It is a lovely beginning for a difficult letter to write for the Corinthian church, not lacking in any spiritual gift, is puffed up with pride and like noisy gongs and clanging cymbals is guilty of neglecting the greatest gift of love. But that comes later. Here in the beginning of the letter Paul calls the Corinthians sanctified saints, together with all those in every place who call on the name of Christ, so that enriched in speech and knowledge by the grace of God they might be blameless on the day of Jesus Christ. Of course in the verses that follow this introduction Paul gets down to business and names the divisions reported to him by Chloe’s household appealing to them in the name of Jesus to agree with one another. We should not be surprised by divisions in the church twenty one centuries later given that they existed in the beginning and at least some of those who neglected the law of love had a personal relationship with the real Jesus. Maybe we should be surprised, and certainly grateful, when we who are church play nice and actually enjoy being together and more to the point live the hope of our calling where the confession of our faith is conveyed by the character of our communities.
This may sound strange, but I was wondering where you got the picture above of the body of Christ. I am a youth minister and am trying to work on some graphics to put in the our youth room that illustrate Ephesians 4:15-16. I was wondering if I could use your artwork for that. My email address is fcocyg@gmail.com.
ReplyDeleteThanks!