Romans 10 – 1 Corinthians 12

Hi, welcome back to the podcast.
Thanks for listening.
This week we are continuing through
Romans and then we will be partially into 1 Corinthians as well.
We made it through
about chapter 9 of Romans last week,
but it might be helpful to have a little bit of summary,
Michael, as we get going on this.
So, this is where we have been so far in the book of Romans.
Paul lays out a very careful argument.
We begin with sin,
the problem of human nature, our fallenness.
He moves then to our guilt and our hope,
which is in the grace of Jesus Christ
that we are saved by believing.
It is our faith that gives us access to grace.
That then is shown
as our hope, both in this life and in the life to come,
both now and in the future.
And then the idea is fleshed out as Paul rereads part of the Old Testament through this new lens of
justification.
He does that with Abraham,
he does that with Adam,
and in both cases
sees in them a prior but incomplete paradigm for what Jesus has now done.
And then as we move into chapter 8,
we begin to get the idea of living into this new covenant,
both the struggle with our sin,
the inner conflict in chapter 7,
but then specifically in 8,
the life in the spirit.
Paul puts that on hold for what I think is one of the trickier sections
as we move into this sermon about Israel.
Yeah, I think as we talk about these different
movements in Paul’s argument,
I think what we’re going to find is there’s a lot of contrast.
Paul contrasts the external,
the visible, things like circumcision to the spiritual,
things like the inward working of the Spirit of God.
There’s also movements in Paul’s argument here that are
consistent where he wants to talk about how in the midst of our Christian living,
we need to reread
our history from the way that it was to the way that it is in Christ.
And I do think once you get
to Romans chapter 9,
especially as modern biblical scholars look at this,
this is in many
ways an example of how Paul tackles what is a really significant issue for the early church,
an issue which we saw all throughout the book of Acts is what then does this new way of interpreting
mean for communities specifically that have thought of their faith being paired with their
racial and theological identity as Jews.
And as Paul writes to the church in Rome,
there’s this real grappling with what is new and how do we reinterpret the faith if it isn’t external markers
like circumcision and it is spiritual markers like the spiritual circumcision of the heart,
then what does that mean for the people who are physically circumcised?
And that will then lead
into the later part of Romans to Paul’s more broader argument which maybe feels a little bit
more accessible about then what does that mean for all of our actions?
What does that spiritual
reality mean as we seek to live it out externally?
And Michael, it seems to me that there’s a little
movement here.
We start that conversation in chapter 9 and really the question is what about
Israel as people of the old covenant?
Are they included in the new covenant or are they lost?
And you begin to get the sense in chapter 9 that Paul has in mind that they were destined for
punishment or that they have sort of been abandoned because of their lack of faith,
but that’s not where he ends.
And I think maybe that’s a very subtle way for Paul to create some
questions, to create some uncertainty so that then he can circle back around because by the time we
get to chapter 10,
he’s giving us some of these absolute wonderful things.
My heart’s desire and
prayer to God for Israel is that they may all be saved.
Then he says if you confess with your lips
that Jesus is Lord believing in your heart that God raised him from the dead,
you will be saved.
Then he says there is no distinction between Jew and Greek,
the same Lord as Lord of all
and generous to all who call on him.
And how could they hear without someone to proclaim him?
So in typical great preacher fashion,
Paul raises a question.
It sounds like he’s talking about
someone else and he circles around to lay some accountability on his hearers for how they conduct
themselves for their own salvation,
for their own proclamation.
And Paul, I think in the end,
holds out the hope that Israel is not lost,
that they will find their way to Christ and that God
will hold that door open for them,
that they will see the truth of the Messiah.
As you get to the middle of Romans here,
I think what may seem like a change of pace is actually a
reflection of Paul naming and owning from the very start that this is a new way of doing business.
This is a new way of understanding faith because Christians have identified and thought
as people of the Jewish book.
All of the connections and descendants and lineage all
the way back to Abraham,
the covenants, the laws, the pieces that go into your identity as a Jew
has been assumed in the Christian context.
And when Paul makes the argument early in Romans,
no,
this isn’t about your actual heritage.
This is about your faith and Jesus Christ’s grace,
which is for all,
which is why you have this connection of the sin of all,
the redemption of all.
Now that poses a really significant problem and Paul just owns it.
He says the problem
here is this makes it look like the Jews don’t matter anymore.
And Paul is a Jew among all Jews.
For him, these are his people and they matter.
And I think a pivotal moment that actually comes
in Romans chapter 13,
he makes the argument in verse 11.
