CHAPTER 1
WEEK 1: A TIME FOR THANKSGIVING
FIRST SUNDAY OF ADVENT
Thankful for God's Grace: 1 Corinthians 1.3–9
3 Grace to you and peace from God our father and King Jesus the Lord.
4 I always thank my God for you, for the grace of God that was given to you in King Jesus. 5 You were enriched in him in everything, in every kind of speech and knowledge, 6 just as the messianic message was established among you, 7 so that you aren't missing out on any spiritual gift as you wait eagerly for our Lord, King Jesus, to be revealed. 8 He will establish you right through to the end, so that you are blameless on the day of our Lord, King Jesus. 9 God is faithful! And it is through God that you have been called into the fellowship of his son, King Jesus, our Lord.
We weren't long into the phone call before I noticed something was different. It was the first time I'd spoken to this friend for some weeks and, whichever way the conversation turned, one name kept coming up. She and James had been talking over dinner last night ... James was hoping to get promotion soon and would be working much closer to where she lived ... perhaps I knew so-and-so who'd been at school with James? ... and so on, and so on. There was a warmth, an excitement, and the conclusion was obvious; any minute now, she hoped, James would ask the key question, to which her answer was ready and waiting.
Well, it happened, of course, and they are now married, but my point is to notice how people give themselves away by what they go on talking about, almost (it sometimes appears) to the point of obsession. It doesn't take long in someone's company, or even during a phone call, before you discover what's really exciting them: what is at the centre of their waking thoughts.
If we had any doubts what Paul was excited about, what was at the centre of his thoughts and intentions, this first paragraph of one of his most varied and lengthy letters would soon put us straight. One name keeps coming up, over and over again: Jesus. The name occurs eight times in these nine verses. Paul couldn't stop talking about Jesus, because without Jesus nothing else he said or did made any sense. And what he wanted the Corinthians to get hold of most of all is what it means to have Jesus at the middle of your story, your life, your thoughts, your imagination. If they could do that, all the other issues that rush to and fro through the letter would sort themselves out.
In particular, he wanted them to have Jesus at the centre of their understanding of the world and of history. Most of the Christians in Corinth had not been Jews but ordinary 'pagans'. They had been Gentiles, believing in various gods and goddesses, but without any idea that history, the story of the world, was going anywhere or that their own lives might be part of that forward movement. Again and again Paul wants them to learn this lesson: that they have been caught up into a great movement of the love and power of the one true God, the God of Israel, whose work for the whole world has now been unveiled through the events concerning his son. That's why Jesus is at the centre of the picture.
Look how, with a few deft strokes of the pen, he sketches a picture of the Christians in Corinth so that, at every point, their story is intertwined with Jesus' story. To begin with, God has set them aside for his own special purposes in King Jesus; that's what 'called to be holy' in verse 2 means. I don't possess very many suits, but there is one I keep for best, which only comes out on the most special of occasions. That's what being 'holy' means, from God's point of view; it means that he has set people aside for special purposes; and the people in question are expected to cooperate with this.
But once they've been set aside as special, they discover that they are part of a large and growing worldwide family, brothers and sisters of everyone who 'calls on the name of our Lord King Jesus'. In fact, 'calling on' his name is the one and only sign of membership in this family, though people in Paul's day and ever since have tried to introduce other signs of membership as well. And the idea of 'calling on his name' links this worldwide family back to the earlier story of Israel, the people who 'called on the name of the Lord' in the sense of the Lord YHWH, Israel's God. Right from the start, Paul shows what's going on: in Jesus, Israel's true king, the world's true Lord, Israel's one God has become personally present in the world, summoning all people into his family.
As in most of his letters, Paul follows the opening greeting by telling the Corinthians what he thanks God for when he thinks of them. Notice how he moves from what has happened to them in the past, through the sort of people they are in the present and on to the hope they have for the future, with Jesus at the centre at every stage. God has given them his 'grace' in King Jesus (verse 4). 'Grace' is one of those little words that contains a whole universe of meaning, summing up the fact that God loved them and acted decisively on their behalf even though they had done nothing whatever to deserve it, but rather the opposite.
