New Thoughts (11/01/18-11/08/18)
Simplicity versus Spectacle (11/04/18)
Before I dig into the meat of this passage, I want to carry forward a few observations from my earlier study of the passage. Fundamentally, in spite of the transitional ‘Now’ that opens the passage, this is not a total shift of focus. Yes, as so often in this letter, we are transitioning from one issue to the next, but be very clear: Paul is still addressing issues. And of all the issues that Paul has had to address, this one ought, I think, to sadden us most.
Think about what has been going on for the last several chapters – arguably since the opening of the letter. Corinth was proudly spiritual, and from their perspective they had the gifts to prove it. Why, just look at the manifestations happening here! Look at how many speak from the Spirit at any given gathering! Look how free we are in Christ! But there was a darker side that perhaps they would just as soon you didn’t look at. Look how we bicker and compete over our favorite preachers. Look how we accept one and all, regardless if their professions of faith in Christ are belied by the clear evidence of abiding sin. See how welcoming we are? Look how we go back and enjoy the old worship forms without concern. Look how we value our liberty more than our fellow believers. Look how we pursue our gifts without regard for God and His Truth.
Don’t you see? This is what happened! This is why Paul has decided he needs to remind them of the message he preached from the outset. You see, the Gospel wasn’t enough for the Corinthians anymore. It was too silly. It asked too much. We’re supposed to speak of a bodily resurrection? We’d be laughed out of the city talking such nonsense. It’s hard enough to contemplate explaining a God who died and rose again, but at least that’s something the locals would be familiar enough with, given the mythologies of Grecian religion. It’s familiar turf. But, nowhere in those mythologies was there really anything to prepare them (or us) for personal, physical resurrection.
On the other hand, there were these gifts. You know, those really impress people. They impress us. Who’s going to deny the power of God when we’re all speaking in tongues and bringing forth prophecies and what have you? Isn’t that what Jesus said believers would do? “These signs will accompany those who have believed: They will cast out demons in My name; they will speak with new tongues; they will pick up serpents; drinking poison will do them no harm; they will lay hands on the sick and heal them” (Mk 16:17). Well, leave aside the disputed nature of that passage, and we can yet question how widely it was intended to apply. After all, the same passage marks that statement down as accomplished. “They went out and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them, and confirmed the word by the signs that followed” (Mk 16:20).
Meanwhile, there’s the larger problem that signs and wonders, divorced from the word, prove nothing, and even with the Living Word standing there, they tended more to distract than to confirm. “Unless you see signs and wonders, you simply will not believe” (Jn 4:48). That’s hardly a commendation. Take the stronger warning from our Lord. “For false Christs and false prophets will arise, and will show signs and wonders, in order, if possible, to lead the elect astray” (Mk 13:22). Now ask: Which camp is this performance coming from? Well, we might suggest that a tendency to downplay the Gospel message in favor of pneumatik display suggests the camp of falsity.
What happens when the Gospel isn’t enough? You get power hungry. The simple Truth isn’t sufficiently interesting. Sermons are boring. We’ve heard it all before. Worship songs are trite, musty things. Give me something with some chops, something I can dance to. The Gospel is just words, dead letters. (Oh dear!) Give me power. Give me reason to believe. And still, Jesus stands and says, “Unless you see signs and wonders, you simply will not believe.” And so, like the Corinthians off you go, chasing signs and wonders, rather than truth and life. You’ve opened yourself up to the lies of the enemy, and all the while, he’s got you convinced you’re on the path of holiness.
But, you will say, Paul himself lays claim to demonstrations of the Spirit and of power (1Co 2:4). Why, yes; yes he does. But, what was the demonstration? He mentions it just before making that very claim. “I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified” (1Co 2:2). Do you know what was powerful? This simple, unadorned message, preached to a community that would find crucifixion off-putting in the extreme, and resurrection downright loopy, produced a community of faith in the very thing that alone could save them: Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. We can add, without doing harm to Paul’s point: and Him risen from death. For without the latter, the former is just one more death amongst untold millions.
Paul’s demonstration of the Spirit and of power didn’t come from speaking in tongues, though he spoke ‘more than you all’. It didn’t come from lofty proclamations of, “Thus says the Lord,” or trance-like pronouncements of messages just now received from on high. It didn’t come with marvelous healings. Nobody was sending in a dollar and a handkerchief for him to bless, that they might apply it to their sick one. No, the demonstration of power was the Gospel proclaimed, because the Gospel is the power. “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek” (Ro 1:16). Recall that Paul had tried something different before coming to Corinth. He’d tried presenting the Gospel as a matter of logic and rhetorical art up there in Athens. That didn’t work. The Gospel, to be clear, is utterly logical, and presented rightly, will stand every rhetorical test. But, that’s not its power. Its simplicity isn’t its power either. Its power is the same Spirit of God who rose Christ from the dead, living in you.
This is the sole effective tool of the Church: To preach the same simple, unadorned and unadulterated message that Paul was determined to preach. Here is the power to save. It’s not in your artful speaking, your skillful musicianship, or your carefully crafted slate of programs. It’s the simple message of Christ alive, Christ crucified, Christ dead and buried, Christ risen and ascended. It is this message that bears the seed into the fields of unbelief. It is this message that fertilizes and waters the seed. It is this message that bears fruit. So, then, we are called to go forth preaching, and to go forth preaching this message. We are called to preach it indiscriminately. We don’t first size up the crowd and decide whether they appear likely to hear and receive what we have to say. We say it, and leave the result to that Christ we preach.
