Daily Liturgy and Scripture

Life in Christ is shared with both the Spirit and our brothers and sisters. This isn't a "me and Jesus vs. the world" kind of thing. Not only are we learning to be more like Jesus, we are learning how to live with one another. This requires mistakes, and it also requires grace and forgiveness. People are not Jesus, we are the faulty parts of his body in this advance effort to bring that Kingdom to earth in small ways.

Paul is finishing his first letter to the Corinthians, and it's all about unity. He gives extra attention to the topics of supporting one another and the Jerusalem church, being loving and affectionate toward another, commending those who have been faithful co-laborers. These were the pillars of the first churches, and the should remain at the forefront today.

Something as wild as resurrection bodies might be an easy fixation to get hung up on, but Paul cautions against it. While we are part of that future alongside our Savior, our current bodies still matter. Bearing God's image in our physical bodies and bearing the resurrection image in our resurrection bodies are both creations of God, and neither should be diminished.

The resurrection is everything. Not only because it proves Jesus as God, but also because it is our future. It is foundational to the believe in what Jesus came to do, and that is the thing that makes the Kingdom of Jesus truly unique: it will never end.

Continuing the conversation about speaking in tongues, Paul now turns generally for the need to maintain an orderly worship. There are a lot of pieces in this portion of the letter that, once again, could have benefitted from our knowing what their questions had been. In general, though, the point is to remember that God is the object of worship, and not us.

Gifts of the Spirit aren't just for show, they're for the building up of the church. Speaking in tongues is used here by Paul to show that it's important to keep that focus, and bring one's spiritual family along instead of going on like a lone wolf spiritual giant.

This famous passage from 1 Corinthians about love is often quoted in sermons and at weddings. While love is certainly the foundation of a marriage, that is not really what Paul is talking about here. In previous chapters, he has been talking about a new kind of community, and the building of the body of Christ. Just prior to this, he mentioned a list of gifts from the Spirit. Now, he is explicit about the thing which should come before those gifts: love. God is love, and the Spirit is God. Any gift of the Spirit must be grounded in that reality.

It's difficult to be part of a group where there are differences. Wouldn't it be easier if we were all the same? Not so in the body of Christ. There are different gifts given by the Spirit, so being aware of the Spirit's working in us is critical. If we don't know our part, we might find ourselves trying to use our eyeballs to walk!

There is a LOT of cultural context going on in this verse, but perhaps a good gist might be this: when at worship, the point is not ourselves, but Christ. This includes not putting the emphasis on ourselves in dress and in the Lord's Supper. Paul remembers the liturgy of that meal, a sacrament left to us by Christ himself, to remember his sacrifice and our connection to God. We are also connected to one another when we share that communion, but the focus is still Christ.

Paul comes back to his point about eating meat sacrificed to idols. Not only does he want to encourage the believers to avoid participation in demonic ceremonies, he also wants them to lead others in a way that ends in Christ instead of in idolatry. Not just because they are being observed by others, but also because God's glory should be their objective.