Month: October 2020

Week 44 2 Corinthians

In January I’d read about Moses so I was feeling pretty confident when I saw his name come up in chapter three. But Paul tricked me. He was talking about Moses’ law, not Moses. Talking about The Law changed everything.
For me law in the bible is a very sticky subject. It bogs me down mentally.
Of course one slick way of managing the law is to say it’s a mainly useless OT idea that never worked in practice and was only a stop-gap kind of wait-until-Jesus-arrives measure. So I can end up with an Out-With-the-Law and In-With-the-non-Law fix. Which is a pretty smooth Concept Reassessment technique.
I looked up Law in a word book. It’s used maybe 200 times in the OT and 220 times in the NT. I only checked a couple of dozen references but it seemed obvious that the word Law didn’t mean exactly the same thing all 420 times. Not by a long shot. Sometimes it was elastic enough that it seemed to have totally different meanings. Which complicates things. And so the solution of just dumping The Law has a certain appeal. The short-cut would save me the time of a) having to read through 420 references, and b) trying to figure how or if they fit.
If just dumping The Law gained me everything and lost me nothing then I’d wonder: why not?
But if it gains me a lot and loses me a lot then why?

Note: October 31 – 93.3% finished.

Week 44 1 Corinthians

Yesterday I read chapter twelve where the Spirit gave people special abilities when they believed in the Lord. It seemed pretty clear that: a) every person gets at least one gift, b) no one person has every single gift, and c) there’s no single gift that everyone gets universally.
But reading thirteen-fourteen today it sounds like there’s more to it.
For example I’m wondering why Paul said he wished everyone in Corinth: had the gift of speaking in tongues. And he also wished they: were all able to prophesy. For prophecy is a greater and more useful gift. I thought no single gift went to everyone. And it sounds like there’s a kind of gift hierarchy – some are better than others.
I’m wondering about Paul saying: desire the special abilities the Spirit gives, especially the gift of prophecy. Reading yesterday I thought the Spirit gave me the aptitude he wanted me to have…and it might not be exactly the one I want. Here it sounds like I can take a shot at a better or preferable gift (though it’s not definite I’ll get it).
Paul says that if a person can speak-in-tongues he should pray for the complimentary gift of translating spirit-speak into human language. The two go together so why not pray for both? So I’m wondering about getting extra gifts.
Anyway I went from sunny and clear to cloudy and overcast in about twenty-four hours.

Note: quotes from I Corinthians 14:5, 1, 13. And see 12:39-40.

Week 44 1 Corinthians

In chapter twelve Paul’s talking about getting a gift from the Spirit of God.
When I’m giving someone a gift I usually try to figure out what he himself actually wants. Not what I want.
But Paul gives the sense that the Spirit’s gift is a kind of enhanced capacity that helps me do something he wants done. Paul says when we believe in the Lord: a spiritual gift is given to each of us as a means of helping the entire church.
So it’s a means – a tool I can use – to benefit the church.
Technically I guess it shouldn’t matter to me what gift I get. But what if it does matter?
For example take the gift of Wise Advice. What happens if I get that aptitude but I don’t really want it? What if I want the Power to Heal the Sick instead? Well…from the sound of it I’m in a bit of a jam because Paul says: it is the one and only Holy Spirit who distributes these gifts. He alone decides which gift each person should have.
The Spirit doesn’t shop around for what he thinks I might like. He gives me what he wants me to have because the gift isn’t really for me anyway. It’s something I’m being given to pass on to the church. It’s for their benefit, not mine.

Note: quotes from I Corinthians 12:7 & 11 (NLT). Wise advice and healing are in 12:8-9.