If the seed doesn’t appear to bear fruit, we do not look to adjust methods. We do not look for better marketing. We don’t look for places to cast the blame. We understand. God hasn’t failed. You haven’t failed. The seed hasn’t failed. All is proceeding exactly according to plan. It’s just that the plan doesn’t include this one’s salvation. That may be cause for sorrow. No. It is most assuredly cause for sorrow. And it pains us the more when the seed we plant has fallen on one near and dear to us. But the success of the seed is not ours to determine. It is God’s seed planted in God’s field. If we have done our part, it is enough, and come of it what may, God be praised for it.
The Gospel Starts Here (11/05/18-11/06/18)
You may well have been asked at some point to explain in a few words just what the Gospel is. It may very well have caused you to pull up short. Unfortunately, it seems that Gospel has become a bit of jargon to us. It’s a word we use freely, and yet have little capacity to define. Well, here’s our key to defining it! Paul actually identifies it with the death and resurrection of Christ. This is the thing he preached, delivered as being of foremost importance: Christ died. Remember? It was there at the start of the letter. I’ve pointed us back it already. He wasn’t going to mess around. The gospel is the power to save, and the gospel consists in a simple message: Jesus Christ was a man. He lived as a man lived. He died – again as a man dies, although in a fashion we would hope never to experience. He was crucified by the Romans at the behest of His countrymen. He was taken down from that cross and buried in a tomb. He remained there the better part of three days, but then He rose again.
Even with that, I’ve used more words than are really needful. The Gospel: Jesus Christ died for our sins. He was buried, and He is risen from death. We can build from this, assuredly. There are the questions of how he died, how he rose. There are the questions of why we should be believed, and what it all means. There’s going to be the questions of how eternal God could die, how this differs from any number of pagan belief systems, and hopefully, the question of, “What must I do to be saved?” But that’s by no means guaranteed. The Gospel is the power of God to save, but it is the power of God. It’s His call. But, I think I’m getting ahead of myself a bit.
Come back, for the moment, to the centrality of this point. This is at once the most critical point of belief and the hardest. It is hard on many levels. It is hard, in this present age, to accept the idea that there is a god of any sort. And yet, I think, even at our atheistic worse, there is a recognition that there must be some sort of god, something to give meaning to this business of life. Otherwise, why go on? There have been those who, unable to arrive at an answer to that question, opted not to go on, but that’s not really an answer. That’s just giving up.
But, let us accept that there is some sort of god out there, and we must wrestle with what that means, what makes a god a god? Scripture tells us that the God it describes is unchanging, eternally the same. OK. So, we have two issues now: If He had no start, how does He exist at all? And if He has no end, how could He die? Well, it may be a bit of a cheat, but we can clear the first one: The very idea of eternality requires no start. He is because He always has been, for whatever value of always you choose. There is no before God because He always exists. But, that doesn’t help us with this death of God business, does it?
Now, to be fair, the world of the Corinthians had less of a problem here. There were plenty of competitor religions offering the same idea. Often, it was a god that died annually, and was reborn annually. Just about any of the fertility gods, the ‘corn gods’ as C. S. Lewis tended to refer to them, would fit that mold. Mithras certainly fit the mold. So, thus far, they probably didn’t have too much of an issue with Jesus being another God who dies and lives again. But, it was different, wasn’t it? For one, it wasn’t some annual event. For another, it wasn’t a case of wandering down to Hades for a bit, on some sort of mission or other, and then coming back topside. For one, you could not appeal to witnesses when it came to these myths. Nobody was about who could attest to having met with the god or the titan or even the Herculean hero. No. They’d all heard the same stories, of course, but nobody had ever met them, nor met anybody who had. How could they? These were myths! But, here’s Paul naming names, providing a list of hundreds who could readily confirm the matter. And they came from all walks of life. It wasn’t just the Twelve. It wasn’t Paul’s fever dream. It wasn’t even some Jewish myth. There were Centurions who could attest to the fact!
But, there’s another hurdle. Even if we accept that Jesus, in His humanity, died a very thorough, very human death, and even if we can handle the concept that this left His godhood untouched, unaltered, we still have to face the hardest question: What does this have to do with me? OK, so He’s God and He died and He lives. That’s all very nice. But, looking at the world around me, it sure doesn’t seem like He’s much of an impact on events. Why should I care? Of course, the answer is because you’re a dead man walking, guilty of crimes against eternal God, and the only hope of surviving your day in court lies in this same Son of God.
This is absolutely critical! It’s all well and good to acknowledge Jesus. It’s a fine thing. It’s even well and good to acknowledge that He is a deity, even the Deity. But, leave off this factor, and all that acknowledging is pointless: This Jesus, this very God of very God, died for a reason. He died for your sins. He died, not because by your sins you removed His support, and the lack of belief caused Him to fade from existence. No. God has no need of believers, in all fairness. He is that He is. He is before you, and He is after you. But, the reason He died is critical. It is critical no to your own eternal being, but it is absolutely critical as to the quality of that eternal being.
Here is a good first thing to understand: The grave is not the end. It’s transitional housing. Eternity awaits you, regardless of belief system. The atheist will go on in eternity every bit as long as the Christian. The Muslim and the Hindu and the Buddhist and the Animist will all have just as long an eternity as do we who are known of Christ. But there is this: Some enter into an eternity of blessed union with God. Others, the vast majority as Scripture has it, enter into an eternity of punishment for sins. There is no limbo, no purgatory from whence one might hope for eventual reprieve. The die has been cast at the grave. Eternity awaits, but whether with pleasure or pain depends on prior events. Did Christ die for you? Has your debt been paid? That’s the sole question. That’s the soul question!
