Bible Study - 1 Corinthians Part 4 - Authority and Imitating Jesus

Catch up time. Between coming down with a bad cold and the busyness of the week leading up to Easter I've gotten a bit behind, but I should hopefully be caught up by the end of this week.

With this post we wrap up Paul's opening discussion of conflict over leaders that's dividing the Corinthian church. With 1 Corinthians 4:1-21 Paul takes on the issue that's been in the background all along: there are a number of people in the church who are strongly criticising his leadership and teaching. Paul has failed to persuade or impress them and more than that, they think they've got it all figured out on their own. Yet here Paul turns the tables and suggests that being a genuine Christian leader has nothing to do with being impressive or powerful - in fact if we're really following Jesus it can be the opposite! 

• Read 1 Cor. 4:1-5. We should be careful in how we apply Paul’s teaching here as it’s easy for Christian leaders to abuse it. At the same time it does raise some important questions.
• When is it appropriate to judge or evaluate those in leadership and when is it best to leave it up to God? How do we determine if a leader has genuine authority from God? 
• Read 1 Cor. 4:6-13. What do you make of Paul’s contrast between the Corinthians’ proud self-image and the humble picture he draws of true Christian apostles? How does Paul’s description of what to expect from genuine Christian leaders compare with Christian leaders you know (or know of)? 
• The image of Christian life Paul offers raises questions for all Christians, not just leaders. Which of these two models would you prefer to be: rich and powerful or poor and weak? What challenge does this make to our comfortable Christian lives today and our understanding of success? 
• Read 1 Cor. 4:14-21. Paul tells the Corinthians to “be imitators of me.” Is this arrogance and self-praise on Paul’s part or does he mean something else?  (Hint: think of what Paul says in verses 6-13) 
• Finally, what do make of verse 20 “For the kingdom of God depends not on talk but on power.”? What kind of power is Paul talking about?

Bible Study - 1 Corinthians Part 3 - Leadership and being 'Spiritual'

This week we continue through Paul's opening discussion of the conflicts in the Corinthian church. In 1 Corinthians 2:6-3:23 Paul continues his discussion of God's foolish wisdom, what it means to be spiritual, and the role of leaders in the Christian community.

• Read 1 Cor. 2:6-3:4. How does being a spiritual person relate to how we behave? Should our spirituality be evident in how you live? How do you spot a spiritual person? 
• How would you react to Paul’s sharp criticism that your church is unspiritual? Do you think that your church spiritual in the sense that Paul is talking about? Are you? 
• Read 1 Cor. 3:5-17. What is the role and purpose of Christian leaders? Do we make too much of individual leaders instead of keeping our focus on God and Jesus? 
• What do you make of Paul’s idea that Christians taken together form God’s Temple? As you reflect read Ephesians 2:19-21. 
• Read 1 Cor. 3:18-23. What do you think Paul means when he says “become fools so that you may become wise”? What do you think Paul means here by wisdom and foolishness?

Bible Study - 1 Corinthians Part 2 - Divisions and God's Foolish Wisdom

When I started off our Bible study group last week I decided to read from N. T. Wright’s translation of 1 Corinthians 1:1-9, a translation that really struck me the first time I read it.

¹ Paul, called by God’s will to be an apostle of King Jesus, and Sosthenes our brother; ² to God’s assembly at Corinth, made holy in King Jesus, called to be holy, with everyone who calls on the name of our Lord, King Jesus, in every place—their Lord, indeed, as well as ours! ³ Grace to you and peace from God our father and King Jesus the Lord.

⁴ I always thank my God for you, for the grace of God that was given to you in King Jesus. ⁵ You were enriched in him in everything, in every kind of speech and knowledge, ⁶ just as the messianic message was established among you, ⁷ so that you aren’t missing out on any spiritual gift as you wait eagerly for our Lord, King Jesus, to be revealed. ⁸ He will establish you right through to the end, so that you are blameless on the day of our Lord, King Jesus. ⁹ God is faithful! And it is through God that you have been called into the fellowship of his son, King Jesus, our Lord.

(N. T. Wright, Paul for Everyone: 1 Corinthians, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2004)

Wright translates the Greek word ‘Christos’ as King instead of just turning it into the English word Christ as we normally do. The effect for me was powerful and I still get chills when I read it. The original Greek and Roman hearers of 1 Corinthians would have heard it more or less in this way, since the Jewish idea of the Messiah meant nothing to them, but the world of anointed (which is what Christos means) kings and rulers was very familiar. To hear Jesus called King eight times in just nine verses hits home the radical message of Paul’s Gospel. Jesus is the world’s true king and not any human power (from the Roman Emperors down through the powers and principalities of today).

It’s worth keeping this central part of Paul’s message in mind as we come to this next part of the letter. In 1 Corinthians 1:10-4:21 Paul starts to deal with the conflicts in the Corinthian church and the core issue that stands behind all of the squabbling – God’s strange wisdom verses the wisdom of this world. This week we get into the first part of Paul’s argument.

