Christian Origins #29 - Corinthians

07/24/23 • 28 min

Born to Win Podcast - with Ronald L. Dart

Of all the ceremonies that are connected in our mind to the Christian faith, there is probably nothing more fundamental than that ceremony we call the Lord’s Supper, or Holy Communion, or the Eucharist, or the Christian Passover, even. You would think that if something was so central to the Christian faith...that, at least, would be something we would not have any argument about. Well, you’d be wrong, because Christians do differ on many thing—on what they call it, when they do it, how they do it.

This is nothing new about this, though. In the first century, the apostle Paul had to write a letter to the Christians in Corinth to explain to them what they were supposed to do about this most important ceremony. I guess we should be thankful for the Corinthian church. If they hadn’t been so obstreperous—if they hadn’t been such a problem to Paul—none of these questions would have arisen, 1 Corinthians would not be written, and we wouldn’t have this very valuable information. In 1 Corinthians 11, verse 17, Paul says this:

Now in this that I declare unto you I praise you not, that you come together not for the better, but for the worse. For first of all, when you come together in the church, I hear that there be divisions among you; and I partly believe it. For there must be also heresies among you, that they who are approved may be made manifest among you.

1 Corinthians 11:17–19 KJ2000

Paul seems to say that we need to have this kind of thing so we can tell the difference—so that God can look down here and see who is going to serve him and who is just going through the motions. Then Paul addresses what was going on when the Corinthians gathered together to observe that fundamental ceremony. From what Paul has heard, they were not celebrating the Lord’s supper—that re-creation of his last Passover with his disciples—but were doing it their own way...and he is not amused. But first, let’s digress and get a little background on the example they were expected to follow, in the Gospel of Luke, chapter 22.

1 Corinthians 11:17–19 KJ2000

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Faith in a Box

I think I am at long last beginning to understand something that puzzles a lot of people. How was it possible to hate a man who could make the blind see, the lame walk, the deaf hear? A man who could restore an insane person to his right mind? What on earth could motivate religious people to want to kill him? The healer, of course is Jesus, and the men who wanted to kill him were the religious establishment of the day.

The Jews had been through a lot to get where they were. They had endured 70 years of exile in Babylon, and even after they came home and restored the Temple, they had made their way through some terrible times. They had been oppressed and occupied, and through it all they had to continually beat off challenges to the orthodox faith.

And by the time Jesus came on the scene, the majority had firmly established themselves as the religious leaders of the Jews. The political structure of Judaism was a relatively stable, two-party system—Pharisees and Sadducees. Then, Jesus appeared, and posed the most serious threat to their power that they had ever encountered. Jesus was a problem. And if you take your time reading the New Testament, it becomes plain that they didn’t hate him because he healed sick people. They hated him because he was not orthodox. I use the term orthodox, not in the sense of identifying a sect. I use it in the broader sense of the word: conforming to established doctrine especially in religion.

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Christian Origins #30 - Corinthians

One of the truly sad things in the history of religion is the hostility that persists between Jews and Christians—sometimes it even becomes hatred. It’s very old, of course. It dates from the very beginning of the Christian faith—not only in the conflict between some Jews and Jesus, but even in the Book of Acts, among the followers of Jesus who wanted to maintain the faith of Jesus as a Jewish sect and not admit Gentiles. It is almost as though there were a jealousy between Jew and Gentile over Jesus.

And as Paul took the gospel to the European synagogues, that jealousy persisted. Jealousy is a powerful instinct in man, and getting religion doesn’t wipe it out. It just gives it a new field to explore. And so it was that when Paul wrote to the church at Corinth, he had to address a matter of jealousy that had arisen. He starts the 12^th chapter of 1 Corinthians this way:

Now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I would not have you ignorant. You know that you were Gentiles, carried away unto these dumb idols, even as you were led. Therefore I give you to understand, that no man speaking by the Spirit of God calls Jesus accursed: and that no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Spirit.

1 Corinthians 12:1–3 KJ2000

There is a funny thing about this verse. It doesn’t seem to fit here in a discussion of spiritual gifts. And one would think it possible for a person to say that Jesus is the Lord and not mean it. How does it fit in this context of spiritual gifts? I can’t think of any class of person who might say that Jesus is anathema except those Jews who rejected him as Messiah. This suggests an ongoing conflict between the Jews and Gentiles as the Gentiles accepted Jesus (who was Jewish) as the Messiah.

So what is Paul talking about here? Once again, we have to realize that we are reading someone else’s mail, and without understanding the dynamics that existed on the ground in Corinth, it is easy to miss the import of what Paul is saying. Perhaps we can read between the lines and understand the conflict a little better.