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Post by Admin on Mar 29, 2024 12:49:06 GMT -5
Fourthly, love doesn’t act unbecomingly (13:5a). Paul’s verb is sometimes translated rude, but this term – especially in its popular American usage – doesn’t do justice to the sense of the Greek. The verb refers to conduct which is inappropriate or unseemly, but in a way which incurs shame. This shamefulness can be a matter of sensibility (cf. 7:36, 12:23), but it can also be inherent to the behavior or conduct itself. It is important to recognize this distinction. A particular behavior, action or response can be inappropriate in a certain circumstance, but without being inherently wrong or shameful. So, for instance, attending a formal, black tie dinner dressed in beach attire is unseemly, but it isn’t intrinsically disgraceful. Thus shamefulness can be intrinsic or implied: Something can be regarded as shameful based on personal, cultural or even human sensibilities (ref. again 12:23); other things are shameful in themselves. These observations show that Paul’s term encompasses a broad range of meaning/application, but a couple of considerations are helpful in determining its meaning in this particular context:
- First and most importantly, Paul was speaking about an impropriety which is contrary to love – something that love absolutely does not do. This points toward actions or behaviors which demean, shame or harm others or which bring shame upon oneself because they transgress the law of love – love for God, other people, and even oneself (rightly understood). And because this impropriety is a violation of love, it includes those things which are regarded as unbecoming and shameful and not merely what is inherently so. Even if a conduct isn’t wrong in itself, if it stumbles or in any way harms another person (or oneself), it is contrary to love and therefore improper. Paul has already stressed this truth in the instance of Christian freedom: Eating “idol meats” isn’t inherently sinful or shameful, but it is if it violates the obligation of love (8:1-9:27).
- Secondly, Paul provided his instruction in view of the Corinthian situation and abuses. The Corinthians were conducting themselves shamefully, not so much in terms of immoral conduct as unloving conduct. They were acting out of spiritual pride and so didn’t have any sense of shame; if anything, they were congratulating themselves on their mature spirituality (ref. again 4:1-21, 5:1-8, 6:1-8, 7:10-24, 8:1-13). Paul’s goal here, as elsewhere, was to expose and address the underlying problem, namely the Corinthians’ natural-mindedness and consequent lack of love. Thus Paul’s meaning may be summarized in this way: Any action or conduct which violates love by contradicting or otherwise undermining faith, godliness, edification or unity is unseemly and shameful, even if it isn’t inherently wrong. Disrupting the Church’s order, harmony and peace or hurting a brother through one’s mature understanding or liberty is just as unbecoming and disgraceful as engaging in immoral acts (cf. 8:1-13, 10:31-33, 11:1-14, 20-22).
Fifthly, and closely related to the previous concern, love doesn’t seek its own (13:5b). Here as well some English renderings are less than adequate, if not even somewhat misleading. So, for instance, the English Standard Version (ESV) renders Paul’s verb as love “not insisting upon its own way.” This rendering connotes a kind of petulance or childish selfishness which love refuses to engage in. The implication, then, is that love moves a person to yield to others in decisions and choices and not demand that everything go his own way. But Paul’s meaning is much more subtle and encompassing than that. Paul wasn’t referring to a willingness to yield and let others have their way; indeed, such deference can be (and often is) an instance of the very thing Paul was denouncing as contrary to love. He was speaking of a quality whereby a person’s thinking, orientation and exertions are not preoccupied with or driven by things, matters, concerns or interests pertaining to himself. The issue here is mindset, not actions as such: The person living a life of love is not “self-seeking” in that he regards and interacts with the things pertaining to himself (NAS, “his own”) through love’s perspective and orientation – through the mind of Christ. This core quality of love, perhaps more than the others Paul noted, highlights the divine nature of love and the truth of the scriptural maxim that “whoever loves has been born of God” (1 John 4:7-21). For it puts its finger on the very nature of man’s fallenness and the way it manifests itself in the day-to-day existence of every human being. Jesus articulated this human dynamic most succinctly (and most appropriately) in His treatment of His kingdom and its features in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6:19-34, ref. esp. vv. 24-32). - In this context Jesus emphasized the truth that men have the option of serving one of two lords (6:24). Not only are there only two masters, every human being serves one or the other. In other words, every person is subject to the lordship of one of these two masters; no one is free of both. - Those lords are God and mammon. Many reduce the notion of mammon to money, but money is only one expression of mammon. Mammon refers to anything and everything by which a person believes he will be benefitted. Moreover, “benefit” is individually determined on the basis of personal considerations, ideals, interests and concerns. Understood in this way, it’s evident that the “lord” Jesus labeled “mammon” is actually the person himself: Each person serves mammon as his master by serving his own personal benefit according to his own judgment, interests and concerns. - Jesus makes this clear from his subsequent discussion in which He noted that all men are driven by their motivation to gratify their personal needs (6:25-31). Importantly, Jesus didn’t identify the “mammon” of money, status, power, etc., but the very necessities of life. The proof He provided that men are enslaved to the “lord” of mammon is the fact that they are preoccupied with meeting their basic needs of nourishment and covering.
Jesus’ language highlights the truth that people have, as their first and overriding concern, the gratification of their own personal interests. Again, it’s crucial to note that He didn’t mention secondary, discretionary or perceived (“felt”) needs, but those which are undeniable and critical – those needs which are fundamental to human existence. - By treating these fundamental and essential needs as mammon, Jesus was indicating that serving those needs is itself a form of idolatry which sets aside the other master who is God Himself. This is a radical notion that is lost on many. Everyone recognizes that people have as their primary concern meeting their basic life needs; indeed such preoccupation is not only understandable, it appears necessary and right, for the person who doesn’t satisfy these needs dies (note Maslow’s “hierarchy of needs”). And yet Jesus treated this pursuit as serving the “lord” of mammon. At face value Jesus’ position is outrageous; if seeking to meet one’s basic need for food and clothing amounts to serving the false god of mammon, then all human beings are idolaters – including Christians. Yet Jesus was saying something else. - He wasn’t condemning people’s efforts to provide for the necessities of life, but their anxious preoccupation with meeting those needs. - More specifically, Jesus was indicting the unbelief attached to people’s approach to satisfying their needs. In their natural condition, human beings are devoted to their own interests; their thoughts and days are preoccupied with securing their personal well-being (in any number of arenas). In Jesus’ words, they are “anxious for their lives”: What will I eat?; what will I drink?; with what will I clothe myself? (6:25, 31-32). This preoccupation of heart, mind and life reflects man’s intrinsic obsession with the things pertaining to himself, but it more importantly gives expression to his fundamental unbelief. People’s anxious preoccupation betrays their lack of faith: They don’t trust that the God who created them knows their vital needs and will meet them. In Jesus’ judgment, unbelief is the most basic form of human insanity: It is absurd to think that the Creator-Father doesn’t discern the needs of His creatures – especially His children; it’s even more absurd to think that, knowing their needs, He’ll not provide for them. God provides for even the least significant of His creatures; how will He fail to provide for His image-sons (6:26-30)? Jesus drew upon the issue of essential human needs rather than “felt needs” in order to make and reinforce His point about unbelief. Everyone in His audience would have agreed with Him that preoccupation with selfish, self-indulgent concerns amounts to serving the false god of mammon; none, however, would have felt that way about a person seeking to provide for life’s necessities. Approaching His topic in this way enabled Jesus to make the critical point that unbelief and idolatry are not what people naturally assume they are.
By constructing his argument as He did, Jesus highlighted the real issue with people’s natural orientation and pursuit (their “seeking their own”): It’s not that they expend the necessary effort to satisfy their legitimate needs; that’s incumbent upon everyone, and the person who refuses to make that effort incurs guilt with God as a sluggard who puts Him to the test (cf. Psalm 37:25, 127:2 and Matthew 6:32-33 with Proverbs 6:6-11, 20:4). The issue is that men provide for their needs in unbelief. And their unbelief isn’t necessarily in what they do or how they do it, but in their mindset and orientation. In their natural state, people are anxiously preoccupied with their needs, betraying the fact that they don’t trust God to meet them. Self-assured or not, they nonetheless look to their own resourcefulness. And so, while Paul was obviously speaking to the Corinthian tendency to promote their own rights, freedoms and interests above others (7:1-16, 8:1-9:27, 11:17-34), he was getting at something more fundamental: the principle of natural human self-preoccupation which lies behind all selfish attitudes and acts. People are intrinsically engrossed with matters pertaining to themselves; they naturally and spontaneously “seek their own” (12:5). And whether they pursue the satisfaction of legitimate needs or the gratification of “felt needs,” they do so faithlessly – out of alienated minds which view all things through the lens of the autonomous self. And as this natural human condition highlights man’s fundamental unbelief, so it also demonstrates his lovelessness. Faith and love always exist together, for the one who knows and trusts God loves Him and the one who loves Him knows Him in truth and so trusts Him (cf. John 8:12-43, 14:1-24, 16:12-28 with Galatians 5:6; Ephesians 3:13-19, 6:23; 1 Timothy 1:12-14; Titus 3:15; Philemon 5; etc.). Man in his natural state is defined by his preoccupation with things pertaining to himself. His days are consumed with providing for his basic life needs, and beyond those concerns his thoughts and energies turn inexorably to his “felt needs” and how best to satisfy them. The calamity of Eden left Adam’s race in a state of self-isolation and anxious self-preoccupation; people live their lives isolated within their own minds, so that all interest in and involvement with matters external to them is framed by and processed through their sense of themselves. People might give of themselves to other individuals or causes not directly related to them, but those “selfless” urgings and undertakings are nonetheless the exertions of a self-referential being; religion is the great proof that men can never escape from the intrinsic principle of “seeking their own.” Love, however, doesn’t seek its own because it operates according to a reality larger than and beyond the individual (the one who is loved as well as the one loving). The person who loves hasn’t escaped from himself – he is the one loving, but his love is the love of His Father. And that is true in two senses: The Christian’s love is of the same sort as His Father’s in that it derives from Him, but it is also an extension of his love for his Father. The Christian’s love isn’t bound up in himself, but in the triune God; his love is inseparable from his faith. Love doesn’t seek its own in that its self-giving is unto God; it is an exercise of faith.[/b][/b][/font][/font][/font]
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Post by Admin on Mar 29, 2024 12:53:05 GMT -5
Paul’s sixth negative quality of love is that it is not provoked (13:5c). Several things about this are important to note at the outset. First of all, this term refers to an inward disposition, not to outward actions as such. Secondly, this notion of provocation is neutral – that is, it isn’t itself inherently negative or positive, but it can carry either connotation. Finally, and most importantly to the point Paul was making respecting love, the negative or positive quality of this provocation is determined by the perspective and mindset of the person and not by the particular matter (person, situation, circumstance, etc.) behind the provocation. Thus a person may be provoked in a negative way by things which are themselves neutral or even positive; so also the opposite may be the case – which is precisely the direction in which Paul was taking his argument. The scriptural usage of this Greek term is as follows: - Luke employed it twice in his Acts account, once in its verb form as here in the Corinthians epistle and the other time using its noun cognate. In both instances he used it to describe Paul – the first time in relation to his disagreement with Barnabas (15:39) and the second time his inner turmoil when he walked the streets of Athens (17:16). Though some regard the first usage as negative, it’s more likely that both instances of Paul’s provocation reflected the same godly conviction and zeal. In the case of Athens, Paul’s heart was provoked with a deep, inner distress born of his passion for God and the truth of His gospel and a sincere love for the spiritually blind and lost Athenians. But that same zeal for God and His gospel provoked Paul’s agitation and sharp disagreement with John Mark (Acts 15:39). His concern in that clash and subsequent parting of ways was the sober obligation of Christ’s ambassadors to testify truthfully to His gospel through their own single minded devotion and faithfulness. John Mark had abandoned the work in Pamphylia and brought a reproach on Christ and His gospel and Paul was adamant that that would not happen again (ref. Acts 13:1-13, 15:30-38). - The Hebrews writer also employed the noun cognate in exhorting his readers to provoke one another to love and deeds consistent with the life and mind of Christ (10:24). Literally rendered, his expression is “let us consciously and purposefully consider one another unto the provocation of love and good works.” Here, too, the connotation is entirely positive. In each of these three instances, godly zeal and love for God lay behind the provocation and its outward manifestation. But here in the Corinthian epistle Paul was acknowledging that there is a provocation which is contrary to love – a provocation born of the lovelessness of self-concern and self-seeking. And by insisting that love is not provoked, Paul was taking a slightly different glance at love’s fundamentally patient nature and orientation.
Previously it was seen that the patience Paul spoke of (13:4a) refers to love’s restraint in treating a person as he justly deserves. And love withholds such treatment, not because it “looks the other way” or because of some implicit virtue in not giving an offender his due, but because it has a grander objective in view. Love discerns and seeks the true and highest good of its object, and this perspective and singular motivation drive its response in any given situation. Love looks beyond the immediate issues to the larger, truly important concerns, and this is why it is willing (where appropriate to love’s goal) to withhold what is justly deserved. But that very same motivation and orientation lead love to not be provoked. Just as it is capable of restraint in its treatment of others for the sake of the greater good, love is capable of attitudinal restraint: It is able to not become irritated or agitated even where such a reaction is justified. This attitude is all the more significant when it pertains to the arena in which such restraint is the most difficult, namely, where a person sustains personal insult, injustice or injury. It’s one thing to not become irritated or exasperated with things, people, circumstances or situations which don’t directly affect us; it’s something else altogether to have that attitude toward those provocations which do. And this is especially the case with personal affronts and hurtful provocations which are unjust and undeserved. Anthony Thiselton’s comments are well worth noting: “Paul’s wording looks back to the positive praise of a love that waits patiently. If love lacks patience and allows self-regard or self-importance to creep in, such contaminated love may become exasperated in pique or into bitterness, in part because self-interest has been affronted and in part because it has overreacted. ‘Agapeistic’ love may degenerate into a self-regarding love that nurses and parades its ‘hurts.’ Love then becomes corrupted into a kind of moral blackmail, and becomes manipulative. This seriously threatens the survival and growth of ‘true’ love, for it may generate a cycle of mutual recrimination.” This insight is helpful for discerning the connection between love as not negatively provoked and the fact that it doesn’t take into account a wrong suffered (“love does not record wrong”; 13:5d). As with all of the qualities of love Paul mentioned, it’s critically important to grasp his meaning here. Scholars put forth different renderings as best capturing the sense of Paul’s expression, but virtually all agree that his basic meaning is that love doesn’t keep accounts respecting offenses and wrongful and/or injurious treatment. And set alongside its predecessor, certain subtleties of this quality of love begin to emerge. The issue isn’t that love has a short memory, that it doesn’t discern offenses or hurts or refuses to regard them as such; Paul’s point is that love refuses to retain a record of them. The person living a life of love is fully aware of the offenses and injuries he sustains and, like all men, can recall them to mind and name them for what they are. What he doesn’t do is regard those hurts as resource to be stored up for future use. This “storing up” of hurt can take all sorts of forms, including brooding, resentment, bitterness, unforgiveness and even a vengeful spirit.
Like everything people hold onto, they keep their storehouse of offenses and injuries because they instinctively – if not consciously – believe it will provide a benefit to them. And, not unexpectedly, the psychological dynamics of the perceived usefulness of hurts reflect the dynamics of the ways they are stored. - Where such hurts and offenses are retained as a matter of resentment and bitterness, they allow the offended party to justify as right and just his condemnation of those who’ve offended him. - Similarly, storing up affronts and offenses affords a person a reservoir of hurt and pain which he can draw upon to vindicate any sense of victimization that he might have. (Victimization is immensely useful to people, for it allows them to rationalize virtually any sort of failure, sin, or personal irresponsibility.) So also a storehouse of injuries and injustices (real and perceived) provides a ready reinforcement for people’s inherent self-righteousness and their rationalization of an unforgiving, rancorous or even hostile attitude toward others. - And where hurts and affronts are held onto in a spirit of retribution, they are useful in keeping the offended person’s passion for vengeance and commitment to it alive and strong. Though they may not be consciously aware of it, it is nonetheless true that people instinctively fill up and safeguard a storehouse of personal offenses and hurts because it is useful to them. At bottom, it serves the intrinsic human self-centric perspective of “me versus you” in which distinctions are occasions for ranking and self-exaltation. People naturally set themselves above others – in their thoughts and concerns if not in their actions, and “keeping an account of wrongs suffered” is eminently suited to that orientation, for it gives them one more basis for distinguishing themselves as superior to others: They wouldn’t do what others have done to them, and the fact that they’ve stood up under mistreatment encourages their self-congratulation. They believe they have grounds to congratulate and console themselves, and so also the right to condemn and spurn – and even retaliate against – those who’ve mistreated them. People store up offenses because they allow them to legitimize their attitudes and actions toward their offenders. When they are provoked they tell themselves that it is out of concern for what is right and just, and so justify their responses (inward and outward) as appropriate to the demands of righteousness. One of the more common “righteous” responses is what Thiselton calls moral blackmail. This “blackmail” can be as subtle as aloof detachment or “silent treatment” or as overt as complete withdrawal or “response in kind.” Paul knew all too well that love does not exempt a person from injustice and hurt – it actually invites them. But he also knew that love triumphs over injury; though it unjustly suffers injury, love refuses to keep an account of it because it will not be bound over to it.
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Post by Admin on Mar 29, 2024 12:56:08 GMT -5
Paul’s next pair of qualities of love consists of a negative and a positive one: Love does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices in the truth (13:6). Here, too, a couple of considerations are important to discerning Paul’s meaning. First of all, this statement must be interpreted in its context. No one would disagree with this, but if the context is itself misperceived or mistreated, then this interpretive principle won’t be of any help; in fact it could lead the interpreter in the wrong direction. Second, these two qualities must be seen as mutually interpreting; that is, each one explains the meaning of the other. The first thing, then, is to address is Paul’s terminology: Specifically, what did he mean by “righteousness” and “truth” and how do those concepts speak to the nature and operation of love? Starting from the above considerations, it is evident first of all that these two terms must be interpreted in the light of Paul’s surrounding discussion of love’s attributes, orientation and activity. The contextual framework, however, extends beyond Paul’s immediate list of love’s qualities to the contribution of chapter thirteen to the larger context addressing the matter of spiritual gifts. Even more broadly, Paul’s language in this verse must be considered in terms of the issues and concerns he was addressing in this epistle. At bottom, the letter must be treated as an organic whole, not only because it came from one mind and with a unified purpose, but because Paul wrote it to a particular community with particular problems and needs. Thus, fragmenting the letter and isolating a given passage or topic insures that it will be mistreated and likely even misinterpreted (as is the case with all of Scripture). With this in mind, the following things can be said about Paul’s terminology: The term, unrighteousness, is readily subject to misinterpretation, not only because of certain presuppositions regarding the concept of righteousness, but also because this Greek word group has a broad semantic range. - Because it often has legal or judicial overtones in scriptural usage, many tend to define unrighteousness in terms of deviation from a moral or ethical standard – a standard often prescribed and mandated by law. From this vantage point, it’s easy to conclude that Paul’s point was that love sets itself against all deviation from lawful behavior. - Others see in this term a more generic connotation of wrongfulness. Thus D. A. Carson’s rendering: Love does not delight in evil. There are at least two notable concerns with this sort of rendering: First, Paul’s term (adikia) carries an implicit judicial connotation which is not inherent in the notion of evil (at least in contemporary American vernacular). In terms of contemporary English usage, “evil” is too generic to hone in on Paul’s meaning. As well, in the preceding verse Paul used the Greek term which commonly denotes general wrongfulness or evil (cf. Romans 2:9, 7:19-21, 12:17-21, 13:4, 10, 14:20, 16:19; 2 Corinthians 13:7; 1 Thessalonians 5:15), which suggests that he meant something else (or more) here.
In its most basic sense, unrighteousness refers to deviation from the “right.” And because, from the Scripture’s viewpoint, “rightness” is objective and fixed rather than arbitrary and subjective, righteousness and justice are relative synonyms, with the former tending to connote right thinking and the latter right practice. - Righteousness is “rightness”; it is conformity to what is right, with rightness being determined objectively by God – not so much as supreme Legislator but as Creator. That is, rightness is determined by the nature of things as they really are – as God created and ordered them as a reflection and expression of His own person and nature and toward the realization of His purposes in them and for them (Romans 1:18-20; Ephesians 1:9-10). - Thus a thing’s righteousness is its conformity to the truth: the truth of itself as well as its relation to God and all other things (which “things” include all other creatures as well as the principles and existential dynamics which comprise and characterize the created order). And so, while unrighteousness certainly includes the violation of explicit moral or ethical standards, it is much more. It speaks to all failure – through ignorance, folly, error or willful violation – to conform to the truth of how things really are, whether in one’s perceptions, attitudes, or actions. The importance of this wider perspective is illustrated by the frequent attempt by commentators to attach Paul’s statement to particular matters of unrighteousness he addressed in his epistle. So some say that Paul was referring to the Corinthian practice of judging one another in order to exalt themselves; others point to their toleration of immorality or their abuse of their liberty. In all these respects (and many others) they were guilty of “rejoicing in unrighteousness.” But while such practices were clearly instances of unrighteousness which love rejects, to confine Paul’s meaning to them is to miss the larger issue he was speaking to. As noted repeatedly throughout this study, Paul recognized that the Corinthians’ unrighteous attitudes and actions were symptomatic rather than problematic; the essence of their unrighteousness was their failure to employ the mind of Christ. That is, their fundamental violation of what is right was their deviation from the “rightness” of their true identity in Christ. Thus Paul’s corrective – whatever the particular issue – consisted in a call to repentance: “Do you not know…?” (cf. 1:10-31, 2:12-16, 3:16-23, 5:1-7, 6:1-20, 9:19-27, 11:1-3, 17-28, 12:27-30). The Corinthians didn’t need to change their behavior as such, but to step back and rethink who they were in Christ and how their life and identity in Him needed to define and determine their relation to one another and the issues they faced. The conception of righteousness as conformity to the truth is confirmed by the parallel Paul drew between it and the notion of truth: Love shows its rejection of unrighteousness precisely by embracing and exulting in the truth. These two qualities of love are thus mutually implying and mutually interpreting (cf. Romans 2:1-8). But what, exactly, is the “truth” love embraces and celebrates?
