EPISODE 126 CHAPTER 16 "The Final Charge"

Welcome, friends, to Share the Word. Whether you're just beginning to explore the Bible or have been a Christian for years, we believe that you'll get some great insight from our podcast as our teachers unpack the big ideas of the New Testament in a down-to-earth language. Thanks for being a listener. Now let's get right into today's lesson. First Corinthians chapter 16, the final charge. I'll bet you never heard of a church named the Corinthian Presbyterian Church or the Corinthian anything church, have you?

If you have, I'd be surprised because I definitely have not. The Berean Baptist Church, maybe, or the Antioch Methodist Church, probably. The Roman Catholic Church, for sure. But Corinthian anything? Highly unlikely. This was just not a church, at least when Paul wrote to it, anyone in their right mind would want to emulate.

Even though it sounds like it had a lot of advantages, it was located in a large, diverse city, was established by the greatest church planter ever, one that seems to have grown pretty large pretty quickly and with members gifted with every kind of spiritual gift that God was giving at the time, yet it was wracked with problems, as we've seen: unchecked pride, feelings of superiority, weak internal leadership, disunity and factionalism, open immorality not being confronted, lawsuits, member against member, misuse of spiritual gifts resulting in very disorderly public services, even drunkenness and other improprieties at the Lord's Supper. Other than that, how did you like the play, Mrs. Lincoln? I mean, that church sounds like it was a giant mess. True, Paul says they were sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be his holy people. He means their faith was real.

Positionally, God accepted them as holy because of their faith in Christ. But practically, on the down-to-earth level, they were not living up to that high calling and not even close. And that's why this epistle is so corrective in nature, chapter after chapter. Paul is saying throughout, in essence, You're God's people in this dark city. Act like it, for heaven's sakes. It was common in Paul's letters, as we've seen already, for example in Galatians and also in Romans, that he laid out some doctrinal teaching followed by some practical instructions.

Some, here's what you should believe as Christians, followed by some, here's how you should therefore behave as Christians. But with this letter to Corinth, that was completely reversed. This letter has been overwhelmingly about their behavior being far from what it should be. Chapter 15 is really the only place where Paul focuses in on doctrine when he underscores how foundational and essential the historical resurrection of Jesus is to the Christian faith. And that point is so salient, obviously, even though it's confined to one chapter out of 16 in this letter, when I think of First Corinthians, it's honestly the first thing I associate with this letter. I hope you will too, because as Paul writes at the beginning of chapter 15, it is of first importance, meaning no way we can overemphasize it.

If Christ has not been raised, our faith is worthless. Those who died trusting in him have perished. They're forever gone. We'll never see them again. To believe differently than that, it all comes down to the validity of the resurrection. That's the only hope we have.

That's why all four of the gospel writers aim their accounts at that climax, Jesus coming out of the tomb very much alive. It is what makes Christianity unique and powerful. You can visit the grave of the founders of any other world religion or the founders of any other school of philosophy, any of the gurus of the past, any of the so-called prophets or mystics of the past, and find their rotting corpses or bones or whatever is left of them there. But not the author and perfecter of our faith. Jesus' tomb is empty. Jesus' victory over death and the grave is physical resurrection, a fact eyewitnessed by hundreds of people, including Paul himself.

That's the fact upon which Christianity was born, and the reason it flourished and continues to do so. It's also that basis that Jesus' resurrection from the dead really happened, and on that basis that we too are promised victory over sin, death, and the grave. Jesus blazed a trail for all of us who would believe into him by faith. That's why Paul wrote at the end of chapter 15, O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting? Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

If we are in Christ by faith, we are promised victory over death too. We will live again. That was exactly Jesus' promise to his first followers. He put it just this succinctly, John chapter 14, verse 19, Because I live, you also will live. If I rise, you also will rise. And he did, so we will.

Which brings us now to the last chapter of 1 Corinthians and Paul's final words in this epistle. You can sense the authenticity of this letter from his many personal references as he closes out this correspondence. He talks about his own expected upcoming itinerary, or he expects to be in the months ahead, as well as that of his associates like Timothy and Apollos. He mentions some leaders from Achaia, which is the district where Corinth was located, men who have recently come to visit him, strengthened and encouraged him, he said, Fortunatus, Stephanas, Achaicus. These are men Paul has confidence in and is urging the Corinthians to respect and recognize as their leaders. And he also sends back to the Corinthians greetings from the Ephesian church, including from Aquila and Priscilla.

Remember that couple who helped Paul start the church at Corinth years before, who are now with him in Ephesus. But in the middle of all this exchange of final greetings and itinerary information, there is a final charge to the Corinthian Christians, and that's where I want to focus today. It's a straightforward charge to all Christians, no matter where we may be or when we are living, and it comes at verse 13. There Paul writes, Be on the alert, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong, and all that you do must be done in love. I want to break that down for you today. First he says, Be on the alert.

I'm looking at the literal New American Standard version today. Other translations may say, Be watchful. The word has to do with vigilance, like a sentry standing guard during times of war and danger. He must stay alert, always watching because the fate of many others may depend on his vigilance. It's the opposite of letting yourself become drowsy, distracted, drifting away, losing focus. Of course, Paul isn't talking about physical sleepiness or even physical dangers.