Again, I asked, did they stumble, they being the Jews,
so as to fall beyond recovery?
No, not at all.
Rather because of their
transgression,
salvation has come to the Gentiles to make Israel envious.
You see what he does there?
He says that the Jews become the bearers of the Gentiles receiving salvation,
which simultaneously then becomes God’s mechanism to make the Israelites envious so that they can find salvation.
So for Paul, it’s this kind of A equals B,
B equals C, A equals C kind of argument,
where he comes down in the end to say,
this is all planned for in God’s providential care,
not to get rid of the Jews,
but so that both the Jews and the Gentiles can receive salvation.
Yeah, it might be oversimplified,
but it seems to me that part of what Paul is doing is taking
something that has been external.
It’s been one’s ethnicity.
It’s been one’s righteousness in the law.
It’s been one’s obedience.
It’s been one’s religious practice.
And Paul seems to be
saying that that now becomes an internal reality,
that in Christ we internalize grace when we put
our faith and trust in Jesus Christ and not in anything else,
not in any of those markers,
not in any of those conditions,
not in any of those labels,
but in Christ alone.
And the amazing thing that I think Paul does here is by the time he wraps up the 11th chapter,
when you think he’s
been talking about the Jewish people,
you find out he’s right back to talking about you.
“I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters.” And now,
having put that foundation of internalizing the
faith, he’s going to give us one of the strongest chapters of the book on what it means to live that faith out externally.
But for Paul, I think it has to go that way.
It has to begin inside
and move outside.
It can’t ever work the other way.
Well, remember the book of Acts?
Paul goes to a new town,
and every time he goes to a new place,
he goes to the synagogue.
He goes to the
place of worship where the Israelites gather.
And I can just see these middle chapters being a summary
of what Paul starts with when he engages in those communities.
He gets to a new place,
he presents the gospel of Jesus Christ.
He talks about how Gentiles are now welcomed in by the grace of
Christ into this new salvation or this new understanding of salvation.
And the first thing,
you can just see it in your mind’s eye.
The first thing that that collection of practicing Jews are
going to ask is,
“Well, Paul, what about the covenant?
What about Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob?
What about the law that God gave us,
the Ten Commandments, and all of the interpretations
over thousands of years?
What about God’s promise to be faithful to us,
to bring us into the
Promised Land, to set us free from our oppressors?
What about that, Paul?
You can just see every time
he goes in there,
he’s got to address his people.
He has to speak to this issue.
And here in the
middle of Romans, you can almost sort of hear a crystallizing,
a summary of that thing that he
would have to give voice to in those communities.
But like you’re saying,
Clint, and I think this
is the power of Romans,
is that we hear Paul saying this to Gentiles.
And so while Paul’s making
this argument, which may,
on one hand, feel a little esoteric,
it is driven in an application
to the Gentiles to say,
“So this is a problem.” But it’s not really a problem because of God’s
providence.
And in fact, you know, as he ends the section in chapter 11,
he ends with this beautiful,
oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God,
how unsearchable his judgment
and his past beyond tracing out.
It’s just this beautiful sort of eruption into thanksgiving and praise to say,
“Nobody would have guessed this.
Nobody would have planned this, but a sovereign,
providential, all-knowing, all-powerful God has made this happen.” And that is sort of this
challenge is to integrate these two groups within one church.
Because simultaneously, while he’s arguing Christ to the Jews,
he has to convince the Gentiles that the Hebrew scriptures
and Abraham and Adam and the first covenant matter,
that they can’t simply start with Jesus,
that me and Jesus is an incomplete picture,
that they are grafted in to something with deeper roots.
Not a new thing,
but the continuation of what God has always done because of who God has always been.
And the idea of Paul trying to get these massively different perspectives and people
on board together to be the church is just staggering.
And the book of Romans,
I think, gives us the best picture of how Paul tries to do that theologically.
Maybe not so much practically,
but the undergirding of Paul’s thought that goes in both directions toward the new and toward the
old.
It’s amazing to me.
I think that’s another thing that he holds intention throughout the
whole book is the new and the old,
just like he does faith and works,
just like he does sin and
redemption by grace.
I think that the old and the new is a real challenge for Paul because the Jews
treasure the old.
That’s not a burden that they consider themselves caring.
That’s a gift.
And the Gentiles are by definition new in all these ways,
and then they create all these new problems.
And you’re right in a culture that may be tempted to make our faith private and individual,
Paul’s letter to the Romans does not have any time or space for that.
