Bonus Content from May 26, 2024
bONUS CONTENT
5.26.24
1 Corinthians 16
If you’ve been following, you know North Sub is running a deficit now for the first time after four years or so of significant year-end surpluses. Giving is up a little year-over-year, but still short of our budgeted giving, which was increased a full 9% year-over-year.
During this past Sunday’s sermon, I asked the congregation apart from that to consider in prayer whether this is a time to step out in faith and adjust our giving in obedience to what God wants for us, choosing to live on whatever’s left. I’m confident that if we all prayerfully consider that, God will take care of our church’s deficit. In fact, there are some ministry possibilities I’m excited to dream about that might be available to us if we’re able to grow our giving budget over the next few years!
That said, there’s more to 1 Corinthians 16 than just the first four verses where we spent our time on Sunday. Here are eight quick summary notes on the rest of this important chapter that I didn’t have time to include on Sunday.
On Making Plans [5-7]: There’s nothing wrong with expressing wishes for what our plans will be! But you see: Paul holds those loosely, looking to the Lord for direction. And in fact, we learn elsewhere that these plans of Paul’s will end up needing to be changed. He was able to do so because he had subordinated his plans to God’s plans.
On Effective Ministry [8-9]: We so often think that the way we’ll know we’re effective in a particular place is that everybody will love us. But most effective ministry is actually like this: it’s accompanied by opposition, even fierce opposition.
On Gentle Ministers [10-11]: Corinth was a little like the North Shore in the sense that there was a little bit of an elitist attitude, like: “Impress us! Grab the attention of the room! Compel us with your charisma!” When a Timothy comes along (kind of humble, unassuming, meek), that kind of pastor can get eaten alive in a happening, high-octane place like Corinth. Paul says, “Adjust your vision. Let God help you see a Timothy the way God sees a Timothy.”
On Tribalism [12]: This verse doesn’t stand out unless you remember chapter 1. Remember what we saw there: the Corinthian Christians saw Paul and Apollos as representatives of different camps, and they were fighting over which of the pastors was superior. Paul told them at the beginning of the letter to knock it off, and now he shows that he’s serious by calling Apollos “brother” and urging him to visit. Now think about pastors and churches in this area that we’d consider to be from other “tribes.” Do we speak in a similarly warm way about those fellow Christians?
On Manliness [13]: The word translated “be courageous” here is actually more precisely translated “act like men.” In our age of confusion about gender differences and gender roles, we’ve seen some helpful instruction on gender in this letter already. But this quick instruction telling the whole church (men and women) to “act like men” simultaneously guards us against two ditches.
The ditch on one side is: “It’s sexist to associate men with strength. There’s nothing uniquely valuable in the strength men have to offer; in fact, that sort of emphasis is toxic.” Not so: here Paul echoes the frequent Old Testament injunction rooted in male strength.
But the other ditch over here is: “Strength is exclusively the domain of masculinity.” That’s not right, either, because Paul’s instructing the whole church (men and women) to “act like men,” namely to exercise courage in their walk with Jesus. Our sons and daughters and wives and mothers and grandmothers in our congregation are all called to be courageous, to walk with the Lord with an unwavering strength that comes from him.
In other words, Paul (a) points us down the path of recognizing male and female distinctiveness while (b) acknowledging that there is a great deal of commonality when it comes to walking with Jesus as either a man or woman of God.
On Holy Kisses [20]: We may assume, “Oh that’s how people used to greet each other back then,” but in all our historical records from this time, there’s actually no evidence unrelated people were greeting each other with kisses in the Roman Empire. That was a greeting reserved for family members! Which means that Christians were showing up to church and greeting each other with the warmth of a family Thanksgiving dinner, not like businesspeople showing up for a client meeting.
On the Writing of Scripture [21]: biblical writers often dictated their writing to scribes, which some have used to try to discredit the authority of scripture. But it’s not some kind of secret thing – Paul puts pen to this in his own hand as his stamp of approval on what’s been written.
On Judgment and Grace [22-24]: strong words – a curse! Followed by “Lord, come!” And he will come, to judge and to save. On that day, everything will be brought to light and will be sorted.
In all, this chapter is dripping with situation-specific references that remind us that these are real people in real places. 1 Corinthians is a letter for us, but as one pastor clarified, it’s not a letter to us. God cares enough about the earthy, nitty-gritty things of life to include all of this in scripture! And these closing personal notes teach us about love in ways that chapter 13 can’t by itself.