Part 2: Unity in Community: God's Building Project; Making Fools For Christ
In Chapter 3 of Paul's letter to the Christian community at Corinth, Paul is calling for unity in this diverse, divided community. He begins by having them take a good, hard look at themselves. He begins by calling them spiritual infants. Paul sees faith as developmental and these folks are in the beginning stage of faith. They are focusing on their flesh rather than on their spiritual nature. All of us are made up of flesh, but we are not to live as though our human nature is separate from God. Our flesh is the point of entry for sin. These folks were allowing their flesh or human nature to dominate their outlook and actions. Paul views their faith as immature because of their "jealousy and quarreling." They do not have a strong relationship with God. They are allowing their fleshiness to dominate their spiritualness. One can tell what a person's relationship with God is by looking at the way that person relates to others. And they were not doing a good job with others. They were fighting over who was the better leader: Paul or Apollos. We see fighting in churches today where people lose sight of who they belong to and what the purpose of the church is. Then people focus on themselves, become jealous, become controlling, protect their own turf, become back stabbers, cause trouble, fight, and/or if things don't go the way they like it "pack up their toys and go home!" This is spiritually immature behavior. A spiritually mature Christian will work for unity and peace. They will nurture and respect each other and work toward finding solutions.
Next Paul tries to get them to focus on what the church is: God's building project by using three metaphors: 1) God's Field; 2) God's Building; 3) God's Temple. 1) God's Field: Those who are in agriculture know that it takes many hands to produce crops. Some will be the planters. Others will take care of the field. While others will reap the harvest. Paul is trying to get the Corinth church to see that each leader has a role. There is not a jealous bone in Paul against Apollos. He and Apollos each have their job in creating the church, but neither can grow it. Like a plant, only God can make it grow. 2) God's Building: Here Paul is comparing himself to a general contractor who is building on the foundation of Jesus Christ. Remember the hymn "The Church's One Foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord?" Paul sees the leaders of the church as the sub-contractors. If their work is "not up to code" or if they use inferior materials, the building will fail. Their leadership will be tested by God with fire. If it is built with the wrong materials, God will destroy it. The leaders will be punished as well, Paul states. Leaders of the church, we have an awesome responsibility to make sure that our own spirits are strong in the Lord, then we will have the "right" materials to build Christ's church. 3) God's temple: Paul uses the word "you" as being God's temple. Here the Greek word for you is plural, meaning "all of you." This is not referring to the individual, but to the gathered community. For Paul to be claiming them to be the holy dwelling place of God would have been a new concept. For the Greeks, temple was a place to worship Greek gods. For the Jews, God resided in the temple in Jerusalem. Now Paul is saying that the community of believers is the temple and they should be holy.
because God resides with them. So those who work at splitting the community are offending God and defiling God's holiness. Paul goes as far to say that God will destroy them. With God's building project, God chooses to be present in the world through the community of faith to build eternal relationships with everyone in the world. Those as part of the community of faith are instruments used by God. In everything we do are to be about showing God's presence to the world through serving others with actions and words. We are not to be pitting one leader, one idea, one theology, or one way of doing things against another, but all striving to do God's will.
Paul then speaks about wisdom and foolishness. Wisdom for the Greeks was having a special knowledge. For Paul this special knowledge was selfish. God's wisdom is about obedient faith or "cross wisdom," denying self (Mark 8: 34-35). This is foolish in to the Greek wisdom. So be fools, but be fools for Christ. Serve unselfishly. Build on the foundation of Christ. Focus on God's purpose. One Greek wisdom saying was, "all belongs to you." This still is being stated in our world especially through advertising.
Paul says, "Yes, all does belong to us, but we belong to God through Christ so all belongs to God." So why do we defend our own turf, our own ideas, our own way of doing things. It doesn't belong to us, we belong to God so build community on the foundation of Jesus Christ and be a fool!
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Author: shorster
Location: Lusby Maryland USA
Gender: Female
Age: 56
Blog Entries: 14 (archive)
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rev. sue shorb-sterling child of god disciple of christ servant leader pastor of olivet united methodist church in lusby, maryland elder in the baltimore-washington conference of the united methodist church community spiritual director of southern maryland emmaus......
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