Our faith is in church.
It’s in community.
It’s connected to a longer history,
and it always forces us to grapple with the new,
with what is coming and what surrounds us.
And in that way,
I do think that this book is
very deep and rich with pastoral insight.
Absolutely. And I think, again, coming out of that sermon,
we get these remarkable chapters,
New Life in Christ.
There are many members.
They don’t all have the same function,
and yet they’re one body.
Let love be genuine.
Rejoice with those who rejoice.
Weep with those who weep.
I mean, these beautiful words about not only personal faith,
but living out that personal faith in community.
As far as it depends on you,
live at peace with all.
Let every person be
subject to one another,
to the authorities of the world.
Outdo one another in showing love.
I mean, it’s amazing to me how easily Paul turns his eye from this major question of what do we do with
the Jews to how do we live as the people of Jesus.
And in a way that is as seamless,
I think, as it can be,
you read along and you find,
“Oh, he’s not talking about them anymore.
He’s talking about me.
He’s talking about us.” And it’s really well done, I think.
What strikes me about the
latter part of this book,
Michael, is just how relational it is,
how Paul takes these lofty
theological things that he’s been pursuing for 10 or 12 chapters and then boils them down into these
simple but profound practices,
not making another stumble,
not judging each other,
not losing hope,
showing love even to those that we struggle to love.
One of the wonderful tenets
of Paul’s preaching is that he has the ability to do that.
He can set these deep doctrines
in the context of living them out in a practical way.
And I just find that I find that these 12,
13, 14, those chapters of Romans just really, really strong.
When you look at the overall arch, again,
of what Paul’s doing here,
I think that this is an
incredible way to start wrapping it all up and to make sense of it all.
Because what might at
least the surface seem like Paul is making this really heady sort of theological argument
is now clear once we get to the end to have been practical the whole time.
We started with sinfulness and the reality that that sinfulness looks like behaviors.
He has an entire list of this is what sinfulness looks like.
It’s a challenging list actually.
And then he has this whole section where he talks about how that problem has been remedied by the providential
love and grace of God and how that poses a challenge to what the Israelites had once
considered to be the solution.
And then you get to this end section where Paul says,
“And so therefore this is casting a vision of what a life lived in grace,
salvation through faith looks like.
It looks like submitting ourselves to the governing authorities.
It looks like loving
each other with sincerity,
not giving in to hatred, which is evil.
It looks like fulfilling the law,
but in a new sense,
the best of the law.” What Jesus said that we’re called to love our neighbor
as ourselves.
Each one of these is a practical encouragement,
a way in which the faith is lived
out in really external ways,
which is connected to Paul’s entire letter.
It’s not disconnected, it’s all one seamless whole.
And I think that’s a beautiful picture of how as Christians we too
should seek to be transformed in our mind,
as Paul says, and therefore for our outer actions
to also be changed,
to be converted, to be redeemed so that others might see Christ in
not only the way that we think differently,
but the way that we therefore live differently.
Yeah, and one practical, to use your word,
example of that, I think we see at the end of chapter 14,
“Let us no longer pass judgments on one another.” He says,
“I’m persuaded that nothing is unclean,
but if it’s unclean for anyone who thinks it is,
then I wouldn’t do it.
I wouldn’t eat food if I
thought it offended them.” And again,
I think we see the internal external,
that instead of some
arbitrary law that deems some things clean and some things not,
Paul says, “It is now in Christ our conscience.
Does that offend my own conscience?
Then I shouldn’t do it.” But not only that,
does it offend my neighbor’s conscience.
And if it offends my neighbor’s conscience,
then I also shouldn’t do it because I’m accountable not simply to myself,
but in Jesus Christ,
I’m accountable to those around me.
I’m accountable in my relationships.
And theologically speaking,
he relocates the impetus of law.
Practically speaking,
he redefines what it means to be religious.
I think he would use the word faithful.
That’s interesting that you say that,
Clint, because that poses both the beauty of this book
and the nearly incomprehensible problem,
which Paul is creating here.
The beauty is that the gospel of Jesus Christ is for Jew and Gentile,
and it transforms everyone.
That’s beautiful.
It’s an absolutely wonderful encapsulation of the good news,
capital G.
Here’s the problem though.
By redefining the law,
you get rid of the part of the law that’s great.
And that’s the clarity.
Do this.
Don’t do this.
Eat this kind of food.
Don’t eat this kind of food.
Go in these places on these days of the week.
You can’t go to these places on these days of the week.
And in some ways,
the rigidity of the rules provides a simplicity that is admirable.