There will be no plea of ‘not guilty’ before that court. There will be no call for patience until you have a chance to pay off your debt. There is no work release, no parole, and to be very clear, there’s no least chance of ever paying off your debt – not by any means found in yourself. Your crimes are against an eternal being, and the guilt is as eternal as He is. As I said, there is a reason Jesus died. It wasn’t because the Jews were upset with Him, and it wasn’t because the Romans saw Him as a threat to order. It was because that was the plan from eons before the day He was born of a woman. From eternity past, the Triune Godhead had determined that this would be the way of it. He was born to die, but not to remain dead. He died as the vicarious offering for our sins, the fulfillment of the Jewish Day of Atonement, but not just for the Jews – for all who are the called of God, given into His hands as a people for His own name. The death of Christ is, as Clarke says, ‘essential to the Gospel scheme of salvation’. Recognizing this is essential to our faith.
For the moment, we shall stick with the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus, because that is where our Apostle is focused. Understand this: His death was of little significance to us apart from His Resurrection. If He had died and remained in the tomb, His death would mean little: Just one more enemy of the state put away. But, He didn’t remain there. Death could not hold Him. God raised Him. Now, you would think, being as He was God Himself, that would consist in Him raising Himself, but that’s not how events are presented to us. No, the power of the Holy Spirit raised Him from death. This, too, is important for us, because, as we shall see, it is that same power of that same Holy Spirit, that brings us out of our death into the life that is ours in Christ.
I have, together with the commentaries, been insisting that this is a critical doctrine, let us say the critical doctrine of our faith. How critical? Let the Wycliffe Commentary’s authors answer. “If Christ was not crucified and resurrected, salvation is impossible.” They are not alone in this assessment, by any stretch. Take Calvin, for instance. “For it follows from this, that, if the resurrection is taken away, they have no religion left them, no assurance of faith, and in short, have no faith remaining.” And yet, here was Corinth. Can you see why Paul found it needful to address this issue strongly and at length?
We can add Barnes to the list. In fairness, we could add pretty much any commentary worthy of being read at all. He observes that there can be no true religion without knowledge and belief that Christ died for sins, and rose from the dead. You can’t have Christianity without Christ, and you can’t have Christ except He has died and He is risen. To bring Matthew Henry in on the subject, “Remove this foundation, and the whole fabric falls, all our hopes for eternity sink at once.”
But, it’s both, friends. It’s death and resurrection. Calvin writes, “For as sin was done away through the death of Christ, so righteousness is procured through His resurrection. This distinction must be carefully observed, that we may know what we must look for from the death of Christ, and what from His resurrection.” That draws upon the words Paul wrote to Rome, and to all who ‘believe in Him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead’ (Ro 4:24-25). “He who was delivered up because of our transgressions, and raised because of our justification.” The last was as needful as the first, and there can be no true church, nor any hope of salvation, where this doctrine is not adhered to.
[11/06/18] Before I begin to transition towards discussions of faith and fact, there is one brief curiosity I wish to satisfy. In this passage, where Paul speaks of Christ risen again, it is given in the Perfect Tense, which the Wycliffe Commentary reminds us has the implications of continuing consequence attending upon the action. That is to say, His risen state persists. I wondered, as I was reminded, whether the same can be said in regard to the resurrection of Lazarus. Checking the account in John 11-12, I see that it is not. Lazarus, was he whom Christ had raised from the dead (Jn 12:9), but the action there is given in the Aorist Tense. It’s a past action, presented as a whole.
That makes sense. Lazarus, though raised from death, would return to the grave. This was not the resurrection for him. It was a specific miracle of Christ, performed at a specific time for a specific purpose. It was evidence of the claim He made: “I AM the life.” It was clear, incontrovertible evidence that He did indeed have the authority and the power to give live to whom He pleased. Here was one dead in the grave, buried past the period of doubt, and with no more than a word of command, “Lazarus, come forth!” Jesus restored this one to earthly life, however temporarily in the grand scheme of things. But, this was not entrance into eternity. It is not even, I have to insist, an action contradictory to the assessment of Hebrews, where we read that it is appointed for men to die once and after that, the judgment (Heb 9:27).
At risk of stretching the point too much, I would say this gives evidence that for the Christian, that one-time death already transpired, and the grave represents no more than the restful repose suggested by the Scripture’s tendency to refer to it as sleep. We see that usage even in this passage. But, if Lazarus was once in the grave, and returned hence without violating the truth given in Hebrews, then there is a distinction to be made between death and the grave, at least so far as the believer is concerned. Consider baptism. We understand this as symbolic of having died to sin, as emblematic of dying with Christ, and being risen with Christ. That one death that Hebrews requires has passed. That judgment has been faced, it seems to me, and the court has already declared the case satisfied. The Resurrection of Christ was that declaration. Assuredly, this is no call to live as you please, knowing that court’s hands are tied. Far be it from us! But, if you still know a sense of dread when you consider that day, it would be well to recall that we are already judged, and the Atonement already has been accepted on our behalf.
