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16. Love and Edification in 1 Corinthians

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1 Corinthians 12:12-29; 13:1-13; 14:1-40

The Body Analogy

  • 1 Corinthians 12:12-14 The Christians in Corinth should think of themselves as one unity body.
  • Discord is like a festering disease in the body: “[I]f one were to run through the entire list of citizens, I believe he would not discover even two men in Tarsus who think alike, but on the contrary, just as with certain incurable and distressing diseases which are accustomed to pervade the whole body, exempting no member of it from their inroads, so this state of discord, this almost complete estrangement of one from another, has invaded your entire body politic.”1 (Dio Chrysostom, Discourse 34.20)
  • Factions are terrible and draining: “[T]hose cities are best inhabited which know how to think harmoniously. Everywhere faction is a terrible, disruptive thing, and like consumption. For having fastened itself to the body politic it drains off, sucks out, and depletes all its strength, and does not cease until it has entirely worn it away, using the sick themselves as a means for their own destruction.”2
    • (Aristides, Oration 23.31)
  • Dale Martin: “Within “deliberative” rhetoric—that is, rhetoric urging a political body toward some course of action—a popular topic was concord, or unity. Indeed, homonoia (“concord”) speeches, as they were known in Greek (the Latin was concordia), became practically a genre unto themselves, with predictable patterns, set clichés and examples, and an identifiable ideology. …The ideological purpose of homonoia speeches was to mitigate conflict by reaffirming and solidifying the hierarchy of society. To this end, certain topoi (set examples) recur with tiresome regularity. A favorite device is to show how the political hierarchy of the city mirrors the harmonious hierarchy of the cosmos. The cosmos works well because each cosmic entity knows its place in the cosmic body.”3

    • Body Parts Together

    • 1 Corinthians 12:14-27 Each of the body parts is important. Those with less native honor should be clothed with greater honor.
    • The Asclepius Temple hung body parts from its walls and ceiling.
    • Murphy-O’Connor: “Paul would have seen the dismembered limbs displayed in the Asclepion as symbols of everything that Christians should not be: dead, divided, unloving, and unloved. From this it would have been an easy step to the contrasting image of the whole body in which the distinctive identity of each of the members is rooted in a shared life.”4

      • Speaking in Tongues as a Status Indicator

      • They were using the gifts of the spirit to outdo one another
      • Dale Martin: “It seems clear that for both Paul and the Strong at Corinth, speaking in tongues is a high-status activity, and its status significance, as we will see, is precisely what, in Paul’s opinion, makes it problematic in the Corinthian church. …[M]any modern scholars have assumed, like most modern intellectuals, that speaking in tongues is an activity of uneducated, marginal people.”5
      • Dale Martin: “In 13:4 …Paul again uses the term “puffed up,” suggesting that it is the “wise” or “strong” in Corinth who value—too much, in Paul’s opinion—both knowledge and the esoteric language of the angels. He himself normally places a high-status valuation on speaking in tongues. He claims the gift for himself, even going so far as to claim a greater share of it than any of the Corinthians (14:18). In 14:2 Paul says that the person who speaks in tongues speaks not to human beings but to God. “For no one hears, but in the spirit [pneuma] he speaks mysteries.” Glossolalia is divine discourse; it deals in “mysteries,” which for Paul is a highly valued epistemological category.6
      • Three times Paul listed various spirit activities (1 Cor 12:8-10, 28, 29). In each case he puts tongues last or second to last.
      • Dale Martin: “[W]e must recognize that those who, on the surface, occupy positions of lower status are actually more essential than those of higher status and therefore should be accorded more honor. …The lower is made higher, and the higher lower. …Paul first accepts the high status of glossolalia as a given and then questions the expected attribution of honor to those of high status. Greater honor, he says, should be given to those normally considered to be low status. …To us, this sounds like simple, just equality. But to a person of ancient times imbued with upper-class ideology, to say that a slave and a master should work in tandem or that a patron should not expect his client to give way to him would have sounded revolutionary.”7

        • Love as the Key to Manifesting the Spirit in the Assembly

        • 1 Corinthians 13:1-3 The Greeks and Romans had lots of divine speech, but nowhere do we read about love as a consideration. Paul introduced something that must have felt brand new. Your high-status divine speech is nothing if you don’t do it in love.
        • 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 Taking the opposites, we get impatient, unkind, envious, boastful, arrogant, rude, insistent, irritable, resentful, rejoicing in wrongdoing, unwilling to bear anything, believe anything, have hope, or endure. This sounds like a description of the Corinthian Christians’ behavior. Paul challenged them to behave differently, especially when they gather.
        • 1 Corinthians 13:8-13 Paul urged humility. Since we only know in part, we should be open to correction.

