How to love "in" Christ

We just finished our study of 1 Corinthians! It’s tempting to skip the last chapter, where Paul seems most concerned about apostolic logistics (who can be where, when they can be there). But his picture of the unity of the first Christian churches and preachers brings the letter back full circle, offering an alternative to the divisions he bemoaned in chapter 1. He not only calls the church to love one another “in” Christ, but models that love with his own writing. But how does one love “in Christ,” and how does it help us love those who we don’t really get along with out of Christ? Here is part of Erik’s answer:

For Paul, love is service of people Jesus chose, not you. I think this what Paul means in his very last line: “My love to all of you in Christ Jesus.” That loving in Christ can be a little confusing, but prepositions are incredibly important in Christian theology! “In Christ” is the only reason Paul is even in relationship with the Corinthians: Jesus chose them. And “in Christ” is the only reason Paul needs to give himself in service: Jesus chose them. To love in Christ is to serve those Christ chose because Christ chose them. You don’t need more than that, which is good, because often you won’t get more than that.

Ping Pong is a Matter of Life and Death

Paul begins 1 Corinthians with the cross and ends with the resurrection. This isn’t just a clever literary construction: the Apostle believes that all the Corinthians’ many problems sprang from the fact that they didn’t really grasp the full meaning of Christ’s resurrection. Preaching on the first half of chapter 15, Erik pointed out the paradox of the resurrection: the fact that God’s answer to death is resurrection pushes us to celebrate the goodness of life and to hold onto life loosely. In other words, resurrection is a matter of life, death, and everything in between. He introduced this idea with the exemplary life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

If you know one thing about Dietrich Bonhoeffer, it’s this: he was a martyr. Bonhoeffer was a German theologian who was executed for his role in a plot against Adolf Hitler. But did you know that he was great at ping pong? He set up a table at the underground seminary he led and dominated younger students. Or that he had an ear for music? He loved playing Chopin and collected records of Black spirituals. Or that he enjoyed poetry, wine, and food? Bonhoeffer loved life, he found life overflowing with joy, pleasure, and meaning. He wrote: “Only the person who loves the earth and God in one can believe in the kingdom of God.” He wasn’t a famous ping pong player, pianist, or chef. He was a famous martyr. But it raises a question that every follower of Jesus must answer: How was someone who loved life so much, so willing to lose his life?

The secret of loving life is being unafraid to lose it. And the key that unlocks this secret is the hope in the resurrection of the dead.

The Most Beautiful Music Needs Silence

Worship in the church of Corinth was devolving into chaos! Preaching on Paul’s instruction about tongues and prophesying, Deb pointed out the way that silence is essential to the way orchestras make beautiful music: only rarely do all the instruments play at the same time. This order isn’t about silencing some instruments, but rather a way of enabling a whole company of diverse sounds to play harmoniously together. It’s the same in a church:

Like the musicians in an orchestra, sometimes we need to remain quiet and let someone else carry the melody. That was the case with tongues-speakers, long-winded prophets, and disruptive women in Corinth. This was Paul’s advice to a first-century church that was trying to figure out how to shape their corporate life, how to be the body of Christ together in a way that unites believers, strengthens their faith, and welcomes curious visitors. To remain in tune, believers should be concerned not just with exercising their own gifts, but using those gifts with the goal of building up the overall spiritual health of the body of believers. 

God is Patient, God is Kind...

There is a good chance that you’ve heard 1 Corinthians 13 at a wedding: “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud…” Lovely words! But read the verse more closely, and you might feel like the passage is as much a rebuke as it is an inspiration. Without love, even our most impressive achievements are nothing; without love, we are nothing. Preaching on this passage, David reminded us that scripture teaches that God is love, and thus we can find comfort in knowing that first and foremost, these words describe God:

when we read this passage, we should think of God, not of me. The love described in this chapter tells us “How God loves me.” So, we can read, “God is patient, God is kind. God does not envy, God does not boast, God is not proud. God is not rude, God is not self-seeking, God is not easily angered, God keeps no record of wrongs.” This is how God loves us.

