Which spiritual gift is the best one? We’re not meant to ask that, right?

Jesus is the ultimate treasure. It is worth giving every other treasure to have him.

Chris explores the opening passage from Ephesians 1 where Paul encourages his hearers that our salvation be ‘to the praise of His glory’, addressing our common tendency to make our worship of God more about us than we realise and how that can happen so easily.”

In our culture everyone believes in love. The Beatles declared that ‘all you need is love’. Everyone knows love’s importance and lasting value. And Paul declares that love lasts forever, it never ends. This week we take a look at what love really is, and how only God guarantees that it never fails. Because God is love He promises His people that one day we will be given access to a face-to-face relationship with Him. An intimate, close-up experience of the glory of God that even Moses could only dream of in Exodus 33. Through Jesus we have access to the face of God. A face that is the answer to our every longing and desire, the face that is the answer to every hope we’ve ever had.

This week we come to, arguably, the most famous chapter in the New Testament. Often taken out of context this is Paul’s appeal to the Corinthians to see love as their greatest aim, not the unbridled use of their spiritual gifts. In this chapter Paul paints a beautifully poetic picture of agape love. Not just emotion or feeling but action as well. It points to God’s love that is both patient and kind. God’s love that does not insist on its own way. And ultimately God’s love for those (us) who don’t deserve it. We are called to love like this. God is calling us as a church to make love our greatest priority. To audit every area of our lives in the belief that without love we gain nothing.

Following on from last week’s message, Paul wants the Corinthians to know they are the church he is talking about. They are Christ’s body and God has appointed a variety of individuals, supernatural gifts and acts of service that the body might be built up and cared for. When we know that all our gifts and service are God appointed it keeps us from discouragement. It helps us remember that all we have is by grace. We need one another and we ourselves are needed. Even the most ordinary and mundane acts of service are precious to Him. The church in Corinth needed, and we need, this foundation, to become the church and the people God is calling us to be.

The Corinthian church is deeply divided and these divisions are affecting their worship. Paul takes the opportunity in this passage to step aside from speaking about their worship to address the deeper issues under the surface.

Paul is addressing the church in Corinth, where they were in danger of prioritising one or two ‘special’ gifts like speaking in tongues over all the others and were making much of themselves in the process. But Paul wants them (and us) to know, that it’s God who gives gifts to His Church. That He has a great variety of gifts that he loves to bestow upon His people. And we need them all. It’s the Holy Spirit’s joy to distribute gifts liberally as He sees fit. All for God’s glory and for the common good. We are reminded that for King’s Church to be the fully thriving community we want to be, we need to make space for all the gifts!

We start our new worship series in the book 1 Corinthians by coming back to the heart of worship. Our confession is that ‘Jesus is Lord’. And this is a work of the Holy Spirit. In church life it is easy to get distracted by many things, but the apostle Paul does not want us to be uninformed. True spirituality is built on the foundation of Christ Jesus being Lord of all!

We take a look at the type of church God is calling King’s Church to be. Reflecting on our journey so far and looking ahead to how we might play our part in reaching a city of over 1.3m people for Jesus. We are encouraged to look at the early church. A group of 120 disciples huddling in an upper room are transformed when the power of the Holy Spirit comes upon them. They are transformed, by the power of God, into being His witnesses, and He wants to do the same with us. We believe that Jesus has not finished His work. And He is calling us to play our part spreading His Good News to the people of Birmingham and beyond.