          • Practical Instruction for Spirit Manifestations in the Assembly

          • 1 Corinthians 14:1-5 The key term for this chapter is “building up.” Does speaking in tongues build others up? What about prophecy?
          • 1 Corinthians 14:6-12 Uninterpreted tongues do not build others up.
          • 1 Corinthians 14:13-20 The same person who speaks in tongues can interpret. In this way others will be built up. Prophecy is preferred.
          • 1 Corinthians 14:21-25 Tongues were a sign of judgment.
            • Anthony Thiselton: “[T]ongue-speaking in public worship is inappropriate in the first place because it places many of God’s own people in the situation of feeling like foreigners in a foreign land and “not at home” in their own home; (ii) second, tongue-speaking…will not bring the message of the gospel of Christ home to unbelievers. …Unbelievers do not produce prophetic speech which communicates gospel truth. Hence on one side prophetic speech characterizes the believing church at worship; tongues, on the other side, constitute negative signs (at least in public and in their effect) generating barriers and alienation inappropriate for believers. …Paul portrays speaking in tongues as a sign which inexpert unbelievers (rightly or wrongly) associate with, and interpret as, pagan μανιά, and thereby are pushed yet further away into judgment. On the other hand, prophetic speech brings genuine conviction (ἔλγχος) of truth, and hence faith.”8
            • Thomas Schreiner: “Judgment, of course, is not the only function of tongues since interpreted tongues edify the church (14:5).”9
            • Tongues also build up the speaker (14:4) and give God praise and thanks (14:15-17).
            • 1 Corinthians 14:26-33 Here Paul limited the number of tongues speakers and prophets to two or three each. In v27, someone other than the speaker interprets the tongue. Putting this together with v13, we see that either the same person can interpret or another can. Prophesying Christians can control when to stop, and they can resist the urge to start.
            • 1 Corinthians 14:34-36 We covered these verses in session 12 “Women in 1 Corinthians”.
            • 1 Corinthians 14:37-40 Paul left them with three final instructions: (1) strive to prophesy, (2) do not forbid speaking in tongues, (3) everything is to be done decently and in order.

              • Application

              • Anthony Thiselton: “Paul now makes utterly explicit what had lain implicitly in his earlier rhetoric. Not only does the rhetoric of the body reassure those with supposedly “inferior” or “dispensable” gifts that they do indeed belong fully to the body as essential limbs and organs, but this rhetoric now explicitly rebukes those who think that they and their “superior” gifts are self-sufficient for the whole body, or that others are scarcely “authentic” parts of the body, as they themselves are. It is hardly mere speculation to imagine that those who perceived themselves as possessing the “high-status” gifts of knowledge and wisdom, or of the power to heal or to speak in tongues, could be tempted to think of themselves as the inner circle on whom the identity and function of the church really depended. In modern times, the tendency to select either one or more of the “gifts” in 12:8–10, or to interpret the baptism by or in the Spirit in 12:13 as the sign of “advanced” status, comes perilously near to the Corinthian heresy which Paul explicitly attacks.”10
              • Don’t think you’re better than others because you go to a continuationist church that makes time for divine speech on Sundays. That doesn’t make us advanced or superior to other Christians. Even so, the opposite problem is quite prevalent in Christianity today.
              • N. T. Wright: “Paul’s overriding concern…is for order, peace and mutual upbuilding when the congregation comes together for worship, rather than for chaos, interruption and dissension. Of course, there are many churches today where there is so much order and peace that Paul might have wondered if everyone had gone to sleep.”11
                • Bibliography

                Aristides, Publius Aelius. Orations 27-53. Translated by Charles A. Behr. Vol. 2. Leiden: Brill, 1981.

                Chrysostom, Dio. Discourses 31-36. Translated by Lam J. W. Cohoon. Vol. 3. Loeb Classical Library, edited by T. E. Page. London, England: William Heinemann, 1940.

                Martin, Dale B. The Corinthian Body. New Haven, CT: Yale University, 1995.

                Murphy-O’Connor, Jerome. St. Paul’s Corinth: Texts and Archeology. 3rd ed. Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 2002.

                Schreiner, Thomas R. 1 Corinthians. Vol. 7. Tyndale New Testament Commentaries, edited by Eckhard J. Schnabel. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2018.

                Thiselton, Anthony C. The First Epistle to the Corinthians: A Commentary on the Greek Text. Vol. 13. New International Greek Testament Commentary. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000.

                Wright, N. T. Paul for Everyone: 1 Corinthians. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011.

                1. Dio Chrysostom, Discourses 31-36, trans. Lam J. W. Cohoon, vol. 3, Loeb Classical Library, ed. T. E. Page (London, England: William Heinemann, 1940), 355-7.
                2. Publius Aelius Aristides, Orations 27-53, trans. Charles A. Behr, vol. 2 (Leiden: Brill, 1981), 32.
                3. Dale B. Martin, The Corinthian Body (New Haven, CT: Yale University, 1995), 40.
                4. Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, St. Paul’s Corinth: Texts and Archeology, 3rd ed. (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 2002), 190-1.
                5. Martin, 87-8.
                6. Martin, 87.
                7. Martin, 95-6, 101-2.
                8. Anthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians: A Commentary on the Greek Text, vol. 13, New International Greek Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000), 1121-23, 26.
                9. Thomas R. Schreiner, 1 Corinthians, vol. 7, Tyndale New Testament Commentaries, ed. Eckhard J. Schnabel (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2018), 291.
                10. Thiselton, 1005.
                11. N. T. Wright, Paul for Everyone: 1 Corinthians (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 200.
                The post 16. Love and Edification in 1 Corinthians first appeared on Living Hope.
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