And what we’re going to discover is in the pastoral letters to come,
including Corinthians that we’re
out to turn to in the latter part of this discussion,
this poses massive, very practical problems for Paul,
because when you get rid of the rules,
people start taking liberties that Paul
does not intend in the end of Romans.
And we start to see some early Christians doing some,
for lack of other words, crazy stuff.
Yeah.
And I think that gives example to a pretty important
truth.
It is in some ways easier to do those things theologically than it is personally.
It’s one thing to make the well-formed argument about freedom from the law and living graciously
in relationships through Jesus Christ.
But the doing of it is a whole other struggle.
And as we move into those letters that give us snapshots of the life in the church,
I think we see the disconnect between the theology we know we should do and the practices we see
happening in the church.
Knowing is sometimes easier than doing.
Absolutely.
I will also add,
as we come towards the end of Romans here,
two notes about chapter 16 and what my Bible calls
the personal greetings.
First of all, I think it’s great to remember that this is a letter,
that this is sent to real people by Paul.
And it’s good to be reminded that this is a real snapshot
of a real person trying to be faithful,
talking to real people,
struggling with faith, because that’s who we are.
We’re real people trying to be faithful.
And I think it’s a beautiful reminder
that this letter, though it’s in a book we call the Bible,
was at one point addressed to people
with names.
And that’s beautiful.
And I think another thing to add to that,
and this is important
as we turn our attention to Corinthians,
is please stop and note all of the women specifically that Paul mentions here.
And it’s very wonderful sort of recognition,
our sister Phoebe, who’s a deacon in the church.
She’s a benefactor of many people,
Paul says, including Paul.
He talks about greeting
Priscilla and Aquila, co-workers in Christ,
greet all of these people who are meeting and serving together.
Of course, there’s men and women listed here.
But as Paul makes some theological arguments
about women in their place in the church in the coming book,
the fact that he’s naming women he’s
serving with and working with is an important temper to some of the ideas we’re going to encounter
in just a few minutes.
I think whenever we get to a section like this,
we can read over
this long list of names and really not think about them at all.
And many of them aren’t named
anywhere else, so we don’t know anything about them.
But it helps to remember that each person has a story,
that each person is known in the community,
that Paul has interacted with them,
that Paul is connected relationally with them,
that they love him.
He loves them.
To your point,
Michael, he has this phrase,
“Greet Rufus and his mother.
She is also a mother to me.”
And these are real relationships,
and these are the people that Paul anticipates being with as
he looks toward arriving in Rome.
And it helps, I think, to know that the gospel is incarnate in our relationships,
and these are real people that Paul is interacting with,
talking to.
He knows them, and that matters.
It does matter, because even in the most simplistic way,
it keeps us from
reading Romans like a theological tract,
to suck all of the humanity out of it,
and make it like
this is a theological,
systematic theology of the Christian faith.
I think, yes, this book is deep,
this book has theological depth that the Church has drawn on for thousands of years,
but let’s not forget the fact that this letter only exists in relationship with real people,
that Paul was trying to lead,
really, without having even been there.
And I do think as people
who also haven’t had Paul in our midst,
there’s a great gift in getting to sort of enter into that
relationship, because it’s in our New Testament Bible.
Just one last thought,
verse 22 of chapter
16, so that no one’s confused.
Paul is late in his career when he writes this letter,
and some have suggested that writing has become difficult for him.
And so, there’s a verse here that says,
“I, Tertius, the writer of this letter,
greet you in the Lord.” It’s generally thought that’s Paul’s secretary,
that Paul’s dictating the letter,
and that this man is writing it down to send to the
Church.
So, just to make sure that everybody’s on the same page there.
When we leave the book of Romans,
we really, for the rest of Paul’s letters,
we’re dealing specifically with people that Paul
has been with.
We mentioned that when he writes Romans,
he’s not been to Rome yet.
The exact opposite is true as Paul writes to the Corinthian church.
He planted this church.
He founded this church.
He lived there with these people.
They look to Paul as essentially their spiritual father of that congregation.
And he had a lot of interaction with him.
You may notice as you read this letter,
he references a letter that he’s already sent them.
So, what we call first
Corinthians is at least second Corinthians,
but we don’t have any record of what that first letter
or letters look like.
So, we call this one our first.
But there’s a lot of relationship here.
There’s a lot of connection with Paul and this congregation.
While there’s a difference between Romans and Corinthians in exactly what you’re saying,
Paul hasn’t had an apostle relationship with the Roman church,
but has had with the Corinth church.
