The Real World: Corinth - "Jesus and Christians"
[powerpress] Transforming Truth: Your identity in Jesus alone must define who you are and what you do.
As the apostle Paul ministered in the city of Corinth, he went directly into a society that was mainly Italian in culture, spoke Latin as the official language, and lived by standards altogether different than the Judeo-Christian ethic. Those who came to the cosmopolitan city of Corinth were individuals from the province of Achaia (like America's Mid-West) with aspirations. Arriving in a new environment, it became fashionable for the people to adopt Roman culture with all of its habits, beliefs, and social mores. As the values of status and personal ambition were embraced, things like dress were utilized to make statements about positions in society ,and there became a clear divide between the wealthy patrons of the city and the "common man." Even Paul's authority and role as an apostle was judged by the educated elite in light of the expectation that he fit their standards of a good public orator as found in the lecture halls surrounding them.
If any of you has a dispute with another, do you dare to take it before the ungodly for judgment instead of before the Lord’s people? Or do you not know that the Lord’s people will judge the world? And if you are to judge the world, are you not competent to judge trivial cases? Do you not know that we will judge angels? How much more the things of this life! Therefore, if you have disputes about such matters, do you ask for a ruling from those whose way of life is scorned in the church? I say this to shame you. Is it possible that there is nobody among you wise enough to judge a dispute between believers? But instead, one brother takes another to court—and this in front of unbelievers! The very fact that you have lawsuits among you means you have been completely defeated already. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated? Instead, you yourselves cheat and do wrong, and you do this to your brothers and sisters. Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. (1 Corinthians 6:1-11 NIV)
How did Jesus deal with people who professed faith?
When it comes to legal matters in the church, we absolutely submit to and abide by the laws of the land that are themselves submitted to the Law of God (Romans 13). What this means is that confidentiality in the church only goes so far as things are civil, not criminal cases. We love and work with anyone, from any type of background, believing that Jesus will both forgive and liberate lives. However, we must report things when crimes are committed or there are circumstances that put others in danger (i.e. - sexual or physical abuse). This is where the courts and justice system of the land are employed. This also applies to things like contractual matters, business counsel, and cases between a Christian and a non-Christian.
The appeal that Paul is making in the midst of a culture that is filled with people who are quick to bring suits against another is that we must look to work out civil matters between Christians within the church. There are many here that are being trained and are are even now qualified to help in matters of counsel so that the name of Jesus is honored when there are issues to be worked out. If we are going to be a family, we need to live like one, without dysfunction.
This decision is an issue of identity. Will you allow the norms of our culture to define your interactions, or will you allow Christ to actively shape you into a person who thinks and lives differently? The question to ask is this: Who will you believe? Will you trust the One who made you, loves you and died to redeem you, or a destructive culture struggling in the dark looking for hope and meaning?
“Leave it all in the Hands that were wounded for you” ― Elisabeth Elliot, Keep a Quiet Heart
All of Scripture says God loves you, He is patient with you, and, through your faith in Jesus and repentance from sins, He brings you into His plan and purpose for your life. Paul sites a list of sins representative of the common way of life in the Corinthian culture as an appeal to put off the old behavior and to put on the new, true life found in Jesus. He summarizes this in his letter to the Colossians:
Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all. (Colossians 3:9-11 NIV)
The new life in Jesus is an issue of how you identify yourself. Everyone, as long as you are in the tent of this body, is going to be tempted. Jesus was tempted in every way, just as you are, yet was without sin. He lived, and you should live, out of His identity as the Son of God. This is what defines us. This is sanctification.
“Love may forgive all infirmities and love still in spite of them: but Love cannot cease to will their removal.” ― C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain
When Paul speaks of being washed, it refers to baptism upon your repentance. If you have not been, you should be baptized into the death and burial of Jesus, dying to your old way of life, that you might rise with Him by faith into new life. Sanctification (Greek: Hagiazo) refers to being holy, sacred and devoted to God, with the fundamental idea of separation from common or ordinary usage for devotion to divine service.
Sanctification is an identity and relationship issue. When Jesus relates with His people, it is the first thing that He addresses, at times changing people's names (Abraham, Sarah, Peter, Paul, etc.), vocations, and, always, their lifestyles. Our names, talents, vocations, and orientations are the things that we cling to, that we feel like define who we are and why we do what we do. When we come to trust in the love of Jesus and the truth of His gospel, we humbly submit to allowing God to remake us in His image. Our fallen state is redeemed, and we are reshaped into the original, flourishing design that He had for us before our separation from Him. It begins when we are born again and will culminate when we see Jesus face to face.
