Henry: Welcome To Immerse: The Daily Bible Reading Experience.
Day 21.
Immersed in First Corinthians.
The people in the church at Corinth, a Greek city, renowned
for its immorality were struggling.
They were grateful to Paul for introducing them to Jesus, but
now they were convinced they had moved beyond Paul in some key ways.
The Corinthian community was deeply influenced by the Greco-Roman
religious culture around them.
Many of their ideas came from this cultural environment, which
they were trying to integrate with their new Christian faith.
One set of ideas, supposed a sharp divide between physical and spiritual
realities, including the body and soul.
It was thought that physical realities like the body were
inherently evil, while spiritual realities like the soul were good.
In this heresy, the body and what was done in the body would've
been considered insignificant.
Only the soul was important.
This view so different from the Bibles went back many centuries.
To the philosopher Plato.
It was still highly influential as evidenced in a religious movement known
as gnosticism, which would become a major adversary to the early church.
Paul wrote this letter shortly after AD 50.
After having stayed in Corinth for a year and a half, Paul had moved on
to Ephesus, just across the a gnc.
The Corinthians took advantage of the short distance corresponding with Paul
about the problems facing their church.
So what was going on in Corinth?
A lot.
It turns out they seemed to think that being spiritual meant
being free from the bodies that trapped their spiritual selves.
This led them to ask questions about marriage and sexual relations, including
whether people should even bother to get married and have children.
On another extreme, some boldly argued that certain actions done with
the body had no effect on the soul.
This included things like eating food sacrifice to idols, and visiting
prostitutes in pagan temples.
Paul's teaching about the resurrection also raised questions for them.
What was the point of the resurrection?
Where the soul would return to the body if the physical body
wasn't important or even good?
And besides, how would that work and what would those bodies be like?
The letter from the Corinthian believers to Paul provided him with
plenty of questions to answer, but Paul had also learned from some friends
who had visited Corinth that even more things were happening there.
A man in the church was having sexual relations with his stepmother.
The church had also divided into factions based on which famous teacher they liked
Most, Paul, Peter or Apollos, the weekly worship gatherings were full of disorder,
and believers with disputes were even taking one another to public court.
In all, Paul would have to address 12 different problems in his letter.
We don't have the letter the Corinthians sent to Paul.
But we do have this lengthy reply now known as First Corinthians.
This was not the first letter Paul wrote to them.
In this letter, he mentions an earlier one that has not survived even with
all their questions and problems.
Paul addresses the Corinthian believers as God's own holy people and gives thanks
for them in the main body of his letter.
He addresses all their questions as well as his own concerns, one by one.
While he writes about many different topics in his reply to the
Corinthians, a basic correction is inherent in many of Paul's responses.
For example, being spiritual doesn't mean being freed from the body.
Instead, it means living in the human body with a true appreciation
that it is a gift from God.
Our bodies were made for the Lord, and the Lord cares about our bodies.
Paul insists.
Don't you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who lives
in you and was given to you by God, so you must honor God with your body.
Paul's stunning conclusion about the importance of the resurrection
is crucial, not only for the Corinthians, but also for us today.
The good news about Jesus is built on the teaching of God's victory over
death Without the resurrection of Jesus, the faith of God's people is useless.
And they are still trapped by sin and its deadly consequences, but with it
believers know that God's renewal of the world has already begun in Jesus,
and that they will experience it fully in resurrected bodies at his return.
The first letter to the Corinthians,
this letter is from Paul.
Chosen by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus.
And from our brothers Shanise, I'm writing to God's church in Corinth
to you who have been called by God to be his own holy people.
He made you holy by means of Christ Jesus, just as he did for all people everywhere
who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord, and ours may God
our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Give you grace and peace.
I always thank my God for you and for the gracious gifts he has given you now that
you belong to Christ Jesus through him, God has enriched your church in every
way with all of your eloquent words and all of your knowledge, this confirms that
what I told you about Christ is true.
Now you have every spiritual gift you need as you eagerly wait for
the return of our Lord Jesus Christ.
He will keep you strong to the end so that you will be free from all
blame on the day when our Lord Jesus Christ returns God will do this.