The Lord's Table is Level

ICC celebrates communion on the first Sunday of every month (always followed by a potluck - everyone is welcome!). Regular rhythms like this structure our spiritual lives, but we must always ask ourselves: What kind of structure are they building? This is why Paul admonishes the Corinthians to “examine yourselves” before celebrating the meal together. Crucially, he is not speaking to them as individuals, but as a community. To help ICC follow Paul’s direction of examining the kind of community the Lord’s Table is building, Erik posed these two questions:

First, do those who come to ICC with a lot leave with less, because here they found a place they can share what they have? Second, Do those who come to ICC with a little leave with more, because they found a place to receive what they need?

It is all too easy to be another place where those who come filled leave drunk and those who come thirsty leave hungry. But the Lord’s Supper—like any good potluck—is meant to be a place where those with a lot leave with less so that those with a little leave with more.

Gospel Freedom

As we come to the end of Paul’s thoughts on Christian freedom in 1 Corinthians 9, David reminded us of a fundamental point: the kind of freedom God promises flows directly out of the gospel of God’s love for us. Here is part of his conclusion:

The gospel is not God’s commandment. The gospel is not what God orders us to do. The gospel is what God promises to do for us. The gospel is a package of God’s grace through which all the blessings are flowing into our souls, and nothing is missing. The gospel redeems our sins and fills us with the Holy Spirit. The gospel cleanses our conscience and enables us to serve the living God. The gospel sets us free from all the bondages and lifts us to be God’s children. The gospel gives us firm righteousness that protects us from all kinds of accusations. The gospel wakes up our hearts to the love of God until our hearts burst with thanks and praises. The gospel gives us desire to remain in God’s love and rejoice in it. The gospel gives us power to love our neighbor like God loves us in Christ. The gospel paves the way to truth and life before us, and gives us the strength to walk the way in peace and joy and confidence. The gospel leads us to all the glorious promises that God made through Jesus Christ.

Body Language

The issue of eating meat sacrificed to idols seems far removed from the issues that face Jesus’s followers today, but nothing could be further from the truth! Preaching on 1 Corinthians 8, Deb asked us to consider “body language”: the message that our actions communicate. She ended with this stirring challenge:

Jesus says the church is his temple, his body, the place where his Spirit resides. We are the body of Christ, so let’s make our body language the language of love.

From Selfish to Sanctified

In 1 Corinthians 7, Paul commends singleness as the possibility of undivided devotion to God but offers marriage only with the caveat that it necessary means divided devotion. Some might bristle at this unsentimental view of family life, but Erik used the story of the nineteenth-century American theologian B.B. Warfield to show how marriage sanctifies selfish desires by turning them towards others:

Warfield was certain he was called by God to support the global church as a traveling speaker. But his wife Annie wasn’t. In fact, her whole body seemed to say no: she had a physical collapse while traveling and she never recovered. So, Warfield gave up what he believed his calling to be and they moved to Princeton, New Jersey, where he spent the rest of the writing, teaching, and caring for Annie. He did not have authority over his own body, but yielded to her. She did not have authority over her own body, but yielded to him. Neither was free to care only about pleasing themselves. Neither was free to care only about pleasing God. Paul tells us, marriage means mutual agreement, but mutual agreement means divided devotion.

 Yet that marriage sanctified Warfield: he became the sort of person who would give up his ambitions and love another as himself. Supposedly Benjamin never left Anne’s side for more than a couple hours. He would do his work in her presence, reading aloud from his research or writing. I’m not sure the dry theology of Victorian Presbyterianism was good for her health, but they both cherished the companionship. It’s incredible to think that at the root of that devotion is the same desire that inspires pop songs and compels people to get on dating apps. But that romantic desire was sanctified, made holy, by marriage. Sex begins as a selfish desire that makes us into its servants, but in marriage it is sanctified into a desire that directs us away from ourselves and into servants of others.

Bodies, Washed and Sanctified

Paul told the Christians in Corinth “honor God with your body.” He believed this command followed inescapably from the fact the salvation found in Christ was the resurrection of the body, his and ours. What then do sin and sanctification mean if salvation is for the body? David offered the image the barnacles on a whale to help us understand:

1Corinthians 6:11 says, “You were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. Like removing barnacles from a whale’s body, when I raise the name of Christ high as my Lord, the Holy Spirit comes down upon my body and He washes and removes all the stubborn attachments, which are on my body and behave as if they are part of my body. Then, the Spirit never leaves the body, and becomes a spring of living water in me welling up to eternal life (John 4:14).