That serves nicely to transition us back to the passage before us. Jesus Christ has risen! That is the fact here established, and, as noted, it is a fact with continuing consequences, certainly for Him, but just as certainly for His Church. The Gospel message is one of hope, but you can’t lay hold of the hope that it offers except you possess the promises it makes. You cannot possess those promises apart from holding fast to this most fundamental doctrinal truth. He is risen! He died, not in some figurative sense, and not by appearances only. He was very much dead and in the grave. The Romans were not inclined to make mistakes in that regard, nor were his wounds of a nature that permitted of surviving them. But, He didn’t stay dead. He lives – Perfect Tense without end. Because He lives, because death could not hold Him, we have hope of life. Because His resurrection offered firm evidence that our Father in heaven had accepted His offering, the perfect completion of His earthly mission, we have cause to know our own cases closed in the courts of heaven. The verdict has already come down. Don’t be confused. It’s not that God winked at all you and I have done and declared us not guilty in spite of the evidence. No, but it’s penalty paid, defendant released.
Is it any wonder that Paul takes such pains to establish the factuality of that resurrection? Is it any wonder that Jesus made certain that there were more than sufficient witnesses to the event to establish the fact? Look at that list! You have the Eleven, all of whom, at the time, were alive and available for corroborating testimony. But, perhaps they colluded, right? Well, there’s also those five hundred random believers up in Galilee – again, the bulk of them alive and known to the Church. Look them up. Take them out for coffee and hear their testimony. Or perhaps you don’t trust country folk and you’d prefer somebody in authority. Paul doesn’t mention this one, but I do think that centurion who oversaw proceedings at the cross was another witness who made himself available. Oh, and there’s Paul himself, of course. How likely was it, after all, that one who had set himself to the task of destroying this cult had become instead its chief promoter? What would it take for such a radical shift? Was he a grifter? Not likely, given that he continued to support himself with the heavy manual labor involved in tent-making. Not likely, given that he made his way without calling for payment.
Barnes observes that the sheer weight of eye-witnesses was sufficient to prove any fact one might desire to prove. These were ‘competent and credible witnesses’. Jewish jurisprudence would have required but two or three. Here are five hundred plus. To the skeptics and atheists who continue to insist that their assessment of these events is somehow superior to the assessment of those present to observe the events, it must be asked: What historical fact would not be accounted proven by so vast an array of unrelated witnesses? What possible judgment could any court of law make, if this level of testimony is accounted insufficient? What fact remains, if this is not counted as proof of the fact?
For the Church, we return to the central issue that Paul is dealing with: You cannot deny a general, physical resurrection without first denying Christ’s Resurrection. As we have seen, the surplus of witnesses makes such denial foolish on the face of it, but still it seems that throughout history there have been those who felt the need to try. You have the swoon theory. You have the emanation theory (He wasn’t really in the body when it died). You have any number of attempts made to sidestep the reality of the Resurrection. For the Corinthians, it seems likely they were able to accept His Resurrection – He was a god after all; but they couldn’t hold on to the idea of their own resurrection, not in bodily form. Even for us, I suspect, there is difficulty with that idea. Have you never spent curious moments wondering how God was going to manage to reconstruct all the believers down through the ages when we understand that the elements that composed one of them have been recycled any number of times to appear as elements in others? I mean, atoms are atoms. How does He decide who gets which bits? That misses the creative power of God, who fashioned the universe and all that it contains out of nothing, but our human reasoning balks at the concept. We still want things explained in ways we can understand and lay hold of.
But, here is Christ: Resurrected not temporarily, but permanently. Here is the seal upon your own eternal state, and while God is Spirit, there is a real physical body involved here. That will be stressed more as we get further along in this chapter, but it’s a real, physical body. It is recognizably yours, it would see; or at least it can be. Jesus, we observe, was at times entirely unrecognizable in His resurrected state, but more often, He was tangibly Himself, complete with the holes left by His death. That body may be new, made of freshly created materials, but it is made in such a way as to leave you knowable by those who knew you. How does this work with the ‘no more tears, no more sorrows’ aspect of eternity in heaven? I’m not sure. You would think that might involve restoration of broken limbs, excised organs, and diseased materials. You would think that was needful, not merely for an end of our own sorrows, but for acceptance before a Holy God. If all is restored to the perfect state of Shalom, certainly that means all the defects of sin – both in inclination and in effect – are removed. I guess we’ll find out when we get there.
For now, recognize that the Resurrection of Christ, which is proven beyond credible doubt, has implications for your own. Recognize that if Christ born, dead, resurrected, and ascended is removed from the faith, then no cause remains for faith. All preaching is in vain, and all faith, however earnestly held, is in vain. We are dead from birth, and utterly devoid of hope. Indeed, any faith we muster up, apart from this central core, is but an aggravator of our guilt. It gains us nothing, and loses us more by the day.
Faith and Fact (11/06/18)
This really gets us at the core of Paul’s point. There were those in Corinth who were sowing doubts about the resurrection. To those beset by doubts, Paul observes that any continued profession of faith, any continued claims of allegiance to Christ would be utterly useless if once they let go of this central doctrine. These events were real, he insists. They weren’t just dreams and visions. They were physical events attested to by physical interactions. As Calvin writes, “The eyes of the body cannot be witnesses of a spiritual resurrection.” It wasn’t some allegorical event, as some have tried to suggest. It was as real as your next meal.
Now, we need to be careful of our understanding when Paul adds the seeming disclaimer to the end of his thought in verse 2. “Unless you believed in vain.” Does this mean our belief might not be strong enough to attain unto salvation? Well, on one level, I would say yes. Neither your belief nor mine will ever be strong enough to attain unto salvation. Our salvation does not, at least in the ultimate sense, find its cause in our belief. Yes, you must believe to be saved, but you can’t believe except you are saved. That is to say, if the Holy Spirit has not already moved upon you to take up residence in your heart, there is no chance of your believing. I would insist that the corollary holds as well. If He has moved upon you, there’s no chance of your not believing. The vanity of verse 2 is not a question of your belief proving insufficient. It’s a question of belief without reason, of giving credit to idle nonsense as if it were authenticated fact.