For He is faithful to do what He says, and he has invited you into partnership
with his son, Jesus Christ, our Lord.
I appeal to you dear brothers and sisters, by the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ,
to live in harmony with each other.
Let there be no divisions in the church, rather be of one mind
united in thought and purpose.
For some members of Chloe's household have told me about your quarrels.
My dear brothers and sisters.
Some of you are saying, I'm a follower of Paul.
Others are saying I follow Apollos, or I follow Peter, or I follow Only Christ.
Has Christ been divided into factions?
I.
Was I Paul crucified for you?
Were any of you baptized in the name of Paul?
Of course not.
I thank God that I did not baptize any of you except Crispus and Gaius.
For now, no one can say that they were baptized in my name.
Oh, yes.
I also baptized the household of STIs, but I don't remember baptizing anyone else.
For Christ didn't send me to baptize, but to preach the good news and not
with clever speech for fear that the cross of Christ would lose its power.
The message of the cross is foolish to those who are headed for destruction,
but we who are being saved know it is the very power of God.
As the scriptures say, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and discard
the intelligence of the intelligent.
So where does this leave the philosophers, the scholars, and
the world's brilliant debaters?
God has made the wisdom of this world look foolish since God, in his wisdom, saw to
it that the world would never know him.
Through human wisdom, he has used our foolish preaching to save those
who believe it is foolish to the Jews who ask for signs from heaven,
and it is foolish to the Greeks.
Who seek human wisdom.
So when we preach that Christ was crucified, the Jews are offended and
the Gentiles say it's all nonsense.
But to those called by God to salvation, both Jews and Gentiles, Christ is the
power of God and the wisdom of God.
This foolish plan of God is wiser than the wisest of human plans,
and God's weakness is stronger than the greatest of human strength.
Remember, dear brothers and sisters, that few of you were wise
in the world's eyes or powerful or wealthy when God called you.
Instead, God chose things the world considers foolish in order to shame
those who think they are wise and he chose things that are powerless
to shame those who are powerful.
God chose things despised by the world.
Things counted as nothing at all.
And use them to bring to nothing what the world considers important.
As a result, no one can ever boast in the presence of God.
God has united you with Christ Jesus.
For our benefit, God made him to be wisdom itself.
Christ made us right with God.
He made us pure and holy, and he freed us from sin.
Therefore, as the scriptures say, if you want to boast, Boast only about the Lord.
When I first came to you, dear brothers and sisters, I didn't use lofty words and
impressive wisdom to tell you God's secret plan for I decided that while I was with
you, I would forget everything except Jesus Christ, the one who was crucified.
I came to you in weakness, timid, and trembling, and my message
and my preaching were very plain.
Rather than using clever and persuasive speeches, I relied only
on the power of the Holy Spirit.
I did this so you would trust not in human wisdom, but in the power of God.
Yet when I am among mature believers, I do speak with words of wisdom, but
not the kind of wisdom that belongs to this world or to the rulers of
this world who are soon forgotten.
No, the wisdom we speak of.
Is the mystery of God, his plan that was previously hidden, even
though he made it for our ultimate glory before the world began.
But the rulers of this world have not understood it.
If they had, they would not have crucified our glorious Lord.
That is what the scriptures mean when they say no eye has seen, no ear has
heard, and no mind has imagined what God has prepared for those who love him.
But it was to us that God revealed these things by his spirit, for
His spirit, searches out everything and shows us God's deep secrets.
No one can know a person's thoughts except that person's own
spirit, and no one can know God's thoughts except God's own spirit.
And we have received God's spirit, not the world spirit.
So we can know the wonderful things God has freely given us.
When we tell you these things, we do not use words that come from human wisdom.
Instead, we speak words given to us by the spirit, using the spirit's
words to explain spiritual truths.
But people who aren't spiritual can't receive these truths from God's spirit.
It all sounds foolish to them and they can't understand it for
only those who are spiritual can understand what the spirit means.
Those who are spiritual can evaluate all things.
But they themselves cannot be evaluated by others for who can know the Lord's
thoughts, who knows enough to teach him, but we understand these things
for we have the mind of Christ.
This concludes today's immerse reading experience.
Thank you for joining us.