If this is true, how did the world end up in the state that it's in today?
1Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” 2The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’ ” 4“You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5“For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” 6When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. 8Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?” (Genesis 3:1-9 NIV)
The nature of temptation and the scheme of Satan, the accuser, is to always question trust in God's Word. When this is embraced in a society separated from God long enough, lies become the norm.
“No matter how big the lie; repeat it often enough and the masses will regard it as the truth.” ―John F. Kennedy
The commands of God can seem foreign to you if, like me, you did not grow up in a church environment, or, as a Christian, you live unaware of the naturalistic malaise that is the atmosphere of Chicago.
17So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. 18They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. 19Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, and they are full of greed. 20That, however, is not the way of life you learned 21when you heard about Christ and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus. 22You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; 23to be made new in the attitude of your minds; 24and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. 25Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor, for we are all members of one body. 26“In your anger do not sin” : Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, 27and do not give the devil a foothold. 28Anyone who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something useful with their own hands, that they may have something to share with those in need. (Ephesians 4:17-28 NIV)
28Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. 29They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. 32Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them. (Romans 1:28-32 NIV)
It is a deceptive hum that lulls the church to sleep thinking that this is a good city and that everything is fine. It is an effort to remember that God is important, heaven, hell, and eternity are real, and there are invisible forces at work driving life as we know it on a daily basis. What we see in front of us is not all that there is.
So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. (2 Corinthians 4:18 NIV)
Even in the church, the Bible instructs us that there will be and are false teachers, false apostles, false prophets and false teachers, as there have always been, and that we must be aware and on our guard. Humanistic rationalism has led to many distortions of the Word of God and heresies within the church.
For such people are false apostles, deceitful workers, masquerading as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. It is not surprising, then, if his servants also masquerade as servants of righteousness. Their end will be what their actions deserve. (2 Corinthians 11:13-15 NIV)
Like a muddied spring or a polluted well are the righteous who give way to the wicked. (Proverbs 25:26 NIV)
One of the primary functions of the Old Testament prophets was to call the people back to the Law of God that they might be blessed. This is what the crux of real revival looks like - beginning with the restoration of the holy standards of God amongst His people that we might turn away from wickedness and that God might heal our land. This is to what Paul calls the Corinthians, and, in effect, all Christians through the cross.
When the king heard the words of the Book of the Law, he tore his robes. He gave these orders to Hilkiah the priest, Ahikam son of Shaphan, Akbor son of Micaiah, Shaphan the secretary and Asaiah the king’s attendant: “Go and inquire of the Lord for me and for the people and for all Judah about what is written in this book that has been found. Great is the Lord ’s anger that burns against us because those who have gone before us have not obeyed the words of this book; they have not acted in accordance with all that is written there concerning us.” (2 Kings 22:11-13 NIV)
You forfeit the pleasure of God when you lose Biblical truth. When you dismiss the Word of God, the motivation for Christian living begins to be merely a tool toward a better marriage, better job, better life, way to fulfill your dreams, to fulfill our duties as a social organization, or various other goals, rather than being a people set apart to Jesus as the focus. Jesus becomes a means to an end rather than the end itself.
In the following quote, you have this designation of characters: The speaker: Screwtape, a devil The recipient: Wormwood, another devil The Enemy: God
"The thing to do is to get a man at first to value social justice as a thing which the Enemy demands, and then work him on to the stage at which he values Christianity because it may produce social justice. For the Enemy will not be used as a convenience. Men or nations who think they can revive the Faith in order to make a good society might just as well think they can use the stairs of Heaven as a short cut to the nearest chemist's shop. Fortunately it is quite easy to coax humans round this little corner. Only today I have found a passage in a Christian writer where he recommends his own version of Christianity on the ground that 'only such a faith can outlast the death of old cultures and the birth of new civilizations'. You see the little rift? 'Believe this, not because it is true, but for some other reason.' That's the game."- C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters - Letter 23
This is when your morality before God gets blurred and begins to adapt to the standards of the world around you, because pleasing God is not the ultimate objective.
So we make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each of us may receive what is due us for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad. (2 Corinthians 5:9, 10 NIV)
What replaces love for Jesus is the idolatry of your self-aggrandized human duty and dignity, which evokes pride and causes you to miss the target. The human spirit is glorified rather than the one that gave it breath.
“When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command locusts to devour the land or send a plague among my people, if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land. Now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayers offered in this place. (2 Chronicles 7:13-15 NIV)
You are called as a part of Jesus' church to love those in the world, being in the world but not of it.