God Above, Christ Below, Spirit Within

In chapter three of his letter to the Corinthians, Paul gets theological about the church. He deploys a set of powerful images to capture the way God works with his people: a field, a building, and temple. And connecting these images is nothing short of the Trinity itself:

When we confess that God is love, we aren’t just saying that God is loving. We’re acknowledging that God is constituted by the love of those three persons for each other: That cooperating, overflowing love within God is why he creates, why he saves, and why he’s building a church. Look at the three images Paul gives. First, a field with God above, like the sun and rain that account for all life and growth. Second, a building with Jesus Christ as the foundation, the solid base upon which everything else stands. And finally, a special building, the temple, in which the Holy Spirit makes a home. God above, Christ below, the Spirit within. hat’s not just true of the church, but this church, with all its flaws. The church in Corinth was so preoccupied with petty loyalties and rivalries that they didn’t even notice that they were surrounded the way only a three person God can!

Wisdom of Death and Life

As we continued studying Paul’s provocative teaching about the foolishness of the cross and true wisdom in 1 Corinthians chapter 2, David pointed out the way worldly wisdom presumes death and thus is incapable of offering life:

Steve Jobs said, “Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.” He is talking about “wisdom.” And his wisdom is founded on the fact, “I’ll be dead soon.” His wisdom may be a good guideline in “making a big choice in life.” But his wisdom is actually his darkness. He always remembers the fact “I will be dead soon.” So, even the best choice will end in vain and he will harvest futility. In this sense, we can say that there is no wisdom in the world. Although we all work hard for better life, it’s a struggle in darkness, and at the end we find ourselves with empty hands.

Making Fools

What does the Apostle Paul have against wisdom? In 1 Corinthians, he writes that the cross of Christ is foolishness, and quoting Isaiah, declares that it will “destroy the wisdom of the wise.” Erik preached on the way that Paul sees the cross of Christ creating a new world, reducing the wisdom of the old world to nothing.

Listen to how Paul’s language shifts to destruction and creation: he’s reducing the things that are to nothing, in order to make something new out the “the things that are not,” the nothings and the nobodies. The cross is the blueprint for the new world God is making, and that new world begins in church.

Division and Completion

The opening verses of 1 Corinthians describe a community descending into destructive divisions. Paul, however, offers an alternative. If the community is centered in Christ, their differences can make the community complete rather than dividing it. To illustrate this point, Deb shared the following story in Sunday’s sermon:

When I was in college, I worked for one summer as a camp counselor at an overnight Christian camp. I brought my guitar with me to play at campfire sing-alongs. There was another staff member named Jean who also played guitar, and she was much better at it than I was. The thought of being compared to Jean made me reluctant to put myself out there and play. But the thought came to me: Even if I can’t play as well as Jean, at least one more group of campers will have a guitar to sing along with around their campfire than if I let my comparative lack of skill discourage me from playing. If we all give whatever it is we have to give, the community will be made more complete. 

Death is the Seed of Life

Happy Easter from ICC! When God raised Jesus from the dead, he transformed the meaning of death for all of us who would follow. In his Easter sermon, David drew on Paul’s instight that there can be no resurrection without the crucifixion, no new life without death:

Paul said, “We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may be revealed in our mortal body” (2 Corinthians 4:10-11). St. Paul didn’t say, “We carry the resurrection of Jesus.” He said, “We carry the death of Jesus.” And he did so, expecting that “the life of Jesus body may also be revealed in our body.” Paul found that death is the seed of resurrection and life.

It is Finished

Christians reenact the Passion Narrative every year. We know that Christ’s crucifixion is not the end of the story. Yet as much as we might long to turn the page, this event has such gravity—the Son of God dying on a cross—that it cannot help but pull as backward to itself. The Gospel of John reminds of this with Jesus’s final statement, “It is finished.” Preaching on this passage, Erik contrasted what the powers who collaborated to kill Jesus might have thought these words meant with what Jesus himself was confessing:

The Romans intended crucifixion to finish people. They used this method of execution to end storylines they didn’t like. There is a paradox about crucifixions: they were meant for everyone to witness, but no one to talk about. The victim was lifted high so that everyone could see, but what they saw was revolting: a naked, bloody body, suffocating in agony. You couldn’t speak about this without ruining conversations, turning stomachs, breaking the rules of polite society. If you witnessed a crucifixion, you’d never forget it. But you might never talk about it. That is why despite thousands of crucifixions, there is so little written about them. The point was public silence: Rome wanted to utterly discredit and humiliate the victim. The empire declares: “This person, their life, their cause is finished.” “It is finished” is exactly what Rome wanted to hear, and with it all the powers of sin, death, and evil. They wanted such an admission of defeat.