Week 44 1 Corinthians

In August-September I was tracking how many times the OT was quoted or referred to in the gospels. There were quite a few. But I quit counting after John since it was pretty labour-intensive. So I admit that I’m guessing when I say that the OT is still being used quite a bit in the post-gospel NT (but I think it’s a good guess, better than a how-many-jelly-beans-in-the-jar guess).
Anyway a good example of the OT sneaking up on me is chapter ten. Paul talks about the Red Sea crossing, the pillar of cloud, manna, water from the rock, the gold calf, the bronze serpent, the Balaam story, and the complaint episodes.
If I had decided on January 1 to opt-out of the OT then not much of this paragraph makes sense to me.
Fortunately though it doesn’t really matter a whole lot since Paul is using OT-Israel here for illustration purposes only: all these events happened to them as examples for us. They were written down to warn us.
It turns out that Paul’s Big Point – which I can understand even if I bypassed the OT – is: if you think you are standing strong, be careful, for you, too, may fall into the same sin.
So I’m relieved that OT-Knowledge isn’t essential (although thinking about Paul’s Big Point I realize that I don’t feel as relieved as I’d like).

Note: quotes from I Corinthians 10:11-12 (NLT).

Week 44 1 Corinthians

The church in Corinth had some true-to-life un-churchly-like things going on.
One example was that a guy in the church did something wrong to another guy in the church – might have been anything: theft, fraud, embezzlement? – and now they’re going to battle it out in municipal court.
Paul talked about that conflict and gave a couple of pieces of advice. A pretty practical one was that other people in the church were perfectly capable of making a fair judgment call on this dispute. Why not deal with it in-house? Which made sense.
But then he said something that didn’t have much to do with practicality and didn’t make much common sense. He said that: to have such lawsuits at all is a real defeat for you. Why not just accept the injustice and leave it at that? Why not let yourselves be cheated?
Why not accept injustice, why not let yourself be cheated?
Crazy questions, a crazy and unrealistic idea.
While I sat thinking about it I remembered the Lord had said: don’t resist an evil person. Even if he slaps you in the face. Which is another crazy and unrealistic idea.
The church in Corinth was just doing the normal thing, the natural thing, the thing anybody would do, the way everybody was doing it.
Which I guess from what Paul said, was maybe where the problem began.

Note: quote from I Corinthians 6:7 (NLT); and the Sermon on the Mount Matthew 5:39-41

Week 44 1 Corinthians

In the first couple of chapters of Acts the church seemed to be so nice. The Ideal Church. But before long it started to look more like a Real Church (in search of the Ideal).
Same thing shows up right away in first Corinthians. Paul starts talking about quarrelling and disagreement in the church. The conflict was over ‘who’s pack do you belong to?’ It looked something like this:
Some Corinthians were loyal to Paul;
Some Corinthians were loyal to Apollos;
Some Corinthians were loyal to Peter;
Some Corinthians were loyal to Christ.
Segregated along party lines the church was perfectly positioned for an internal squabble.
This sounds like a totally contemporary situation.
For example:
I know a guy who went on a kind-of enlightenment-seeking pilgrimage to a big influential powerful aggressive church in California.
I know a guy who went on a kind-of enlightenment-seeking pilgrimage to a big influential powerful aggressive church in Australia.
If Guy #1 is now a California loyalist and Guy #2 is now an Australia loyalist they have a great opportunity to start sniping away at each other.
But Paul’s advice to Corinth then and Guy #1 – Guy #2 now would be: stop arguing among yourselves. Let there be real harmony so there won’t be divisions in the church. I plead with you to be of one mind, united in thought and purpose.
It’s a great, great bit of advice.
And it’s way, way easier to say than do.

Note: quote from I Corinthians 1:10 (NLT)

Week 44 Romans

Chapter sixteen is a postscript to the first fifteen.
Mostly it’s a list of people that Paul was greeting.
But Paul wasn’t greeting the first person on the list.
Phoebe was from the church in Cenchrea (I checked a bible map and saw that Cenchrea is near Corinth) and she would soon be travelling to Rome. So Paul was telling the Rome church: receive her in the Lord, as one who is worthy of high honor. Help her in every way you can, for she has helped many in their needs, including me.
As far as I know Phoebe is only mentioned this one time in the bible. She’s almost totally unknown. But what I do know is that there were people in need around her and Phoebe helped them.
Phoebe was a helper.
Four chapters ago Paul compared the church to a human body that had a bunch of different body parts that worked together. Every single person-part had something to do. Phoebe was one small part and her small function was to help people. That’s what she was suited to do, and she did exactly what she was good at.
By contrast Paul was obviously a point-of-the-spear guy. A key guy doing a big part that a key guy was suited for.
And Phoebe, doing her small part, helped him do his big.