The result of this 'grace' is that God's riches have enriched them (verses 5, 6). They have become a community of learners, growing eagerly in knowledge about God and his new life, able to teach one another, and so strengthening and confirming the original royal proclamation, 'the messianic message', that has been made to them.
God has called them in the past, God equips them in the present and God will complete the process in the future. World history, and the story of the Christian life, has a shape, and Jesus is its shaper at every point. There is coming a day – like 'the day of the Lord' in the Old Testament, only more so – when the hidden truth about the world will be unveiled; this truth will turn out to be a person, and the person will turn out to be Jesus. That's why it's the central Christian badge or sign to 'call on him', to pray to the father through him, to know his friendship and love, and to thank him for the wonderful grace he has given us – yesterday, today and for ever.
For Reflection or Discussion
In what ways do you see your church as part of a worldwide family? How does this enable you to 'call on' Jesus?
WEEK 1: MONDAY
Thanksgiving in Suffering: 2 Corinthians 1.8–11
8 You see, my dear family, we don't want to keep you in the dark about the suffering we went through in Asia. The load we had to carry was far too heavy for us; it got to the point where we gave up on life itself. 9 Yes: deep inside ourselves we received the death sentence. This was to stop us relying on ourselves, and to make us rely on the God who raises the dead. 10 He rescued us from such a great and deadly peril, and he'll do it again; we have placed our hope in him, that he'll do it again! 11 But you must co-operate with us through prayer for us, so that when God gives us this gift, answering the prayers of so many, all the more will give thanks because of what's happened to us.
You watch from a distance as a friend walks down the street. You see him turn and go into a house. He strides in cheerfully and purposefully. You wait for a few minutes. Then you see him come out again – only now you see, to your horror, that he is limping, staggering along, with bruises on his face and blood trickling from one arm. You are filled with pity and sympathy, but also with puzzlement: What on earth happened in that house?
The historian, particularly the ancient historian, is often in the position of the puzzled spectator. We may have evidence about an early phase of someone's career and then again a later phase, but what happened in between is often hidden from us. So it is with Paul. He has gone into the house, striding cheerfully along; that is how he appears to us in 1 Corinthians. Now, in 2 Corinthians, we see him emerge again, battered and bruised. Even his style of writing seems to have changed. But we don't know what happened inside.
Nor does he tell us. Like many people in the ancient world, he was more interested in what illness or suffering meant than in giving us a detailed account of his symptoms. Most of what we know is in these verses; we can glean a little from things he says later in the letter, but it doesn't amount to much. He simply refers to 'the suffering we went through in Asia' (the Roman province of 'Asia' was roughly the western half of modern Turkey, with Ephesus in the middle of its west coast; Ephesus was where Paul was staying when he wrote 1 Corinthians). What had happened?
Acts doesn't help at this point, either. Perhaps, if Paul was imprisoned and ill-treated in Ephesus – as seems likely – the author of Acts was anxious not to draw too much attention to it. He has Paul getting into enough trouble as it is. But the riot in the theatre in Ephesus, which Acts describes in chapter 19, may have been part of it. In that passage, things are quietened down by the city officials. But people had woken up to the fact that if the message Paul was announcing was to catch on, their businesses would suffer; so would their civic pride in the great temple of Diana. And the opposition may well have continued in new and nastier ways, leaving Paul feeling, as he says here, that he's received the sentence of death.
In fact, his description sounds much like what we would call a nervous breakdown. The load had become too heavy; all his natural human resources of energy and strength were worn down to nothing. It's bad enough to hear a magistrate declare that you are sentenced to death; it's far worse when a voice deep inside yourself tells you that you might as well give up and die. That is the point Paul had reached, the point where the night had become totally dark and all hope of dawn had disappeared.
Does that mean he'd been relying on his own resources up to that point? That seems strange for someone who could write, in the previous letter, about his work being done not by his own efforts, but by God's grace (1 Corinthians 15.10). But maybe, beneath this conscious sense of God's help and grace, there was still more that Paul had to learn about the meaning of the resurrection – the very thing that he had made the climax of the earlier letter (chapter 15)! Here he says it plainly: the fact that he came to the point where he despaired of life itself was somehow intended – intended by God, he must mean – to make him rely on 'the God who raises the dead'. This old Jewish belief in the life-giving God, the God whose power created the world and will recreate it, came home freshly to Paul as he found himself stripped of all other resources.