At risk of diverting again, I would just observe that this tendency toward vain beliefs is rampant in this present age. Perhaps it always has been, but I haven’t always been around to witness it. But, the spread of conspiracy theories on topics large and small in our day just amplifies the propensity to believe without cause. It seems, at times, that none of us are immune to the impulse, and with the Web out there giving voice to every crackpot with a couple of quarters to spare, there’s no end to the ‘data’ one can collect to ‘prove’ the case, however preposterous.
Here’s a handy test, though. “Truth is in its own nature invariable.” That’s the beginning of a statement Matthew Henry makes. In and of itself, that’s a darned useful reminder. But, he is not concerned with simple matters of logic and science. Truth is really a higher matter, particularly when we set ourselves to consider the truth of God. “Truth is in its own nature invariable; and the infallible teachers of divine truth could never be at variance with themselves or one another.” This becomes a guiding principle for coming to grips with Scripture. Appearance of variance is evidence not of an untrustworthy text, in this case, but of insufficient understanding on our part.
But, this is a marvelously useful test for the would-be teachers of our own day. The Apostles, we should observe, were eye-witnesses of events. It was a requirement of the office, the very definition of the office. They were also, in that office, given that peculiarly Apostolic gift of the Spirit, to present God’s Truth infallibly. To be perfectly clear: No teacher living today, no teacher living in the generation immediately following the Apostolic age, can lay claim to this gift. It is not inherited – not by the Pope, not by any man. I continue to hold that anybody since that time who has sought to lay claim to the title of Apostle must be found suspect, at minimum. The claim is one that seeks for far too much authority, and must be seen to attempt a claim to authority that refuses all questioning.
But, we have their measure. If (were it possible) there is any truth to their claims of apostolic authority, or even to claims of teaching truly in whatever capacity, then bare minimum, this must hold: What they teach accords perfectly and wholly with the Apostolic Word made sure in the pages of Scripture. If there is variance, then we are quite certain which way the error lies. It’s not in the Word of God. Notice the closing claim. Whoever of us preached, this is what was preached. There is no Pauline doctrine that John did not preach, no Johannine doctrine that Peter did not proclaim. There is one Gospel. There can only be one Gospel, because there is only one God, and in Him, only one Truth.
This matter of the Resurrection of Christ, and the resurrection of the believer, is what those Apostles received to teach from the One Who was resurrected. It is what they received, and it is what they believed. How could they not? They had lived it! They had seen it, touched it. They knew beyond possibility of doubting that this Truth was real. What they believed is what they confessed. “You will be My witnesses…” If this is what you have believed, then indeed is your salvation assured by that faith.
If, however, you have believed some false doctrine, or if (again, an impossibility) this doctrine itself is somehow found to be false, then in fact your faith is in vain, because it has been baseless from the outset. It’s not that faith can be lost, or that real faith might fail to persevere. It’s quite simply the case, that whatever that faith was, it was never saving faith. There’s nothing there to persevere. Again: To be in vain, is to be without sufficient reason, as concerns faith. Just believing isn’t enough. Muslims believe. Hindus believe. Even atheists believe. But, that belief isn’t going to save them. Conspiracy theorists believe – ardently! But, belief won’t alter the facts any more than will disbelief. Facts are stubborn things, and the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is proven a fact.
Have faith, but have faith founded upon fact. Here is something trustworthy. Here is a foundation that cannot be shaken. God came down, took up the life of man, and lived it perfectly. God came down and died at the hands of man, not because He was powerless to stop them, but because they were powerless to do otherwise than fulfill the plan He had set in motion from before the beginning. God died because of our sins, but our sins could not destroy Him. Death could not hold Him. God lives – ever and always, and having perfectly pursued His perfect plan, He has restored us to Life; life worthy of the name life; now in a position to love and enjoy Him forever, as He welcomes us into His eternal presence.
The Shocking Apostle (11/07/18)
Paul uses a term to describe his own calling that is shocking to our ears; sufficiently so that most of our translations do their best to soften the statement. He was, says the NASB, like ‘one untimely born’. Well, that doesn’t seem so bad. I would imagine many a parent has been taken by surprise at news of a child on the way. Consider a soldier called off to war, and it would not be unreasonable that he might think the birth untimely – welcome, but untimely. Is that Paul’s meaning?
Or, maybe he’s talking about a premature birth. That’s something that probably carried more weight of sorrow in ages past than it does today. Today, it’s more an inconvenience. Poor baby might spend his or her early months in the hospital, and the insurance companies, I’m sure, don’t look forward to the charges that will accrue. But, it’s not the all but certain death sentence it once was. Paul’s choice of terms could be referring to such a birth, but it’s also possible that it remains a stronger term still: Abortion. The term, if we have any humanity remaining to us, is shocking just to hear the mention. It’s a marginally softened, socially condoned murder. The aborted child is not intended to survive. We know of cases where even the worst efforts of the administering individual fail to produce the intended result, and against all odds, the fetus arrives still alive, calling, sadly, for more desperate measures. The miracle doesn’t convict and bring to repentance. It just ups the effort required to achieve the contracted result.
