July 23, 2020<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Over the next 16 days we will be reading through the book of 1 Corinthians together. The church in Corinth was an absolute mess! They were plagued by serious issues of arrogance, division, sexual immorality, and confusion concerning doctrine as well as the particulars of their moral living under the gospel. This church needed a wake-up call, a call to repentance and purity, to renewed devotion to Christ, to love and unity, and to zeal for the gospel. The church has changed little over the last 2,000 years, but praise God that there is abundant grace for the mess! Each of us needs this same call to humility faithfulness, unity, and fervor today as much as they needed it then. Let\u2019s heed this call which God gave the church at Corinth through the apostle Paul and let it shape the way we live as Christ\u2019s body!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Paul begins this chapter with a strict warning against idolatry. Apparently some of the Corinthian Christians had been eating in pagan temples the things that had been sacrificed to those particular gods. Paul makes a distinction between eating these things inside the temple and eating the meat of a sacrifice sold in the marketplace, because eating it inside the pagan temple is to participate in the sacrifice to a false god! He draws on the example of the Israelites and their fall into idolatry to warn the Corinthians against this and to remind them that God is always faithful to provide a righteous path for us to take when we are tempted. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Paul then turns his attention to meat sold in the marketplaces and the consciences of weaker brothers and sisters in the faith. He applies the truths he has spoken of in chapters 8 and 9 to this situation as well, commanding the Corinthians in verse 24 “Let no one seek his own good, but the good of his neighbor.” This, along with what Paul says in verse 31 (“So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.”) is the ethic of the life that we are too live in Christ!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
God calls us to flee from worldly and idolatrous ways, ways that would draw us deeper into sin as well as bringing reproach and shame on the church and on the gospel. He calls us to make a clean break with the ways of the world, for “You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons” (v.21). He calls us to live in such a way as to, as much as possible, avoid offending anyone so that the gospel can go forward unhindered. Are you living this way?<\/p>\n\n\n\n