• Read 1 Corinthians 1:10-17. Paul talks about divisions and conflict in the church at Corinth. Have you experienced conflict in the church? How does it make you feel to hear about this in the New Testament? 
• Read 1 Corinthians 1:18-25. Is the Gospel (or Good News) of Jesus the crucified King foolish? What do you think is the biggest obstacle keeping people from accepting the Gospel today? 
• Read 1 Corinthians 1:26-31. Are you often impressed by those who speak well, are well educated, wealthy, wise and powerful? Is this something you would like to be? Is it something we should strive for or does God call on us to have a different set of values? 
• Read 1 Corinthians 2:1-5. What do you think Paul means when he says that he delivered his message “with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power”? How do you think this differs from the more common experience of hearing someone who is a persuasive or powerful speaker? Have you experienced God’s Spirit and power in your life? What was that like?

Paul and Women

From our initial sessions on 1 Corinthians it's clear that one of the most common things people think about Paul is that he had very negative opinions of women. One thing I hope that I'll be able to bring across in this study is that this view is deeply mistaken. Part of the trouble is that it has been spread both by men and male religious leaders eager to keep women in subservient roles, and by many women and men reacting against this mistaken view of Paul and rejecting his writings entirely rather than taking a hard look at what Paul actually said.

I could go on quiet a long time about this, but for now I'll post this short video by respected Biblical scholar Dr. Ben Witherington III. In it he deals with the issue of women in ministry in general, and specifically with the 'problem passages' in Paul that defenders of male-only church leadership always quote - 1 Corinthians 14:26-40 & 1 Timothy 2:8-15.

The interesting thing is that Witherington tends to be on the more conservative side of scholarship (that is he argues that all of Paul’s letters were written by him, where more liberal scholars tend to think that 1 Timothy along with the controversial part of 1 Corinthians 14 were written by later disciples of Paul). Basically he argues the problem isn’t the texts themselves, rather it’s how they have traditionally been interpreted.

Bible Study - 1 Corinthians Part 1 - Greetings!

With this week's session we start into Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians. I would recommmend reading the background to the letter I posted last week before starting your study. Though Paul's letters are inspired Scripture applying to all Christians, they were originally written for a specific situation and it helps to have a general sense of that situation as we start. Throughout the course of this study I'll include some further background information for the parts of the letter that really need it.

Opening Question: What have you heard about the Apostle Paul? How do you view Paul and his writings? There are a lot of opinions about Paul out there today, and it helps to take a minute to consider what angle we're each coming from. As we read this letter I hope you'll find that Paul  (like his Lord Jesus) doesn't fit neatly into many of the boxes people have tried to put him in.

This week we start off with a short section of the letter which forms its formal opening. All Greco-Roman letters started off with who they were from and who they were going to, and often included a thanksgiving, which is how Paul starts off this letter. However Paul always takes these standard elements and uses them to introduce key ideas about what it means to be Christian, as well as some of the topics he'll be talking about in the body of the letter. So as we go further into the letter keep in mind what Paul says here.

Questions:

• Read 1 Corinthians 1:1-3 (The Geeting). Paul describes the church as those ‘made holy in Christ Jesus’ and those ‘called to be saints.’ Is this how you see the church? What do you think Paul means by the term saint? 
• What we translate as the English work 'church' is the Greek word 'ekklesia'. This was an everyday  word for the people in Paul's time - it wasn't a specifically 'religious' term. It refers to the political assembly of all citizens in a Greek city. The church for Paul then is like an alternative city or community. How does this compare to your understanding of 'the church'? 
• Read 1 Corinthians 1:4-9 (The Thanksgiving). Have you had the experience of receiving spiritual gifts from God? What do you consider to be a ‘spiritual gift’? Why do you think God gives them to us?
• Paul uses Jesus' name eight times in these first nine verses. This makes it pretty clear that Jesus is absolutely central to Paul. Does Jesus have that place in our lives?  

 

Bible Study - Paul, Corinth, and the Greek East in Roman Times

Following up on my last post, I hope you'll bear with me because I think this background to 1 Corinthians is important and hopefully should be interesting.

Paul the Apostle

• Most of Paul’s story is told in the Book of Acts – Paul also tells much of his own story in his letter to the Galatians. He as a Jew born in the Greek city of Tarsus in what’s now Turkey and like many Jews he had two names, one Hebrew (Saul) and one Greek/Roman (Paulos). As a young man was extremely zealous for Judaism and persecuted the early disciples of Jesus as dangerous heretics.
• Paul accepted Jesus as God’s Promised Messiah after a vision on the road to Damascus in Syria after which he was baptized. He began his calling as a missionary as the junior partner of another apostle named Barnabas before setting out on his own. Paul always remained a Jew (though a very different kind of Jew), Paul did not convert to another religion so much as come to a radically new understanding of the God of Israel through Jesus the Messiah.
• From 45 or 46 AD until his martyrdom in Rome around 62-64 AD Paul founded Christian communities in the Greek and Roman cities throughout what’s now Turkey and Greece
• Paul’s letters are the oldest part of the New Testament (written before the Gospels). But while Paul was inspired by the Holy Spirit as he wrote, he was writing to deal with practical challenges specific to his churches and probably had no understanding that he was writing sacred Scripture. It was only later generations of Christians who recognized that Paul's letters were inspired Scripture applicable for people in all times. Therefore it’s important to understand the practical situations that led Paul to write his letters.