Ironically,
as we get into the letter to the Corinthians,
there are significant authority issues in Corinth.
There seems to be some significant debates ranging over which teaching and more specifically,
which teacher to trust and to allow to carry the day.
And Paul gets his back
up against the wall a little bit.
He bristles and he gets after the church in Corinth.
There are other pastoral letters to come where Paul’s tone is pretty warm,
pretty inviting,
pretty encouraging.
And there’s encouragement in Corinthians,
but there’s a lot of rebuke.
There’s a lot of censure.
And there’s also a lot of pretty hard-nosed teaching in here.
Yes. So, when Paul opens a letter,
it’s often with a section that is pretty positive, but it’s interesting.
He only gets 10 verses in before he goes right to the heart of it and says,
“I hear that there’s divisions among you and it’s not okay.” So,
Paul doesn’t take long to jump into
the thick of things and some of the issues that are happening in the Corinthian church.
And some of this we have to learn by application.
We hear Paul address something,
and so we assume
that it must have been one of their struggles.
We don’t know everything about what was happening in Corinth.
We know that it was messy.
We know that it was primarily a Gentile church.
It was in a large urban city.
It was on a trade route.
There’s evidently some affluence there.
And this group of people that has been formed by Paul to be the church seems to be coming
apart at the seams in some places.
And Paul is really working hard to help them get on track.
Well, like you said, exactly, it’s a short introduction.
Paul jumps right in,
and he starts naming names right off the bat.
Apollos,
Cephas.
And this actually sends biblical
scholars scrambling because they all want to know,
well, what did Apollos say and what was Cephas’
position and how were these two people distinct and all of that kind of thing.
But if you’ve been
in the church at all,
for any amount of time,
you know an Apollos and a Cephas.
We all know that church is about relationship and it’s about people.
And the Corinthians have had significant
wrestling and disagreement and loud voices in the room.
And Paul shows up with this letter to say,
“I am strong as your leader because of my weakness.” He does this sort of
thing in tension back and forth,
that I should be the one that gets the time of day because when
I show up to talk to you,
I don’t do it with bombastic language and big words and loud voices.
I come in humility and quiet.
And Paul makes this really interesting argument to say,
“You should be listening to my apostolic authority and my direction,
but you should be listening to
it, not because I’m the big bully,
but because I have submitted and I’ve been humble.” Because
Paul makes the argument,
by the way, that’s exactly how Jesus led through service and not
through a big stick.
One of the things we guess about the Corinthians is that they were struggling
with the idea of wisdom and the idea of attaining some sort of spiritual or supernatural wisdom.
And you’ll notice as you read the book,
several times you’re going to see lines that have quotes around them.
And in many of those cases,
we think that Paul is actually quoting a letter that they
have written him and he’s responding to it verbatim.
And notice how many of those quotations
have something to do with wisdom.
And in most instances,
it seems to be the case that they
think wisdom elevates them and gives them permission and freedom.
And Paul keeps saying exactly the opposite.
No, we are not after the worldly wisdom.
What we call wise looks foolish to the world.
What we call great looks insignificant to the world,
that we have a different standard,
that we have a different ladder,
that we define ourselves completely differently from the questions
you’re asking and how often Paul has to take them to task to bring them back down and how often he
uses himself to do it.
And I think you’ll notice that theme.
It’s very prevalent throughout the book of Corinthians.
I think that word’s helpful,
Clint, the idea of elevation.
And I think, as I heard you saying it,
the idea of elevation worldly to spiritual wisdom.
I think there’s another elevation here as well.
And that is a kind of elevation of stature within the church itself.
It seems that in Corinth,
people are vying for the most important,
most prestigious place in the community.
And so you have this language about speaking in tongues and prophecy.
And you get this idea that people are vying for spiritual wisdom,
which sets them apart from the rest of the
other Christians, that they’re looking for a kind of elevated status within the church community.
And Paul has zero time for it.
He just completely ravishes that idea, because ultimately,
Paul makes the argument here in chapter three,
that you’re not following Paul.
You’re not following Apollos.
One plants the seed, the other waters.
You’re following Christ.
That this idea of status, the same issue that the disciples raised with Jesus,
which one of us is going to sit your hand,
is the thing that Paul’s directly addressing here,
that there is no wisdom that’s going to
elevate you within the community,
because that’s not Christ’s way.
Yeah. And the Corinthians seem
to want to build a hierarchy,
either by which apostle they follow,
which teacher they belong to,
which spiritual gifts they have,
how long they’ve been in the church, who they know.
