Him in the depth of the relationship that He purchased for them. Each day we are covering, in sequential order, one of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament and expecting people’s lives to change through the revelation of His leading in this way.
Today is the seventh day of the series, and the book is, 1 Corinthians, the seventh book in the New Testament as it appears in our Bible. 1 Corinthians is a book written to believers in a major financial center of their time, who were Spirit-filled baby Christians and were sinning worse than the non-believers. The focus of this letter that Paul wrote to these people was to get properly focused and within God’s guidance.
The first thing I’m going to point out in this book is a challenge a lot of people have today in the one true body of Christ that truly stands apart from the world. Paul wrote, “Now this I say, that every one of you saith, I am of Paul; and I of Apollos; and I of Cephas; and I of Christ. Is Christ divided?” There are many more divisions in the Body of Christ today than there were then and a lot of people cannot stand united in the Body because of it; however, we can be united through the same principle that Paul taught the people of Corinth, “For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified.” This boldly uniting statement should be used from all pulpits to foster love and understanding of our Body.
The next thing that Paul did was to tell the people how to look for the wisdom of God, and it was as we covered in previous blogs, by the revelation of the Spirit of God. People in their time were seeking for physical, emotional, and spiritual enlightenment just like many are seeking for today, and the only way any of them or the people in our time will find true wisdom to attain the proper desires and focus of receiving the gifts from God is to focus on Him and have the wisdom He freely gives.
Paul continues with, “And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ.”; which, leads us into the rest of the focus of this letter of correction to this group of believers. Paul tells the people, Christ is the only foundation, you are God’s temple, the wisdom of the world is foolishness to God, we are servants, not to be puffed up with pride, and to be followers of himself warning them of other teachers.
Paul then corrects them even more sternly by rebuking them for committing fornication and telling them to expel the ones who are committing it so they may learn not to do things like that, and how to accept being wronged by fellow Christians instead of suing them in front of non-believers. Paul continues by instructing them how to possess their bodies in a wholesome way sexually in marriage, and to live according to their calling.
Paul talks about how God’s ministers are worthy to receive wages, but he had not forced it on any of them, that he was a servant and tried to be relatable to all men, but people who are attempting to win a competition must follow the rules, and our competition is to receive the prize of eternal life.
Paul then talks about how most of the Israelites started through the path of entering the Promised Land but were overtaken in the wilderness after they were brought out of the Egyptian’s bondage, and how this is potentially a portrait of people’s journeys if they did not stay focused on God. He continues by telling them to flee from idolatry, do all things to the glory of God, to be followers of him as he is of Christ, how to observe the Lord’s Supper, and how the diversity of Spiritual Gifts are all to benefit the Body of Christ and these gifts are all from the same source and equally important.
Paul now clarifies the utmost importance of love above all these other gifts and functions in the Body of Christ, what love is, and how it functions. The last functional instructions of the Body of Christ that Paul gave to the Corinthians is on speaking in tongues, prophesying, and orderly worship.
Paul then tells them about the resurrection of Christ and how it ensures their resurrection, the order of the resurrection of the saints, and about the resurrected body; then, he challenges and mocks death. The freedom from the fear of death that the rest of world fears is a fundamental key to the freedom that changes people’s lives experiences here on Earth.
Paul concludes his letter by instructing the people to set aside funds on the first day of the week for the ministry, his plans to come to them, and to let people who do not love the Lord to be “Anathema Maranatha.”; which is to be put to death by the coming of the Lord.
God does not play games with His words through Paul, and neither does He in our lives today. One of the main takeaways I’d like to place emphasis on today is, “Even if a person has been born again and Spirit filled, he can live a life that is not honoring to the One who recreated him, and although a person has started the Journey it does not necessarily mean he will get to enter “The Promised Land.” Paul takes the people in Corinth through the first stages of the process of growing in Christ, and it is the same process people get to experience today.
The examples in this blog are only a limited sample of the deepening relational revelation described through the letter to the Corinthians which display God’s leading and guiding His people through their lives by His practical instructions in His Spirit filled people’s lives
The intent of the blog is to demonstrate the difference in the revelation that God gives to His people as they intently follow Him and focus on what He has told them through their individual lives and the revelation they’ve received through the Holy Spirit and His Holy Bible.