This is the term Paul uses for his call to office. He came to it like an abortion comes to life. It ought not to be. It’s the most unexpected and unlikely event one can imagine. There are a number of ways to seek meaning from this shocking image. That Paul has the most shocking in view, I think, is shown by his amplification of the point in the verse that follows. There I was, persecuting the Church, seeking to put its members to death as heretics, and of a sudden, it all changed. Is it any wonder that the Church had a great degree of difficulty in accepting Paul as their own? It certainly didn’t surprise Paul to find it so. So, yes, there is that live-born abortion shock to the discovery. This one? He’s not merely alive, but preaching the Gospel? God accepted him? Unimaginable. Life has come even to such as this. And look at the result!
Another sense of the matter takes us back closer to the premature aspect of the image. The others had been given time to develop in their faith. They had known Jesus some time, sat under His teaching some time, had opportunity to form questions and have those answered. They had grown into their maturity, or even their infancy, according to the normal processes. Paul, on the other hand, was dead one moment, and arrived at a similar stage as they, as it were, in the next moment. It wasn’t quite that fast, but the shift was dramatic. The others had not been persecuting God’s chosen when He called them. They had been seeking Messiah, and Messiah found them. Paul had been doing his uttermost to quash any mention of Messiah, at least this one. And yet, Messiah found him, and rather swiftly snapped him out of it.
Now, we cannot say with certainty how exactly Paul came by his knowledge, other than to say it came by way of direct and immediate inspiration by the Holy Spirit of God. Was it a flood of knowledge received of an instant, or was it a series of such occasions? My inclination is to find the years spent in the wilderness as being the period in which his tutelage transpired. He may not have had the living God-man to walk with in the flesh, but yet he had the living God-man to walk with, and if my opinions are correct on this, he had, in the end, about the same period of training as had the others. He just arrived at the start bit more forcefully.
But, if he had a similar period of instruction, then in what way does preemie or abortion describe his call? Kittel’s suggests this may have been an adopting of the opposition’s choice of derogatory description. Think, for example, of how we arrived at the label of Christian. It was, at the outset, a term of derision. I suppose for many it still is. Oh, you’re one of those…a Christ-ian. Well, yes, as a matter of fact, I am. This could be a similar sort of thing. Those seeking to undermine Paul’s apostolic standing spoke of him as an abortion, unfit to be handling the things of God. How could this be an heir of the kingdom? It’s not even fit to breathe God’s air! And Paul’s defense is effectively to say, “I know, right?” He has much the same opinion. He has no business being entrusted with this office, given his past. He has no business expecting mercy from God, and yet, here it is. “By the grace of God, I am what I am.”
Apostles and apostles (11/07/18-11/08/18)
Now, then: The subject of the apostolic office looms large in the study of this epistle. It does so for me, at any rate, because of various trends that have arisen on the Charismatic end of the Christian spectrum. There has been the five-fold ministry movement, that was (and I suppose, is) quite sure that all the offices listed by Paul in the letter to Ephesus are being restored in our time. See? He says apostles were given to the Church. Is it any wonder that the Church is weak in the current age? She has no apostles! But, take heart! WE are here!
I still maintain that the larger impetus to claiming the apostolic mantel is to be found in status seeking. It used to be that claiming the prophetic mantel would do to set you apart from the rest, but then it seemed everybody was operating in the prophetic. What’s a born leader to do? If everybody and his child is wandering about saying, “Thus says the Lord,” then who’s got cause to listen to you? Honestly, who’s got cause to listen to anybody? We can just grab our own word from the ether. And again: Welcome to Corinth!
So, then, I continue to maintain and defend the stance that the Apostolic office passed from history with the last of the Apostles, presumably being John. We see no provision made for accession, unlike other offices of the Church. We see no evidence, even from the generation immediately following, of any new holders of that office. It isn’t until much later that the bishop of Rome decided he should take up that title and rule the rest.
Yet, here we have reference to ‘all the apostles’ at the penultimate position in Paul’s list of witnesses. Is this any different than the twelve? Was it just a return engagement? The general consensus appears to be that this speaks of a larger group, although who exactly, nobody is sure. Was it the Seventy, perhaps? Was it the full company of all preachers then extent? But, that’s an office in its own right, and has its own title. Why use another, unless apostle is to be equated with preacher, much like prophet is suggested as equating to teacher. Go down that road, and pretty soon, there’s only the one office. It just has a lot of labels.
Now, while there are attempts to alter the prerequisites for this office, as there must be if one is to accept even the faintest possibility of its continuation, what Scripture lays out as necessary is pretty plain. We see it at the selection of Matthias. “It is therefore necessary that of the men who have accompanied us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us – beginning with the baptism of John, until the day that He was taken up from us – one of these should become a witness with us of His resurrection” (Ac 1:21-22). Arguably, the requirements set forth here precluded Paul from office. He had not been with them, so far as we know, at the baptism of John. We have no evidence that he was there when He was taken up from us. Is it any wonder, then, that he found himself having to defend his claim to office so often? It must be noted, however, that he did not find it necessary to defend his claim before the Apostles. They swiftly discerned that he met the critical criteria: He could serve as a witness of His resurrection. How could he do this? Only if his experience out there on the Damascus Road involved seeing the same bodily Lord Jesus as they had encountered post-crucifixion.
A vision wouldn’t cut it. A vision isn’t a witness. A vision could be written off to ill effects from the heat of the day, or food poisoning, or any number of other possibilities. But, a real, physical encounter, with a real, physical being? That’s evidence. It was, as we have said, very different from the experience of the others, but it was a real experience of the real, risen Savior. He could testify. He is risen! I have seen Him. Whatever claims the modern-day apostle might make, it can’t be this one. And any pretense to such a claim serves only to demonstrate the untrustworthiness of the claimant. That may seem a bit of double-jeopardy, if that’s the right term, but there it is. The necessary evidence cannot possibly be provided in believable fashion.