The first thing to note is that Paul employed the definite article with the noun “truth.” He didn’t say that love rejoices with truth, but with the truth. This indicates that he was specifying the notion of truth and not speaking in generalities. In other words, he had a specific truth in mind or was speaking of truth in a specific arena or sense. Scholars recognize this and so provide various answers to the question of what particular truth (or arena of truth) Paul was indicating. Some say he was referring to the gospel; others argue that he was speaking of truth as it is in itself: truth as objective, disinterested and dispassionate; truth as uncolored and uncorrupted by human perspectives and agendas. Understood a certain way, both views are arguably correct. Paul’s overall approach to the concept of truth supports the conclusion that he wasn’t referring to factual correctness as such, but to truth as speaking to the way things really are – truth as the actual reality of Creator and creation, most specifically in terms of the relational dynamics between God and His creation as revealed in the salvation history and realized in Jesus Christ. This is the truth proclaimed in the gospel – the truth as it is incarnate and glorified in Jesus (cf. Romans 1:16-20, 3:1-7, 15:8-9; 1 Corinthians 5:7-8; 2 Corinthians 4:1-6, 6:1-11, 13:1-8; Galatians 2:1-14, 5:1-7; Ephesians 1:3-14, 4:20-24, 6:13-15; Colossians 1:1-5; 2 Thessalonians 2:1-14; 1 Timothy 2:1-4, 4:1-3; 2 Timothy 3:1-8; etc.). This notion of truth coincided with Jesus’ own conception, for He openly insisted that He is the truth – not merely that He is truthful or conforms His practice to what is true, but that He is the sum and substance of truth as the incarnate and glorified Logos (cf. John 1:14-17, 14:6; cf. also 7:18, 17:17-19). Jesus is the truth of God and the truth of His creation (as True Man), as well as the truth of God’s purpose for His creation in relation to itself and in relation to Him. Having examined Paul’s terminology, it’s now possible to consider how the ideas of unrighteousness and truth correspond to love’s nature and the way it expresses itself. Stated as a question, exactly how does love renounce unrighteousness so as to rejoice with the truth – both as a matter of intrinsic conviction and practical orientation and operation? Again, if righteousness is “rightness,” then love rejects that which contradicts the “right.” Love also discerns the true and greatest good of its object, which implies that it discerns the truth of the object itself. And discerning the truth of its object and thereby the true good of its object, love applies itself to that good in truth – that is, in sound judgment, sincerity and integrity. Love is bound over to the truth of the right and good and so tolerates no deviation from it; love is the way the mind of Christ perceives, judges and acts. All of this discussion helps to explain Paul’s compound verb in the second clause: “Love rejoices together with the truth.” It’s not merely that love embraces and celebrates the truth; it joins together, as it were, with the truth in its own celebration of itself. Love stands alongside the truth in the sense of upholding truth’s perspective and passion. Love is of God, and so is devoted to the truth as it is in Jesus, even as that truth informs and inflames love’s orientation and zeal.
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Post by Admin on Mar 29, 2024 12:59:25 GMT -5
The next set of qualities associated with love forms a cohesive whole and emphasizes love’s constancy and inexhaustibility: Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things (13:7). This statement is critically important in the flow of Paul’s argument because it is both the apex and hinge of this context: On the one hand, it succinctly draws together in summary fashion Paul’s preceding list of qualities; on the other, it acts as Paul’s transition into his closing doxology in which he exalts the supremacy of love (vv. 8-13). Each of these four qualities of love may be considered individually, but not independently. For, they are so closely related that treating them independently makes it impossible to fully grasp Paul’s meaning. Each quality reflects upon and conditions the others so that they necessarily imply and interpret one another. This interdependence needs to be born in mind as each is treated in turn. The first of the four is that love bears all things. Paul is the only New Testament writer to employ this verb, and, outside of this epistle (ref. also 9:12), he used it only in the first Thessalonian letter (ref. 3:1-5). The basic sense of the verb is to bear up under or endure a condition, situation or circumstance: - In the Thessalonian epistle Paul employed it in speaking of his burden for the saints at Thessalonica and his longing to know that they were holding up under their adversity and also not being led astray by accusations and arguments intended to undermine their confidence in Paul and ultimately move them away from their faith (cf. 1:6, 2:1-16 with Acts 17:1-10). Paul was deeply concerned about the well-being of this fledgling body of believers – so much so that, even though he needed Timothy in Athens and intended that he and Silas (Silvanus) would travel with him to Corinth, he decided that Timothy should return to Thessalonica and then later rejoin him in Corinth (ref. Acts 17:13-15; 1 Thessalonians 3:1-6). He’d made that difficult decision because his burden for the Thessalonians had grown to the point that he could no longer bear it; he needed to know that they were standing firm in their faith and that he’d done all that was within his power to encourage and strengthen them. - Paul’s only other use of this verb occurs in this Corinthian epistle (9:12), where it functions in a way which is very closely aligned with the present passage. In that context, Paul was speaking about his willingness to set aside his rights as a minister of Christ’s gospel – not out of a spirit of self denial or self-righteousness, but in order to not place a stumbling block in front of the Corinthians. He was entitled to material support from the saints (9:1-14), but had foregone that support and provided for his own needs because his priority was to not, in any way, become an impediment to the gospel. Paul recognized and gladly upheld his obligation to “do all things for the sake of the gospel” (9:23), and, in the case of the Corinthians, this meant “enduring all things”; it meant Paul bearing what he needn’t have for the sake of the gospel and its fruit in the lives of men.
Paul’s other usage of this verb in this epistle helps to illumine the relationship between love and “bearing all things.” It shows, first and foremost, that love bears with what it needn’t because it has a larger, grander objective in mind than one’s rights or entitlements. Love does what it does because it discerns and pursues the great good of its object. Thus love’s agenda isn’t self-denial or the mere sacrifice of one’s own interests and prerogatives: - Love has no interest and sees no value in privation (in whatever form). Rather, its sole concern is the positive good of the other. - Instead of depreciating or denying the self, love employs the self and all of its resources for the sake of good – good which is defined, as it ought to be, in terms of the gospel, its cause and its fruit. Love “bears all things,” not because it finds virtue in asceticism, patient suffering, or in yielding to wrongfulness or evil. Much less does it “bear up” because it is ignorant or foolish or refuses to acknowledge wrongfulness for what it is. Love bears all things because it is of God. God’s love is singularly purposeful, and so it is with His saints. Like Him, their love is intentional, unwavering and unrelenting, fully devoted to seeing every person presented complete in Christ. Thus Thiselton’s rendering: Love never tires of support, where the notion of “support” has to do with standing together with the other – even at great cost to oneself – for the sake of the other’s true and everlasting good. As love bears all things, so it believes all things. This statement, too, must be interpreted in the light of the character of love and its relation to the person and purpose of God. This consideration alone is sufficient to show that Paul wasn’t ascribing to love any sort of naïveté, gullibility, dullness or lack of insight. If this were the case, then love could not possibly be a defining characteristic of God. Love is tireless in its support of its object because it is resolutely committed to the other’s good. This same purposefulness and commitment lie behind love’s “belief.” The rendering, “love believes all things,” is arguably misleading, for it suggests the very thing love is not: It suggests that love believes everything it hears and sees, and so is gullible, undiscerning and even unwise. But nothing could be further from the truth. Love doesn’t embrace everything it’s told or put its confidence in what it sees; Paul was insisting that love never loses faith. And love never loses faith in the sense that it never doubts God and His purposes and promises or His faithfulness to accomplish them. Love’s enduring faith has nothing to do with what it hears, sees, or experiences in the world of men; to the contrary, it “keeps faith” in spite of those things. Love believes God on behalf of people and His good purposes respecting them; it doesn’t believe them as such or believe in them. So it was with Paul and the Corinthians: He loved them, and his love was evident in the fact that he never lost faith concerning them. In spite of what he saw in them, he believed God for them (2 Corinthians 4:1-15).
Paul’s third example of love’s constancy and inexhaustibility is that it hopes all things. Again, this statement and the notion of “hope” must be interpreted in the light of its three counterparts, but also in terms of the nature of love as it truly is – as it exists in God and expresses His person and purposes. - Hope must be understood in divine terms rather than human ones, and this means that it has nothing to do with whimsy, speculation, personal expectations or sentimentality. Human “hope” is all of these things because it derives from human minds which have no knowledge of the future and so can only interact with it in terms of prospect: what is possible or probable based on (at best) past or present experience. Often, people’s hope is based on nothing more than their own longing and wishful thinking. At bottom, natural human hope is entirely personal and subjective; it is ultimately a self-derived, self-serving “wish-dream.” - The hope Paul spoke of differs from the human notion of hope precisely at this point: The latter reflects human finiteness, personal subjectivity and selfishness, while the former is purely objective, having its source and substance outside the person; it is a person’s response when he embraces the truth as it is in God and as it is made manifest in the person, work, and fruit of Jesus Christ. Hope exists where there is authentic conviction of the truth. This is why Paul went on to assert that faith, hope and love abide. And this is so, not merely for time, but for eternity, because conviction of the truth as it is in the triune God and His works never comes to an end. Hope never fails because God and His purposes never fail; hope thus looks, not to personal longings and aspirations, but to the unchanging God who will not deviate from or fall short of His goal for His creation (ref. Hebrews 13:5-8; Revelation 21:1-6). It’s precisely because love rejoices together with the truth that it is constant in hope. Love never ceases to hope because it never ceases to believe and trust the God of truth (cf. Romans 4:1-5:5, 8:18-25, 15:1-13; 2 Corinthians 3:1-18; Galatians 5:1-6; Ephesians 1:1-2:13, 4:1-6; Colossians 1:1-29; cf. also 1 Thessalonians 1:1-4; 1 Timothy 1:1, 4:10, 6:17; Titus 1:1-3). Lastly, Paul insisted that love endures all things. Having considered its three counterparts, the meaning of this statement shouldn’t be difficult to discern. This verb and its cognates are common in Paul’s writings, and it has the fundamental sense of abiding under a situation or circumstance. It is most often rendered persevere, which is an excellent rendering except that this notion usually carries with it misleading connotations. For, in contemporary English usage at least, perseverance tends to connote resignation or the sheer force of will. - Perseverance implies difficult or trying circumstance, and thus people typically “persevere” because they have no choice; only rarely do they endure hardship willingly, and when they do it’s because they perceive some value or benefit in doing so.
- But even where people find value, virtue or benefit in enduring trials, they endure, not with joy or contentment, but with resignation and sometimes even resentment. They’re willing to “take their medicine” because they believe it will have a good effect in the end, but they find no goodness and derive no satisfaction in the medicine itself or in the act of taking it. These considerations highlight the psychological dynamic behind natural human perseverance. People instinctively avoid all forms of difficulty, hardship and pain, so that they generally endure such things only when they have to. Again, when they do persevere willingly, it’s because they expect a good outcome. Either way, people perceive no goodness in the act or occasion of “remaining under”; indeed, the whole thing is distasteful. The point is simply this: The natural man draws an essential distinction between the circumstance being endured and the outcome he hopes to realize. He regards the former as “bad” while the latter is “good.” The process and the outcome are thus two entirely different things; the process is a “bad” thing that must be endured because it is unavoidable or necessary; the desired outcome is conceived as the “good” reward to follow. This is the way people naturally view and approach the issue of perseverance, but the Scripture sees things differently. While the natural mind perceives an essential difference between the process of endurance and the expected outcome, the mind of Christ recognizes them to be essentially one and the same. The reason this is so is that both the process and the outcome are bound up in God and His love and good purpose for His people. Hardship and suffering are no less the loving bestowment and goodness of the triune God than the good outcomes which result from them. The truth of the oneness of the process and the outcome of perseverance is most clearly evident in the life of Jesus Himself. So, for instance, the Hebrews writer noted that Jesus lived out and matured in His sonship through the things He suffered. Yet His suffering wasn’t a process unto the goal of becoming a son; Jesus’ suffering was itself part of the reality and life of His sonship, the goal of which was the perfecting of that sonship which was already fully true of Him. So it is with those who share in Jesus’ life. Paul sought to be conformed to Jesus’ suffering, not because he was an ascetic who perceived intrinsic value in suffering, because he was a martyr who believed suffering would secure for him a good outcome with God, or because he believed that following Jesus’ example would prove his devotion to God. Paul’s desire to be conformed to Jesus’ suffering was merely his longing to be conformed to Jesus Himself. As one who shared in Christ’s life, Paul’s goal was his full christiformity. He longed for and labored to see Christ’s life fully realized in himself and knew that this meant he’d share in all that his Lord experienced (cf. Philippians 3:7-11; Colossians 1:24). Love endures all things because it recognizes all of life as God’s administration of His purpose of creational christiformity (Ephesians 1:9-10). It does not resign itself to the process, but rejoices in it because it rejoices together with the truth.
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Post by Admin on Mar 29, 2024 13:02:01 GMT -5
g. Paul regarded love as more than merely the correct framework for Christian ethics and conduct; he saw love as speaking to the very essence of what it means to be a Christian. Christians don’t simply act in love; they live lives of love, and not because it’s proper, but because it’s truthful. When Christians live lives of love – love as it is in the triune God, they live authentically in conformity to the truth of who they are. Paul understood – and insisted that the saints understand – that to be a Christian is to partake in the new creation in Jesus: to have died to one’s natural human “self” such that the life now being lived is the life of Christ lived out and perfected in him (ref. again Galatians 2:20; Colossians 3:1-4; also Romans 6:1-11; Galatians 6:11-16; Ephesians 1:3-2:7; Philippians 3:1-21; etc.). God is love at the very core of His being (1 John 4), and thus all who share in His life and nature are equally defined by love. Viewed in this way, love is seen to be inseparable from truth as it is in God and as it is in His creation as He created it to be. Thus Paul could assert that love rejoices together with the truth, which means that it also opposes and withstands the “unrightness” of every form and expression of untruth existing in the created order. And characterizing God and His creation in its authenticity, love abides forever as the very fabric of the universe which binds all things together and joins them in perfect intimacy with the Creator who Himself is love. Is it any wonder, then, that Paul concluded his treatment of love with a glorious doxology praising love’s supremacy? (13:8-13) This doxology flows naturally out of Paul’s preceding discussion and makes an important contribution to his larger argument. - Paul just affirmed love’s constancy and inexhaustibility: Love never tires of support, it never loses faith or hope and it never grows weary in perseverance. In a word, love never fails (literally, love never falls down; 13:8), and that quality is at the heart of its supreme virtue and value. - The same, however, cannot be said of the Spirit’s charismata. While love is essential and indispensable to the authentic operation of the Spirit’s gifts (12:31-13:3), the reverse is not true: Love has no need of the charismata for its authentic existence and operation. The proof of this is in a critical point of distinction between love and the charismata: The former endures forever; the latter do not. Whether consciously or not, the Corinthians had fallen into the error of exalting the Spirit’s gifts – particularly the ones having the appearance of power and significance. By doing so, they not only denied the supremacy of love, they actually depreciated the gifts themselves by overlooking the very thing which makes the gifts significant, powerful and effectual. The Corinthians were, in effect, prizing the outer form while ignoring the inner substance. Like the Israelites who continued to venerate the empty and lifeless temple after Yahweh’s glory-presence had departed, many at Corinth were devoting themselves to the gifts as such rather than to that which enlivens and authenticates them.
In making his point, Paul turned to the three spiritual gifts most prominent in his discussion (and evidently in the esteem of the Corinthians themselves): prophecy, tongues and knowledge (13:8-10; cf. 13:1-2 and 14:1-40 with 8:1-13). For all their virtue and value in edifying Christ’s Church, and however exalted they might appear, the Corinthians needed to understand that they are finite and transient. This passage is critically important to Paul’s contextual discussion of the charismata and the Corinthians’ understanding and interaction with them as a body. Too often, however, it is effectively (if not intentionally) divorced from the context because of the new and intriguing elements it introduces. In particular, the passage’s emphasis on the imperfection and impermanence of the charismata – especially as Paul treats this topic in terms of a coming future “perfection” – has proven to be a lightning rod in the Christian community. Whether on the part of charismatics or cessationists, preterists or futurists, a priori premises, assumptions and preoccupations have made it easy for Christians to “miss the forest for the trees” and leave Paul seemingly focused on issues other than his actual concern. But precisely for this reason it’s necessary to take a close look at Paul’s language and argumentation as they fit into the larger context and the way this passage speaks to the issues and problems occurring in the Corinthian church. The interpreter must approach the passage in an objective, dispassionate way, setting his own assumptions and agenda aside. He must consciously resist the temptation to try to vindicate his own doctrinal convictions and discipline himself to let the text say what it says and mean what it means. Christians may end up differing at some points, but at least they will have done their best to allow Paul to speak for himself rather than put words in his mouth. Three general issues are most important in treating this passage: 1) the meaning of the perfect; 2) the nature of the partiality (imperfection) of spiritual gifts and the range of gifts this partiality applies to; 3) the dynamics in the relationship between the “perfect” and the passing away of the “imperfect” (the partial). Starting where Paul started (13:8), the first thing to be considered is the spiritual gifts Paul cited and the way he treated their impermanence. Again, Paul mentioned only prophecy, knowledge and tongues in his treatment, and this allows for two possible conclusions: - The first possibility is that Paul cited these three specifically because they alone (perhaps along with other closely related gifts) “pass away” in connection with the coming of the “perfect.” - The other option is that Paul mentioned these three representatively. That is, they represent all of the Spirit’s gifts, which are all transient and imperfect. Thus Paul was implying that all of the charismata pass away when the “perfect” comes; he mentioned knowledge, prophecy and tongues because these gifts were so important to the Corinthians. The first option works well with the cessationist view which holds that all of the so-called “sign gifts” ended with the completion of the New Testament canon. (Most cessationists believe this completion is the “perfection” Paul was referring to). Sign gifts are said to have passed away because they attested the truth and authority of the apostolic message (2 Corinthians 12:11-12; Hebrews 2:1-4) until that message was recorded in the New Testament scriptures. Once those writings were complete, the apostolic authority passed to the text itself, so that the authenticating charismata are no longer necessary. All of the other gifts of the Spirit, however, continue on through the church age, being vital for the Church’s well-being and growth (cf. 12:1-30; Romans 12:3-8, Ephesians 4:11-16). Conversely, the second option will not allow for the “perfect” to denote the completed New Testament canon unless one also concedes that all of the Spirit’s gifts passed away with the close of the first century. If prophecy, knowledge and tongues are merely representative, then the partiality and impermanence which Paul ascribed to them applies to all of the charismata. If these three gifts ceased with the completion of the canon, so did all of the Spirit’s gifts. Few Christians are willing to make this concession, and this leaves only two options: One can either reject the notion that Paul was speaking of all of the charismata, or find another meaning for his term, the “perfect.” (The position embraced here is that Paul was indeed ascribing partiality and impermanence to all of the charismata and meant something other than the completed canon by the term, the “perfect.”) The next thing to consider from verse 13:8 is Paul’s language in speaking of the cessation of the gifts. This is where many commentators focus in building their arguments. Specifically, in treating the three charismata of prophecy, knowledge and tongues, Paul lumped together the first two, employing the same verb and grammatical form in describing their cessation. - At the one end of the spectrum, his verb can refer to the mere nullification of a thing’s activity, effect, or relevance (note Luke 13:7, where the verb speaks to a fruitless tree nullifying the usefulness of the ground it is planted in; cf. also Romans 3:3, 4:14, 7:6 and 1 Corinthians 1:28). - At the other end, it can denote a thing’s abolition or destruction altogether (ref. Romans 7:2; 1 Corinthians 2:6, 6:13, 15:24-26; etc.). Paul employed a different verb and grammatical form in speaking of tongues. This term has the general sense of ceasing, desisting, or departing from an activity or course of action (cf. Luke 5:4, 8:24, 11:1; Acts 5:42, 6:13, 13:10, 20:1, 31).
The critical issue for many is Paul’s grammar: Here he employed the middle voice rather than the passive voice of the previous verb. The middle voice in Greek indicates the subject’s participation in the action of the verb, whether directly in acting upon himself (the “reflexive” middle – Matthew 27:5) or indirectly in acting in a self-referencing or self-serving manner (such as when a person acts in his own interest or according to his own design – Hebrews 9:12). With respect to the present usage, many commentators reason that Paul’s change of grammar indicates that the gift of tongues will cease in and of itself. The contention is that, whereas prophecy and knowledge will be done away by something (or someone) outside them, tongues will pass away intrinsically and naturally with no such outside entity acting upon them. This interpretation is commonly held by cessationists who put it forward as textual vindication of their contention that the gift of tongues (along with all of the so-called “sign-gifts”) died off naturally with the close of the New Testament canon. And they argue that tongues ceased naturally because they had served their purpose in authenticating the apostolic teaching until the written apostolic record was finalized. This interpretation, however, stands upon an unfounded conclusion. In the case of this particular verb, it occurs in the New Testament in the middle voice with only one exception (1 Peter 3:10), and in none of its uses does it connote an intrinsic, natural cessation (ref. the above cited verses along with Acts 21:32; Ephesians 1:16; Colossians 1:9; Hebrews 10:2; 1 Peter 4:1). The textual evidence indicates that this Greek verb characteristically took the middle voice at the time of the biblical writings, and thus no special significance can be attached to its use here. (Many Greek verbs follow a pattern in which they take middle/passive voice forms but are actually active in meaning. Such verbs are called deponents. Some of these verbs are deponent throughout their conjugation; others are deponent in only some of their forms.) Thus Paul’s grammar doesn’t allow for separating tongues and their cessation from knowledge and prophecy. And this being the case, it follows that all three must be regarded in the same way: as passing away by virtue of the coming of the “perfect.” This, in turn, means that the “perfect” can only be associated with the completed New Testament canon if one is willing to concede that knowledge – and not merely prophecy and tongues – ceased with the close of the first century. Thus Carson’s comments: “The outcome of the debate over these positions in very important, because Paul writes that the imperfect disappears when perfection comes. In other words, the gifts of prophecy, knowledge and tongues (and presumably by extrapolation most other charismatic gifts) will pass away at some point future to Paul’s writing, designated by him ‘perfection.’ If this point can be located in the first or second century, then no putative gift of prophecy, knowledge, or tongues is valid today.”
Cessationists note that it is the spiritual gift of “knowledge” (the “word of knowledge”) which passes away along with prophecy and tongues, and so argue that this fits the notion of the “perfect” denoting the completion of the canon. For once the New Testament scriptures were in place, there was no need for “revelation knowledge” as a spiritual endowment; the Spirit had now bound up all revelation in the written word. In itself, however, this argument doesn’t prove (or necessitate) that the “perfect” refers to the completed canon. Turning, then, to the issue of the “perfect,” Carson notes the three most popular interpretations:
1) The first is the one already noted, namely that Paul was speaking about the canonical completion of the New Testament scriptures.
2) The second is that this perfection refers to the full maturity of either the Church or individual believers. In terms of the latter, “perfection” is then a personal reality attained by each Christian at his death (or at the resurrection; ref. Philippians 3:1-21). As for the former, the Church’s perfection must arguably be situated at the end of the age. By the Spirit’s work through His gifts, the Church is moving toward its full maturity in Christ, but this “perfection” yet stands as a future hope for every generation (cf. Ephesians 2:11-22; 4:11-16, 5:25-27). The Church’s refulgent glory as a spotless bride awaits the revealing of the Bridegroom, even as the full glory of the individual members of Christ’s Church – and therefore the full glory of the Church itself – awaits the resurrection.
3) The third option is that Paul was speaking of the Parousia and the components of “perfection” associated with it, including the resurrection and the new heavens and new earth (cf. Romans 8:16-25; 1 Corinthians 15:1-28; Philippians 3:1-21; 2 Thessalonians 1:9-2:17; 1 John 3:1-3). While the first view is understandably preferred by cessationists, the third one best conforms to the context and the overall New Testament witness. The first argument in favor of it is a negative one, which is that the notion of “perfection” as referring to the completion of the New Testament canon is entirely foreign to this passage (as it is to all of Paul’s writing and the New Testament). It seems beyond question that the source of this interpretation is not biblical and contextual exegesis, but the a priori assumption that the gift of tongues has ceased. But there is also a compelling positive reason for adopting the third interpretation, and that is drawn from Paul’s elaboration in verse 12 (cf. vv. 9-10). There he noted that the coming of the “perfect” brings the partial and imperfect to an end, which includes the imperfection of present knowledge. But Paul didn’t associate this passing away of the imperfect with a completed canon; rather, he associated it with seeing the Lord face-to-face – with knowing fully even as he was, already at that time, fully known by Christ (cf. 1 John 3:1-3).