The World of the Greek East

• Starting around 1000 BC the Greeks founded colonies all around the Mediterranean. Then in the 330s BC Alexander the Great conquered all of the Middle East from Egypt to India, spreading the Greek language and culture throughout the whole region.
• The Roman Empire conquered Greece and the rest of Eastern Mediterranean by the 1st Century BC, yet the language and culture remained predominantly Greek (Latin was only spoken by Roman soldiers, officials and businessmen). The New Testament is written entirely in the Common Greek that was the main international language of the time.
• One of the things Roman rule brought to the Mediterranean was safe shipping (they largely eliminated piracy) and an efficient postal service. We have a huge quantity of letters from the time of the Roman Empire, and Paul’s letters follow the common style and format of the time. Most critically in an age before telephones, visual media and the internet, letters were a substitute for personal presence (something we see quite clearly in Paul’s writings)

Paul’s Churches

• Paul’s Christian assemblies seem to have been made up of a number of small house based communities spread throughout the cities. Each city seems to have had a central meeting place in the largest home owned by a church member where each of the smaller house communities got together to celebrate the Lord’s Supper and have large group meetings and worship.

Corinth

• Corinth had been one of the major city-states of Classical Greece before being totally destroyed by the Romans when they conquered Greece in 146 BC (as an example to the rest of Greece they killed every adult male and enslaved every woman and child – this was the other side of ‘Roman Peace’).
• It was re-established in 44 BC by Julius Caesar as a Roman colony and once again became a major city and the main port of Roman Greece. The new settlers were mainly common people from the suburbs of Rome and freed slaves (who could come from any part of the Roman Empire – though a large number of those freed tended to be educated Greeks). As a result Corinth became known as a city on the make and a notorious as a place where you could make your fortune or just as easily lose your shirt – a city of people obsessed with status, wealth, and with a strong sense of individualism.
• Corinth was a major centre for the Imperial Cult of the Roman Emperors, full of temples and monuments to the state religion that turned the Emperors into gods. It was also a place of countless other religions – traditional Roman religion, Greek religion, and Eastern religions, such as the Egyptian goddess Isis and countless others. These people knew nothing about the God of Israel, pagans in a pluralistic world where you could believe anything you pleased – so long as it didn’t threaten Rome’s power.

The Writing of 1 Corinthians

• Seems to have been written around 54 AD from the city of Ephesus in what is now Turkey and is actually Paul’s second letter to the church (he refers to an earlier letter at one point). Paul wrote several others to this church (including 2 Corinthians) as he had a number of challenges in his relationship with them. It was still a tumultuous congregation 50 years later when Clement an early Bishop of Rome wrote a letter to sort out yet another internal dispute.

Confessions of a History Geek

As you probably picked up in my last Bible Study post I'm a bit of a history geek. I've always loved history and when it came down to choosing my major once I settled into the humanities after leaving engineering history was a no brainer. If God hadn't called me to ministry I'm fairly certain that I would be teaching history in a university lecture hall about now.

I love discovering the unexpected twists and turns of the human story (seriously, truth really is stranger than fiction). I equally love filling in the picture of what life was like for people in other times, people both astonishingly like us yet also remarkably different. When I'm bored and haven't had time to buy or borrow any new books I'm more than happy to read through Wikipedia history articles, either to learn something new or critique what's been written (though thankfully I've never bothered to get an account and actually start editing articles).



At the same time it's more than just a personal passion or preference that leads me to include more than a bit of history in my Biblical teaching and preaching. The fact is that though there's a lot in the Bible that is fairly straightforward, a lot of it doesn't make sense or is easily misinterpreted if you don't know something the historical context in which each of its books were written. That's because, though the Bible was inspired by the Spirit of God and speaks eternal truth to every age, the people who physically wrote it remained people of their time and place.

Certain things just don't make sense if we don't know the original situation these books were written into, and the kind of people who put pen to paper. To take Jonah and Nahum as examples, you can't really get a full sense of what these books are saying if you know nothing about Nineveh and the Assyrian Empire. You don't need to know the minute history of the Ancient Middle East, but you need to know enough to understand the reason for God's judgement in Nahum and the radical and upsetting nature of his forgiveness in Jonah.

Like Jesus, the Bible involves God making his divine and eternal Word human. The Holy Spirit helps us understand God's Word as it comes to us in Scripture, but we need to also take the time to use the mind and knowledge God has also given us to be sure that we don't unintentionally make the Bible say what we want it to say to us in the present.

That being said let me know if I'm going on too much about the iconography of Roman coins or how the key to understanding Palm Sunday is found in the book of Maccabees which tells the story of Judas Maccabeus and his brothers who liberated Judea in 165 BC from the tyranny of....