Yet when Jesus proclaimed “it is finished” wasn’t an admission of defeat, it was a confession of faith. He knew his faithfulness to God meant death, but he also that God’s faithfulness to him meant life.

The Truth on Trial

David opened our Passion Series with a sermon on the trial of Jesus. Pilate asked “What is truth,” yet as judge he did not seek the truth because he was afraid of the truth. This failure revealed his weakness, possessing neither the power of a judge nor a king. Instead, the world’s true judge and king was the one he presumed to condemn:

God gave Pilate power to rule people, and with this power, he became the judge over people. Pilate’s first duty attached to the power given to him was defending and testifying to the truth. In fact, he knew everything. He knew that Jesus didn’t do anything wrong. He knew that the high priests delivered Jesus for envy. So, using his power from above, he should have released Jesus and condemned the Jewish leaders who were accusing Jesus falsely. But he didn’t have power to defend the truth. He gave up Jesus in order to protect his self-interest. He was not a truth-bearer. Although he was the last defense line of the truth, he was powerless and irresponsible. In this sense, he was not a king. But Jesus is true king. He testified to the truth and defended it until sacrificing his own life. As this truth was defended by Jesus’ blood, there is no place for a lie in this truth. And this truth is the foundation of God’s salvation, the foundation of Jesus’ gospel, and the foundation of our faith.

No Substitute for Hope

Erik brought our series on Daniel to a conclusion. Daniel’s final vision contains one of the earliest, clearest statements of a hope for resurrection in the Bible. God’s promise of raising the dead transformed the meaning of hope for a people in exile:

Confidence, optimism, positivity all have their places. The problem is that they are no substitute for hope, certainly no substitute for the hope Daniel receives from an angel and passes on to us: Hope not just for the future, but the past; not just the living, but the dead. Hope for the hopeless. We can’t find that anywhere in ourselves or in our situation – only false hopes there. True hope can only come from God, the only one with the power to make right everything that has gone wrong.

God is Ready for Your Prayers

What does one of the greatest prayers in scripture teach us about God? Preaching Daniel 9, Deb found that God can’t wait to answer our prayers:

As Daniel concludes his prayer, something remarkable happens. Before he has even finished praying, he receives a visit from the angel Gabriel. The angel says that as soon as he began to pray, a word went out; a revelation was given. God is that ready to answer prayer. He is eager to answer prayers that are aligned with Kingdom priorities and that come from a humble heart that recognizes God’s greatness and our own shortcomings.

Where Can We Find Power?

Preaching Daniel 9, a vision of kings and kingdoms falling from power, David asked: What if true power isn’t found in kings and kingdoms, but the cross of Jesus Christ?

We don’t have to have human power to fight against evil people in this world. It is because our power and freedom do not come from this world, but from God. Jesus gave his disciples the gospel of salvation and the Holy Spirit so that they would engage in spiritual battles with people, not to defeat them but to save them.

Pulling Back the Curtain

ICC is deep into Daniel’s visions. These baffle some readers and send others in an unproductive search for clues about the future. Preaching on Daniel 7, Erik showed that the most important thing that God reveals in his word is not the future, but himself. What we see can see about the future flows from what we see about the character of God. He used the image of characters on the stage to show what he meant:

That’s why Daniel’s vision of God is such a revelation. It’s a bit like a drama on stage. Imagine you’re a character in a play where you don’t know the ending but it feels like a tragedy and there’s no reason for hope. Then, for a moment, the action on stage pauses, the curtain opens behind you, and then you see all this other action that you didn’t even know was happening: stagehands preparing new sets, screenwriters impatient for the next act, and a director who has the entire story and all its performances in hand. So much more is happening than you thought, and so much more is possible. You realize, haven’t reached the conclusion, you’re not even in the final act. Everything that occurred on the stage that seemed absolutely decisive is in fact less decisive than what is going on behind the scenes. This is what “apocalypse” means: It’s a peak behind the curtain.