The third interpretation of the “perfect” also best fits with Paul’s explanatory statement in verses 13:9-10. After insisting that prophecy, knowledge and tongues will cease, Paul explained that they will do so because they are non-ultimate and transitory. They are part of the present “imperfection” and so will yield to perfection when it comes. The imperfect won’t pass away because of annulment, but because of consummation. Having carried out their role in God’s purposes, they will yield themselves to that consummate reality which they served. This understanding, then, sheds light on what Paul meant by the “partial.” Linguistically, the term has a broad semantic range and refers to that which is, in some sense, a portion or part in relation to something else. It can thus denote a physical part of a whole (12:27; John 19:23; Ephesians 4:16; Revelation 16:19), a matter of degree, extent or comparison (11:18; Romans 11:25; 2 Corinthians 1:14, 2:5, 3:10; Hebrews 9:5), a particular time, place, instance, or matter of concern within a larger scheme (14:27; Matthew 2:22, 15:21, 16:13; Acts 19:1, 20:2; Romans 15:15, 24; 2 Corinthians 9:3; Colossians 2:16), a share in something (Matthew 24:51; Luke 12:46; John 13:8; Revelation 20:6, 21:8, 22:19), or even a particular entity in distinction from others of the same sort (Acts 23:6, 9). This noun can also refer to a state, condition or situation which is non-ultimate and/or transitory. In this instance there is “partiality” in the sense of falling short of that which is ultimate, full or final. And framed in terms of the “perfect,” this partiality is seen to constitute imperfection, much as the Hebrews writer insisted that the Old Covenant was imperfect – not flawed or corrupt, but non-ultimate and therefore impermanent (8:6-7; cf. also 7:18-19, 9:1-11, 11:40). These considerations help to narrow in on Paul’s meaning in this context. His insistence that Christians know in part and prophesy in part (13:9) speaks to the imperfection and incompleteness of the present order on the one hand and, on the other, the perfection and fullness that are to come. - The partiality of believers’ knowledge (as also the gift of knowledge) speaks to their progress in “christiformity,” not their finiteness. That is, they know “in part,” not because they’re finite, but because the perfect has not yet come. When that happens, Christians won’t be omniscient, but they will know fully as human beings; in Paul’s words, they will know as they are known – in full and perfect conformity to the truth (13:12). - The partial nature of prophecy is related to the partiality of knowledge. A person can only proclaim what he knows; where knowledge is imperfect and incomplete, so is his proclamation. (As will be seen, prophecy speaks more to forth-telling than foretelling.) The one who knows “in part” prophesies “in part.” So also the fullness of knowledge implies the perfecting of prophecy. Paul didn’t mention the perfecting of prophecy as he did knowledge, but the implication is that “knowing fully” will mean the capacity to fully and perfectly proclaim that which is known.
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Post by Admin on Mar 29, 2024 13:05:43 GMT -5
The Corinthians (as many Christians to this day, charismatics and noncharismatics alike) were preoccupied with spiritual gifts and had allowed them to become just one more instrument of their self-serving, factious attitudes and orientation. They’d done this with the men who’d served them (1:10-3:23), with their sense of personal maturity and wisdom (4:1-7:39), their rights and liberty in Christ (8:1-10:33) and even with the Lord’s Table (11:17-34), and so also with the things of the Spirit (12:1-14:40). In all of these situations, the fundamental and critical failure was the same: The Corinthians were guilty of violating the law of love. For all their giftedness and apparent maturity, they were mere “babes in Christ” who were yet unaccustomed to the “solid food” of faith working through love which nourishes the life and mind of Christ in the saints unto their “growing up in all things into Him who is the Head.” The Spirit gives His gifts for the sake of the edification of Christ’s body – for the sake of the up-building of the body’s members, but in conformity to the truth that the individual members are members of one another. The charismata are individually distributed endowments whose function, purpose and effect are bound up in the whole. The Spirit’s gifts are ministrations of love – not the unholy self-love of the persons possessing them, but the triune God’s love for His Church expressed and lived out in the saints’ love for one another. Like all of God’s good gifts, the Corinthians had embraced the charismata as one more occasion and resource for enhancing their sense of themselves and their service to themselves. The Spirit’s gifts are authentic and fruitful only insofar as they are a ministration of love. And as love discerns and labors for the greatest good of its object, so the charismata serve the body’s edification unto its perfection in Christ. When that work is complete, edification (up-building) comes to an end, and so do the Spirit’s endowments given for that purpose. In Paul’s words, “when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away” (13:10). Again – and consistent with the whole scheme of the salvation history – this dynamic is one of fulfillment rather than abrogation (cf. Matthew 5:17 with Galatians 3:1-18; Ephesians 2:11-3:10; Colossians 1:15-2:17; etc.). That is, the charismata are ordained to pass away, not because they lose vitality, are truncated, or are replaced by something else, but because they will have “run their race” and accomplished their purpose. Put a different way, the Spirit’s gifts are endowments serving the “already” unto the realization of the fullness of the “not yet.” Like John the Baptist who was the servant-friend of the Bridegroom, the charismata are servants of the perfection to come, and when it arrives, their work of service will be complete (ref. John 3:22-31). This dynamic is critical for resolving the apparent contradiction in Paul’s treatment of knowledge: On the one hand, he declared that knowledge will be done away (13:8-10); on the other, he insisted that knowledge will be perfected in that the saints will know fully even as they are fully known (13:12). How can something be done away and perfected at the same time?
The contradiction, however, is only apparent; a careful look at Paul’s contextual argument – and treating it through the lens of his “already/not yet” perspective – shows exactly what he meant and refutes any charge of inconsistency or contradiction. A couple of observations are sufficient to make the point: - First, Paul was speaking of knowledge in two different senses. The two are not entirely separate or unrelated, but they are distinct. With respect to the knowledge which is a gift of the Spirit and which passes away, Paul was referring to what he previously called the “word of knowledge” (12:8; cf. 14:1-6). This is an endowment of the Spirit by which a person is granted a notable degree or clarity of insight and understanding to be ministered to the body as a word of knowledge (not knowledge for its own sake). On the other hand, the knowledge which is perfected is that arena of “knowing” which every believer possesses – the knowledge associated with the mind of Christ in the saints (ref. 1:4-7; 15:33-34; cf. also 2 Corinthians 4:1-6, 8:1-7, 11:1-6; Ephesians 1:15-17, 4:11-13; Philippians 1:9-10; etc.). - The two are distinct, but they are closely related. For one thing, the gift of knowledge can arguably be viewed as an enlargement or enhancement of the knowledge which marks every believer. Those given the spiritual gift of knowledge aren’t granted a different knowledge, but a deeper one – a greater insight into the knowledge of the truth which is bound up in the person of Jesus Christ and His work. (One may well argue that those called to be pastor/teachers possess this gift in some measure.) The spiritual gift of knowledge and Christian knowledge are also related in terms the “partial” and the “perfect.” Specifically, the dynamic of fulfillment in connection with the principle of “already/not yet” shows how the gift of knowledge passes away with the coming of the “perfect” while the knowledge inherent in sharing in Christ’s mind is made full. The gift of knowledge is absolutely necessary to the Church’s (and thus individual Christians’) edification; otherwise, the Spirit would not bestow it. It addresses the saints’ ongoing need to grow in the knowledge of God in Christ (ref. again Ephesians 1:15-17, 4:11-13; Philippians 1:9-10; cf. also 2 Peter 1:2-8 and 3:17- 18), and this need in the Church will continue until the end of the age. But when Christ appears and His people behold Him face-to-face, they will have no further need of instruction or a “word of knowledge”; they will be present with the One in whom exists all the fullness of wisdom and knowledge (Colossians 2:1-3). And so, the very mechanism which causes knowledge to be done away is the same mechanism which causes knowledge to be made full. The gift of knowledge is imperfect and partial because it is non-ultimate; it serves the progress of the saints’ knowledge, which is itself imperfect and partial because it is incomplete. But both of these imperfections will end. Thus Paul: We know “in part,” but when the perfect comes, “the partial will be done away.” In that day, knowledge will be perfected because “we will know fully as we have been fully known” (13:12).
This consideration of knowledge provides the basis for understanding how prophecy and tongues – and indeed all of the charismata – are “partial” and so pass away with the coming of the “perfect.” Prophecy will be addressed in more detail later, but at this point it’s important to note that the prophetic gift involves the communication of the things of God to men. In the Israelite history, God’s prophets were men chosen by Him to interact with the covenant people on His behalf. Their calling was framed by the formula, “thus says the Lord”; the prophets were Yahweh’s mouthpieces and so His interpreters. They spoke His words to the people and interpreted His works that they would know Him in truth. In a word, the prophetic ministry in Israel involved the horizontal mediation (human being to human being) of vertical truth (truth pertaining to the person and purpose of God), and the need for this ministration didn’t end with the coming of Christ. God’s words and deeds still needed to be communicated and interpreted to men, but now the divine word and act were embodied (and fulfilled) in Jesus Himself, so that the prophetic ministry became the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The closing of the New Testament canon didn’t eliminate this ministry; indeed, it could not be so: The scriptural record testifies of Christ who is the truth, but the written words must become “spirit and life” in order to communicate the living Jesus Christ (John 6:24-66), and this necessitates Spirit empowered witness and not merely an accurate written account. This is not to say that the Scripture cannot provide such living witness, but the Spirit must attend its reading in order for it to do so. Otherwise, it is just another religious text. The same dynamic applies to the gift of tongues. The Spirit is the Spirit of Christ who communicates the truth to men by mediating the living Jesus Christ to them, and He does this by forming and perfecting His life in them (cf. John 14:16-31, 15:26-16:15 with 2 Corinthians 3:1-18). But the Spirit doesn’t do this work in a vacuum: Faith (and new life) comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ. But how will one hear unless a herald comes to him in the power of the Spirit and communicates the truth of Christ to him in a way he can understand? The truth sets men free, but truth resides in meaning, not words as such. And discerning meaning depends upon a meeting of the minds, which depends upon communication, which is a matter of linguistics. To one who doesn’t understand, even the most profound articulation of the glory of the gospel of Christ is merely incoherent babble (14:6-11). As long as language barriers exist, the gift of tongues will have a place in the Spirit’s work. The reversal of Babel’s curse began at Pentecost (Genesis 11:4-9; Acts 2:1-11), but won’t be complete until the perfect comes and the whole race of mankind is consummately one in the Last Adam. Again, the larger context (chaps. 12-14) represents Paul’s response to the Corinthians’ inquiry regarding the things of the Spirit (pneumatika; 12:1). They apparently questioned him about pneumatika, but Paul recognized that their actual concern was the charismata – the Spirit’s gifts. But these are not the same thing; the gifts of the Spirit are merely one component of the things of the Spirit:
Pneumatika refers to the purpose and work of the Spirit (2:13-15, 9:11, 10:3-4; cf. Romans 1:11); the charismata are one instrument in that work. Thus one can only rightly address the Spirit’s gifts and their function and meaning by considering them in terms of their place within the Spirit’s larger work in the divine plan. This is the reason that Paul began his treatment of the pneumatika by taking up the topic of the Church as the Body of Christ (12:4-30). Now, in the fullness of the times, the Spirit has become the Re-Creator Spirit: He is again acting to order and fill the creation, but this time by restoring and regathering all things back to their Creator-Lord. This work of renewal and recovery will ultimately extend to the heavens and earth, but in this age it embraces only the human creation. The new creation has its essential substance in Jesus Christ, the firstfruits, and the Spirit is building on that foundation by producing and perfecting Jesus’ life in others of Adam’s children. In Paul’s language, the Spirit is producing and perfecting a Body for Jesus: a community of people who constitute one body because of sharing together in Jesus’ Spirit and in His life as the Last Adam. Christ’s Body is the beginning and marrow of the Spirit’s work of re-creation which has its ultimate goal in the summing up of all created things in Him. This work of creational christiformity – which in the present age operates in the spirits of men – is the substance of the pneumatika which the charismata serve. Paul recognized that the Spirit’s gifts (the charismata) serve the Church’s well being and up-building (its christiformity), but he also understood that they can only accomplish their role when those who possess and use them discern the nature of Christ’s Body and what it means for it to be built up in Him. Understood and implemented in any other way – which is to say, divorced from the truth and operation of love, the Spirit’s gifts readily become instruments of destruction. Paul’s treatment indicates that the Corinthians didn’t grasp the relationship between the pneumatika and the charismata; they misjudged the Spirit’s gifts and their role in the Body just as they misjudged the Body itself (11:17-34). (Indeed, where Christians misconstrue the Body the Spirit is building, they inevitably misjudge and misuse the gifts He grants unto that task.) In this way, too, the Corinthians proved they were still “fleshly” – still thinking and acting as “babes” (3:1ff), and this truth provides the backdrop for Paul’s statement in verse 13:11. Many read this statement in isolation and conclude that Paul was speaking of his own maturation process from childhood to manhood. The result is that his words are taken as an exhortation to young people to strive toward personal maturity and to adults to “grow up” and put away their former childish ways. But such an understanding strips Paul’s statement from the context; the truth is, he was referring to himself, not by way of example, but by way of analogy. He wasn’t at all stepping aside from the topic at hand, but was punctuating his point about the charismata and their transient role in God’s purpose by drawing an analogy between them and the dynamics of human maturation.
The first thing this analogy highlights is the fact that immaturity is not inherently wrong. To the contrary, God has ordained it as a necessary stage in human development. A child is a child, not by fault, irresponsibility or neglect, but in accordance with the truth. Indeed, for a child to attempt to be an adult is for him to lie against the truth. Hence Solomon’s instruction in Ecclesiastes (11:9-12:7): It is right and good for a child to be a child; it is to acknowledge and embrace the truth. But embracing the truth also means recognizing that childhood is a passing season which has its goal in adulthood. It is good and necessary for a child to be a child, but he must regard and treat his childhood with a view toward his maturity. But secondly, immaturity is a season. A child must embrace his immaturity in the sense of acknowledging it, understanding it, and living into it well and wisely. But this means recognizing its impermanence and imperfection – an impermanence and imperfection born of non-ultimacy, not inherent flaw. A child lives well and wisely in his childhood when he regards its season and resources as serving something beyond itself. Thus he doesn’t cling to the things of childhood, but rather embraces and employs them in their season as instruments unto his coming maturity. God has ordained “childish things” and made them essential in their time, but He has also ordained that, when they have served their purpose, they will be put aside. To be of the truth, one must embrace childish things in his childhood and then put them away when the time of childhood has passed. So it is with the Spirit’s gifts: They are proper and good because they serve God’s purpose in the present age. But like childhood, this season is preparatory, not ultimate. God has ordained the “immaturity” of the present age to give way to the “maturity” of final perfection, and so it is with the charismata: They are “childish things” – resources given and appointed for the present time of “childhood,” and so resources that will be set aside when the time of childhood ends. The charismata are “childish things” and are put away when the perfect comes. This is not the case, however, with the pneumatika as such; not everything associated with the saints’ present immaturity passes away: love, faith and hope go with them into their maturity (13:13). And the reason faith and hope endure is that truth endures: Faith is the conviction of the truth as it is in Jesus Christ – the conviction which results in devoted, submissive trust. So hope endures because it is the unwavering, settled and abiding confidence which faith secures. The one who knows the God who is ever faithful trusts Him and entrusts himself to Him, and this dynamic of faith and hope doesn’t pass away when the perfect comes, but is perfected in it. (While certain aspects and concerns of faith and hope cease with the coming of the perfect (ref. Romans 8:24-25; 2 Corinthians 4:16-18, 5:6-8), faith and hope in their essential substance must – and do – endure forever.) Faith and hope don’t share the imperfection of the charismata, yet they still fall short of love’s supremacy. And the reason is that they are entirely dependent upon love; faith and hope are grounded in love and are love’s fruit. Love is supreme because it is foundational, and love is foundational because God is love.
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Post by Admin on Mar 29, 2024 13:13:17 GMT -5
5. In chapter 14 Paul returned to the topic raised by the Corinthians in their letter to him. They had inquired about matters of the Spirit (pneumatika, ref. 12:1), but Paul’s discussion makes it clear that they were actually concerned with the charismata – the Spirit’s gifts. The Corinthians might not have discerned any distinction between them, but Paul did; he understood that the Spirit bestows His gifts to the Church as a key component of His work in the creation and on its behalf. The charismata are but one aspect of the pneumatika which have their singular goal in a christified creation – that is, in the summing up of all created things in Christ. In the present age, the Spirit’s work of renewal is limited to the spirits of the saints; like the rest of the physical creation, Christians’ bodies continue under the curse awaiting the resurrection and full and final perfection which will follow upon Christ’s Parousia (cf. 15:12-58 with Romans 8:9-1; 2 Corinthians 5:1-8; Philippians 3:17-21; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18; etc.). This means that the pneumatika are solely concerned in this age with the Church and its up-building as the spiritual community of the new creation. And being one aspect of the pneumatika, the charismata share the same concern. - The Spirit distributes His gifts to individual believers according to His wise and purposeful design that the Church – Christ’s Body – should be built up in all things into Him who is the Head. (Hence Paul’s discussion in 12:1-30). The charismata are individual endowments, but which have their meaning, use and value in the community: The gifted members receive and employ their gifts for the well-being and up-building of the whole body. Only in this way are the gifts authentic as charismata; only in this way are they authentically pneumatika. - And if the Spirit gives His gifts for the sake of the members’ individual and mutual conformity to Christ, then the gifts must operate as a ministration of love (13:1-13). This is true for two reasons: First, there is no edification in the absence of love (cf. 8:1 with 12:18-13:3); second, and most importantly, the life of the body and its members is the life of Christ Himself (Galatians 2:20; Colossians 3:1-4), and the life of Christ is the life of love. Paul recognized that he couldn’t rightly address the Corinthians’ concerns about the Spirit’s gifts and their operation without first providing the proper framework. One cannot address questions respecting the charismata without situating them within the larger matter of the pneumatika. And this means approaching the Spirit’s gifts in terms of the Church: the Body of Christ which is a spiritual organism animated and nurtured by love. Expressed in terms of Paul’s letter, this explains why chapter 14 – which at last turns to the concerns raised by the Corinthians – follows after (by necessity) chapters 12 and 13. And by way of introducing chapter 14, a few observations are in order: The first thing to note is that Paul limited his treatment to the gifts of tongues and prophecy. There are two likely reasons for this: First, the Corinthians may have posed their questions to Paul in terms of these two gifts (certainly tongues); a second possibility is that Paul drew upon these two because of their usefulness in constructing his argument.
The first option is supported by the natural-minded orientation of the Corinthian believers. In every issue and concern they placed themselves and their own personal interests at the center. So it was with spiritual gifts; their gifts were ultimately about them, and so the Corinthians would have naturally focused their attention on the more showy and seemingly important gifts: tongues, knowledge, prophecy, etc. On the other hand, tongues and prophecy are eminently suited to Paul’s point that the charismata are given to serve the Church’s edification. The reason is that both gifts involve utterance, and speech is a primary way in which believers build one another up (ref. 14:1-6, 12-17, 26; cf. also Ephesians 4:11-16, 29; Colossians 3:16, 4:6; 1 Thessalonians 5:11). Secondly, Paul’s intent in this chapter was to answer the Corinthians’ inquiry regarding the Spirit’s gifts and their meaning and purpose, not provide a formal theology of tongues (or of prophecy). This observation is critically important because the gift of tongues is typically the focal point in the dispute between charismatics and non-charismatics and this chapter is a classic proof-text in the dispute. Employed in that way, the passage is set at odds with Paul’s intent and divorced from its context. The result is that its true meaning and contribution to Paul’s argument and overall instruction are obscured. Implied by the previous observation is the fact that rightly interpreting Paul’s instruction in this chapter depends upon grasping – and working from – his understanding of the gift of tongues (as well as the gift of prophecy). A common error is to start from one’s own premises and definitions and then interpret a text through that lens; so here people tend to read Paul’s instruction in terms of their own definition of tongues and prophecy (whether or not they do so consciously). But it ought to be obvious as a first principle that arriving at Paul’s meaning requires starting with his definitions and premises. - What did Paul understand the gift of tongues to be? - And in what sense does this gift comprise a plurality? That is, what did Paul mean by his statement that there are kinds of tongues (12:10)? Does “kinds” refer to different manifestations of the one gift or to a family of related gifts? - Paul also indicated in verse 12:10 that the Spirit endows the same person with these “kinds” of tongues. Is this always the case, and does this lend support to the notion of public and private gifts of “tongues-speaking,” the latter often being associated with a personal “prayer language”? - So also, how did Paul understand the gift of prophecy? Did he view it as functioning essentially like the ministry of Israel’s prophets? If so, does this imply continuing revelation in the New Covenant era and therefore an “open canon”? Can a revelatory prophetic gift exist without jeopardizing the integrity of the Scripture? On the other hand, if the gift of prophecy differs from the prophetic ministry of the Old Testament Israelite prophets, what is that difference and how do we know? Also, what is the relationship between prophecy as a spiritual gift and the role of the prophet under the New Covenant (cf. Acts 11:27-28, 13:1, 21:8-11 with 1 Corinthians 12:28-29, 14:29-32 and Ephesians 4:11-13)?
It goes without saying that Christians provide different answers to these (and other) questions, and the answers they give are foundational – in some cases, even determinative – in how they interpret Paul’s instruction and its relevance for the Church today. With that in mind, it’s necessary to start the treatment of this passage with at least a general framing of Paul’s understanding of the gifts of tongues and prophecy. Of course, many will take exception to the view espoused here; indeed, that would be the case regardless of the position taken. More will be said later at the appropriate points in the exegesis of the passage, and the hope is that the position promoted here will be adequately developed and supported from the text. But for now, a handful of observations ought to suffice by way of introduction.
1) First, concerning the tongues gift, and setting aside for now the notion of tongues as a private, personal phenomenon (as in the case of a “prayer language”), it seems clear that Paul understood the gift of tongues – in its public expression, at least – to be a supernatural endowment by which a person is enabled by the Spirit to speak in a language he (and perhaps at least one or more of his hearers) doesn’t know, but an authentic language nonetheless.
2) This means that there is inherent meaningful content in what is spoken. This is important in that it implies that the interpretation of tongues involves extracting and communicating the content that is present in the speech rather than assigning meaning to sounds which are intrinsically meaningless (as when one assigns a certain meaning to non-linguistic gibberish). Indeed, as Carson has noted, one must question in what sense mere sounds without intrinsic meaning can be “interpreted.” Assigning meaning where none exists in the speech itself is either speculation or divination, not interpretation. Carson’s comments are helpful: “The interpretation issues in intelligible speech, cognitive content; and if it is not in fact a rendering of what was spoken in tongues, then the gift of interpretation is not only misnamed but also must be assessed as undifferentiable from the gift of prophecy. The tight connection Paul presupposes between the content of the tongues and the intelligible result of the gift of interpretation demands that we conclude the tongues in Corinth, as Paul understood them, bore cognitive content.” 3) Taken together, these two observations leave room for language that is non human, but language nonetheless. Some treat this notion of non-human language in terms of purported “angelic language” (ref. 13:1), but the example of computer code shows that it can take a myriad of forms. Binary object code (“machine language”) doesn’t constitute a human language, but consists entirely of the numbers 1 and 0. Yet it is language in that it contains and conveys informational content; it communicates to the machine “hearer.” So it is conceivable that tongues could embody verbal communication that exists beyond the bounds of human language. Tongues as non-human language is certainly possible, but the manifestation at Pentecost would seem to argue against it – at least with respect to the public function of the gift (ref. Acts 2:1-6).