Note: quotes from Romans 16:2 (NLT)

Week 43 Romans

The first eleven chapters of Romans were pretty theoretical, and I had trouble following some of Paul’s thinking.
But twelve-thirteen-fourteen-fifteen turn out to be pretty practical. Which isn’t the same as easy.
Chapter fourteen is one example of Paul recommending something pretty hands-on to the people in Rome.
His starting point is that everyone who believes in the Lord has some degree or level of faith. He calls it weaker-faith and stronger-faith (he doesn’t say it but I guess there are a lot more faith-strengths in-between). Since faith isn’t exactly the same strength in all of us an environment is created where we can start complaining and criticizing and arguing and pointing-fingers over our faith differences. Strong Faith hassles Weak Faith; Weak Faith gets self-defensive and yaps at Strong Faith. Like that.
Anyway the practical point Paul makes is that church wasn’t set up to be the place for sniping and badgering.
It’s natural for me to wonder: but what if the guy I’m criticizing is actually wrong?
Paul says that’s not your issue: each of us will have to give a personal account to God.
So I ask myself: then what am I supposed to do?
Paul says: don’t condemn each other anymore. Decide instead to live in such a way that you will not put an obstacle in another Christian’s path.
Which is pretty practical advice.
Even if it isn’t the same as easy.

Note: quotes from Romans 14:12-13 (NLT)

Week 43 Romans

Last December I decided to read the whole bible – OT & NT.
Lots of people prefer reading just the NT. Nothing much wrong with that.
But I spent last winter and spring in the OT and now that I’m reading Romans I’m glad I did. That NT-letter is OT-heavy.
I wondered how heavy so went back to do a quick survey of the first eleven chapters:
There are more than fifty OT quotations.
There are more than seventy references to OT law.
There are whole blocs of text written directly to Jewish people: 2:17-29, 3:1-20, chapter four is about Abraham, 5:12-21 (maybe), chapter seven is for people who know the OT law, most of nine-ten-eleven sound like they’re written to Jewish people.
Paul figures his readers know OT events and people: creation, Adam, Abraham, Sarah, Sodom-Gomorrah, Isaac, Rebekah, Jacob, Benjamin, Esau, the pharaoh, Moses, David, Isaiah, Hosea, Elijah & Mount Carmel are all named.
The point? Romans carries a lot of OT freight.
So if someone asked me what parts of Romans they could read that were pretty much OT-knowledge-free I would say only chapters five, six, and eight, plus bits-&-pieces. A person reading Romans is handicapped without any OT knowledge.

Personal note: Reading the OT helped me understand Romans better. How much better? A bit better – instead of being super-difficult to understand I’d rate Romans as just-plain-difficult. Added note: the numbers above are mine, meaning they’re pretty accurate but don’t take them to-the-bank.

Week 43 Romans

Because I’m a 21st-century Albertan I know I’m smarter than most 1st-century guys.
So a niggling question that occurs as I read Romans is how much of this letter did Paul’s not-too-bright audience understand (because halfway through it there’s quite a bit that I’m not getting)?
Here’s an example of one of Paul’s not-too-simple ideas. He’s talking about people who turn their back on the Lord’s truth. Paul says that even though they do: the truth about God is known to them instinctively. God has put this knowledge into their hearts.
Paul says there’s an instinctive, internal apprehension that people have about the Lord’s truth. Well yeah, you think…it’s easy enough to say that something that’s non-testable and invisible exists in my heart.
But Paul understands that. He goes on to say: from the time the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky and all that God made. They can clearly see his invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature. So Paul shifts from the airy-fairy instincts-of-the-heart to the actual tangible earth and sky. It sounds like Paul is saying that if you look at the rock-solid material world then those rock-solids can convey a couple of ideas about what the maker-of-rock-solids is like.
The material world is a kind of subtle Visiblizing Medium that tips me off about the invisible source it came from.

Note: quotes from Romans 1:19-20 (NLT)