“I am coming to you now, but I say these things while I am still in the world, so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them. I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified. (John 17:13-19 NIV)
Tolerance is not God's highest value. He commands those in the world to repent of rebellion and sin.
“Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill. In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.” (Acts 17:29-31 NIV)
It is not a human rights, civil rights, or equality issue. It is an issue of reconciliation with the one true God, and conforming to His loving, liberating design for human flourishing. All of us were born fallen and into sin in various capacities. That is why Jesus said you must be born again to see or enter the kingdom of God (John 3). Thereafter, you are supernaturally sanctified by His Word and Spirit the rest of your life until you see Him face to face.
“Yes, if truth is not undergirded by love, it makes the possessor of that truth obnoxious and the truth repulsive.” ―Ravi Zacharias
The rest of this chapter speaks of sexuality and Jesus who comes to shape this vital, primal area of our lives.
Sex and sexuality are celebrated in the highest of terms in the Bible. Finding the right venue and terms for the relationship is the issue.
“I have the right to do anything,” you say—but not everything is beneficial. “I have the right to do anything”—but I will not be mastered by anything. You say, “Food for the stomach and the stomach for food, and God will destroy them both.” The body, however, is not meant for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. By his power God raised the Lord from the dead, and he will raise us also. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself? Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Never! Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, “The two will become one flesh.” But whoever is united with the Lord is one with him in spirit. Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body. Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies. (1 Corinthians 6:12-20 NIV)
The struggle in Christian living is over the rights that people think that they have or attempt to maintain though they belong to Jesus. For those in Corinth, and for many in our culture, the issue is sexuality. Paul further addresses the issue in terms of prostitution, being renumerated for your sexual activity. This is prevalent in Chicago as it was in Corinth. The command is to flee from sexual immorality. Because the Corinthians were looking for loopholes as we do, Paul chose two words to define the sexual sin. Sexual immorality is biblically defined as sexual activity before marriage. Adultery is sexual activity outside the covenant of marriage.
The reason that this is important is because you are to be a temple of the Holy Spirit. Paul's first mention of the temple to the Corinthians was a reference to the church, the collective body of believers:
Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person; for God’s temple is sacred, and you together are that temple. (1 Corinthians 3:16, 17 NIV)
We must honor, esteem, and protect it, not simply for what it is presently, but for what it is destined to become in Jesus. The second mention of the temple is that of the individual. Both references indicate that you need community to help clean you so that we can together become houses of worship.
Why? Because You are not your own. You were bought by Jesus at the price of His own life.
The question is: Who does Jesus say that you are when you belong to Him? You are male or female, called, elect, a new creation, where the old has gone and the new has come, part of a chosen people, a royal priesthood, adopted as sons and daughters of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, royals (refer to song), Predestined Justified Righteous in Jesus Glorified Holy Free from blemish, accusation or blame in Jesus More than a conqueror through Jesus who loves you To be the head and not the tail To be at the top and never at the bottom To lend to many nations and borrow from none Unified Anointed Loving Joyful Patient Kind Peaceful Graceful Gentle Self-controlled The apple of God's eye Favored Strong in the Lord Able to teach and competent to instruct one another Forgiven and forgiving Wise Bold as a lion A co-heir with Christ as we participate in His sufferings (including the process of overcoming temptation). And the list goes on...
How then do we begin to live the sanctified life? You begin by falling out of agreement (repentance) of the old way of life and adopt a new confession that will transform your heart, environments, capacities, and world. The words that come off of your mouth shape your identity more than you know.
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. (Proverbs 18:2 NIV)
The mouths of fools are their undoing, and their lips are a snare to their very lives. (Proverbs 18:7 NIV)
It is written: “I believed; therefore I have spoken.” Since we have that same spirit of faith, we also believe and therefore speak, because we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us with Jesus and present us with you to himself. All this is for your benefit, so that the grace that is reaching more and more people may cause thanksgiving to overflow to the glory of God. (2 Corinthians 4:13-15 NIV)
Jesus uses your words to shape your affections, your thoughts, your workplace, your friendships, your families, your church and everywhere that we will head together. Make sure that you live as if your life is not your own. Allow Jesus to define your life and your community, not by where you have been, but where He is taking you and this church by His love and grace. Let these things be the word of faith that you hold to in your heart and on your lips.
Take-Home Truth: 1) Come to Jesus in repentance and faith. Be born again in Christ. 2) Join a community group to continue to learn how to find your identity in Jesus alone. 3) Begin to discipline your tongue to speak about not where you have been, but where Jesus wants to take you and this church. Make a list.
Second City Church- The Real World: Corinth Sermon Series 2013