Yeah, absolutely.
You’re completely right, Michael.
Paul’s having none of it.
He knocks that down every chance that he gets.
I’m not sure if I received this letter,
if it would be even possible to miss the urgency.
He says in chapter four,
verse 18, “Some of you have become arrogant as if I were not coming to
you.” And as a person who has a four-year-old,
that’s practical.
I’m coming home, and we’re going to deal with this.
Well, and that shortly thereafter follows my favorite verse in any of
the pastoral letters, “Which do you prefer?
I can come to you with the spirit of gentleness,
or should I bring a stick?” I love that Paul tells him,
“Look, we can do it the easy way,
or the hard way.
You decide.” I love that line.
To connect this conversation back to the book of
Romans, because I think that these two are really conversant,
in chapter five, we’re going to deal
with what might strike you as a strange thing.
There’s apparently a man in the Corinthian church
who’s having relations with his mother-in-law,
and there’s this sharp,
sort of very practical,
concrete directive that Paul gives to the Corinthian community.
And what I think you need to know is,
when you look at the end of Romans,
and you see Paul making new interpretations of old laws,
saying what used to be physical is now spiritual,
and we have a new way of interpreting what we’ve been given,
to us a few thousand years later,
that may seem obvious.
Now that we get to the Corinthian community,
there was significant misunderstanding of what that meant.
It seems that some man thought that this idea of being new creatures in Christ,
that we’ve been all united in
Christ, that we’ve been set free from the law,
that this language was taken so literally that
these individuals started to redefine their sexual relationships.
And what Paul makes clear,
he finds to be abhorrent ways.
Yeah, they seem to have confused forgiveness for permissiveness,
as if being free from our sin allows us then to do whatever we want.
And he straightens that out
pretty strongly.
In fact, at one point he says something like,
“Deliver that man to Satan,” which
we think probably means,
“If need be, kick him out of the church.” He’s bringing dishonor on the
community and therefore dishonor on Christ.
And he chides the people pretty strongly for putting
up with this, that you should know better.
This is not what it means that we follow a new law.
This is not what it means that we’re free from our sin.
There are aspects of whatever the mindset is
in Corinth that I think we see in American culture.
The idea of permissiveness,
the idea that we should all be free to do whatever we want,
that we all make our own rules,
that we all set our
own boundaries, and that everyone else has to be okay with that.
Part of Paul’s strong reaction to
that is that it dishonors Christ.
But I think an extension of that is that it also makes it
impossible to be the community.
The community can’t be the church when it functions under
everybody’s own set of standards.
That it’s just not possible for us to find unity when we each
get to do whatever we want.
And once again, that goes against the spirit of the law.
Love your neighbor as yourself.
And those kinds of relationships break down the ability for the
church to love one another in sustainable and meaningful ways.
And Paul from a distance sees that clearly.
Apparently, the Christians in Corinth who were closer to it didn’t see it at all.
Yeah. And as we get close to it,
there’s probably no way around it.
Part of this letter,
a backbone of this letter seems to indicate that for the Corinthian church,
there’s a real struggle
with sexuality and relationships.
Paul chides them for fornication in several places,
for using prostitutes or for consorting with prostitutes.
And it probably helps to understand
that to see where Paul goes in regard to marital relationships and family and gender.
Because it’s pretty hard to get around the fact that Paul says some not very flattering things about men and
women, women in particular.
And he gives some instruction that I think our female listeners
are going to find a little hard to deal with, probably even offensive.
There are moments,
and I mean this humbly because I know that I don’t understand the subtleties,
but there are moments in which it strikes me that Paul is a little conflicting with Paul.
I think you’ll read sections in Romans,
you’re going to read sections in other pastoral letters,
where it seems to be pretty clear that this new thing that Christ has done has united us in
substantive ways.
So that the distinction between slave and free,
male and female, these things are breaking down because we’ve all sinned and we’ve all been saved by Christ.
And then you have moments where like 1 Corinthians 7.39,
a woman is bound to her husband as long as
he lives, but if her husband dies,
she’s free to marry anyone she wishes,
but he must belong to the Lord.
Any Pharisaical Jew would be on that train.
I mean that’s sort of a party line,
if you let me say it that way.
So they’re just moments in which,
I’m not saying that Paul
disagrees with Paul’s self,
but there does seem to be some diversities here.
And I’ve got to
hold that up a little bit,
I think, when you get to Paul’s language about women.
