God Centered Life

We as Christians will be better at advocating for the Bible, better at defending traditional values, and better at teaching the exclusivity of Christ if our rejoicing in truth is embedded in a 1 Corinthians 13 type of love.

Perhaps we should contrast 1 Corinthians 13 to the popular pagan cults of today: "If I speak on the celebrity circuit to thousands but do not have love, I am just the sound of paparazzi flashes going off, or a noisy blog, or a meaningless tweet." Paul teaches about the countercultural beauty of love.

Here Paul lists several spiritual gifts in a bit of a hierarchy. The key is the significance of the clarity of the gospel. The most important thing is that people understand it, so he lists the speaking gifts first. All of this needs to be understood in the context of love, submission to one another, and reverence for Christ.

We are a body with different members and all are necessary. But unlike in the world where we give special honor to the especially honorable, in the church we do the reverse. The counter cultural aspect of the Christian community is its willingness to honor those who lack honor.

Paul is addressing diversity in the Corinthian church. There were rich and poor, Jews and Greeks, slaves and freevery significant divisions within the Greco-Roman culture that were reflected in the church, and yet Paul calls them to unity in the midst of their diversity.

Living in the AD reality of Christ's death and resurrection means to live as sons of the heavenly Father with the desire to please him in every way and to have fellowship that is unbroken by the barriers that we construct between each other in our fallen state.

We need contentment and rejoicing in what gifts God has given us, rather than wishing we had something else. Make the most of what God has given you, and know that it's all going to fit together in a beautiful orchestra according to God's design and His tune.

People throughout history have come to this passage and looked for a precise definition as to what each of these spiritual gifts are. They very often come up with different ideas because it is the wrong question to ask of the passage.

We’re not just talking about spiritual gifts in this passage. Many people today want to be spiritual; they want to connect with God and they wonder what that's about. Paul explores the nature of true spirituality as defined by the Bible.

Here Paul addresses what it really means to be a spiritual person. How do we grasp hold of that and where do spiritual gifts fit into that? This becomes of great relevance and significance if we're wanting to become more spiritual people.