"For the wisdom of this world is foolishness before God. For it is written, 'He is the one who catches the wise in their craftiness; and again, 'The Lord knows the reasonings of the wise, that they are useless!" (I Corinthians 3:19-20)
Last week, the apostle Paul wrote (in I Corinthians 3:1-3) that he "couldn't speak to the Corinthians as spiritual men, but as to men of flesh, infants in Christ...unable to receive solid food...since there was jealousy and strife among them"--leading to factions and cliques in the church, and stymieing their growth as believers who should be working together and united in Christ! And so Paul spends the first four chapters of his epistle, basically addressing this problem--thus something that obviously was a "big deal" to God!
Paul said that "according to the grace of God given to him, like a wise master builder, he laid the foundation, and another is building on it...but that each man must be careful how he builds on it; for no man can lay a foundation other than the one that is laid, which is Jesus Christ...and if any man builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each man's work will become evident; for the day will show it because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire itself will test the quality of each man's work! And if any man's work remains, he will receive a reward...but if it's burned up, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire!"
And so, we are all builders, Paul says, and the materials that are laid on the foundation represent our "works," good or bad! We can't be saved by works, but Ephesians 2:10 says that "every Christian has been created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God has prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them"! Works are not the source of a Christian's life, but the marks of it, MacArthur notes! And II Corinthians 5:10 says that, as believers, we will all "stand before the judgment seat of Christ, so that we may be compensated for the deeds done in our body"! And, as we can see more clearly now, this should motivate us to live a life pleasing to the Lord, as it also motivated Paul!
This then set the tone for our lesson last night (on I Corinthians 3:16-23), where Paul continues with this same line of thought, and particularly about the importance of being united together as believers in Christ!
"Do you not know that you are a temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?" Do you not know? Ten times in the book of I Corinthians Paul uses these words as the starting point to introduce something important and indisputable he wants to get across! (For example, in 5:6, where he asks, "Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?" Or, in 9:24, where he asks, "Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but only one receives the prize?")
But here (in 3:16), referring to individual believers? Or is he referring to the Corinthian church in which God's Spirit indwelt? "Do you not know that you are a temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?" Constable writes that "Paul was not speaking here of individual believers being temples of God, though they are (as stated in 6:19), or of the church universal, though it is (as stated in Ephesians 2:19-22 and I Peter 2:5). He meant instead the composite of believers who made up the local church of Corinth, as is clear from his use of the plural 'you' in the Greek text, and the singular 'temple'! And so, not just any building but a temple that God inhabited! God's sanctuary in Corinth where the Spirit of God dwelt"!
And, like each individual Christian, it is holy, and God jealously guards that which is holy! And so, the passage is accompanied (in verse 17) with a warning! "If any man destroys (or defiles) the temple of God, God will destroy him, for the temple of God is holy, and that is what you are!" In the Old Testament God dwelt in the "Holy of Holies," of the tabernacle (later the temple), where once a year, on the "Day of Atonement," the high priest would enter to offer a blood sacrifice for the people. Anyone else who dared to enter was immediately struck dead! And there are other examples, in the New Testament, of how God jealously guarded that which is holy! In Acts 5:1-11, in the case of the Ananias and Sapphira, "lying to the Holy Spirit"! In I Corinthians 11:28-30, in the case of one "drinking of the cup unworthily," when partaking of the Lord's Supper! All of which should give new meaning to the warning in I Corinthians 6:18-20, where it says: "Flee fornication! Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the immoral man sins against his own body! Or do you not know (there it is again!) that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price; therefore, glorify God in your body!"
In verse 18, the apostle Paul returns to the issue of the wisdom of God in contrast with the wisdom of the world, with yet another warning! "Let no man deceive himself...by thinking that he is wise in the wisdom of this age"! And so starts with a warning about self-deception, and being entralled with the wisdom of the world! In II Corinthians 11:3, Paul would write, "But I am afraid that, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds will be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ!" If any man thinks he is wise in this age, he must become foolish (in the eyes of the world!) so that he may become wise"!
MacArthur writes that in order to gain and maintain unity in the church we must not be deceived--by deceiving ourselves--but have "a proper view of ourselves, of others, of our possessions, and of our Possessor"! It all comes down to how we "think" about these things! (Proverbs 23:7 says, "For as a man thinks within himself, so he is!")
And, according to Paul, it's wrong to line in cliques behind one or another of God's servants and to "boast in people"! By doing so, Constable points out, the Corinthians were "limiting God's blessings on them--by, in effect, rejecting God's good gifts by not appreciating all the people that God had sent to help them"! "All" God's servants (Paul, Apollos, and Cephas) were gifts to the Corinthians! In fact, Paul declares that the "the world and all that life holds" (including "things present and things to come") belong to the Corinthians (and, by application, to all Christians!) and contain blessings for them, in the sense that "Christians will inherit it and reign over it with Christ one day"!
Paul concludes I Corinthians 3 with this: "All things belong to you, and you belong to Christ; and Christ belongs to God!" Wow! What a great conclusion for this lesson! Knowing that believers belong to Christ and therefore to each other should be the greatest incentive for unity in the church! And it fulfills Jesus' high priestly prayer, in John 17:20-21, where Jesus prayed that not only His disciples, but that "all those who also would also believe in Him through their word, might be one, even as He and His Father were one, so that the world might believe that You sent Me"! What a great ending to this passage! Realizing God's great desire that we, as believers, be one! But there's so much more to come!
MacArthur notes that, "in Christ, all good and holy things are for the believers' blessing and God's glory"! II Peter 1:3 says, "seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who has called us by His own glory and excellence"! And Ephesians 1:3-4 says, "Blessed be the God amd Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him..."!