Clarke writes, “It does not appear that, after this time, Jesus ever did make any personal discovery of himself to anyone.” The extraordinary ends to which Paul had to go in order to validate his own call to office render it entirely unlikely that any other had laid claim to that office without leaving some record of the fact. If personal converse with Christ is, as it always was, an essential character or prerequisite of the apostle – and I dare sit it is – then there can be no valid possessor of that office today, nor has there been since somewhere around 90 AD.
So, we circle back: Who is Paul talking about? Clarkes suggests a lesser class of apostles that arose after the Apostles, but that seems a problem on a few levels. His distinction is between the ‘primitive apostles’, Paul being the last, and this later group of secondary apostles. Let us refer to them as Apostles and apostles. These two groups shared the internal divine call, but only the Apostles had the external experience of Christ manifested in the flesh. Why do I take issue with this? Well, for one, I find scant evidence for this later group. For another, Paul is speaking of people who are his contemporaries. If Clarke merely means to say that their call, such as it was, came later than his, then that would make sense. But, then again, Paul brings them up precisely because they did have external experience of Christ manifested in the flesh. So, even if we accept Clarke’s theory, it can’t very well apply to the group considered here. I would add that his one remaining qualifier leaves effectively nothing to distinguish this later group from any other office of the church. The pastor surely has an internal call, as does the elder (if we are willing to distinguish those two offices). I would hope that any officer of the Church had an internal call, and that the Church had confirmed and affirmed this call to the best of their ability with the Spirit’s aid.
But, what remains is this one, critical criteria of personal converse with Christ. This is essential. The office of Apostle cannot be held apart from it. Consider the cloud of witnesses to whom Paul appeals here. As he wrote, there were still many who could fit that description. The Twelve were not the only disciples who followed Jesus start to finish. That’s evident. There were a hundred and twenty gathered together in Jerusalem. There were enough back in Galilee that we have this group of five hundred gathered at one time. All of these had experienced personal converse with Jesus. All of these, it would seem, had experience of His physical, post-resurrection presence. What remains to distinguish this last group? I’m going to suggest a commission, but not the same commission given to the Apostles. That commission is familiar: Go and make disciples, teaching them all that I taught, and bringing them into obedience to the same. We might refer to them as missionaries. I know this is an idea I’ve posited before, but it still holds, in my thinking. To be an apostle is to be commissioned as an emissary to a specific people with a specific duty to perform. We could call it a limited ambassadorship. When Paul and Barnabas were first sent out from Antioch, they were apostles, but apostles of that church. That church commissioned and sent them. They had a mission to Cyprus, and when that mission was completed, so was their commission. They returned home to the church.
As Paul writes, there remain many who could satisfy the particular requirements necessary for an eye-witness testimony of Christ. We can readily posit that amongst that group, there existed a subset who had felt this internal call to the mission field, and who had been commissioned by the Church to that end. They were not Apostles, but they were apostles, and co-laborers with the Apostles. Given the propensities of the present day, however, I far prefer to think of them as the earliest missionaries: Commissioned to spread the Word, but not to formulate it.
As we come to the final verse of this passage, we hear another absolutely essential quality of both Apostle and apostle: They teach as one. Honestly, I’m not sure who all is included in Paul’s ‘they’, but I incline toward applying it broadly. Take any of those mentioned in the preceding verses. It doesn’t matter. Apostle, brother of Christ, random Galilean believer, missionary of the church: They teach as one. That’s Paul’s point. If they are truly apostles of either sort, truly witnesses of the risen Christ, they preach the same truths. It cannot be otherwise – certainly not for the Apostles. To do otherwise would in fact nullify their apostleship, because the whole point of that office was to establish the canon of God’s True Word to His people. And note: “We preach” is again in the Present Tense. It’s a continued action. There was no deviation amongst them, nor would there be. It is, after all, not their opinions which are preached, but God’s Revelation of Truth.
Here’s a thing about Truth. It doesn’t shift. It doesn’t shift because God is Truth, and He doesn’t shift. If Truth changes, then so does God, and if God changes, then faith has no anchor. This is the whole basis for faith. “You never change.” God is steadfast, faithful. There is no shadow of turning in Him. He is not a man that He should repent. He is not fallible that He must alter His plans to adjust for unexpected contingencies. He is Perfect and always has been and always will be. There is nothing to be added to Him in His original state, nor anything that could be subtracted. This is He Who holds you in His hands, Who says, “nobody can snatch you away from Me.” This is He Who proclaimed the end of all things from the beginning. If there is possibility of change, then He cannot do this. If He cannot do this, then He is not God.
So, here’s a conclusion we can reach from this point. If you have been listening to a true representative of Christ, then it must follow – MUST! – that what they preached is the same message found in the pages of Scripture. It’s still the same Gospel that Peter, Paul, John and all the others proclaimed from the outset. The novelty may have worn off, but that’s no reason to change. There is no sufficient reason to change, for that Gospel, the original, the one and only, is the power of God to save. Everything else that man devises to try and improve upon it has only proven to detract from it. This is the foolishness God has chosen, and it would be foolish in the extreme to choose otherwise, thinking ourselves wiser than He. It would be beyond foolish to willingly go after one who teaches a different Gospel, however strongly he urges his pedigree.
