Week Nine: 1 Corinthians 13

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Week Nine: 1 Corinthians 13

March 16, 2022 • Mitzi Barber • 1 Corinthians 13

• God's love activates the power in our God-given spiritual gifts (chapter 12). Without love, our gifts are nothing. The Corinthians were seeking status & power, using their gifts to be "puffed up," rather than to build up one another in LOVE. Love is power in God's economy.
• We cannot manifest love in our own power. We experience God's radical love in order to be a conduit of his love to others. When his love is at the center of our spiritual gifts, we are NOT noisy gongs or clanging cymbals.
• Love endures all things: This doesn’t mean just grin and bear it, but rather endure here means "abide, tarry with."
• Vs. 10 tells us, "when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away." What is Paul referring to? Perhaps Jesus' second coming? When Jesus' comes again, all of our spiritual gifts (prophecy, knowledge) will fade away. But love never ends.
• We are fully known and fully loved now. We only "see this in a mirror dimly" now, but eventually will we come to experience this truth face to face (vs. 12). In our pursuit of love, our pursuit of God, we realize that God is continually pursuing us!
• Reflection Question: How have you felt God's love in your life? What characteristics of his love that are listed in the text have you experienced?
• Reflection Question: We are each on uniquely personal journeys with God. On YOUR journey with the Lord, what might he be calling you further into as you pursue LOVE? As your heart dwells in the Scripture this week, ask Jesus: Lord, how are you inviting me to lean into Love?

Week Twelve: 1 Corinthians 15-16

April 7, 2022 • Jaime Carnaggio • 1 Corinthians 15—16

• Paul is helping them to see how this concept of something dying giving way to new life is not as absurd as they think. This happens in nature all the time. Seed that is sown dies in the ground before the plants grow and come alive. • There’s a clear physical difference in what goes in the ground and what comes out of it, and yet the essence of it remains intact. So is it with the resurrection of the dead. Our physical bodies die and rise again to new life. There is continuity between our earthly body and our resurrected body . . . and yet there are physical differences. • We inherit our earthly, natural bodies from Adam, who came from the dust, and these bodies reflect the reality of a fallen, broken, sinful world. Our bodies are weak, we have limitations, our bones can break . . . and eventually they will perish . . . to dust we will return. But we inherit our heavenly, spiritual bodies from Jesus (the last Adam), who came from heaven, but took on a body of dust (a weak, perishable, earthly body) and did what the first Adam could never do, he paid the penalty of death, he reversed the curse, and his earthly body gave way to a resurrected one. On Easter morning, he didn’t appear as a disembodied spirit floating around. He was once again embodied, people could see him and touch him, they recognized him!! • What happened to Jesus, will happen to us. Our resurrection bodies will “bear the image of the man of heaven!” Philippians 3: 20-21: 20 But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, 21 who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body… • My current, earthly body is like the acorn, which will die in the ground, but will eventually give way to a resurrected body, which is like the oak tree: identifiably the same, but greater to an unimaginable degree…a body that is mysteriously in continuity with the body we have now but also gloriously different, one that’s imperishable, unbreakable, incorruptible, immune to disease and sickness . . . it will be raised in glory and power and honor. • Our resurrection is like trading in a set of dusty, moth-eaten, moldy clothes that will rot and decay (which aren’t allowed in a holy, perfect heaven) for a brand-new, royal robe that will never perish or degrade. What a marvelous exchange! • Despite all the mysterious nuances that we really can’t fully know on this side of heaven, we CAN be certain that our resurrection is a future reality, we CAN be united in the hope that one day ALL in Christ will be raised imperishable and clothed with immortality, in a real resurrected, eternal, body in heaven. “Death is swallowed up in victory.” “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?”