4) With respect to the gift of prophecy, opinions are no less diverse than with the gift of tongues. There are those who maintain no essential distinction between the role of the Old Testament prophet and the spiritual gift of prophecy. Others distinguish the prophetic gift from the office of prophet, and link Israel’s prophets, not with the spiritual gift of prophecy, but with the men identified as prophets in the New Testament. Still others distinguish all three of these prophetic dimensions. Where prophecy is regarded as revelatory, it is generally held by non-charismatics to have ceased (as also the role of “prophet”) with the completion of the canon. This conclusion is grounded more in philosophical and doctrinal considerations than exegesis of this passage (and others), with the primary concern being the obvious problem of an “open canon” and ongoing divine revelation. Many, however, regard the gift of prophecy as non-revelatory and treat it as roughly synonymous with the preaching function. Those holding this view thus tend to describe the prophetic gift rather than define it. That is, they address it in terms of its functional operation rather than a formal definition. Packer’s comments are illustrative (and reflect a general Reformed perspective): “The essence of the prophetic ministry was forthtelling God’s present word to his people, and this regularly meant application of revealed truth rather than augmentation of it [i.e., the introduction of new revelation]. As Old Testament prophets preached the law and recalled Israel to face God’s covenant claim on their obedience… so it appears that New Testament prophets preached the gospel and the life of faith for conversion, edification and encouragement…” Packer thus conflates and makes essentially synonymous all three prophetic dimensions: the spiritual gift of prophecy and the two prophetic roles of Old and New Testament prophet. But in trying to equate the three, he confuses the matter by moving the prophetic ministry as such away from a revelatory role. He starts with the premise that the Church’s prophetic ministry involves the proclamation of previously revealed truth, but his further premise of “sameness” requires him to then assert the same thing regarding the Old Testament prophets – an assertion he knows he must qualify. (Thus his use of the qualifier “regularly.”) But there is a better option for doing justice to the biblical text’s treatment of prophecy and the prophetic office and the problem of an open canon. Thus some initial observations: First, the Scripture distinguishes the New Testament prophet (and prophetic utterances) from the Old Testament prophet and prophecy at least in terms of authority. In the New Covenant era, prophetic utterances and prophets are subject to apostolic authority and judgment (cf. 14:29-33, 34-37 with 11:4-6 and 1 Thessalonians 5:19-21). Christ’s apostles, not prophets, are the final authority in matters of God’s word. Consistent with this, it is possible for the New Testament prophetic ministry to be a revelatory ministration without jeopardizing the scriptural canon (ref. 14:6, 26, 29-30). It can be a form of secondary revelation – that is, the Spirit’s work of revealing truth in the cause of the grand revelation of God in Jesus Christ – the revelation embodied in the Scriptures (cf. 2:10 with Matthew 11:27, 16:17; Galatians 1:15-16; Ephesians 1:17; etc.).
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Post by Admin on Mar 29, 2024 13:15:38 GMT -5
Chapter 14 is a single, unified context which comprises four sections (vv. 1-19, 20-25, 26-33, and 34-40). Again, the entire chapter focuses on the gifts of tongues and prophecy, but in order to make a larger point regarding the charismata and their role in the Church. The importance of recognizing this becomes especially evident in the fourth section dealing with women speaking in the church assembly, and failure to treat Paul’s statements in context has led to the distortion and abuse of his meaning.
a. The first section of the chapter (vv. 1-19) is itself comprised of three distinct parts (vv. 1-5, 6-11 and 12-19). The first part presents Paul’s general assertion, which is that prophecy is superior to tongues. Paul’s line of reasoning shows the sense in which this is true: The superiority of the gift of prophecy resides in its inherent effectiveness as a spiritual gift: - All of the Spirit’s gifts are given for the Body’s edification, but utterance gifts are especially effective in this regard because they involve verbal, person-to-person communication (ref. Ephesians 4:15-16, 29). - But whereas prophecy is always effective in the work of edification, the gift of tongues isn’t. The reason is that prophecy is inherently communicative; it involves speaking the truths of God’s gospel to men in their shared language. Tongues-speaking, on the other hand, involves language which is foreign to the speaker and possibly also to the hearers. However, in making his assessment of prophecy’s superiority, Paul was speaking relatively, not absolutely. That is, Paul was comparing prophecy with tongues, not with all of the gifts (or every ministration of the Spirit, for that matter). Again, scholars and commentators propose different answers to the question of why Paul chose to focus his treatment on these two gifts, but whatever his reason, what matters is that his comparison pertains strictly to them. So, for instance, it would be wrong to conclude that Paul was exalting prophecy above the apostolic ministry, which also is an endowment of the Spirit (ref. again 12:28). Indeed, Paul’s larger argument makes it clear that prophets and prophetic utterances are subject to apostolic authority and scrutiny (ref. 14:36-40). Similarly, Paul’s ranking of tongues beneath prophecy doesn’t constitute a depreciation of tongues as such. Paul recognized tongues as a bona fide endowment of the Spirit, and therefore necessary in the Spirit’s task of building God’s new-creational sanctuary. Every gift the Spirit gives is wise, purposeful, and necessary to His work of renewal and christiformity. In this sense, one can argue that no gift is superior to any other; all are equally the Spirit’s charismata. But within the functional scheme of the Spirit’s gifts, prophecy enjoys superiority to tongues, and that by virtue of the very nature of these two gifts. Prophecy communicates the things of God without qualification. That is, it is not subject to linguistic barriers. (Paul’s premise is that prophetic utterance involves a language shared by speaker and hearer.) Tongues, however, is conditioned by linguistic factors by its very nature. Hence the need for the supporting gift of interpretation.
The inherent communicative advantage of prophecy is what renders this gift superior to tongues. The gift of tongues is obviously good, important and necessary (14:18), but in the economy of the Spirit’s endowments and their functioning in the life of the Church, prophecy – and the prophetic ministry – holds the place of superiority (14:19). This distinction will be further developed later on, but it’s worth noting here that Paul viewed tongues as a gift oriented toward the Spirit’s work beyond the corporate body (i.e., individual Christians and unbelievers), whereas prophecy is for the Church itself. Both gifts thus serve the Spirit’s work of up-building, but in different arenas and in different ways. Paul’s assertion to the Corinthians was that prophecy is superior to tongues, and he prefaced that assertion with an exhortation (14:1). A more open, contextual rendering of the Greek is as follows: Pursue love and be zealous for the things of the Spirit (and so the Spirit’s gifts); what that means is that you are to be especially zealous to prophesy in the Church. - Paul has shown that love informs, directs and empowers the gifts. The reason is that love seeks the highest good of its object, and this good is precisely the goal of the Spirit’s gifts: The great good of the saints is their christiformity, and the charismata are directed toward this outcome. - So the Corinthians were not to set love and the gifts of the Spirit at odds with each other. Paul wanted them to understand that the “more excellent way” that is love doesn’t overshadow or negate the charismata; both are “matters of the Spirit” (pneumatika – 12:1, 14:1) and both serve His work of creational christiformity (which, in this age, pertains to the Church). Indeed, in a certain sense, love and the charismata presuppose each other. Thus the logic of Paul’s reasoning: - Paul charged the Corinthians to relentlessly pursue love in their corporate life, and this pursuit implicates zeal for the things of the Spirit. For the one who loves demonstrates that he is zealous for the Spirit’s work of christiformity, even as zeal for that work expresses itself in a life of love. - So also the one who is zealous for the Spirit’s work will be zealous for the Spirit’s gifts, since those endowments serve His fruitful labors in the Church itself and in the Church’s mission in the world. - But precisely because the charismata serve the Spirit’s work of edification, (that is, the building of God’s dwelling in the saints – Ephesians 2:19ff; cf. Zechariah 4), it follows that proper zeal for the Spirit’s gifts is actually zeal for the work and goal of the gifts rather than for the gifts as such. - And this means that there will be greater zeal for prophecy than tongues because prophecy inherently edifies the Body whereas tongues do not.
Paul shows that this is his thinking by his subsequent explanation: Prophecy is to be preferred in the Church over tongues because the one who speaks in a tongue doesn’t speak to men and therefore doesn’t edify them, whereas the one who prophesies does speak to men, and does so unto their edification, exhortation and consolation. In a word, speaking in a tongue edifies the speaker; prophecy edifies the Body (14:2-4). Like the Spirit who taught and led him, Paul’s foremost concern was the Church’s up-building in Christ, and it was from this vantage point that he asserted the superiority of prophecy over tongues. At this level his explanation is straightforward, but it also introduces several difficulties. 1) First of all, what did Paul mean that the tongues-speaker speaks to God? Some have argued that the Corinthians had effectively substituted pagan ecstatic utterances for the biblical gift of tongues. These sorts of pagan practices were common in the Greco-Roman world, and the contention is that the tongues-speakers at Corinth were continuing these practices under the guise of the authentic spiritual gift of tongues. Thus it’s argued that the noun God should be rendered god, with Paul’s point being that those at Corinth who were speaking in tongues were actually engaging pagan deities, not the true God. The most compelling argument against this view is that the context contradicts it. If the tongues-speaking at Corinth was pagan and demonic, Paul would have explicitly distinguished between the Corinthian practice and the authentic gift. This is especially the case since he himself spoke in tongues (v. 18); there’s no way he would have allowed the Corinthians to equate his use of tongues and their pagan abuse. But Paul makes no such distinction; the issue of concern for him was not the Spirit’s gift versus a pagan counterfeit, but the Corinthians’ wrongful perception and use of the authentic gift (cf. vv. 2-5, 13-19). This is a critical observation, for it frames the whole context: However one concludes about Paul’s meaning at various points and in particular details, all such conclusions must flow from and be consistent with the fact that he was discussing the authentic spiritual gift of tongues (which he acknowledged operates in various ways), not some pagan counterpart. Thus the context supports the conclusion that Paul was indeed saying that the one speaking in a tongue speaks to God, and uncovering his meaning is helped along by his subsequent clarification in 14:2b-4. - First of all, Paul explained this notion of “speaking to God” in terms of communication: The person speaking in a tongue is speaking to God in the sense that God alone understands what he is saying. Paul’s assumption was that men are present in this tonguesspeaking scenario; they’re not being spoken to, not because they’re absent, but because they don’t understand what is being said.
There’s no communication between the speaker and those hearing him, and so it’s as if they aren’t even present in the room. The only one who hears and understands what is being communicated is God Himself. The believers present are effectively nothing more than spectators to the tongue-speaker’s interaction with God. This statement introduces Paul’s larger contextual argument, which is that communication and understanding are critical to edification, and edification is the reason for the use of the gifts in the Body. Again, it’s important to emphasize that Paul’s intent in this passage wasn’t to minimize the gift of tongues. But neither was he condemning a pagan counterfeit the Corinthians had embraced in the name of the legitimate gift. He was arguing against the use of tongues in the assembly of believers where there is no communication and understanding and therefore no edification. - Secondly, Paul explained that the one speaking in a tongue “utters mysteries in spirit.” Paul obviously meant for this statement to further clarify his point; unfortunately, it has tended to raise more questions and difficulties than it provides insight and answers. What did Paul mean by mysteries and how do these mysteries relate to the notion of spirit? Did he mean that the person speaking in a tongue speaks mysteries under the leading of the Holy Spirit, or in his own spirit? (Some who believe that the tongues-speaking at Corinth was a pagan counterfeit conclude that “spirit” denotes demonic spirits.) And what is the nature of these “mysteries”? In the end, how one interprets spirit will impact the way he understands the mysteries associated with it. Many commentators (and English Bible versions) hold that Paul was referring to the Holy Spirit. This is certainly plausible since Paul was dealing with the authentic gift of tongues, which is an endowment of the Spirit and empowered by Him. Thus anyone speaking in a tongue is speaking “in the Spirit” – which is to say, in and through His power and leading. However, the overall context seems to better support the conclusion that Paul was referring to the person’s spirit (cf. vv. 13-17). This interpretation is also supported by Paul’s immediate point that tongues is reduced to a purely personal phenomenon when there is no communication to others. This is obviously the case in the private use of tongues (which practice will be discussed later). But it is also true where the tongues-speaking involves a language unknown to the hearers and there is no interpretation (ref. vv. 5-13), which is the scenario Paul was here addressing. His point is then that communication is taking place only between the speaker and God; moreover, it exists as the spiritual communication of spirit-to-Spirit communion.
So also, the context and Paul’s overall argument – which focus on edification (and so communication) in the body – seem to indicate that “mysteries” refers, not to esoteric revelation or insight (whether divinely or demonically inspired), but to the obscurity of the speech. That is, the tongues-speaker’s utterances are mysterious in that no one understands what he is saying. A helpful example of this is the expression, hocus pocus, which connotes mysterious, deceptive, or veiled speech or actions (hence its use as a magical mantra). It’s widely accepted that this expression derives from the Latin words spoken in the administration of the Eucharist (hoc est corpus meum) – words which historically had an aura of mystery because the communicants didn’t understand them. In the present scenario, Paul noted that the speaker may very well be communicating with God and praising Him, but such a use of the gift of tongues is illegitimate in the Church because, apart from interpretation, the gift fails to edify (cf. vv. 14-17). Where edification is absent, so is love, and where love is absent the charismata become self-serving distortions of the Spirit’s gifts. 2) Secondly, in what sense does this sort of utterance serve to edify the tongues-speaker (14:4a)? Paul previously said that the one who speaks in a tongue (where there is no intelligible language or interpretation) utters mysteries in his spirit; now he notes that this utterance edifies the speaker. The fact that he is edified seems to imply that the speaker understands his own words. At the same time, his uttering mysteries “in his spirit” suggests that even he doesn’t discern what he’s saying (cf. vv. 14-15). It ought to be no surprise that various interpretations have been proposed, since the way one answers this question depends upon how the surrounding context is understood. So for instance, those who believe Paul was confronting a pagan practice readily conclude that he was using irony to deride the Corinthians: They were seeking to edify themselves by their tongues-speaking and foolishly thought they were doing so. But again, Paul was talking about the true gift of tongues. That alone disqualifies this interpretation, but the parallelism of verse 4 also argues against it. Interpreted in context and in the light of the preceding observations, it’s clear that Paul meant what he said: The one speaking in a tongue does edify himself. But is this edification cognitive or only at the level of his spirit? This isn’t easy to answer since Paul acknowledged both. - On the one hand, Paul emphasized intelligibility and cognition in the matter of edification (cf. vv. 14-15 with vv. 18-19). - On the other, he recognized a dimension of edification which exists in spirit-to-Spirit communion (cf. Romans 8:14-15, 26-27).
Moreover, these two are not mutually exclusive. A Christian’s edification extends to the whole man, and this means that it involves the renewing of his mind as well as the nourishing and strengthening of his spirit. The Spirit nurtures and perfects the life of Christ in His people, and this up building is a matter of communion as much as cognition. But Paul was speaking here of something different. The issue of intelligibility (and so cognition) pertains to the hearers, not the speaker. Paul’s concern wasn’t with the speaker’s understanding, but that of his hearers. His point is that the hearers aren’t edified because they don’t understand what is being said. In their case, the absence of intelligibility precludes the possibility of edification. But he was making no such claim respecting the speaker. Paul didn’t specify whether or not the speaker understands his own words because it’s irrelevant to his argument. Paul recognized that, in some instances, the tongues-speaker is given to know what he’s saying; the Spirit enables him to serve as his own interpreter (ref. v. 13). But he also seems to indicate that there are times when the speaker’s mind is not cognitively engaged with what he’s saying; he is edified in his spirit in distinction from his mind (ref. vv. 18-19). The above considerations and observations can be summarized as follows: - Paul was here talking about the public use of the gift of tongues in the absence of an interpretation (whether provided by the speaker or someone else). Where there is an interpretation, the tongues-speaker does speak to men and they are edified (ref. vv. 5, 12-13, 26-28). - Paul acknowledged and rejoiced in the Spirit’s subjective ministry to the individual Christian, and it seems he included the private use of tongues in that work. But his concern here was with the operation of the gifts in the Church, and, in that circumstance, edification depends upon cognition and understanding. Speaking in a tongue fails to edify the hearers – and so is illegitimate – where the words are not understood. Hence the necessity of interpretation (ref. vv. 27-28). - In the Church, the issue with utterance is intelligibility (vv. 7ff). It is in this regard that prophecy is superior, for it denotes utterance given in the language of the hearers and the speaker (whether or not that utterance is revelatory or instructional – cf. vv. 19, 26-32). To be edified by another’s words, they must be understood. - And because Paul was addressing the use of tongues in the assembly of believers, one cannot automatically extend his instruction to tongues-speaking that occurs outside the Church, whether as a private manifestation or in relation to gospel witness in the world. Paul was concerned with tongues in the Church and so didn’t really speak to their non-ecclesial function. Nevertheless, he drew a clear distinction between the ecclesial and non-ecclesial use of tongues, and we must be careful to do the same (vv. 18-19 with vv. 2, 4).
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Post by Admin on Mar 29, 2024 13:18:37 GMT -5
b. The Spirit gives His charismata to individual believers with the intent that those gifts will serve His work of building up the spiritual house that is Christ’s body. This up-building isn’t limited to the corporate life of the Church – it embraces the individual Christian’s personal communion with God as well as the saints’ mission to the world. But, in the Church, edification depends upon the saints employing their gifts as a mutual ministration of love. The gifts of the one must build up the others in the body, and this means that any use of any gift which doesn’t serve to edify is illegitimate, though the gift itself is of the Spirit. So it is with prophecy and tongues and their use in the Church: Being utterance gifts, they must communicate in order to edify, and tongues fails this criterion in instances where there is no interpretation. (Note that Paul here expressed this criterion of verbal communication in terms of revelation, knowledge, prophecy and teaching (v. 6) – all of which imply intelligible, coherent content which is conveyed in the hearer’s language.) The critical issue with tongues and prophecy (and all utterance) is communication, and communication depends upon the intelligibility of what is spoken – that is, the ability of a series of distinct sounds to convey meaning. The sounds and their arrangement may contain meaning, but they must accurately convey that meaning for communication to take place. Paul illustrated this truth in various ways in the second part of this first section (14:6- 11), first drawing upon some illustrations from “lifeless things” (vv. 7-8). Such things are inanimate objects and don’t communicate in a human language. Nevertheless, they do “speak” a language: They convey meaning by articulating distinct sounds – sounds which the hearer can distinguish from other sounds. - In the case of musical instruments (v. 7) this sound distinction consists in the arrangement of notes. The piece of music constitutes the content to be communicated, and the information is transmitted through the structured sequence and timing of discrete sounds identified in terms of their relationship with the other notes being played. The listener hears each sound and discerns its relation to the other sounds (whether played simultaneously or in sequence). Through that process of hearing and deciphering, the listener comes to understand the music being played and the instrument accomplishes its goal of communication. - The dynamic is slightly different with a bugle, but the principle is the same (v. 8). A bugle isn’t a musical instrument as such, but functions as a signaling device. They’ve been used in the military for centuries, and even to this day to signal various occasions and events such as reveille, taps, etc. In order to accomplish their role as signal devices, bugles must be able to communicate with their hearers. Like musical instruments, they do so by the sequence and cadence of tones they produce. The bugle communicates its message by the way it arranges and delineates the sounds it produces; if it fails to produce such distinction in its sequence of sounds, it will fail to communicate with its hearers.
As it is with inanimate things, so it is with people: “Unless you utter with your tongue speech that is clear, how will it be known what is spoken?” (v. 9). Again, the issue is communication between the speaker and hearer, and this requires that the sounds be intelligible to the hearer. It’s not enough that there is content and meaning contained in the stream of sounds coming out of the speaker’s mouth; that content and meaning must be conveyed to the hearer, and this requires that he be able to make sense of what he is hearing. In Paul’s words, the speech must be clear and intelligible; otherwise the speaker is simply “speaking into the air.” Language itself makes this point: Whatever a person’s linguistic skill, fluency and flair and however rich and profound his utterances, if those listening to him don’t understand what he’s saying he may as well be an ignorant and inarticulate fool babbling empty gibberish. His refined and erudite speech is perceived to be meaningless drivel by the one who doesn’t know his language (vv. 10-11). The problem isn’t the language – it has meaning; the problem is communication. Corinth was a major Greek commercial and cultural center – a city of no little importance in the vast Roman Empire. The Corinthians were part of a culture and heritage known and esteemed throughout the civilized world, and Paul’s letter shows how highly they regarded the Greek virtues of sophistication and erudition. Knowledge, logic, rhetoric and linguistic and oratory skills were lauded among the Greeks, and the Corinthians apparently viewed the gift of tongues through that lens. Speaking in tongues was one more way for a person to distinguish himself as sophisticated and erudite, which made Paul’s assessment all the more painful. - The Corinthians regarded their tongues-speaking as evidence of their spiritual maturity, insight and distinction, and quite naturally wished to have their brethren’s acknowledgement. No wonder, then, that they were so eager to speak in tongues when the Church came together. - Paul, however, regarded this practice in the Church as childishness (ref. 3:1-3) which betrayed their immaturity and lack of understanding. c. The Corinthians’ use of tongues in the body reflected badly on them, but it also reflected badly on the gift itself. They were abusing the gift (and thereby grieving the Spirit), not highlighting and exalting it. The Spirit gave the Corinthians the gift of tongues – as all of His gifts – to serve the edification of the spiritual body He is perfecting in and for the Lord Jesus Christ. Spiritual gifts are tools the Spirit uses to construct the everlasting sanctuary of the living God; the Corinthians were using this gift (and doubtless others as well) in disregard and even despite of God’s sanctuary. Rather than laboring in the Spirit’s power and leading to build it up, they were tearing it down (cf. 3:1-17). Thus Paul’s rebuke: You are proud of your zeal for the manifestations of the Spirit, but your zeal is misinformed and misdirected. You need to be zealous for the church’s edification. With respect to the gift of tongues, this means being zealous for the assembly to understand what is being spoken, which means insisting upon interpretation (14:12-13).