He's talking about staying spiritually alert. There are spiritual dangers all around us. Peter similarly wrote in his first general epistle, Stay alert, for Satan, like a roaring lion, prowls around seeking whom he may devour. 1 Peter 5:8. Christians fall into moral traps and ruin their marriages and lives when they are not alert to that danger. Children grow up exposed to many wrong and dangerous influences if their parents, who are not vigilant, refuse to see what is going on in their lives and listen to what they're listening to and watch what they're watching.

Churches drift away from their mission, even drift into unbelief when leaders are not spiritually watchful. The leaders and people of the church at Corinth had been oblivious about many things that were undermining their fellowship, ruining their witness in their community. Paul has been trying to wake them up to this fact. He's been urging them to straighten out their problems and refocus on what's truly important. Later, in 2 Corinthians, he writes to this same church, We cannot let Satan outwit us. We are not unaware of his schemes.

What is a scheme? It's an evil plot. There's an intelligence behind it. The New Testament is clear that behind the scenes, our spiritual enemy, Satan and his demons, scheme our destruction. They want to ruin our children. They plot our family's demise.

They create cracks in our churches through disunity and stir up discontent. We cannot be naive about any of this. This is why Paul is urging, Stay alert. Be watchful. The world is always trying to conform us to its wrong ways of thinking. Our old sinful nature is never beyond falling for temptations.

Satan and his minions are forever looking for weaknesses to attack. We really do need to put on the full armor of God every day and stay alert to these spiritual realities. So, let's be on the alert. His next charge is, stand firm in the faith. When you see the definite article in front of the word faith in the New Testament, that is the faith, it is talking about the whole body of Christian doctrine, the things taught by Jesus and his apostles and now put down for us in the New Testament Scripture. Jude wrote in his brief epistle, contend earnestly for the faith, which was once for all delivered to God's holy people.

There are always new ideas coming along, new philosophies, new claims, new trends, new whatever. But if they contradict and undermine what the New Testament tells us is true, we must recognize them as lies and turn away from them. We must stand firm in the faith. Of course, to do that, you must first understand the content of the Christian faith, and that's exactly what Share the Word is about. People like you who find this podcast and listen regularly are going to get the whole story, the faith, Christianity's biggest ideas explained chapter by chapter, week after week. We hope you'll keep listening, engaging with those big ideas, letting them get down inside of you, because they will become firm anchors for your soul and your life.

Recently, I traveled back to western Pennsylvania from my home in Delaware to see my lifelong buddies you heard on the last podcast. To get there, I crossed the Chesapeake Bay Bridge from Maryland's Eastern Shore to Western Maryland, quite a span, 4.3 miles over the water. This time when I crossed, they were repairing one side of that 75-year-old bridge. Have you ever seen a bridge built or being rebuilt? They dredge the mud off the bottom of the water until they find rock, and then drive pilings deep down into that rock for support. Huge compressors drive down those pilings, bang, bang, bang, bang, as I was going across the bridge, deep down into the rock.

It's got to support a lot of traffic and never give way. It's got to withstand whatever weather may come that way. And where I live, that could be hurricanes or possibly earthquakes. Jesus once said, Everyone who hears my words and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rains came down, the streams rose, the winds blew and beat against the house, but it did not fall because it had its foundation on rock. That's what Paul is also urging us here when he writes, Stand firm in the faith.

Or when he writes in another place, Don't any longer be infants tossed back and forth by waves and blown here and there by every wind of teaching. How rooted and grounded are you in what God says is true, the faith? It's what the early Christians needed in that decadent culture of the ancient Roman Empire, with wrong philosophies and many wrong religions. And it's badly what we still need today in our modern world that belittles historic Christianity. We must stand firm in the faith. Next he urges us, Act like men, be strong.

We might put it today, It's time to man up. There is a common word in the New Testament translated man, which just means a person, a human being. Sort of like we say guys when we can mean both females as well as males. But that is not this word. This word means man in the masculine sense. Paul knows that outside pressure is mounting against Christianity in the empire, and that is my sense of what he is urging them to get prepared for.

Men were expected to be warriors in ancient cultures, whose role would be to go out and meet an invading army when called on. They would put on armor and go out with swords and battle axes, go out and engage the enemy in the field. Battles were hand to hand. Pure physical strength was needed. If you got pushed to the ground by your enemy, you were likely done for. If you turned your back in fear, you were likely done for.

You had to be brave and unintimidated, or at least pretend you were. That was as important as being skilled with a weapon. Generally, women would not be put in that situation. Men should still understand the challenge. Rise up and be a man. As the old hymn says, Rise up, O men of God, have done with lesser things.

Give heart and soul and mind and strength to serve the King of Kings. That's the idea here. Difficult days were coming for the church. Christianity was about to become religio illicita in the Roman Empire, an illegal religion to be stopped. The Corinthians needed to get their minds off their petty and silly internal issues and prepare for real spiritual battles that were coming at them. As you probably know, in the next decade after this letter was written, Paul, Peter, and other apostles and leaders were martyred for their faith.