Because I think there are some moments where Paul suggests that Christians look at the issue of gender in church
in radically different ways from his culture.
And then there are other times where it seems like
he’s arguing for something that is very similar.
And I would argue,
Michael, that even within the
book, we see some of that tension.
It’s incredible that Paul will make the case that eating food that
has been sacrificed to idols is not outside the realm of Christians if it doesn’t affect
my own conscience, that it doesn’t mean anything,
that circumcision or non-circumcision have no bearing.
And Paul seems to be knocking down these historic barriers because of the freedom and the
grace he sees in Christ.
But then he’ll turn around and say,
as in all the churches,
women should be silent while they’re there.
And it’s really hard to know what to make of that.
Paul seems, in those moments,
very much a product of his culture.
And it’s a little more difficult,
I think, to follow those arguments with theological clarity.
It seems biased in a way that is hard to locate.
And it’s hard to square with what Paul says about women in other places where he calls them co-workers and
says they’ve preached, and they’ve taught alongside of him,
and they’ve done these wonderful things,
and he commends them to the church.
And yet here he seems to say something other than that.
Some have suggested that there were specific women in Corinth causing lots of problems,
and he has them in mind.
That may be true.
Maybe that helps.
But the reality is,
it’s just some uncomfortable stuff in this letter that seemed related to the first century.
Yeah.
Number one,
drop in Romans 16 when you get to 1 Corinthians 11,
because maybe that helps a little bit.
But also,
and I know we probably don’t want to dig in here too much,
but I do think it’s
worth looking at chapter 11,
which has a lot of the most challenging sort of comments.
And I would point to verse 7 and verse 8.
Verse 8 says, “For man did not come from woman,
but woman from man,
I point that out to say,
look where Paul is turning to for that theological argument,
namely creation, that Genesis story of how God creates.” It’s interesting because if you
reframe that story from how the natural creation of all humanity happens,
and you framed it instead
from the grace of Jesus Christ offered to all through faith,
I think that would be a radically different argument.
But because Paul turns to that Genesis argument,
which is a very pharisaical
Jewish argument of line to take,
he ends up with a very pharisaical kind of declaration.
I wonder if Paul is doing that for some reason that we don’t understand the subtleties of this community.
Is there a reason why he’s turning to a sort of standard historical Jewish theological
understanding as opposed to the kind of argument we see him making in Romans,
which is a new
and transformational way of thinking because of Christ?
I don’t know, but I think it’s worth
pointing out that Paul’s doing a lot of different things in this argument with the Corinthians.
He says some really challenging things,
but give him a little bit of flexibility as you read because
he’s dealing with complicated things and he’s sourcing it in different ways.
And we need to
be aware of that.
That’s a good point,
Michael.
There are places in this letter where Paul is
doing groundbreaking theological work,
and then he says,
“Woman ought to have long hair or wear a
hat,” because that’s what nature teaches us.
And it’s a very different tone.
It’s a very different
method of arguing.
It’s a very dated.
It’s not groundbreaking at all,
nor does it seem
particularly centered in his understanding of who Christ is.
He seems to be reaching
outside of that for reasons that I’m not sure we get.
And we don’t need to beat this to death.
Just, ladies,
if you read things that bother you,
just know that that’s not everything that Paul says.
And I do think it’s helpful, Michael,
that at several points in this letter Paul says,
“On this I have a word from the Lord,” and in other places he says,
“Now this is me speaking and not
the Lord.” And so Paul seems to understand that there are times he’s given insightful and God
ordained teaching, and there are other times he’s giving his opinion.
And maybe we can squabble
over which is which,
but it’s, I think, significant that Paul understands both of those things are
happening in this one letter.
You know, I think anyone who has led,
if you’ve led and you’ve
reflected a little bit on that leadership experience,
you’re going to know that there’s a
million different topics and challenges that you can sort of make the hill that you’re going to die on.
And Paul in this letter has clearly picked some hills to die on.
And there’s times when he
says, “I’m dying on this hill because I have to,” because this is gospel,
and there’s other times
where he says, “I’d really prefer you stay single,
but I’m making accommodation to you if you are
going to be tempted and you’re going to lust,
go get married.” It seems that there’s so much
backstory happening in Corinth that the best thing to do is to come to this letter,
I think, with some openness as a reader and say,
“Paul’s trying to give Christ-centered direction to a
church which is in turmoil.
What is the spirit of that direction and how will it apply to us?”
And if we can do that,
I think there’s a lot here for us.