Paul wanted the Corinthians to know that he required nothing less of himself. He, too, had been given the gift of tongues, but as Christ’s called apostle. Paul possessed the apostolic endowment to which all of the charismata are subject, and yet he had no unique privilege or discretion in his use of the Spirit’s gifts. Like the Corinthians (and all of the saints), he, too, was obligated to employ his gifts in a manner which edifies Christ’s Church, and this meant speaking in the assembly in an intelligible way and not in a tongue (vv. 14-19). Characteristic of the chapter as a whole, Paul’s fundamental meaning in this passage is clear, but some of the particulars open up difficulties that need to be considered more closely. - The first is his distinction between mind and spirit in regard to the gifts and their use. This distinction runs through the passage and is central to Paul’s argument, and so it is critical that these terms and their relation to tongues be rightly understood. The context shows that Paul was using these terms metonymically. (Metonymy is a figure of speech in which the name of a thing is substituted for another thing to which it is related, as in the following sentence: The crowd raised an insurrection against the throne, where the term “throne” denotes the ruler’s dominion.) In this instance, mind is a metonym for intelligibility. In other words, when Paul referred to praying and speaking with his mind, he was talking about prayer and speech that is consciously and rationally formulated, understood and expressed (ref. vv. 14, 15, 19). And by implication, it is received by his hearers in the same way; it comes to them in the form of intelligible speech that their minds can process and comprehend (v. 19). Parallel to this, spirit is a metonym for that which is not intelligible. One must be careful at this point: Non-intelligibility doesn’t imply emptiness, irrationality, falseness or fleshliness. It simply indicates that the content and meaning of the utterance are not accessible to the intellectual faculties. This non-intelligibility is of the Spirit every bit as much as intelligible speech; it’s just that it edifies at the level of the person’s innermost being – his spirit. This kind of utterance involves Spirit-to-spirit communion, and hence the suitability of Paul’s assigning to it the metonym “spirit.” This interpretation makes many Christians uncomfortable and some reject it outrightly. But Paul’s own argument substantiates it: Throughout the passage, praying and speaking “with the spirit” is Paul’s way of referring to what transpires when he (or anyone) employs the Spirit’s gift of tongues. Such praying and speaking edifies the speaker, but not in the manner of intelligible speech (whether in his head or in his mouth); it edifies him at the level of his spirit, not his mind. And because it is not intelligible, such speech is of no benefit to his hearers. He can be edified by it, but they can’t; it is a ministration of the Spirit that is purely personal. (The Spirit builds up Christ’s body by building up its individual members, and this work has a personal, private aspect as well as a corporate one.)
- Paul distinguished between his mind and his spirit in relation to the gift of tongues, but he also insisted that, in his use of this gift, he was committed to employing both (v. 15). This qualification introduces its own difficulties. For Paul previously stated that his utterances in a tongue – whether speaking, praying or singing – involve his spirit, but not his mind: his mind “remains unfruitful” (v. 14). Now he seems to be indicating that he found this situation unacceptable: He was determined that his mind as well as his spirit should be involved in his praying, speaking and singing. Some argue that this qualification was Paul’s way of minimizing the gift of tongues. Because tongues-speaking only engages the speaker’s spirit (vv. 2, 14) and it’s critical that believers engage their minds in their utterances (whether speech, prayer, singing, etc.), it follows that tongues is of little value, and then only when there is an interpretation. Others hold that Paul was condemning what they allege was a pagan, ecstatic form of tongues at Corinth (including so-called “prayer language”). His argument is said to be along these lines: What you’re doing leaves your minds unfruitful, and the authentic use of any spiritual gift engages the mind. Therefore, you are to pray (and sing and speak) with your minds. Treated in isolation, verses 14-15 could possibly be interpreted this way, but not when considered together with Paul’s elaboration in verses 16-17. The key to Paul’s meaning is the fact that he was still addressing the use of tongues in the Church. He wasn’t denigrating or disallowing the practice of praying (or singing) in a tongue as such, but doing so in the assembly of believers. The one praying in a tongue is indeed praising and thanking the Lord, but the “ungifted” (uninformed) who are hearing him are unable to join in his praise and blessing because they don’t understand his prayer. The hearers are not edified, which indicts the speaker’s use of his gift. This, then, illumines Paul’s insistence upon praying with the mind as well as the spirit: Prayer in the assembly is a corporate exercise and a part of corporate worship, and so it is necessary that all such prayer be intelligible. The one who prays in a tongue must also pray with his mind – that is, he must make his prayer intelligible by interpreting it (cf. v. 13). - Finally, this passage highlights two important things about Paul that would otherwise not be known: The first is that he possessed the gift of tongues and employed it extensively – so much so that he could confidently assert that no one at Corinth spoke in tongues as much as he did (v. 18). The second is that he rarely (if ever) spoke in tongues in the Church (v. 19). This explains why he never mentions the gift outside of this context. But if Paul regularly exercised the gift of tongues, but not in the Church, this raises the question as to the occasions for his tongues-speaking. The obvious answer is that Paul spoke in tongues outside the Church assembly, which leaves only two options: He employed the gift privately or (and) in the context of his evangelistic preaching and personal ministry.
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Post by Admin on Mar 29, 2024 13:37:26 GMT -5
6. The second section of the chapter consists of verses 20-25. It continues Paul’s treatment of prophecy and tongues and stands upon his fundamental premise that, in the Church, edification – which is the purpose for the Spirit’s gifts – depends upon intelligibility. But it also introduces a significant new element to the discussion, namely the possibility of unbelievers coming into the gathered assembly. The church at Corinth was Paul’s concern in treating the topic of spiritual gifts, and this new element doesn’t change that; it simply introduces a new dimension to his instruction: In their understanding and use of the Spirit’s gifts, the Corinthians needed to take into account unbelievers as well as their fellow Christians, and that even in the context of the church gathering together.
a. Paul indicated this shift in focus with a pointed rebuke: “Brethren, do not be children in your thinking; yet in evil be babes, but in your thinking be mature.” (14:20) If somehow the Corinthians had managed to this point to miss Paul’s assessment that their involvement with the Spirit’s gifts was but one more expression of their spiritual childishness, his rebuke made it clear. He wasn’t calling them to guard against childishness in their thinking and actions, but to renounce it: His directive was to stop being childish. The power of Paul’s rebuke lies in its irony. It confronted the Corinthians on two fronts, challenging their self-perception and showing them that the truth of the matter of their involvement with the gifts was the opposite of what they thought. - They regarded their understanding and use of spiritual gifts as sure evidence of their spiritual insight, maturity and sophistication; Paul unmasked that delusion, insisting that they were actually guilty of natural thinking and spiritual childishness in relation to the Spirit’s gifts. - The Corinthians viewed their relationship with the charismata as something to be lauded; the furthest thing from their minds was that they were guilty of any error or wrongdoing. Paul, however, saw things differently. The Corinthians were childish in their thinking and this resulted in evil in their conduct and its fruit: They were abusing the gifts, with the result that they were grieving the Spirit, harming their brethren and undermining the unity of Christ’s body and the truth of His gospel. Thus a third point of irony in Paul’s rebuke: The Corinthians were guilty of a culpable childishness, but there is another kind of childishness which they lacked and ought to have pursued – a childishness indicative of the very maturity and insight they thought they possessed. And that childishness is the innocence characteristic of infants. The Corinthians were childish in the sense of being foolish, self-serving and lacking in discernment; they ought to have been childish in the sense of being innocent of wrongful and hurtful motives and actions. Paul’s rebuke had a sting, but a sting intended to act as an antiseptic. For he issued it to his brethren in Christ out of a heart of love. Paul was discipling the Corinthians as a devoted father, chastening them for the sake of their edification.
b. There was childishness and evil in the way the Corinthians were perceiving and employing the Spirit’s gifts in the body, but Paul added a new dimension to the issue that perhaps they hadn’t considered. Their approach to the gifts was clearly impeding the up-building of the saints, but it also stood to undermine the Spirit’s work among the unbelieving. - The Spirit’s work is the work of edification. He is the creative Spirit whose interaction with the creation has always been directed toward ordering and filling – bringing order and fullness out of chaos and emptiness. He accomplished this in the initial creation, securing a “created order” such that the Creator-God could pronounce the judgment of perfect goodness upon His work (Genesis 1). - But the fall of the image-son destroyed this order and fullness and introduced a new sort of chaos to the creation. The shalom of creational harmony was shattered and the creation, which had been ordered to reflect the triune Creator’s own perichoretic union and communion, was reduced to a fractured, fragmented entity marked by estrangement and enmity. - Thus the Spirit of creation became, in accordance with the divine purpose, the Spirit of re-creation. The Spirit is again doing the work of creational ordering and filling, but now in order to make the creation the everlasting sanctuary of the triune God: the true sanctuary constructed upon the foundation of Jesus Christ which the Edenic sanctuary only prefigured. - And this work of building God’s sanctuary is ongoing; it involves the continual forming and incorporating of new “living stones” (cf. 1 Peter 2:4-10 with Zechariah 4:1-10; cf. also Acts 1:1-8, 2:1-41 and Ephesians 2:1-22). The Spirit’s work of edification thus pertains to unbelieving people as well as to the saints; God’s image-bearers must be “built into” His sanctuary (the Church) before they can be “built up” as part of it. The Spirit’s gifts are instruments in His labors to build the everlasting sanctuary, and the Corinthians were violating this truth on both fronts: They were opposing the Spirit’s work of edification with respect to the stones already in God’s sanctuary and those yet to be gathered up and incorporated into it. Their use of the gifts was dividing Christ’s body rather than nurturing its unity and edification, but it was also undermining the Spirit’s work among the unbelieving. The critical point in all of this is that, while the Spirit gives His gifts for the sake of the Church (chapter 12), this doesn’t limit them to the body in the strict sense. The gifts serve the Church’s up-building in terms of ingathering as well as nurture. And as it is for the saints, so it is for the unbelieving who experience the working of the Spirit’s gifts: The ability of the gifts to edify depends on their ability to communicate the truth (whether in word or deed). If intelligibility is the issue in the ministration of the gifts to the saints, so it is with unbelievers.
Thus the superiority of prophecy to tongues holds even in the case of unbelievers. The reason ought to be obvious: If those who know Christ cannot be built up in Him by words they cannot understand, how much more is that the case with those who don’t know Him? Worse yet, while believers may only be frustrated by unintelligible speech, such speech leaves unbelievers utterly confused. They don’t have the spiritual grid through which to view the manifestations of the Spirit; their only choice is to interpret what they’re experiencing through their own personal, cultural and religious grid. In the case of unbelievers in Corinth, this meant interpreting manifestations of the Spirit in terms of pagan spirituality. Thus Paul (v. 23): If an unbeliever comes into your assembly and hears people speaking in tongues, will he not conclude that he’s witnessing pagan ecstatic utterances? (“Out of your minds” doesn’t denote madness, but the sort of frenzied expressions characteristic of the pagan religious practices familiar to the people of Corinth.) In this regard, too, tongues-speaking in the Church grieves the Spirit and contradicts edification. Not only is the unbeliever unable to understand what he’s hearing, he’s left to conclude that the Christian faith – which he defines by the worship he observes – is just another variety of the religion which filled Corinth. On the other hand, the intelligibility associated with the gift of prophecy eliminates both of these outcomes: The unbeliever who is present understands what he’s hearing and is thus able to rightly conclude regarding it. Far from confusing Christian worship with pagan ritual, the unbeliever is confronted with the living God and His gospel and forced to distinguish between the spirituality and religion he’s known and that which is “spirit and truth” (vv. 24-25). Indeed, Paul’s language of acknowledgement – “God is certainly among you” – echoes the scriptural promise of Gentile conviction and ingathering resulting from observing the blessedness of God’s people (cf. Isaiah 45:14; Zechariah 8:22-23). “When the church prophesies authentically, it becomes the instrument through which God accomplishes the eschatological conversion of the nations.” (Hays)
c. These considerations capture the substance of Paul’s message in this section, and the reason for approaching the passage this way (that is, jumping over verses 21- 22) is that it’s important to have Paul’s overall argument in view when attempting to interact with his citation and commentary on it. Paul was trying to make a point to the Corinthians and he felt this scriptural passage helped his cause. Thus the best way to arrive at Paul’s thinking behind this citation is to work backwards from the argument he intended it to reinforce. Approaching vv. 21-22 from that perspective, several observations are helpful in sorting out Paul’s meaning:
The first observation has already been implied, but it deserves to be clearly stated because it provides the foundation for all further consideration. And that observation is that Paul cited this synopsis of Isaiah 28:11-12 because he believed it substantiated his point regarding the injurious effect of the public exercise of tongues on unbelievers.
Second, Paul was obviously familiar with the section of Isaiah’s prophecy he cited from, since he drew from the same context in his Romans epistle (ref. 9:33; cf. Isaiah 28:16). This supports the conclusion that, in providing this citation, Paul had Isaiah’s contextual argument in mind and wasn’t simply lifting out a couple of verses because they contain applicable terminology. And given that Paul had in mind the context he cited from, it’s important for Paul’s readers to understand it. (He evidently assumed the Corinthians were familiar with this passage from Isaiah; perhaps he’d instructed them in it during his ministry in Corinth.) The general theme of this context is the impending Assyrian invasion as Yahweh’s judgment upon His unfaithful, disobedient people. Isaiah previously prophesied of this judgment (chaps. 7-8), and now the time was at hand. The Assyrians would march southwest into Canaan and conquer the northern kingdom of Israel (Ephraim, 28:1, 3) and then continue on into Judah (cf. 8:5-8, 28:9-22). This conquest and oppression culminated centuries of the covenant people refusing to listen to Yahweh through His prophets. They had shut up their ears to intelligible speech; now God was going to withdraw such speech from them. He Himself would be silent and the only voices they would hear would be those of their Assyrian captors. Unintelligible speech was to be a sign of divine judgment and rejection, even as Moses had warned the fledgling nation at the very beginning (Deuteronomy 28:47-50; cf. also Jeremiah 5:7-15). This is the context for Paul’s citation, and it is the framework for interpreting his commentary on it (v. 22). Paul understood that a famine of the Lord’s word means desolation and death since His words are life and peace (Amos 8). God can bring about such a famine by His silence, but it can also result from stopped ears or unintelligible speech. In the present scenario, God’s word wasn’t absent and the unbelieving hearers weren’t refusing to listen (vv. 24-25); the “famine” was caused by unintelligible utterances by the speakers. And the implication of this situation was grave. God is a relational being, and therefore a communicative being. This means that the absence of divine-human communication constitutes a curse; it represents the severing of the divine-human relationship. So it was with Israel, and so it remains. To not have access to God’s self-communication is to be exiled to a howling wasteland, and this is the case regardless of whether God ceases to speak, men refuse to listen, or His servants withhold or veil His word. Thus Paul’s assessment: In the Church, and apart from an interpreter, tongues leave the hearers famished. With respect to an unbeliever who happens to be present, this famine of hearing effectively leaves him under divine judgment: He yet remains under the curse of being cut off from the words of life – not through any fault of his own, but because of the tongues-speaker. Whatever the tongues-speaker might believe about the virtue and spiritual value of his speech, the truth is that he is withholding food from his hearers – food that would nourish the saints and give life to the unbelieving. In employing tongues in this way, the Corinthians were indeed foolish children guilty of evil (v. 20). The remedy was to speak intelligibly in the assembly and so honor God’s gospel and nurture the faith of all the hearers. Prophecy exalts and serves faith; it is thus a sign unto those who believe.
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Post by Admin on Mar 29, 2024 13:40:56 GMT -5
7. The third section of the chapter comprises the first half of Paul’s summary instruction regarding the use of the Spirit’s gifts in the church assembly (14:26-33). In keeping with his approach to the subject, Paul’s instruction focuses on the gifts of tongues and prophecy, but in order to make his larger point regarding the charismata as such and the way the saints are to regard and employ them in the life and ministration of the body. And the marrow of Paul’s summary is the very thing he’s been insisting upon throughout his treatment, which is that the Spirit’s gifts are to be used in conformity to the will and work of the Spirit Himself; that is, they are to be employed and directed in such a way that they build up the body of believers. For all the diversity of the gifts and their manifold expressions, all are united by the common, singular goal of edification (v. 26).
a. Paul’s opening statement shows that he had in mind all of the Spirit’s gifts and not simply tongues and prophecy. Nevertheless, he specifically addressed these two gifts in drawing out his summary inferences. And what he had to say about the gift of tongues is essentially a restatement of his previous instruction: Because edification is the purpose for the gifts, and because edification depends upon intelligibility, the legitimate use of tongues in the body demands interpretation (cf. vv. 5, 7-19). Where there is no interpretation – either by the speaker or someone else, there is to be no speaking in tongues in the assembly (vv. 27-28). The only thing Paul adds here is the qualification that no more than three individuals are to be permitted to speak in tongues. The issue isn’t the number of persons who speak per se, but the saints’ obligation to maintain order and propriety in their gatherings. In all they are and do as individuals and as a body, believers are to testify to God and His gospel; they are to bear the fragrance of Christ in every place and in every situation and circumstance. And God is a God of order and propriety, not chaos and confusion (cf. vv. 33, 40). Just as tongues speaking in the absence of interpretation communicates chaos and confusion and thus fails to edify, so it is with too much tongues-speaking. Even intelligible interpretation cannot secure the hearers’ edification when they are distracted, confused and overwhelmed by a multitude of competing voices. Here again it’s important to recognize that Paul wasn’t denying, deprecating or limiting the use of the gift of tongues as such. He understood and upheld the equal value and important contribution of tongues to the Spirit’s work of building God’s sanctuary. But the value and propriety – indeed the true spirituality – of this spiritual gift (and all of the Spirit’s gifts) resides in its proper use according to the Spirit’s purpose and will. Edification determines what is proper with respect to the charismata; in the case of tongues, edification – and therefore propriety – is a function of situational context. Here Paul was speaking of the use of tongues in the gathered assembly. Thus the stipulation of interpretation pertains only to the use of tongues where there is an audience of people who don’t understand what is being spoken. No such requirement exists in the case of the private use of tongues or instances where the hearers do understand – as in the case of Pentecost or other missions situations in which the utterance is in the language of the audience.
b. From tongues Paul turned his attention to the gift of prophecy. Up to this point his instruction has focused on tongues; Paul has only mentioned prophecy by way of contrasting it with tongues for the purpose of establishing the former’s superiority. Now, in his summary instruction, Paul provides some insight into the prophetic gift and how it is to be viewed and utilized in the Church (vv. 29-33). And just as one would expect, the same core principle applies to prophecy as to tongues: As a gift of the Spirit, prophecy has its purpose in the Church’s up building, and this means that this gift, too, must function under the constraints of order and propriety. A multitude of voices fosters chaos and confusion in the case of tongues-speaking, and so it is with prophetic utterance. Disorder precludes intelligibility even when the hearers know the language being spoken. - Thus Paul limited the number of tongues-speakers – even under the assumption that their speech will be interpreted. (Where there is no interpretation, there are to be no tongues-speakers at all.) - So it is with prophecy. If intelligible (interpreted) tongues-speaking must be limited for the sake of propriety and order in the cause of edification, so it must be with the intelligible speech that is prophetic utterance. Paul could not rightly constrain the one without constraining the other. In the church assembly, two or three prophets are to speak (the assumption here being that the Spirit has pressed upon them something to communicate to the body), but with the understanding that their words are accountable. If propriety and order – i.e., the obligation of edification – dictate the governance of the number of prophetic utterances, they equally dictate the governance of the utterances themselves: The words of the prophets are to be judged (v. 29). But this raises the obvious question of who is to judge the words of the prophets. Was Paul referring to the other prophets present in the assembly or the whole body? His subsequent statement seems to argue for the first option (v. 32), but this interpretation introduces its own problem: If prophetic utterances are accountable only to other prophets, what happens in instances where there are no others in a church body who possess the prophetic gift? Was Paul implying that, in such cases, prophetic utterances are to be set aside (or silenced) until they can be judged by the prophets in another church body? Or was he implying that the Spirit always bestows the prophetic gift on more than one person in a given congregation? Another option is that Paul was indicating what is to be normative practice in the churches rather than issuing a hard-and-fast directive. It’s more likely Paul was referring to the saints’ obligation as a body of believers to test all things. Viewed this way, prophetic utterances are accountable to others with the prophetic gift, but they’re also accountable to all of the saints in the body, all of whom have Christ’s mind and are gifted by the one and same Spirit (cf. 12:1-3 with 1 Thessalonians 5:20-21; also 1 John 4:1; Revelation 2:1-3).
This interpretation is reinforced by Paul’s insistence that the individuals who prophesy (and speak in tongues) are to also hold themselves accountable. Their persons, and not merely their words, are subject to the obligation of order and propriety for the sake of the body’s edification. And this means that, if more than one person has a prophetic word for the assembly, each individual is to speak in turn in an orderly and respectful fashion. By doing so, each prophet can be heard and his words processed and assessed; such orderliness, respect and deference insure that the whole assembly is instructed and edified. Conversely, a lack of order insures confusion and incoherence; though the prophets are speaking in the language of their hearers, their speech is rendered unintelligible. This is certainly the case if the speakers are talking out of turn or over the top of each other, but they can also destroy the intelligibility of their words by distracting or offending their hearers through a disrespectful or prideful attitude. The old adage is certainly true that a person’s actions can make it impossible to hear his words. But if prophetic utterances are to be judged by the whole body, what did Paul mean that the “spirits of prophets are subject to prophets” (v. 32)? There are two basic ways this statement can be interpreted: - The first possibility was alluded to above, which is that prophets and their words are accountable to other prophets – men who share the same gift by the same Spirit and so can discern the truth of what is being spoken. In this case, spirit likely refers to the illumining and directing power behind prophetic utterances. Thus John: “Testing the spirits” means testing utterances and ideas alleged to have their origin in the Holy Spirit to see whether they accord with the apostolic gospel as revealed and affirmed by the Spirit (cf. 1 John 4:1ff; Hebrews 2:1-4; also 2 Corinthians 11:1-13:10). - The second option is that Paul was speaking of a prophet’s individual obligation of personal discipline and accountability: The spirits of prophets are subject to prophets in the sense that a prophet has authority over his own spirit. Interpreted this way, Paul’s point was that the prophetic ministry in the Church must not resemble the frenzied, out-of control ecstatic utterances which characterized the paganism of Corinth. God’s prophets are led by His Spirit, and God is not a God of confusion, but of peace (i.e., order and harmony) (vv. 32-33). Where the Spirit is leading, there will be order, propriety, respect, and deference resulting in edification, not chaos and confusion leading to agitation and disharmony. The second interpretation best fits the context, which emphasizes restraint and order as critical to edification in the church assembly. Again, Paul insisted that those with the gift of prophecy were to govern themselves such that only two or three of them speak, and then one at a time in orderly fashion so that the assembly is instructed, encouraged and edified (vv. 29-31). That prescription is the premise for verse 32, which Paul then clarified by noting that God is a God of order and self-control (v. 33): As He is, so are His prophets.