"Bless be the tie that binds, our hearts in Christian love...!"
May God be with you all!
Lowell
Last week, the apostle Paul wrote (in I Corinthians 3:1-3) that he "couldn't speak to the Corinthians as spiritual men, but as to men of flesh, infants in Christ...unable to receive solid food...since there was jealousy and strife among them"--leading to factions and cliques in the church, and stymieing their growth as believers who should be working together and united in Christ! And so Paul spends the first four chapters of his epistle, basically addressing this problem--thus something that obviously was a "big deal" to God!
Paul said that "according to the grace of God given to him, like a wise master builder, he laid the foundation, and another is building on it...but that each man must be careful how he builds on it; for no man can lay a foundation other than the one that is laid, which is Jesus Christ...and if any man builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each man's work will become evident; for the day will show it because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire itself will test the quality of each man's work! And if any man's work remains, he will receive a reward...but if it's burned up, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire!"
And so, we are all builders, Paul says, and the materials that are laid on the foundation represent our "works," good or bad! We can't be saved by works, but Ephesians 2:10 says that "every Christian has been created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God has prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them"! Works are not the source of a Christian's life, but the marks of it, MacArthur notes! And II Corinthians 5:10 says that, as believers, we will all "stand before the judgment seat of Christ, so that we may be compensated for the deeds done in our body"! And, as we can see more clearly now, this should motivate us to live a life pleasing to the Lord, as it also motivated Paul!
This then set the tone for our lesson last night (on I Corinthians 3:16-23), where Paul continues with this same line of thought, and particularly about the importance of being united together as believers in Christ!
"Do you not know that you are a temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?" Do you not know? Ten times in the book of I Corinthians Paul uses these words as the starting point to introduce something important and indisputable he wants to get across! (For example, in 5:6, where he asks, "Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?" Or, in 9:24, where he asks, "Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but only one receives the prize?")
But here (in 3:16), referring to individual believers? Or is he referring to the Corinthian church in which God's Spirit indwelt? "Do you not know that you are a temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?" Constable writes that "Paul was not speaking here of individual believers being temples of God, though they are (as stated in 6:19), or of the church universal, though it is (as stated in Ephesians 2:19-22 and I Peter 2:5). He meant instead the composite of believers who made up the local church of Corinth, as is clear from his use of the plural 'you' in the Greek text, and the singular 'temple'! And so, not just any building but a temple that God inhabited! God's sanctuary in Corinth where the Spirit of God dwelt"!
And, like each individual Christian, it is holy, and God jealously guards that which is holy! And so, the passage is accompanied (in verse 17) with a warning! "If any man destroys (or defiles) the temple of God, God will destroy him, for the temple of God is holy, and that is what you are!" In the Old Testament God dwelt in the "Holy of Holies," of the tabernacle (later the temple), where once a year, on the "Day of Atonement," the high priest would enter to offer a blood sacrifice for the people. Anyone else who dared to enter was immediately struck dead! And there are other examples, in the New Testament, of how God jealously guarded that which is holy! In Acts 5:1-11, in the case of the Ananias and Sapphira, "lying to the Holy Spirit"! In I Corinthians 11:28-30, in the case of one "drinking of the cup unworthily," when partaking of the Lord's Supper! All of which should give new meaning to the warning in I Corinthians 6:18-20, where it says: "Flee fornication! Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the immoral man sins against his own body! Or do you not know (there it is again!) that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price; therefore, glorify God in your body!"
In verse 18, the apostle Paul returns to the issue of the wisdom of God in contrast with the wisdom of the world, with yet another warning! "Let no man deceive himself...by thinking that he is wise in the wisdom of this age"! And so starts with a warning about self-deception, and being entralled with the wisdom of the world! In II Corinthians 11:3, Paul would write, "But I am afraid that, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds will be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ!" If any man thinks he is wise in this age, he must become foolish (in the eyes of the world!) so that he may become wise"!
MacArthur writes that in order to gain and maintain unity in the church we must not be deceived--by deceiving ourselves--but have "a proper view of ourselves, of others, of our possessions, and of our Possessor"! It all comes down to how we "think" about these things! (Proverbs 23:7 says, "For as a man thinks within himself, so he is!")
And, according to Paul, it's wrong to line in cliques behind one or another of God's servants and to "boast in people"! By doing so, Constable points out, the Corinthians were "limiting God's blessings on them--by, in effect, rejecting God's good gifts by not appreciating all the people that God had sent to help them"! "All" God's servants (Paul, Apollos, and Cephas) were gifts to the Corinthians! In fact, Paul declares that the "the world and all that life holds" (including "things present and things to come") belong to the Corinthians (and, by application, to all Christians!) and contain blessings for them, in the sense that "Christians will inherit it and reign over it with Christ one day"!
Paul concludes I Corinthians 3 with this: "All things belong to you, and you belong to Christ; and Christ belongs to God!" Wow! What a great conclusion for this lesson! Knowing that believers belong to Christ and therefore to each other should be the greatest incentive for unity in the church! And it fulfills Jesus' high priestly prayer, in John 17:20-21, where Jesus prayed that not only His disciples, but that "all those who also would also believe in Him through their word, might be one, even as He and His Father were one, so that the world might believe that You sent Me"! What a great ending to this passage! Realizing God's great desire that we, as believers, be one! But there's so much more to come!
MacArthur notes that, "in Christ, all good and holy things are for the believers' blessing and God's glory"! II Peter 1:3 says, "seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who has called us by His own glory and excellence"! And Ephesians 1:3-4 says, "Blessed be the God amd Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him..."!
"Bless be the tie that binds, our hearts in Christian love...!"
May God be with you all!
Lowell