Week Eleven: 1 Corinthians 15: 1-34

March 31, 2022 • Jaime Carnaggio • 1 Corinthians 15:1–34

• Paul reminds us we’re being saved by the gospel. Our salvation isn't just a past reality, accomplished on the cross, once-for-all. It has present significance, the gospel saves and sanctifies us, transforms us and guides us every day. • The eyewitnesses of Jesus’ resurrection validated that it really happened, it wasn't just an allusion or an urban legend. It was a real, unmistakable event that happened in history. He really is who he said he is. • "God’s moment-by-moment, ever-arriving grace fueled Paul’s obedience. God’s unmerited, transforming GRACE is the decisive doer in ALL of Paul’s work.” John Piper • We have faith in the gospel both with our left-brain and right brain – we believe because it’s a historical reality, we trust that these things truly occurred, but we also believe because we EXPERIENCE it . . . because God burns the gospel deep into our hearts, changing us forever. We CANNOT encounter God’s grace and remain unchanged. We are who we are because of God’s grace. • Paul makes it clear that, without the resurrection, the gospel completely falls apart. Without the resurrection, there is no gospel at all. Tim Keller says, "The gospel can’t survive a dead Savior. Everything hangs on whether or not Christ came out of the tomb.” • The reality of Christ’s resurrection means that we, too, will be resurrected. We can be certain of our salvation, of our future victory over death . . . even though we’re still waiting for all things to be put under Christ’s feet. John Piper says, “we can sleep the sleep of the saved and thankful.” • “If Jesus rose from the dead, then you have to accept all that he said: if he didn’t rise from the dead, then why worry about any of what he said? If Jesus didn’t defeat death, every claim he ever made is proven false. If Christ is risen, then nothing else matters. And if Christ isn’t risen – then nothing else matters. The resurrection is the hinge upon which the story of the world pivots.” Tim Keller

Week Ten: 1 Corinthians 14

1 Corinthians 14

• John Piper defines speaking in tongues as “ecstatic and divine utterances where your heart is so full of the Holy Spirit that he looses your tongue in praise to God.” I love that definition. It’s a beautiful gift that strengthens your bond with the Lord. But it's more of a personal, intimate practice, between the person holding the gift and God. It works It works more to edify the specific individual, and less to edify the body. It also requires interpretation, at least publicly. When someone is speaking in tongues publicly and there’s no one present to translate or interpret it, it can cause much confusion among those who hear it • Paul’s problem isn’t with the gift of tongues itself; his problem is with the MISUSE of it, the self-indulgent flaunting of it in public, without interpretation . . . those that used it to show-off, to impress. • Reflection Question: What are some ways spiritual gifts are misused or abused? How can misusing our gifts damage the body instead of build it up as intended, do more harm than good? • When we misuse our gifts (or lack love in using them), we’re clanging symbols, babble, just noise, which is a nuisance, it’s annoying, which can repel people from Christ instead of compelling them toward him. But when we use our gifts rightly, the way they were intended (with love, and with full dependence on the Spirit), we’re a harmonious hymn. We make God known and edify the body. Using our gifts wrongly results in noise, using them rightly results in SONG. • The Bible is complete and sufficient, no future prophecy carries the divine weight like the Bible does; these are God’s breathed words. That being said, prophecy still exists today. What we see more often today is perhaps a bit less “predictive” but still powerful, “God-given revelations,” that work to build up the church and provide encouragement and consolation (reassurance, strength) to believers. • Those that experience prophecy (both the giver and receiver) usually can't deny God's presence. Things that feel like coincidences, are often more likely God’s providence, his prophetic power at work! Paul says with prophecy, our hearts our exposed, we experience conviction and clarity, we’re affected by it, certain that “God is really among us.” • However, prophecy must be weighed by others. It must be tested. Paul makes this clear in 1 Thessalonians 5: 19-20. He says, “Do not quench the Spirit. 20 Do not despise prophecies, 21 but test everything; hold fast what is good.” Because prophecy today is not the authoritative, infallible word of God, it needs to be tested by (measured against) Scripture (because true prophecy would never conflict with God’s holy Word), and it may even need to be evaluated by wise, pastoral counsel. • So with both of these gifts, we don’t just go out and about flaunting them with abandon, they both require restraint and discernment (and often silence) and a complete dependence on the Spirit. • Paul’s primary concern was establishing peaceful order. He doesn’t want our worship or our church experiences to be chaotic and confusing, because God is not a God of confusion but a God of PEACE. And this instruction applies to everyone, both men and women. • Just because you have one of these valuable speech gifts, doesn’t mean you use them every chance you get. Sometimes the more loving thing to do, the more edifying thing to do, is to keep silent, because it keeps better order, it’s more peaceful. If the goal is ultimately for us to use our spiritual gifts to make God known to others and build up the body of Christ, then we are to pursue love and peace and order, we should earnestly desire to rightly exercise the gifts given to us, to fully rely on the Spirit’s guidance.