Order, harmony, and propriety are to characterize everything about the assembly of the saints and their worship – not just at Corinth, but in all the churches (v. 33b). Paul applied this standard specifically to tongues and prophecy, not because it pertains only to them, but because they are the focal point of his treatment of the charismata. And they are the appropriate focus because they so effectively make Paul’s point: Of all of the gifts, none have a greater tendency to violate Paul’s criterion of propriety, order and harmony in the Church than prophecy and tongues. Yet even these gifts – which so powerfully express the leading of the Holy Spirit – do not operate chaotically or beyond the control of the speaker. It’s not clear whether some at Corinth were claiming to be “carried away” in their use of their gifts; what is clear is that Paul discredited any such claims. The very fact that he directed the prophets and those speaking in tongues to limit and order their speaking shows that he believed they had complete control over the exercise of their gifts (cf. again vv. 27-28 with vv. 29-31). The implication, then, is that if any sort of disorder or disharmony arose in the assembly’s mutual ministration of the Spirit’s gifts, it was the result of their folly and sin, not the Spirit’s leading. Every community of believers is accountable for their use of the charismata: If the Spirit gives His gifts for the purpose of the body’s edification (in all of its various components and facets), then the saints have no right to use them selfishly, arrogantly, foolishly, or recklessly. - The Holy Spirit distributes His gifts to individuals, but in the context of and for the sake of the body of which the individual believer is part (ref. again 12:1-14). The Body causes the growth of the Body (Ephesians 4:16), and this implies that each part and its individual functioning is constrained by and accountable to the whole and its edification. - Moreover, the examples of prophecy and tongues show that this accountability extends to the gifted person and not just to his gift. Paul highlighted the accountability of the persons by putting boundaries and definition on their use of their gifts. So he highlighted the accountability of their speech by demanding interpretation in the case of tongues speaking and assessment by the body in the case of prophetic utterances. An important corollary of the prophets’ accountability is the fact that Paul didn’t consider prophetic utterances to be infallible. On the one hand, there are those who claim the gift of prophecy but don’t actually possess it. Such individuals present their own notions as the leading of the Spirit. On the other hand, possessing this gift doesn’t imply perfect sensitivity to the Spirit. Prophets are capable of misconstruing or even missing the Spirit’s leading. Paul understood the limitations of the Church’s prophetic ministry, but that didn’t lead him to ban prophetic utterances; rather, he demanded that they be judged by the body of believers. The community indwelled and taught by the Spirit is the rightful and only suitable judge of whether an utterance expresses the Spirit’s leading.
This highlights the fact that, unlike so many in the Church, Paul trusted the Spirit and His work in building God’s sanctuary. He didn’t feel he had to protect the saints from possible error by erecting human boundaries, definitions or prescriptions; he had full confidence that the Spirit is able to preserve and perfect those under His charge. The easy answer to the fallibility of prophetic utterances is to silence them; Paul’s answer was to trust the Spirit’s power and leading. Paul’s instruction provides direction for how the prophetic gift is to be exercised in the assembly of saints, but it also provides insight into the gift itself. In that regard, he explicitly associated the gift of prophecy and prophetic utterance with revelation (vv. 29-31). Most Christians are comfortable with the idea of prophetic revelation in terms of the prophets of the pre-Christian era, but Paul was referring to prophets in the New Testament Church. Recognizing the implications of this, Christian scholarship has approached the matter in different ways. As noted previously, the primary concern with Christian revelatory prophecy is the apparent threat it poses to a completed New Testament canon. Proceeding upon the conviction of a closed canon, Christians generally embrace one of two positions regarding the spiritual gift of prophecy. - The first denies (implicitly or explicitly) that prophecy is revelatory. This has the obvious benefit of allowing for the prophetic gift to continue on in the Church while still upholding the axiom of a closed canon. Advocates of this view typically treat prophecy as roughly synonymous with preaching. This equation works relatively well in terms of this context in which prophecy represents speech that is intelligible and instructive (cf. vv. 18-19, 31), but Paul’s definitions aren’t that clear-cut. For instance, in this same context he distinguished between prophecy and teaching (14:6; cf. Romans 12:6-7), which is his most common designation for speech which instructs. Even more, in the same statement Paul distinguished between prophecy and revelation, though he later linked them together (vv. 29-31). More to the point, Paul never treats prophecy and preaching as synonyms. He regarded prophecy as a spiritual gift to be employed in the Church, whereas “preaching” designates his proclamation of the gospel in fulfillment of his apostolic calling to take the good news to the world (cf. 15:1-12; Acts 9:1-16; Romans 10:1-15; Colossians 1:24-29; 1 Timothy 2:1-7). But beyond these things, one cannot deny the revelatory quality of the spiritual gift of prophecy and be true to Paul’s writing. - The second way to resolve the difficulty of revelatory prophecy is to label prophecy a “sign gift” and then assert that this gift ceased with the completion of the canon. Under this view, prophecy in the Church (as it was in Israel) does involve human communication of divinely-revealed content, but the need for it ended when God’s revealed truth was fully inscripturated. But as noted before, Paul gives no indication in this epistle or elsewhere that the gift of prophecy has ceased (ref. 13:8-12).
But if prophecy is revelatory – and Paul indicates that it is – and if it continues as a gift in Christ’s Church until the Parousia at the end of the age (the coming of “the perfect”), does it then threaten the notion of a closed canon? The answer depends on how one defines “revelation.” If a particular, narrow definition of revelation is assumed, there can be no ongoing revelation without an open canon. But if one defines revelation according to the scriptural terminology – that is, as an unveiling, then the apparent problem evaporates. For the truth as it is in Jesus Christ – the truth to which the Scriptures bear witness – must be revealed to individual human beings (cf. Acts 2:22-37, 11:34-48, 16:11-14; Galatians 1:11-17; 2 Corinthians 3-4). This alone is sufficient to establish that revelation in some sense necessarily continues until the consummation at the end of the age. Moreover, this revelation of the truth of Jesus Christ isn’t the result of a cognitive or exegetical analysis of words, but of the Spirit’s work in the inner man. Paul himself is the quintessential proof that even the most intimate and scholarly knowledge of the scriptural text is not the same as the knowledge of the truth. For all his vast learning, Paul the biblical scholar was a blasphemer and grievous offender (1 Timothy 1:12-13). He knew vast amounts of information about God, but he didn’t know God Himself because he didn’t know Him as the Spirit reveals Him in Jesus Christ in the inner man. Prophecy (like preaching and teaching) does involve the communication of divine truths to men, but truths that have been unveiled to the speaker (the “prophet”) through the leading of the Spirit. Thus prophecy involves the communication of Spirit-imparted insights – insights into divine truth to which the Scripture gives its “amen,” but which cannot be discerned by analyzing a set of scriptural texts. All truth resides in the person of Jesus Christ (cf. John 1:14-17, 5:31-33, 14:6, 18:37 with Ephesians 4:20-24 and Colossians 2:1-3); the Scripture is a written witness that testifies to the One who is the truth (Luke 24:25-27, 44; John 5:39; etc.). The Scripture constitutes divine revelation in the sense that it is an accurate record of God’s words and works, but God’s purpose in revelation wasn’t a written account which men can read and study. His purpose was to reveal Himself in men and thus to them: to grant them the ever-deepening, person-to-person knowledge that is relational and living – the knowledge of the living God which is in Jesus Christ and which the Spirit causes to dawn and grow in the hearts of men (2 Corinthians 4:1-6). The Spirit is the Spirit of revelation (John 14:16-26, 15:26- 16:15): His work is to reveal the living Jesus Christ by producing and perfecting His life in men. The Scripture is a tool in that revelatory work, but so is the verbal communication of Spirit-imparted insights into the truth of God as it is in Christ. The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy (Revelation 19:10) and the Spirit bears that testimony in the human heart. Thus the gift of prophecy is revelatory in that it serves the Spirit’s work of communicating the living knowledge of Christ to human beings. Until the whole creation is summed up in Him, prophecy will continue to have a vital role in the Spirit’s work of christiformity.
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Post by Admin on Mar 29, 2024 13:45:09 GMT -5
8. The final section of the chapter comprises the second part of Paul’s summary instruction regarding spiritual gifts (14:34-40). The first part of Paul’s summary emphasized order and propriety as critically important to the Church’s well-being and edification, and therefore fundamental to the way the Spirit’s gifts must be viewed and utilized. In terms of utterance gifts such as tongues and prophecy, edification depends upon intelligibility, but intelligibility depends upon more than merely understandable words. Where utterances are made in the context of chaos, confusion or other distractions, those words will not communicate as they ought, in spite of their being uttered in the language of the hearers (whether directly or by means of an interpreter). These considerations and their contribution to Paul’s overall argument must be kept in mind when approaching this closing section. Many times readers come to this passage and treat it in isolation, as if Paul were changing the subject and turning to a new topic of women speaking in the assembly (This apparent discontinuity has led some to conclude that this passage is a later insertion.) But approaching his instruction in this way insures that his meaning will be confused and obscured, if not lost altogether. For, while Paul was indeed writing concerning women in the church assembly, he was doing so in terms of his contextual argument that order and propriety in the assembly are essential to the Spirit’s gifts accomplishing their intended purpose of edification. One must read Paul’s instruction in these verses through this lens if he is to grasp his meaning.
a. This is arguably the most difficult passage in the entire context, and the first challenge is determining whether v. 33b concludes the preceding section or introduces the present one. (The original form of the Greek text doesn’t include punctuation which would answer the question.) Commentators are divided on this issue, but, in the end, Paul’s meaning isn’t greatly affected either way. - If v. 33b closes out vv. 26-33, then Paul was merely emphasizing to the Corinthians that orderliness in the assembly isn’t uniquely their obligation, but is God’s standard in all the churches. Perhaps the strongest argument against treating v. 33b this way is that it seems be unnecessary. It goes without saying that, if God is a God of peace and not confusion, He is that way everywhere and at all times. Thus Paul hardly needed to tell the Corinthians that God is the same in all the churches. - If, on the other hand, v. 33b introduces vv. 34-40, Paul was indicating that his forthcoming instruction concerning women is what he prescribes in all the churches. He didn’t want the Corinthians to conclude that he was singling them out because of considerations or issues unique to them. This view, too, has its weaknesses, among them the fact that it leaves Paul guilty of constructing a somewhat awkward, perhaps redundant statement. Literally, his statement would read: “As in all the churches of the saints, let the women be silent in the churches.” But despite the awkwardness of the wording, this is probably the way Paul intended the passage to be read. He had the same prescription for all the churches, and that prescription was that women are to remain silent in the church assembly.
b. The greater difficulty is the apparent contradiction between Paul’s prohibition in this passage and his previous instruction. Earlier he addressed the matter of women prophesying and praying in the assembly and he voiced no objection to their speaking, only to the manner in which they did so (ref. 11:1-16). Paul didn’t forbid women to speak in the Church, but he insisted that they present and conduct themselves in a manner which would not undermine their testimony to Christ and His gospel and stumble other saints (or the watching world). And in his instruction on spiritual gifts, Paul made no distinction between men and women in terms of the charismata and their ministration. In particular, he nowhere states – or even suggests – that only men have utterance gifts (ref. Acts 21:7ff). And if women are also endowed with gifts such as tongues and prophecy, it follows that they are obligated to employ those gifts as the Spirit intends, namely in the Church for the sake of the body’s edification (cf. 12:1-11, 28-30 and 14:26). To this point Paul has given every indication that women are to be active participants when the saints assemble together. True, there are restrictions placed upon them, but there are restrictions on men as well. Male or female, all of Christ’s saints are obligated to worship Him in Spirit and truth in conformity to Christ’s headship of His Church and the law of love. They must do all things for the sake of the gospel and its fruitfulness in edification – whether in regard to their fellow Christians or the unbelievers observing the Church and its members (cf. 8:1-13, 9:11-12, 19-23, 10:23-33, 14:20-26). Thus far Paul has only restricted women in the Church as required by the obligation of edification; now he seems to be forbidding them from speaking at all. There are only two ways to conclude (assuming Paul’s authorship of 14:34-36, which some commentators deny): Either Paul was inconsistent – if not selfcontradicting – in his position and instruction, or he wasn’t. Some conclude he was indeed inconsistent, but this “resolution” actually resolves nothing, for it leaves the matter of women’s participation in the assembly up in the air. Which of Paul’s positions should we adopt, and how do we know? And if Paul held inconsistent views, doesn’t his inconsistency at least suggest that he hadn’t himself thought through the issues carefully and thoroughly? And that being the case, what confidence should we have in anything he has to say about this topic? But if in fact Paul’s instruction is consistent – and the contention here is that it is, we have the obligation to resolve the apparent inconsistency in a manner that does justice to all he has to say about the role of women in the Church. That requires careful interaction with this epistle, but also with Paul’s teaching elsewhere. c. Beginning then, with this passage, it needs to be interpreted in the light of the context as well as Paul’s previous instruction in chapter 11. Four considerations are in the forefront in that regard. The first is the arena of Paul’s injunction. That is, was he prohibiting women from speaking in the formal assembly or in any setting where other Christians are present? Context must answer this question, since in 14:34 Paul says that women are to remain silent in the churches, while in the next verse he says that it’s shameful for women to speak in an assembly.
Considered alone, these two statements make it difficult to determine Paul’s meaning. But his subsequent comment is helpful – not so much for determining the venue he had in mind (i.e., the formal assembly of the church or any gathering of Christians), but his demand that women remain silent. Even if it’s assumed that Paul was forbidding women to speak in any assembly of believers, his comment suggests that this prohibition isn’t absolute. It appears to be associated, in some sense, with speech motivated by the desire to learn. (What exactly this “learning” is must be determined by the larger context.) The second consideration is that Paul’s insistence that women remain silent in the assembly is set within his discussion of spiritual gifts, and specifically prophecy and tongues (note vv. 39-40). This is important because these are utterance gifts and Paul’s prohibition pertains to speech. Treated in context, it seems that Paul was referring to speech somehow related to the exercise of tongues and prophecy. Three options are reasonable: 1) Paul was forbidding women to prophesy and speak in tongues in the assembly; 2) he was forbidding them to participate vocally in the judgment of prophetic utterances; 3) he was forbidding both. The third issue is the need to reconcile this passage with 11:1-16. If Paul’s prohibition in 14:34-35 is taken absolutely (i.e., women may not speak at all in an assembly of believers), the only way to reconcile these two passages is to conclude that the chapter 11 passage isn’t talking about the gathered assembly. Women may prophesy and pray audibly (in conformity to the definition Paul provides), but only in private settings outside of the assembled church. The most obvious problem with this interpretation is that the passage itself gives no indication of it; rather, it is assumed on the basis of a particular reading of 14:34- 35. In fact, Paul’s only hint – namely, his summary reference to the churches in 11:16 – suggests that he was discussing a practice in the assembled body. (Note that Paul’s transitional exhortation in 14:26 makes the same suggestion.) Assuming, then, the most natural reading of 11:1-16 (and taking into account the corresponding passage of 1 Timothy 2:11-12, which will be examined shortly), it follows that Paul’s prohibition in 14:34-35 cannot be taken as absolute. And laid alongside the preceding considerations, it seems apparent that Paul was referring to speech associated with the gifts of tongues and prophecy and which is motivated by the speaker’s desire to learn. A fourth consideration is the relationship between Paul’s directive and the male/female order of creation. Paul didn’t raise this topic in the present context, but he did earlier in the epistle (11:6-12) and it clearly framed his thinking respecting the role of women in the Church. This issue of the creation order turns the spotlight on another of Paul’s letters in which he addressed the role of women, namely his first epistle to Timothy. In that letter he explicitly referenced the male female order in creation (and their roles in the fall) as substantiating his position that women are to be in subjection in the Church (ref. 2:9-15).
The matter of male primacy and headship was discussed at length in the treatment of 11:1-16 and that discussion need not be repeated here. But a few summary statements are in order as they provide a foundation for considering Paul’s parallel instruction in 1 Timothy 2:9-15. - First, the creational primacy of man over woman isn’t absolute. For though, in the first instance, woman originated in man, the pattern ever since is that man has his origin in woman (11:11-12). There is a fundamental biological and ontological interdependence between male and female. God’s design for man as “image-son” is male and female (Genesis 1:26-27; cf. 2:18-20); man is incomplete without woman and woman is incomplete without man. Humanness – both as created and as consummated in Christ – is a matter of male and female (1 Peter 3:7). - This means that male/female distinctions are overarched by a fundamental ontological sameness and equality. The implication is that functional roles reflect and serve the ultimacy of this sameness, and that includes the arenas in which women are to be in subjection (whether to their husbands or to male headship in the Church.) In a word, headship and subjection – understood and exercised as God designed them – express the fundamental existential structure of unity in diversity. This existential form defines the entire created order precisely because it defines God Himself, and God’s design was that His creation would reflect Him and so attest His nature and glory (cf. Psalm 19:1-3, 104:1-31; Isaiah 6:1-3; cf. also Revelation 21- 22 in which the creation is depicted as having realized its purpose to consummately glorify God by becoming His everlasting sanctuary.) - Female subjection (in whatever arena) thus expresses the fundamental existential truth of unity in diversity. As woman is subject to man, so is the Son subject to the Father (11:1-3). This subjection isn’t absolute (as in natural human hierarchical structures) because it presupposes and serves an essential unity. All subjection – within the created order and within the Godhead – manifests the intrinsic interdependence by which distinctions are related to one another. No distinction is absolute or autonomous; all are mutually interdependent such that together, related properly, they constitute the order and fullness – the shalom – for which all things were created – the inter-relational harmony that defines the triune God. Paul understood these things because he understood the Scriptures with the mind of Christ. So he had them in mind when he drew upon creational features in his instruction respecting female subjection. He didn’t use the creational order as a proof-text to justify a patriarchal commitment to male superiority; he referenced it to show how God designed distinctions into His creation and how they are to function practically so as to attest, uphold and exalt the truth. The subjection he called for derives from the very nature of God’s creation, and its purpose (as all things for Paul) is to adorn and serve the gospel of new creation in Christ (9:23).
Paul’s overarching concern in his instruction to the churches was that they testify truthfully to Christ and His gospel. By doing so, the saints are built up in Him and unbelievers are granted an authentic witness by which they can be saved. This authentic testimony exists where a community of believers manifests the truth that Christ’s Church is a unity-in-diversity organism bound together and operating in mutual love (John 17:20-23). This was Paul’s burden for the Corinthians and it is the lens through which his instruction to Timothy needs to be viewed. He told Timothy to instruct the women in the Ephesian church to adorn themselves in a manner which adorns the gospel (1 Timothy 2:9-10; cf. Titus 2:1-10). His concern wasn’t with forms and manner of dress as such, but with how one’s appearance “speaks”; stated in terms of the present context, Paul was concerned that a woman’s appearance intelligibly communicate truth respecting Christ and His gospel and not obscure it or lie against it. Even in matters as seemingly insignificant as dress and adornment, Christians are obligated to do all things for the sake of the gospel. This is the same perspective Paul brought to his instruction regarding female authority in the Church. The issue for Paul wasn’t patriarchy or the preservation of ubiquitous human sensibilities or cultural traditions, but the truth of the gospel and its fruitfulness in the Church and in the Church’s witness to the world. Here he drew upon the same creation order (and, by implication, God’s intent in it) to frame his insistence that women are to “quietly receive instruction in all submissiveness” (1 Timothy 2:11). Accordingly, they are not to “teach or exercise authority over a man.” Needless to say, there are a myriad of ways in which this injunction has been interpreted and applied in the churches, but the heart of Paul’s meaning is that women are not to act independently as authorities in the Church. The Greek term rendered exercise authority connotes a “self-doer”: a person who acts autonomously as his own authority. (Paul noted that this quality had its origin in Eve and her autonomous act. It is the mark of fallen man which most expresses his alienation from God, himself and the truth.) Paul’s prohibition, then, pertains to women acting as independent authorities in the Church. Here that authority is manifested in women assuming positions of teaching authority over men (whether actually or effectively). Paul notably didn’t specify whether this obligation of submission pertains to women’s husbands or church leadership; he didn’t need to, because when the principle is understood it becomes clear how it applies to both. It’s important to stress that the usurpation of authority need not be overt or formal (or even conscious). In the situations Paul was confronting, it’s doubtful women were striving to become elders or recognized teaching authorities in the Church. The more likely scenario is that they were effectively assuming authority for themselves by their self-will (“self-doers”) in the way they were conducting themselves in the assembly. Paul didn’t identify this conduct, but it seems some were distinguishing themselves inappropriately by taking an assertive role in the congregation’s life and ministration and its interaction with the Scriptures.
This perfectly accords with Paul’s instruction in First Corinthians: Paul was addressing the need for order and harmony in the churches, and this obviously implicates the way the saints – women as well as men – conduct themselves in the body. In this particular context (14:1-40), Paul was applying the criterion of order and propriety to spiritual gifts and the way they’re to be employed when the community of believers is gathered together. - Again, the Spirit gives His gifts for the sake of the Church’s edification, and edification depends upon intelligibility: The gifts must be employed in such a way that they testify truthfully to the gospel of Jesus Christ. - In the case of utterance gifts, this means that the words must be understood by the hearers, but it also means that the context in which the words are uttered must not detract from their intelligibility. - Disorder, confusion and impropriety render understandable words unintelligible and so prevent them from edifying the hearers. Instead of building up the saints in unity and harmony (and testifying truthfully to unbelievers), such speech leaves them agitated, frustrated and divided. Paul wanted the Corinthians to understand the critical importance of the situational context in the proper use of spiritual gifts, and wrapped into that context are the individual believers who comprise a given congregation and their role in the gifts’ ministration. Thus Paul prescribed the who and the how of the use of the charismata and not simply the when and where (14:26-32). The requirement of order and propriety in the cause of edification pertains to the gifted individuals and not merely the setting in which they find themselves. All things – including the saints themselves – are to be in subjection to the cause of the gospel. That same concern and orientation lie behind Paul’s directive regarding women. As noted above, the context indicates that the silence (submission) he called for in this passage pertains to the use of the gifts in the Church, and specifically the use of tongues and prophecy. And given that he previously spoke of women prophesying in the Church (ref. again 11:4-5, 13, 16), this silence most likely refers to women participating in judging prophetic utterances (14:29-34). - This judging would have taken the form of discussion among the saints with the intent of measuring utterances against the truth of the gospel. - The judging process insured that prophecies (and prophets) were held accountable, but it also served as a learning tool, helping the congregation grow in the knowledge of Christ by nurturing its discernment. (It may be that some of the women at Corinth were justifying their participation by claiming their desire to learn (v. 35). Paul’s response was that such learning – learning by actively engaging in the critique of prophetic utterances – needs to take place in the home between a husband and wife.)
Assessing – in a manner which honors Christ and the law of love – the words of those claiming the gift of prophecy demands sober, godly wisdom and prudence which necessarily draws upon the Church’s leadership and teaching authority, and women taking an active role in it cannot help but give the wrong impression. Even if there’s no intent on their part to usurp authority, their participation in this way creates a distraction from the business at hand. (One can imagine the awkward scenario in which a prophet finds his wife taking part in judging his utterances before the body; this may well have been in Paul’s mind in v. 35).
d. However one concludes regarding Paul’s meaning, he knew his instruction accorded with the Scriptures and the Lord’s own direction and thus was consistent in all the churches (cf. 7:17, 11:16). And, though his injunction regarding women is in the forefront, Paul was referring to all of his instruction to them, even beyond the matter of spiritual gifts. And being fully convinced of the divine authority behind his instruction, Paul could insist that anyone at Corinth who chose to dispute or ignore his words proved he was not being led by the Spirit, however “spiritual” or insightful he might believe himself to be (vv. 37-38). In Paul’s words, the one who fails to properly recognize his instruction shows, by that failure, that he is unrecognized – disregarded in his claim to spiritual insight and maturity. Thiselton notes the correlation of Paul’s logic here with 3:17-18 (cf. also 8:2) and highlights the fact that it embodies an axiom of “an inbuilt penalty for a claim that is exposed as simply self-defeating.” “Each respective action brings a self-defeating axiomatic penalty of self-loss. To step beyond the bounds is thereby to show the emptiness or lack of validity of the claim.” Beyond that, Paul regarded such a person as rebelling against the Lord. To ignore or oppose Christ’s apostle is to ignore or oppose Christ Himself. Carson observes: “Here, then, is a foundational test of the Spirit’s presence, of ‘spirituality’ if you like: submission to the apostolic writings, not simply because they are the writings of an apostle, but because they are the Lord’s command, and therefore tied irrevocably to the believer’s confession, ‘Jesus is Lord!’ (12:1-3).”
e. Paul concluded his treatment of spiritual gifts with a three-fold summary exhortation (14:39-40). In light of everything he’d put before them, the Corinthians should now discern the primacy of prophecy over tongues in regard to the Church assembly and its edification. Thus they ought to be zealous for prophetic utterances when the saints come together. At the same time, recognizing the primacy of prophecy does not imply the depreciation of the gift of tongues. Paul wanted the Corinthians to view the charismata rightly as the Spirit’s endowments given unto His work of building God’s true sanctuary on the foundation of Jesus (3:5-17, 6:14-19). Each gift is therefore equally necessary and valuable, so that zeal for prophecy doesn’t mean despising – let alone forbidding – speaking in tongues. All of the Spirit’s gifts are to be valued, but this means employing each of them with the Spirit’s mind according to His will and purpose: in harmonious order which adorns the gospel and builds the house of God.