Paul begins his letter by telling them this much, not simply in order to gain sympathy, though no doubt that is part of it, but for two other reasons as well, one which he mentions and one he doesn't. The one he mentions is that he wants them to be bound to him all the more tightly in a fellowship of prayer. When two people or communities pray seriously for one another, a bond is set up between them that transforms their relationship when they meet again. In addition, Paul sees in verse 11 that something else happens, which is what he is really interested in: when lots of people are praying for something and God then grants it, the thanksgiving is increased.
For Paul, when human beings give thanks to God, something at the heart of the universe comes back into proper shape. Humans thanking the creator for his goodness are a symptom of the way the world was meant to be, a sign that one day it really will be like that. And such signs are themselves powerful in helping forward the work of the gospel through which the great day will come.
For Reflection or Discussion
Have you ever reached the point when you felt like giving up? How in those circumstances did you find your way back to God?
WEEK 1: TUESDAY
Grace, Generosity and Gratitude: 2 Corinthians 9.6–15
6 This is what I mean: someone who sows sparingly will reap sparingly as well. Someone who sows generously will reap generously. 7 Everyone should do as they have determined in their heart, not in a gloomy spirit or simply because they have to, since 'God loves a cheerful giver'. 8 And God is well able to lavish all his grace upon you, so that in every matter and in every way you will have enough of everything, and may be lavish in all your own good works, 9 just as the Bible says:
They spread their favours wide, they gave to the poor, Their righteousness endures for ever.
10 The one who supplies 'seed to be sown and bread to eat' will supply and increase your seed, and multiply the yield of your righteousness. 11 You will be enriched in every way in all single-hearted goodness, which is working through us to produce thanksgiving to God. 12 The service of this ministry will not only supply what God's people so badly need, but it will also overflow with many thanksgivings to God. 13 Through meeting the test of this service you will glorify God in two ways: first, because your confession of faith in the Messiah's gospel has brought you into proper order, and second, because you have entered into genuine and sincere partnership with them and with everyone. 14 What's more, they will then pray for you and long for you because of the surpassing grace God has given to you. 15 Thanks be to God for his gift, the gift we can never fully describe!
Imagine trying to pack an umbrella into a cardboard tube. If you try putting the handle in first it will be difficult. Even if the handle is straight, you will find that the metal tips of the umbrella's struts get caught on the edge of the tube as you struggle to push it in. You may eventually succeed, but you are likely to tear the umbrella, or perhaps the cardboard, in the attempt. The answer, of course, is to turn the umbrella round so that the pointed end goes in first. Then, even if the umbrella isn't folded up properly, you will find that it goes in easily enough.
Something similar happens when people try to persuade others into a course of action that they may find difficult or challenging. Going on telling people to do something they don't particularly want to do is like pushing an umbrella into a tube the wrong way round. You may succeed; if you're a forceful enough character, people may eventually do what you want. But they won't enjoy it and you may damage some relationships on the way. The trick is to turn people's minds and imaginations around so that what seemed forced, awkward and unnatural now seems the most natural thing of all.
Paul rounds off his careful and cautious appeal about the collection by standing back from the details of travel plans and other arrangements and outlining the worldview within which generous giving of the sort he has in mind no longer seems awkward or peculiar. It would be easy to read this passage as simply a list of wise maxims, shrewd and pithy sayings about human generosity and God's abundant goodness; but, although the passage does have that flavour, there is more to it than that. It may be just a sketch, but it's a sketch of nothing less than the whole picture of what it means to be God's people. Give people a few slogans, and you may end up simply trying to force them to do things they don't want to. Turn their minds around so that they see everything – God, the world, the church, themselves – in a different light, and the behaviour may come naturally.
As always, Paul's vision of God's people is firmly rooted in the Bible. And whenever Paul quotes a passage of the Bible, even four or five words, it's worth looking at the original passage, often the entire chapter or paragraph from which the quotation is taken, and seeing what its overall sense is. Here we have three passages, each one of which contributes more than meets the eye to what he is saying, and that together help him to construct a larger picture of who God's people are, what their goal in life should be and how generosity in giving plays a vital part in it all.