Humility and Acknowledgment (11/08/18)
There remains one last topic I want to address on the basis of this passage. It’s a tension I suspect many, if not all of us experience: The tension between acknowledging our participation in events, and humility in recognizing our utter powerlessness when it comes to doing good. You can see that you are in good company, if this is your experience. Look at Paul attempting to thread that needle! I am not even approaching the point of being worthy of this office, yet here I am. By the grace of God, here I am, and I’ve labored hard in light of that grace; harder than the rest. But, it’s not me. It’s His grace that labored. I remain nothing, so far as the effectiveness is concerned. But, I’ve been a willing laborer, whatever and wherever the labor. And even this is no cause for boasting. I’m just saying that this is how it’s been, and it’s all God.
We have all encountered the pretentiously humble, I suspect. There are those who advertise their humility after the fashion of the Pharisees advertising their piety. I can’t but think of the Steve Taylor bit from ‘Smug’. “I'm humble. I'm better than you. You wanna be a humble man, you look at me. You say, ‘brother how can I be humble?’ I don't know how you can be humble. It took me a long time to get this way. Thank God I've arrived. Let's pray.” Unfortunately, that describes us too well.
It leaves us in a bit of a quandary – I can only imagine the degree to which this plagues the pastorate. But, it’s not just them. It’s everybody who seeks to serve in some capacity or other. If you’ve done a good job, folks want to let you know, to encourage you in your gift. And, we like encouragement. It’s nice to be affirmed. How to respond? It feels pretentious to offer something like, “It wasn’t me. It’s all God.” That may be true, but somehow it comes off as a claim to fame by association. It’s running right back to the issue of gifts here in Corinth. See how He uses me? I must be something. It’s what the popular culture has taken to calling the humble-brag, because the reality is that you’re bragging even as you seek to appear humble. That’s not the way!
Paul doesn’t give us ‘a mere pretense of humility’, as Calvin writes. He gives us a true assessment of the reality of things. I am nothing. I worked hard. But even that, both as to effectiveness, and as to my willingness, owes itself to God’s grace towards me. His confession is, I think, about the only way to present things accurately. “By the grace of God, I am what I am.” That really says it all. Apart from His grace, I have nothing to offer you, certainly nothing good. If there is any value to what I do, it is by His grace. If there is any positive impact from my life, it is by His grace. Matthew Henry observes that God alone can say, “I am what I am.” That is the power behind the several, ego ami, “I AM” claims of Christ in John’s Gospel. Only God can point to Himself as the cause for His being. Our greatest privilege – and it is indeed an immense privilege – is to be able to say, “By God’s grace we are what we are.”
We are, most of us, brought out of hard circumstances, lifetimes spent in pursuit of sinful ends. We may have accounted them relatively innocuous sins, but they remain sins. They have very well have been fairly heinous sins. Paul could certainly look back on a pretty miserable record, and that in the pursuit of what he supposed to be righteousness! How many atheists today are in much the same place, pursuing what they construe to be a righteous course (although not, perhaps in the same sense as we would apply the term) as they oppose God who is Our Righteousness? What would come of it should God choose to redeem such as they? I think we find the answer in Paul. Recognition of our past can be turned to good purpose in future – by God’s grace.
Recognition of our past, in the experience of God’s grace, will tend to produce a harvest of humility in us. Like Paul, we realize the utter improbability of being found as we are today. God called me? God sets me as an office in His church? Doesn’t He know who I was, who I am? Well, yes, of course He does. And here’s the grand point: We both know who you are, and as such, where any good comes of it, we both know Who was responsible for it. Your humility will serve as a fine ornament upon His grace. As Matthew Henry writes, “A humble spirit, in the midst of high attainments, is an ornament to any man.”
Indeed, elsewhere he advises, “A humble spirit is commonly a gracious one. Where pride is subdued there it is reasonable to believe grace reigns.” Where pride is subdued, we find reason to believe grace reigns. Here is the primary evidence of faith. It’s not found in the works, although works are a necessary fruit of faith. The evidence is not the works, though, it’s the character of the worker. We might suggest that character is best proven when the worker finds himself or herself praised for the works. “Oh, it was nothing,” sounds humble, but it’s a lie. It wasn’t nothing. Paul doesn’t present his efforts as nothing. They were very clearly significant. One doesn’t labor in the role of producing Scripture and account one’s labors nothing. One doesn’t plant churches across the known world and account one’s labors nothing. It was something alright! It was everything. We ought to work hard for our Lord. We are His servants, after all. But, take our Lord’s instruction: When you have done all that you are commanded, say, “We are unworthy slaves; we have done only that which we ought to have done” (Lk 17:10).
Notice: That doesn’t require denying that you did anything. It only acknowledges that there’s no place for pride or boasting there. I don’t suppose there’s anything at all wrong with a simple ‘thank you’, when somebody chooses to appreciate your efforts. If there’s a way to take Paul’s lead and offer up, “Not I, but grace”, that’s fine. But, for my part, I should find it cause to be careful, for that may just be pride in disguise. It’s a fine line between deflection and boasting. I see it with Paul. That’s why you find him juking back and forth between stating obvious fact, and turning it back to God’s grace. He doesn’t want the appeal to God’s grace to come across as boasting, and the only way to do that, it seems, is to admit to what is clear to one and all. Yes, I worked harder. Why should I deny it? But, if I might short hand it, “My labors; God’s grace.”
I think I’ll give Calvin the closing words for this study. I’m sure I could do nothing to improve upon them. “Let us learn, therefore, that we have nothing that is good, but what the Lord has graciously given us, that we do nothing good but what he worketh in us – not that we do nothing ourselves, but that we do nothing without being influenced – that is, under the guidance and impulse of the Holy Spirit.”