The Romans didn't understand Christianity. They feared its growing influence, and that began a couple hundred years of sporadic outbursts of serious persecution against the early church, especially against those perceived to be its leaders. One of the early church fathers, as they are called, a man named Polycarp, who was a very prominent Christian leader in the Roman province of Asia, where Paul was when he wrote this letter, was martyred in the arena at Smyrna in the middle of the second century. He was one of the last men alive who had actually known one of the apostles of Jesus personally. When he was a young man, he knew the apostle John. When the arresting party came for Polycarp, he fed the officers a meal at his own table and asked if he could pray for an hour before he was taken away.

He was in his eighties, and they had him ride a donkey into the city and into the arena. The Roman proconsul asked him if he would sacrifice to the Roman gods before the crowd and renounce Jesus Christ. He would be freed if he would. His answer was, How could I blaspheme my King and Savior? And so they tied Polycarp to a stake, and they burned him in front of the spectators in the arena that day. And when the flames did not kill him, a soldier was sent to run a sword through him.

A friend who had walked with Polycarp that day into the arena reported that as they entered, a voice from heaven was heard, Be strong, Polycarp. Play the man. There are many such stories from the early years of the Christian church. Tertullian, also a second-century Christian theologian, wrote in his treatise Apologeticus the famous line, The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. These were men. Many were crucified, lit a fire, torn by wild beasts in the arena, but they did not shrink.

In painful death, in faith, they commended their souls to God. As hard as it is to believe, there are such stories today where followers of Christ are still being persecuted in places around the world, and sometimes killed for their faith. It can't help but make me think, under such pressure, would I be a man? Would I be strong enough to never deny Christ? I've read that the early Christians in the province of Asia celebrated Polycarp in February each year, not his actual birthday, but the day he was martyred, because they knew that that was the day his life with God in heaven began. As Jesus once said, Don't fear those who can kill your body but cannot kill your soul.

Thankfully, most of us are not dealing with that kind of extreme opposition to our faith today. But there are many situations that come up that call for boldness and courage from us. So when they do, like Stephen did before the Sanhedrin or Polycarp in the arena, let's also act like men and be strong. And finally, the capstone charge Paul gives here: All that you do, do it in love. We can be alert to spiritual dangers, and we can be firm and unmovable in our faith, and we can be strong and courageous under pressure. But if we do not exhibit love, we miss the mark.

Remember, godly love is patient, kind, doesn't envy, doesn't boast. It's not proud. It's not rude. It's not self-seeking. It's not easily angered. It keeps no record of wrong.

It does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never gives up. That's the kind of love our children need to see in us. That's the kind of love our family needs to experience from us. That's the kind of love our church needs to know and express toward one another.

That's the kind of love unbelievers around us need to see in Christians, so they want to have it for themselves. In the early second century, again, during the reign of the Emperor Hadrian, a Christian apologist named Aristides the Athenian wrote a lengthy treatise to that Roman emperor, urging him to stop persecuting Christians. It was a grand example of speaking truth to power, absolute power. And in it, he did his best to explain who Christians really were and what they really believed, to overcome the fear and superstition surrounding early Christianity. One of the points he emphasized was how much Christians loved one another, that they would literally die for one another. Tertullian wrote similarly, The heathen are wont to exclaim in astonishment, 'Behold how they love one another,' speaking of Christians.

The Roman Empire went from persecuting Christians and martyring their leaders to being conquered by the love of Christ followers and the love they showed toward one another. Without seeing that, our preaching is largely, as Paul would say, like a noisy gong and clanging cymbals to unbelievers' ears. So let's be sure we do all that we do and say all that we say in love. Paul has had to get after this church in many ways, and sometimes quite sternly as their spiritual father. But it's noteworthy when he finishes up this letter, his final words are, My love to all of you in Christ Jesus. You might wonder, did this troubled church ever get it together or even survive?

Since we seem to be on the theme of early church fathers today, I can tell you that 50 years after these letters between the Corinthian church and Paul went back and forth, another highly respected second-generation leader of the church named Clement of Rome also wrote a lengthy letter to this church. You can find it with a simple Google search and read it if you're curious. It's pretty long. But the answer is yes. At the turn of the second century, 50 years on from when Paul was writing, the church of Corinth was still going strong, and Clement had some pretty positive things to say about it at that point. That's good to know, isn't it?

This final challenge must have been taken to heart by many there in Corinth. Be on the alert. Stand firm in the faith. Act like men. Be strong. In all that you do, do it in love.

This is Paul for Share the Word. Thanks for listening. It's clear that the church of Corinth had its challenges, and Paul, like such a loving father, led them through. However sternly at times, it was always done out of love. And like Corinth, we all fight a spiritual battle, and sometimes I wonder, could I have stood in that arena and been as bold and unwavering in my faith as Polycarp? I'd love to think so.

How strong is your faith? Do your actions lead to Christ, or are you that loud, noisy gong? Look, if you have any questions, that's what we're here for. Please let us know. We'd love to talk with you. Info at sharetheword.org, or just go on the website and fill out the form.

From all of us at Share the Word, our blessings and prayers go out to all of you.