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Post by Admin on Mar 29, 2024 15:24:28 GMT -5
E. The Matter of the Resurrection The final doctrinal section of this epistle pertains to the matter of resurrection. It’s unclear whether the Corinthians mentioned this topic in their letter to Paul or he introduced it out of his own concern for them – a concern perhaps arising from things he’d been told by representatives from the Corinthian church (ref. 1:11, 16:17). Paul didn’t say how he came to address this topic, but he did indicate at least one of the concerns he had related to it. And that is that some of the Corinthians were apparently questioning – and even disputing – the truth of the resurrection of the dead (ref. 15:12). Paul went no further in identifying the specific issues at Corinth which provoked his response (though his treatment gives hints concerning them), but one thing is clear: It was surely no accident that he chose to speak to this matter at the close of his letter. - In the first place, Paul regarded the doctrine of resurrection to be the very marrow of the gospel he preached. For, if the gospel is the good news of new creation in Jesus Christ, that good news has its substance in Jesus’ own resurrection as the first fruits of the new creation. Paul understood that there is no gospel if there is no resurrection. - But secondly, because Jesus’ resurrection is a “first fruit,” the truth of resurrection doesn’t terminate with Him. He is the substance of the resurrection, but as its beginning. Jesus’ resurrection is the promise and foretaste of the creation’s “resurrection” – that is, the creation’s renewal into the consummate existence for which God brought it forth. Jesus’ resurrection is the essence of the gospel, but it is also the reason the gospel is proclaimed as both promise and calling to the world of men (and, in a sense, to the whole creation – ref. Colossians 1:15-23; cf. also Romans 8:18-22). - The creation stands in hope of its own “life out of death,” but its participation in Jesus’ resurrection has already been realized within a certain sphere. The material creation – including the bodies of human beings – awaits its entrance into Christ’s redemptive accomplishment in its renewal from the curse, but the spirits of men presently share in His resurrection life (cf. Romans 8:18-23 with 8:9-11 and Ephesians 1:13-14). “What gives us assurance of our future resurrection is not only that Jesus Christ has already been raised from the dead, but also that the Spirit who raised him and will also resurrect us in the future actually lives within us. Given to the church at Pentecost, he indwells God’s people. Therefore, we are already in intimate union with the one who is the agent of the resurrection. We live in the sphere of resurrection life here and now, while simultaneously going about our everyday business in the world…” (Letham) The saints exist in the state of already-but-not-yet, and this state pertains as well to their resurrection from the dead. Though their bodies are dead because of sin, their spirits are alive in Christ; they are raised up in Him and seated in Him in the realm of eternity (the “heavenlies”). The outer man is perishing (which no Christian would deny), but the inner man is just as truly being renewed and perfected in Christ by His Spirit (2 Corinthians 3-4). The passing of days in this life means the decline and destruction of the Adamic body, but the christiformity of the inner man who shares in the life of the Last Adam.
This already-but-not-yet truth of resurrection is fundamental to the gospel and it defines the lives of those who have believed in Christ and been joined to Him. Christians are, in the very nature of the case, those who share in Jesus’ resurrection life (ref. again Romans 8:9-10), so that living authentically as Christians requires rightly understanding and relating to the truth of resurrection. Resurrection means Christians are no longer natural men – men “according to the flesh,” but are now spiritual men – men who live by, in and through the Spirit; men who share in Christ’s life. Viewed from this perspective, one can argue that chapter fifteen is the magnum opus of this epistle. For the truth of resurrection – the gospel – it presents undergirds and frames all of Paul’s instruction in the letter. If the fundamental problem at Corinth (regardless of the particular issue) was natural-mindedness, this natural-mindedness was the result of failing to rightly understand and live into the truth of resurrection. Raised up in Jesus, the Corinthians possessed His mind; their failure to employ His mind betrayed their failure to rightly discern who they were in Him. “The resurrection of the dead is the point from which Paul is speaking and to which he points… The resurrection… forms not only the close and crown of the whole epistle, but also provides the clue to its meaning, from which place light is shed on the whole… as a unity.” (Karl Barth) Again, it’s unclear whether the Corinthians raised the matter of the resurrection of the dead in their letter to Paul; what is evident is that at least some of the saints at Corinth were voicing concerns – even objections – respecting the whole notion of bodily resurrection (ref. 15:12, 35) and these concerns had become known to Paul. This much is obvious, but scholars have also postulated that there were other related concerns and questions among the Corinthians. - The most encompassing of those is the question of the very existence of life after death – whether human life continues in any form or manner following death. - But others have suggested that, like the situation in Thessalonica, some of the Corinthian believers were concerned that the Day of the Lord and resurrection of the dead had already occurred and they’d missed it (2 Thessalonian 2:1ff; cf. 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18; 2 Timothy 2:16-18). (Perhaps the strongest argument against this view is Paul’s clear statement in 15:12; though he did speak of the resurrection as a yet future occurrence (ref. vv. 20-26), the thrust of his argument is toward the fact, importance, and implications of the resurrection of the body, not its timing.) - Still others argue that the issue at Corinth was the mechanism of resurrection – not so much the fact of resurrection as such (the Corinthians obviously believed in Jesus’ resurrection in some sense), but how resurrection actually occurs and what it involves, especially when considered in the light of the natural processes of death and decay. The Corinthians were no different from any congregation of Christians; they’d have considered, discussed and reasoned through all sorts of issues, and this certainly would have included the other-worldly mystery that is resurrection. It’s impossible that a phenomenon so completely unnatural and unknown – and yet so central to the gospel which all Christians together embrace – could escape being a focal point of deliberation and discussion in any community of believers.
And so it’s quite likely that the Corinthians interacted with many issues pertaining to the resurrection. But however broad the scope of their questions and concerns, Paul’s instruction is tightly focused and provides the best insight into what he considered to be the heart of the matter. Several things are important to note in that regard. - The first is that Paul was addressing the particular matter of bodily resurrection. While he acknowledged a kind of spiritual “resurrection” associated with new life in Christ (cf. Romans 8:10; 2 Corinthians 4:16, 5:14-17; Ephesians 2:1-6), Paul saw the enlivening of the inner man as the promise of the resurrection to come and not resurrection as such. Paul did indeed speak of the new birth as a “raising up” from the dead (Ephesians 2:6; Colossians 2:12, 3:1), but he reserved the specific language of resurrection for the bodily resurrection first experienced by Jesus and pledged to all who belong to Him. - The reason for Paul’s emphasis on bodily resurrection is that this constitutes the goal of God’s saving work in men. Just as the material creation’s redemption involves its physical renewal, so it is with the creature man. Human beings are corporeal creatures, so that a person’s salvation involves the renewal and christiformity of his body as well as his spirit. Thus Paul didn’t long to have his disembodied spirit reside in Jesus’ presence, but to have his whole person, body and soul, fully restored and, in that way, attain to his consummate destiny in Christ (cf. Acts 23:6; Romans 6:1-8; 2 Corinthians 4:1-14; Philippians 3:1-11, 20-21). The present life of the inner man is the pledge and foretaste of the fullness of life to come (Romans 6:1-11; 2 Corinthians 4:1-18; Ephesians 1:13-14; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18; cf. also John 5:24-29). - But the matter of the resurrection of the body was also a concern for the Corinthians. Paul rightly focused on it because it’s the apex and climax of God’s saving intention for men, but he had all the more reason to do so given that the Corinthians were struggling with it. His instruction leaves no doubt that this was the case (ref. again vv. 12, 35), and the Greco-Roman background and culture of the Corinthians helps to illumine how and why the notion of resurrection was problematic for them. Resurrection was an entirely foreign concept to classical and Koine Greek philosophical and religious sensibilities, a fact that is often lost upon modern Christians. And it was foreign, not merely because resurrection is a mystical phenomenon alien to human experience in this world, but because it was contrary to Greek (and other pagan) conceptions of human existence. As with most ancient peoples, the Greeks embraced the notion of life after death; indeed, ancient Greek writings often present a view of the realm of the dead (“Hades”) not entirely dissimilar to the Hebrew concept of Sheol: a place characterized by darkness and the inactivity of a lifeless, sub-human existence.
1) Because Sheol is the place of the dead, it is the destiny of all men (cf. Genesis 44:18-31; 1 Kings 2:1-9; Job 17:13-16; Proverbs 27:20; Ecclesiastes 9:9-10). Though Sheol is often equated with the grave, Solomon’s description at least suggests the idea of an afterlife in which the dead continue to “live,” but only as a shadow of their former selves: Their existence is shapeless, drab and empty, entirely removed from the vital life experienced by the living.
2) Hence the most toilsome and agonizing life on this side of the grave is preferable to the afterlife in Sheol (Ecclesiastes 9:3-10). Existence in Sheol means the end of the vitality, activity and pleasures of human life, and, in terms of human power and resource, there is no escape or return from it (cf. Job 7:9-10 and Psalm 89:48 with Psalm 16:9-10, 49:14-15). But while the Hebrew conception of death and afterlife came to include a doctrine of resurrection (ref. Isaiah 26:19; Daniel 12:1-2; cf. also Psalm 73:23-24), this was not the case with the Greek culture of the Corinthians. Hebrew thinking advanced toward the hope of the restoration of life through resurrection; Greek thinking, on the other hand, evolved toward a specific doctrine of the soul’s immortality. Most importantly, the former conviction was grounded in the power and purpose of God, while the latter stood upon a particular conception of humanness entirely apart from any consideration of deity. At least as far back as Socrates (5th century B.C.), Greek thinkers and philosophers were developing and promoting the notion that there is an essential distinction between material and immaterial existence. The most important aspect of this distinction is that the immaterial is ultimate and eternal whereas the material is transient and imperfect. (In simple terms, Socrates’ disciple Plato viewed ultimate reality as bound up in immaterial “universals” which are only represented by physical entities.) In the instance of human beings, this distinction pertains to the flesh and spirit as embodying the material and immaterial aspects of the human creature. The implication is that the human spirit (soul) is ultimate and undying (immortal) while the body is inherently imperfect and so given to corruption and mortality. This creational dualism came to frame Greek thought in many areas, not least philosophy, ethics and religion.
1) From the standpoint of philosophy and ethics, the notion of the soul’s preeminence and immortality led to the conviction that anything which nurtured the soul and its advancement is virtuous and worthy of human pursuit, while concern for matters pertaining to the body and its needs and desires betrays an unenlightened and base carnality. Thus the noble and virtuous Greek gave himself to the pursuit of knowledge, understanding, wisdom, and a disciplined life – things of the soul which endure when the body has passed away; only a fool squanders his life pursuing that which perishes.
2) In terms of religious concerns – especially those pertaining to the afterlife, this purported ultimacy of the soul implies that death is a friend and not an enemy. For, in this life, a man’s soul is imprisoned within a weak and corrupt body. The soul is the true “self” and the body is only a temporary vessel destined for destruction. Thus death brings the liberation of the soul as it finally and forever escapes the bounds of the corrupt mortality which held it, thereby allowing it to attain to the freedom of its consummate glory. Plato’s account of Socrates’ death in his Phaedo is illuminating, and Oscar Cullmann comments on that account as follows:
“When the great Socrates traced the arguments for immortality in his address to his disciples on the day of his death, he did not merely teach this doctrine: at that moment he lived his doctrine. He showed how we serve the freedom of the soul, even in this present life, when we occupy ourselves with the eternal truths of philosophy. For through philosophy we penetrate into that eternal world of ideas to which the soul belongs, and we free the soul from the prison of the body. Death does no more than complete this liberation. Plato shows us how Socrates goes to his death in complete peace and composure. The death of Socrates is a beautiful death. Nothing is seen here of death’s terror. Socrates cannot fear death, since indeed it sets us free from the body. Whoever fears death proves that he loves the world of the body, that he is thoroughly entangled in the world of sense [that is, the physical world of the sensate]. Death is the soul’s great friend. So he teaches; and so, in wonderful harmony with his teaching, he dies – this man who embodied the Greek world in its noblest form.” This basic dualism of temporal flesh and eternal spirit was increasingly woven into Greek philosophical and religious thought in the centuries preceding the birth of Christ, and it arguably played a role in the development of the religio-philosophical system known as Gnosticism. It’s true that Platonic and Gnostic dualism conceive of the negativity of the material order differently, but they are unified in agreeing that the immaterial is ultimate while the material is imperfect and impermanent. The following statement by Kurt Rudolph show the close correspondence between Platonic and Gnostic thought: “We shall not go far wrong to see in it [Gnosticism] a dualistic religion, consisting of several schools and movements, which took up a definitely negative attitude towards the world and the society of the time, and proclaimed a deliverance (‘redemption’) of man precisely from the constraints of earthly existence through ‘insight’ into his essential relationship, whether as ‘soul’ or ‘spirit,’ – a relationship temporarily obscured – with a supramundane realm of freedom and of rest.” (Gnosis) Many have wondered why Gnosticism so quickly gained a foothold in the Christian Church, but it’s easy to understand when Rudolph’s description is superimposed on certain particulars of Christian doctrine, not least its distinction between flesh and spirit. Albeit through misunderstanding the apostolic doctrine of Christ and His gospel, first and second century Gnostics nonetheless believed they had found in the Christian faith – and in Christ Himself – a compatible counterpart to the ideas which formed the heart of their religious convictions. To at least some Gnostic adherents, Jesus was the quintessential Gnostic man – a man fully possessed of divine gnosis. The reason for interjecting Gnosticism into the present treatment is not to suggest that the Corinthians’ thinking had been infiltrated and perverted by it (though some at Corinth doubtless had some awareness of Gnostic ideas), but to show how pervasive the dualistic worldview was in the ancient world – in the East as well as the West. And in its various forms, the creational dualism of “flesh” and “spirit” doesn’t preclude the notion of an afterlife; to the contrary, it demands an afterlife inasmuch as a given dualistic system holds forth the premise of an aspect of human existence which is ultimate and eternal. What Greek (and Gnostic) dualism denied was the notion of resurrection.
Its conception of the human body leaves no place for the continuance of physical existence, and even less for the possibility of the body’s restoration beyond the grave. Thus the concept of a bodily resurrection made no sense in the Greco-Roman worldview. That which is in its essence imperfect and temporal cannot co-exist enduringly with that which is perfect and eternal. So it was that the Greeks on Mars Hill were willing to hear Paul out until he mentioned Jesus’ resurrection; with that, his audience was over. Though some wanted to hear him speak further on this matter, their curiosity was born of astonishment and disbelief; they were incredulous that someone would affirm resurrection – either in principle or with respect to an actual person (ref. Acts 17:21-32). So also it seems some at Corinth were struggling to fit the idea of bodily resurrection into the dualistic worldview which had for so long framed their thinking. They had no problem believing that their souls would endure beyond the grave, but how does one come to grips with the notion of a future resurrection of the body? - How can a physical body given to corruption be raised from the dead? Even in this life a person’s body is marked by imperfection and decay, and after death this decay continues until there is nothing left. This is the uniform pattern of all living things and even things that are not alive. All physical existence moves toward destruction and final dissolution. How, then, are the dead raised, and with what kind of body do they come forth? (ref. 15:35) - And even if bodily resurrection is possible, who would want it? The soul’s great good is to be liberated from the body, not re-shackled to it. Within the Platonic worldview, there could be no greater tragedy than that the liberated and exalted soul should be recalled to once again have to reside within a physical dwelling. Even under the presumption of the resurrected body being itself perfect and free of corruption, it remains that any physical body amounts to a prison: a very real constraint imposed upon an otherwise unbounded soul. How, then, could a person hold – as Paul clearly did – the resurrection of the body to be the apex of salvation and the ultimate goal for which Christians long? In all this, the obvious question is how individuals who’d embraced Jesus Christ could take such a position respecting the doctrine of resurrection. On the face of it, it seems impossible that a person could be a Christian and not uphold the truth of bodily resurrection. (Indeed, Paul will address the grave implications of such a position.) But it seems from Paul’s treatment that the issue with the Corinthians was immaturity and carelessness in their thinking rather than a false profession. They didn’t realize the extent to which their personal and cultural sensibilities were affecting them; in this matter, too, they were failing to employ the mind of Christ and it was bearing its bad fruit in their thinking and individual and corporate lives as Christ’s body. “We should not suppose these Corinthians understood themselves as debunkers of the gospel. On the contrary, they thought of themselves as hyperspiritual Christians (pneumatikoi), rich in every spiritual gift. That, however, was just the problem: they were so spiritual that they found the notion of a resurrection of the body crass and embarrassing.” (Hays)
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Post by Admin on Mar 29, 2024 15:27:49 GMT -5
1. Paul regarded resurrection to be the essence of the gospel, a fact made plain by his introduction to the topic (15:1-11). For he opened his treatment by discussing the gospel and the critical fact that denying the truth of resurrection (even if only with respect to the saints) amounts to a denial of the gospel itself and so also one’s own faith.
a. In making his case, the first thing Paul did was remind the Corinthians that they knew this gospel of resurrection. (His declaration “I make known to you” has the sense of “I call your attention to.”) And Paul could make this assertion with all confidence because he himself had brought the gospel to them. He knew what the Corinthians had heard and understood concerning Jesus Christ because he had been their teacher and father in the faith (ref. 4:15). Moreover, he reminded them that the gospel he’d preached to them didn’t originate with him; he’d received it just as they had. But in his case, he’d received it, not from other men – not even from the Twelve, but from Jesus Himself (Galatians 1:11-17). He stood unique among those whom Jesus had called, for his calling and apostleship came after Jesus’ ascension and following a season in which he had persecuted the Lord and His Church. In terms of his apostleship, Paul regarded himself as one “untimely born” (15:8-10), and yet he knew the veracity of his calling and gospel, for they had come to him from the One who set him apart from his mother’s womb. Paul’s gospel was Jesus’ gospel (further authenticated by the Twelve – Galatians 2:1-9), and this gospel has its climactic focal point in Jesus’ resurrection from the dead (15:3-4). This was the gospel Paul imparted to the Corinthians and they had believed it to be true and embraced it in faith. And having believed it, they had heretofore stood fast in it without wavering (15:1). How was it, then, that they were now stumbling by questioning the truth of resurrection? Indeed, Paul’s words suggest that he wanted the Corinthians to see that there was a striking irony in their situation: They had embraced and held fast to Paul’s gospel because they believed, as he did, that, in Jesus Christ whom the gospel proclaims, life and immortality have been brought to light (2 Timothy 2:8-10). But that life is precisely bound up in the truth of resurrection which they were now struggling with. They couldn’t have it both ways; either they would come to grips with and fully embrace the reality of resurrection or be guilty of denying the truth of new life in Jesus. Questioning the truth of resurrection amounts to questioning the very essence of what it means to be a Christian; in effect, these Corinthians were calling into question their own identity as new men in Christ. At bottom, denying the truth of resurrection amounts to denying the gospel itself, which is the good news of new creation in Jesus Christ. Paul understood the vast and grave implications of Jesus’ resurrection, and the fact that some at Corinth were struggling with the very notion of resurrection indicated to him that they didn’t share his insight; it told him that either they had lost sight of what he’d taught them or they hadn’t done due diligence with his gospel in the first place (15:2). (The rendering, “believed in vain,” is potentially misleading; here the phrase has the sense of believing thoughtlessly or without proper consideration.)
b. Paul had preached the gospel of resurrection to the Corinthians, but he hadn’t been alone in that work. New creation in Jesus is the message of the gospel and He was the first to proclaim it. He did so at first by pointing forward to His death and resurrection, and then afterward as He spent forty days with His disciples explaining to them the meaning and significance of what had occurred (cf. Luke 24:13-51; Acts 1:1-8). Jesus attested to the gospel of resurrection in His person and work, but as the One in whom all the Scriptures are fulfilled; Jesus’ witness to the gospel was preceded by and accorded with the witness of the Scriptures themselves (15:3-4). In His person, words and works, Jesus affirmed the truthfulness of the Scriptures and showed that the promise of the kingdom they proclaim was now being fulfilled in Him (cf. Mark 1:14-15 with Matthew 4:12- 23, 12:1-28; Mark 9:1-13, 11:1-10, 12:18-37; John 3:1-6; etc.). Thus, in preaching his gospel, Paul was merely a co-laborer with the Lord and the Scriptures. So also Paul was part of a larger band of men carrying the same message. Again, though Paul received his gospel from Jesus Himself apart from any input from the other apostles, he’d later set it before the Twelve out of concern that perhaps he’d misunderstood or was misapplying what Jesus taught him. And those men affirmed Paul’s gospel; like him, they proclaimed the risen Lord and forgiveness and new life in Him, asserting as Paul did (and Jesus before him – cf. Luke 24:44- 46 with Matthew 16:21), that Jesus’ death and resurrection were a matter of scriptural fulfillment (Acts 2:14-32, 13:26-37, 17:1-3).
c. The Scriptures held forth the hope of resurrection, situating its realization and fruition in the person and work of Yahweh’s Servant-Messiah. And what the Scriptures promised has now been realized in Jesus of Nazareth – a fact verified by many witnesses. If the Scriptures attested resurrection in promise, hundreds of people then attested it in person. Multitudes had personally seen the risen Christ, which was critical to authenticating the truth of His resurrection (cf. Acts 1:21-22, 3:12-15, 4:33, 13:30-31). Perhaps most significantly, more than five hundred persons had seen Him at the same time, many of whom were still alive at the time of Paul’s letter (15:6). This fact virtually eliminated the possibility of either a conspiracy surrounding Jesus’ resurrection or the claim that alleged sightings of Him were due to an over-active imagination. Moreover, many of these eyewitnesses were still available to verify what they had seen. Among those who had seen the risen Lord, it’s interesting that Paul specifically mentioned Peter and James (15:5, 7). There are at least two good reasons for this. The first is that these men were among those regarded as “pillars” in the early Church (Galatians 2:6-9). Peter had been commissioned by the Lord to lead and feed His sheep (John 21:15-17) and James was the Lord’s own brother. Moreover, these men were leaders in the mother church in Jerusalem (ref. Acts 15:1-21, 21:17-18; Galatians 1:15-19). The fact that these prominent and very credible individuals claimed to have seen Jesus in His resurrection was hugely significant. Were any of the Corinthian saints really prepared to call into question the integrity of these apostolic leaders (not to mention the other apostles)? 350 But perhaps Paul’s primary reason for mentioning Peter and James is that they were prime examples of the vital truth that Jesus’ resurrection is transformative. - Peter had struggled with the whole notion of Jesus’ death and resurrection (Matthew 16:21-23; cf. Luke 18:31-34, 24:1-11; John 20:1-10) and then forsook and denied Him at the end. Thus Peter had to be restored (Luke 22:31-32), and Jesus accomplished this restoration in connection with His resurrection (cf. John 21:15-17 with Acts 1:1-2:40, 3:1-26, 4:1-12, etc.). - So James, along with Jesus’ other siblings, had disbelieved and likely resisted His messianic calling and work (cf. John 7:1-8 with Mark 3:20- 21, 31-32 in which it appears Jesus’ family had come together to convince Him to stop His activities which were attracting so much unwanted and awkward attention.) James saw Jesus as simply his older brother and so it’s not unreasonable that he’d have found Jesus’ claims and behavior irritating and embarrassing. At the very least, Jesus was an enigma to His family members. But the resurrection changed all that. The Scripture doesn’t relate the specifics of James’ conversion, but it does present a man who, following his brother’s resurrection, was transformed from a confused doubter into a devoted servant of his Lord and His Church.
d. Lastly, Paul reminded the Corinthians that he, too, was a witness to the risen Christ. They were doubtless aware of that fact; Paul surely would have emphasized it as part of his witness to Jesus in Corinth. He hadn’t come to Corinth promoting a fantastic tale of an alleged rising from the dead, but proclaiming the gospel of resurrection and creational renewal as an eyewitness of the risen, exalted Messiah (15:8). Therefore those at Corinth who were questioning bodily resurrection were calling into question the testimony of the man who was their father in the faith. Did they understand that and did they perceive the implication? If Paul was wrong (or deceitful) respecting resurrection – which he claimed to have witnessed in Jesus, how could they entrust themselves to his gospel – the gospel which stands upon the truth of resurrection? Paul was in fact a witness to Jesus’ resurrection, but one not unlike Peter and James. That is, he was himself a poignant example of the truth that Jesus’ resurrection brings about the transformation of human beings: His life out of death is life out of death for men. Indeed, Paul is arguably the most powerful example of this truth, and his reference to himself as “one untimely born” shows that he believed this about himself and had it in mind. For this Greek noun refers literally to a premature birth, whether through miscarriage or abortion. This imagery has led commentators in two distinct directions: - The first highlights the issue of untimeliness and concludes that Paul was speaking of the lateness of his coming to faith and apostolic calling. He was “untimely born” in that he wasn’t part of the Twelve, but the Lord had called and commissioned him well after His ascension.