Yeah, and not to follow the rabbit trail
too far into history,
but obviously in the Presbyterian Church that has long recognized
the role and place of women in leadership at congregational level and at governmental levels,
we have not heard these words to be binding.
We have not interpreted them to be a once-and-for-all
statement about gender and the practice of the faith in the Christian community.
And that may put us out of step with Paul,
but we have made those choices in light of everything we read in
Scripture and we hope a more nuanced understanding of people and gender and equality than Paul could
have known in the first century.
Yeah, and I want to just emphasize what you said there, Glenn.
That argument is based in Scripture.
I don’t think that historical reform, Presbyterian
scriptural interpretation hasn’t looked to culture.
Now, we haven’t just thrown it out
because we didn’t like it.
Yeah, it would be impossible to read the Scripture without
living in a culture,
but this is the Presbyterian Reformed way of reading Scripture is deeply
invested in the whole witness of Scripture.
And I think we see that reflected in our reading of
these texts in Corinthians,
especially as they relate to women.
I want to add one thing here,
Clint, that we might pass over,
and that is once again in chapter 11 here,
this language about the Lord’s Supper.
We might, reading it,
miss the significance of people using the Lord’s Supper
as a mechanism to support a hierarchy.
It appears that there are some wealthy people who are taking
privileged seats while the church is celebrating a common meal and the poor are pushed out.
They’re getting the cheapest food and the worst drink,
and Paul is making it absolutely and abundantly
clear the table of Christ is this place of unity,
and you’re making it a place of division.
And for Presbyterians who think of a table that we come to once a month,
and we all come together
in this very worshipful liturgical kind of way,
we might miss what Paul is saying here,
which is the table should be a central place of connection within the church family,
and it seems that the
Corinthians got out of step,
and they were turning it into a mechanism for advancement.
In chapter 10, Paul says, “Because there’s one bread,
we who are many are one body,
for we all partake of one bread.” And then in the conversation about the weak and the strong,
there’s a point at which Paul says,
“If the way that I eat causes my brother to stumble,
then I won’t eat meat ever again.
I would refrain.” And you begin to get a sense how important unity
and connection is for Paul in regard to the church,
and the idea that this church comes
to what is our common meal,
our unity supper,
literally in the Greek,
the love feast, and that it becomes a moment of division and personal excess and judgment and hierarchy and separation.
It looks like what the Corinthians have done is to have turned even worship into a hierarchy.
Who’s going to get to speak?
Who has the right gifts?
And so in chapter 12,
we have this wonderful
conversation where Paul says,
“We are one body.
We have all these parts,
but we have one body,
and the health of the body is priority over the exercise or the happiness of any one of the parts.
It is the whole that has to be healthy.
And for the parts to compare themselves with one another,
or to dismiss one another,
or to disagree with one another,
does a disservice to the whole.”
Whatever letter they wrote,
they wrote him.
I imagine him reading it and just putting his
head in his hands and shaking his head and just thinking to himself,
“I can’t believe this.”
We’re going to deal with more of Corinthians next week as we keep on reading,
so I’m going to stop
my comments there.
I think my last note that I want to offer here is if you’re going to offer
sort of a summary arc to the first part of Corinthians,
and probably even the last part
of Corinthians, this whole book,
is really this is a case study of what happens when Jesus isn’t first.
When we make it about ourselves,
about our status, about the hierarchy of community,
when we make it about our advancement and what we think things should be,
this is what church looks like.
And Paul repeatedly,
pointedly,
sometimes with very
sharp rebukes, is trying to make the argument,
I think, over and over and over again.
Jesus Christ came.
He died.
He sacrificed.
He served.
That is what our community should look like,
and you’re not meeting that standard.
You need to get back after it.
That’s a good word,
Michael, and I think the only thing I would add is notice as you read through Corinthians that Paul doesn’t really draw
a distinction between personal faith and corporate faith, that for Paul,
my experience of following
Christ is intrinsically connected to my place within the body of Christ.
It is not one or the
other.
That faith is always both personal and communal.
And when either of those is off,
the man sleeping with his mother-in-law or the dysfunctional church,
we dishonor Christ.
I think it’s both fascinating and compelling that for Paul, it’s both and.
Well, thanks for joining us for this week’s podcast.
We are thrilled to have you here.
Of course, there’s a lot here.
And if you have any additional questions or thoughts that arise,
make sure to send us an email,
drop it into the Facebook group.
We’d love to address it.
But friends, we’re glad that you’ve been with us and we look forward to seeing you again next week
on the Pastor Talk podcast.