- But the context perhaps better supports another emphasis. The birth scenario indicated by this Greek term does imply a kind of untimeliness in that the baby isn’t carried to term. But the more important issue is that the baby is delivered dead; it issues from the womb prematurely because of miscarriage or abortion, not because of an early live birth. (This is the only occurrence of the noun in the New Testament, but it occurs three times in the Septuagint: Numbers 12:12, Job 3:16 and Ecclesiastes 6:3). Recognizing the strangeness and seeming unsuitability of this metaphor (for example, Paul’s “birth” into faith in Christ and apostleship came late relative to his counterparts, not prematurely), some have argued that Paul was describing himself in the manner of his detractors and opponents. Barrett’s comments are representative of this view: “It must be admitted that this word was an odd one to choose for this purpose, and it is probable that Paul took it up from the lips of his adversaries. It suggested the characteristics of an unformed, undeveloped, repulsive and possibly lifeless fetus. The word may even have been used not only of Paul’s supposed deficiencies as a Christian and apostle, but also with reference to his bodily characteristics. 2 Corinthians 10:10 shows that his adversaries were not above mocking his physical appearance.” But there is another possibility: Set alongside his mention of Peter and James and then viewed through the lens of the larger context, Paul’s terminology suggests that he was thinking of his own life-out-of-death transformation by virtue of Jesus’ resurrection. If that event changed everything for Peter, James, and Jesus’ other disciples, how much more was it true for Paul, the devout Pharisee and persecutor of Jesus and His “way”? Paul knew all too well what he had been prior to his “birth from above” (1 Timothy 1:12-13) and he knew what Jesus made him; there was no pretense in his self-assessment that he was one “abnormally born”: He was indeed like an undeveloped baby delivered under the sentence of death, only to be revived and formed by a confrontation with the risen Lord of life. Jesus’ life out of death had become Paul’s, and that by the gracious power and purpose of God who had been pleased to reveal His Son in him (15:9-10; cf. Galatians 1:15-16). Paul knew the truth of resurrection because he had witnessed it in Jesus Himself, but also because he had experienced it in his own rebirth in Damascus (Acts 9:1-19) and then in an ongoing way in the radical transformation of his life from a committed adversary of Christ and His Church to their devoted servant (cf. Acts 22:1-5, 26:1-23 and 2 Corinthians 4). Paul understood that, in a very real way, he was living proof of the truth of resurrection; the Corinthians, being intimately familiar with his story and ministry, should have shared his self-perception (as also they ought to have regarded themselves). Even if they were too dull to perceive resurrection in the power of Paul’s ministry, they should have been able to detect it in Paul’s life.
For his undaunted and fervent devotion – at great cost to himself – was not consistent with a man endorsing an anecdote or secondhand account. Such zeal for Jesus and His gospel – especially as an abrupt and radical turnabout for a devout, dedicated Pharisee – could only result from a direct and transforming encounter with the living Lord Himself. Paul had had such an encounter with Jesus and, from that moment, nothing was ever the same for him; in every respect, he showed himself obedient to the heavenly vision (ref. again Acts 26:12-23).
e. In calling the Corinthians’ attention back to the gospel, Paul also rehearsed with them its content (15:3-4). But in doing so, he spoke in general, summary terms. That is, Paul wasn’t in any way implying that the specific matters of the Lord’s crucifixion, burial and resurrection constitute the fullness of the gospel (or that they were the sum total of his proclamation of it); rather, he highlighted these three issues as being “of first importance” (cf. 1:23). It’s worth noting that many perceive in Paul’s language and grammar a sort of formulaic expression which suggests that he was citing the articles of an early creed or confession of faith within the Church. Given Paul’s encompassing perspective on the Christ event, it’s doubtful he ever treated the gospel in creedal terms. But even if this view is correct, it doesn’t change the fact that he was here highlighting Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection as key issues in his gospel, not limiting the gospel to those three events (as so many today are inclined to do). And Paul highlighted these three as “of first importance” because he understood that, without them, there is no “good news” to proclaim. For Jesus was put to death, not on his own account, but on behalf of the human race whose nature He took to Himself (“for the sake of our sins”). He entered fully into human death – spiritual and physical (“He was buried”) – in order to conquer death and recover life, not just for mankind, but for the whole creation. And Jesus was raised from the dead, not merely (or even primarily) as proof of His own sinlessness, for he died as “sin-bearer” as well as “spotless lamb.” He died on behalf of Adam’s race and the entire cursed creation, and so it was with His resurrection. Jesus’ resurrection was His triumph over sin and death, but as the Last Adam: He is the first fruits from the dead and so has secured and inaugurated the creation’s “life out of death” (cf. Romans 4:23-25, 6:1-11, 7:1-6, 8:9-11; also 1 Corinthians 6:14; 2 Corinthians 4:1-14; Ephesians 2:12-6; Colossians 2:8-14, 3:1-4). And recognizing that Jesus’ death and resurrection were grounded in and completed the work of His incarnation – that is, His becoming man for the sake of man, it is evident that, in both His sinlessness and death as sin-bearer, Jesus showed that He was in full agreement with His Father concerning man: - In terms of Jesus’ sinlessness, He agreed with His Father concerning of the truth of man as image-son. Jesus didn’t comply with a list of divine directives; He lived as True Man: man in perfect conformity to the One whose image and likeness he bears; man as authentically human.
- And in terms of Jesus’ death as sin-bearer, He agreed with His Father against man by virtue of what man had become. Jesus embraced in Himself that which man is in his estrangement from God (Mark 15:34) and what he deserves because of it, thereby affirming the truth of man’s guilt and just condemnation – the truth of man’s falseness. Ironically, in that way, too (that is, by standing with His Father in condemning pseudo man – man as fallen and estranged), Jesus showed His agreement with His Father concerning what man is in truth – what man was created to be. By His life and by His death, Jesus embraced and displayed the truth of both God and man – man as false and man as true. “The death of Jesus was an outworking of the incarnation of the judge in our humanity, but it was such an outworking of it, that it was in our human nature that the judge bore his own judgment. It was the full realization of the holy will of God in our human nature, the full meting out of the divine condemnation against sin, the full outpouring of the divine love into and upon human nature. But in Christ Jesus all that was also gladly suffered and endured for our sakes, so that in him there was achieved in judgment, in complete and final justification, a judgment, a union between God and humanity which death and hell itself could not break or in any way sunder. Nothing could isolate Jesus as man from God, not even the final judgment of God, for Jesus as man was God himself come as man. It is this perfect oneness in the midst of judgment, God’s bearing in his own incarnation his own judgment of mankind, that is at once the ground of atonement and also its ultimate end. For it is in that oneness that the fellowship is created and restored between God and humanity and humanity and God, the fellowship which is the goal of all God’s merciful work of redemption.” (T. F. Torrance, Atonement) Paul saw all of this bound up and authenticated in the truth of resurrection – the fact of life out of death. Paul insisted upon this gospel and unashamedly preached it to men (2 Corinthians 4:1-6). But he was not alone; he was part of a faithful apostolic community charged by the Lord with taking His gospel to the ends of the earth. Paul’s message was the apostolic gospel – the good news of resurrection in Christ Jesus (cf. Acts 2:22-36, 3:12-26, 4:1-2, 23-33, 5:27-31, 10:34-42, 13:26-39, 17:16-18, 22-32, 23:1-6, 24:14-21, 26:22-23), and that was the gospel the Corinthians had heard and believed (15:11). Thus the thrust of Paul’s introduction to the matter of resurrection: Resurrection is the marrow of the gospel which the Corinthians had embraced and in which they had placed their hope. But even as their hope was set squarely on Jesus Christ, it was set on the truth that He is the Living One who has conquered death and hell and brought life and immortality to light. In a word, the Corinthians’ hope was the hope of resurrection, and this meant that their hope needed to look toward a glorious future for their bodies, not their liberation from them. If the Corinthians indeed had a gospel faith and hope, they needed to stand firm in the Lord. And this meant holding fast to the truth of resurrection – their present resurrection into a heavenly abode and the fullness of their resurrection in the transformation of their bodies in the Day of Christ Jesus (Philippians 3:17-4:1).
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Post by Admin on Mar 29, 2024 15:31:33 GMT -5
2. Paul began his discussion by reminding the Corinthians that the gospel they’d embraced and hoped in is the good news of resurrection from the dead (cf. 15:1-11, 12). Implicit in that reminder is the fact that denying or otherwise compromising the truth of resurrection has serious implications for the gospel itself, and therefore for those who’ve believed it. And if the gospel – which is the good news of what God has accomplished in Jesus – is implicated in a denial of resurrection, then so is the truth of Jesus Himself. And that means that the entirety of the truth of Christianity evaporates. Lest the Corinthians fail to see these critical implications, Paul proceeded to draw them out for them. Again, scholars disagree regarding the particular concern(s) expressed by the Corinthians. Some believe the issue wasn’t the fact of resurrection as such, but whether those who died before the Parousia would have a share in the renewal accompanying it (ref. 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18). Similarly, others maintain that the Corinthians were concerned with whether or not the resurrection had already occurred and they had missed it (ref. 2 Thessalonians 2:1ff; 2 Timothy 2:16-18). Others argue that the issue was the question of physical resurrection as opposed to the ascension and glorification of the soul at death. Because Paul taught a form of present resurrection – namely the “raising up” of the inner man as the enlivening work of the Spirit (ref. again Romans 6:1-11; Ephesians 2:1-7; Colossians 2:9-12, 3:1-4; etc.) it’s not implausible that at least some members of the early Christian community misinterpreted this instruction as indicating that there is no future resurrection at all. This, in turn, implies one of two further scenarios:
1) There is no bodily resurrection; the “raising up” of the spirit is the totality of the truth of resurrection for believers (whatever may have been the case with Jesus’ own resurrection from the dead).
2) The resurrection of the body occurs simultaneously with the enlivening of the soul. As strange as this view might appear, at least some among the very first Christians believed that Jesus’ conquest of death meant that they would never die, a conviction reinforced by Jesus’ own words (cf. John 5:24, 11:20-26). Jesus’ resurrection was a singularity point in the history of the world (indeed, in the history of the created order). It introduced a new reality of existence which touched and redefined every human experience and arena of thought and understanding. Jesus’ resurrection changed everything, and so it was no wonder that the early Church wrestled with it and its pertinence and effect on Christians, unbelievers, and the creation itself. Paul’s letters give some indication of the breadth of questions and concerns which confronted the fledgling Christian community and the Corinthian church certainly wasn’t removed from them. But Paul’s instruction in this passage narrows the focus, highlighting a couple of things about the Corinthians’ struggle with the issue of resurrection:
1) The first is that the Corinthians were clearly wrestling with the whole notion of bodily resurrection (15:12) and not merely questions of timing or pertinence. How much this was driven by the Greek dualistic worldview (spirit vs. matter) versus misunderstanding of Paul’s teaching – or a blend of both – is unclear.
2) The second is that the Corinthians apparently didn’t rightly connect their objection to bodily resurrection with the fact of Jesus’ resurrection. Here again there are two possibilities: Either they were denying resurrection in a limited sense or altogether. If the former, their concern was likely with the resurrection of believers, with Jesus’ resurrection being regarded as unique. The second option is that these Corinthians were denying resurrection as such. While Jesus did emerge from the grave, this “raising” didn’t involve the resurrection of His body in the true sense (a view held by Gnostic Christians and other quasi-Christian groups.) It’s not entirely clear how the Corinthians were reconciling their objections to bodily resurrection with their faith in the resurrected, living Christ, but Paul’s approach indicates that they were indeed holding to Jesus’ resurrection in some sense while questioning the reality of resurrection for Christians (cf. 15:12 with vv. 22-23 and 35-58). Perhaps they acknowledged His bodily resurrection, but as a unique “spiritual” phenomenon, even as Jesus possessed His physical body uniquely as the incarnate Son of God. Perhaps – and more consistent with their pre-Christian dualistic worldview – they regarded Jesus’ resurrection as something other than involving the literal resurrection of His body. Whatever the case, Paul understood that the truth of Jesus’ bodily resurrection was the proper and effective way to address the Corinthians’ questions and objections.
a. Paul argued as he did because he recognized that the fundamental problem with questioning or denying the resurrection is that it calls into question Jesus’ own resurrection (15:12-13). However the Corinthians were reconciling their objection to bodily resurrection with their understanding of Jesus’ victory over death, the mere fact of their objection proved that they didn’t have it right. For there is but one resurrection from the dead, shared by the Lord and His people alike. Jesus wasn’t merely raised from the dead; He was raised as the first fruits of the dead (15:20). This means that whatever was true of Jesus’ resurrection is necessarily true of all believers; to deny the resurrection of the saints is to deny the Lord’s resurrection. Furthermore – and critically important to the truth of the gospel, upholding Jesus’ resurrection means also upholding the exact same phenomenon with respect to those who belong to Him. Being the “first fruits from the dead,” Jesus’ resurrection was the beginning of resurrection, not the unique (let alone final) manifestation of it. He was raised as the Last Adam – the fountainhead of a new humanity, so that what belongs to Him in regard to resurrection life belongs to all those who share in Him. “Our resurrection has already taken place and is already fully tied up with the resurrection of Christ, and therefore proceeds from it more by way of manifestation of what has already taken place [in Jesus], than as new effect resulting from it.” (Atonement) Thus Paul: Any denial of the saints’ resurrection – or any attempt to distinguish it from Jesus’ – means the denial of Jesus’ resurrection (15:13, 16, 20-23, 42-49).
b. There is no doubt that the Corinthians had embraced some notion of Jesus’ resurrection, for that event was foundational to the gospel Paul preached at Corinth (and everywhere) and the Corinthians had embraced his gospel as the truth. It’s possible that some hadn’t really understood Paul’s teaching on resurrection, or perhaps some had since come to question what they’d formerly believed. But whatever the disconnect or misunderstanding, it remained that Paul had proclaimed the gospel of resurrection to them. The clearest proof is Paul’s insistence that any denial of resurrection by the Corinthians amounted to charging him (and the other apostolic witnesses) with false testimony (15:12-15).
c. And if the gospel of resurrection amounts to false testimony, so also the faith it engenders is false (15:14-19. Paul substantiated this claim in several particulars: - First and most obvious, such faith is false because it’s grounded in and fixed upon a lie. Faith isn’t directed toward the gospel message itself, but the person of Jesus Christ proclaimed in that message. But the heart of the gospel’s proclamation of Christ is the truth of His resurrection and its consequences and implications for human beings and the whole creation. If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Jesus’ wasn’t raised. And if Jesus wasn’t raised then the gospel proclamation of His resurrection is a lie and faith in the resurrected Jesus is a misguided and tragic delusion. - But the gospel doesn’t merely proclaim Jesus’ resurrection; it proclaims the truth of resurrection as proving God’s restoration of His dead and cursed creation. The gospel proclaims the resurrected Jesus as the first fruits from the dead, which means that the gospel holds out to men the promise of their own resurrection to be obtained in Him. The gospel is thus a message of hope, but a hope grounded in and directed toward the truth of resurrection (cf. cf. 15:46-58 with Acts 23:6; Romans 8:9-25; 2 Corinthians 4:1-14; Philippians 3:8-4:1). If there is no resurrection of the dead, then the hope held out in the gospel is empty and utterly worthless. - Resurrection is the ground and essence of the Christian’s hope; if there’s no resurrection of the dead, there’s no real hope. Granted, a gospel devoid of resurrection can still hold out some form of “hope,” but such hope is necessarily only earthly and natural; it cannot extend beyond the confines of this present life (15:19). For resurrection is the truth of new creation: the truth of the creation’s recovery and renewal attested and having its first expression in the resurrected Christ who is the Last Adam. If resurrection doesn’t exist, neither does new creation. Thus the only “hope” that can exist is the expectation of a better “old creation” – a better manifestation of and existence under the present order of things. In Paul’s estimation such a “hope” leaves men who embrace it “most to be pitied.” All deluded men are to be pitied, but those most of all who’ve set their hope upon a world existing under the bonds of the curse.
And, though Paul didn’t specifically mention it, it is also true that a hope confined to the present world is a hope which itself denies the gospel. The reason is that the gospel insists upon not only the fact of new creation, but the truth that the present creation has been judged and condemned and is passing away (cf. Romans 8:18- 22; 2 Corinthians 4:16-18; 1 John 2:15-17). Already all things in the heavens and earth have been reconciled to God in Christ (Colossians 1:19-21; cf. 2 Corinthians 5:18-20); already the new creation has been inaugurated, evidenced in Jesus’ resurrection. His resurrection is the pledge of the renewal to come and the whole creation groans in view of it, longing for the day when it will experience in its own renewal the redemption and reconciliation which it already possesses. Thus, for men to hope in the present order of things is for them to turn away from the hope which the creation has for itself; what could be more pitiable than that? Elaborating on this pitiable condition Richard Hays adds: “If Christ has not been raised, we Christians mock ourselves with falsehood. We preach a message that turns out to be an illusion. We offer for the world’s ills a pious lie that veils from ourselves the terrifying truth that we are powerless and alone. Second, as Barrett observes, Christians – in Paul’s view – are called to a life of “embracing death,” suffering through selfless service of others (cf. 10:33- 11:1), not seeking their own advantage or pleasure. If there is no resurrection, this self-denying style of life makes no sense; those who follow the example of Jesus and Paul are chumps missing out on their fair share of life’s rewards.”
d. Faith in a resurrection-less “gospel” is empty and worthless because of what the gospel promises, but it’s also worthless because of what the gospel affirms – namely Jesus’ satisfaction of all the demands obligated of God and man. Jesus’ resurrection signaled His conquest of death, but since death is sin’s outcome and penalty, death’s conquest means the vanquishing of sin and its dominion and the enmity and guilt which attend it (ref. Romans 5:1-6:10). - Again and importantly, Jesus’ resurrection attested His righteousness with respect to God as well as man. From the divine side, God’s righteousness respecting man had two primary and related dimensions: God’s obligation to fulfill His word concerning man (cf. Genesis 1:26-27 with 3:15), which, in turn, obligated Him to both condemn and conquer sin and the curse arising from it. In both respects Jesus satisfied the divine righteousness. - From the human side, the obligation of righteousness was also two-fold: Jesus was obligated to both condemn man in his falseness and live authentically as a new Adam. Thus human righteousness necessitated the confrontation, condemnation and destruction of pseudo-man, but in order that man should become man indeed – man as image-son in truth. In a word, Jesus’ human righteousness involved agreeing with God against human falseness and affirming with God the truth of man as truly man. All of these dimensions of divine and human righteousness were fully satisfied by Jesus Christ, and it was His resurrection that affirmed it to be so. For Jesus’ resurrection was the proof of God’s righteous vindication in His full condemnation and destruction of pseudo-man, but also in the full realization of His creative will that man should be image-son participating in the divine life and love (Genesis 1:26-31). And for that very reason, man was himself vindicated in Jesus’ resurrection, having been liberated from his Adamic falseness to at last attain to the nature, role and relationship the triune God purposed for him. In Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, God and man were fully attested as true. Once again Torrance’s observations are illuminating and helpful: “In the resurrection we see that the saving act of God in the expiation of sin and guilt, in the vanquishing of death and all that destroys the creation, is joined to God’s act of creation. Redemption and creation come together in the resurrection. Indeed, God’s No to all evil and its privation of being falls together with his Yes in the final affirming of the creation as that which God has made and declared to be good – for that declaration of God about what he had made is now made good through Jesus Christ. Atonement is unveiled to be the positive reaffirmation and re-creation of man.” “Apart from the resurrection, the No of God against our sins and the whole world of evil in which we had become entangled, even his rejection of our guilt, would be in vain – that is why St. Paul argues so insistently that if Christ is not risen we are still in our sins. But it is also true that apart from that No, the resurrection is no real Yes. Apart from God’s No, in judgment and crucifixion, the resurrection would be only an empty show of wonderful power – it would not have any saving content to it, it would contain no forgiveness. By itself the expiatory death of Christ would mean only judgment, not life, only rejection of guilt – and yet even that could not be carried through apart from the resurrection – but now in the resurrection that act of atonement is seen to be God’s great positive work of new creation. Thus the No and the Yes imply one another, and each is empty without the other.” (Atonement) Thus Paul’s sober assessment: In the absence of Jesus’ resurrection, all men remain in their sin, including Christians. This means that those believers who are yet alive have an empty and futile faith devoid of authentic hope, and those who have died in Christ have perished. Living or dead, hope in Christ has no substance beyond this life (15:17-19) and so Christians have no real hope to offer the world. “If the telos (goal) of our life together in Christ is merely a mirage on an ever-receding horizon of time, then we are living an unhealthy self-deception – as Christianity’s critics, ancient and modern, have charged. There is no authentic Christian faith without fervent eschatological hope, and there is no authentic eschatological hope without the resurrection of the dead.” (Hays)
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