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Thank you, Mr. Chairman, sir, for those kindly words, and all of you, seeing this is our last evening together for the time being, all of you be thanked, heartily thanked, for the great encouragement and stimulus you have been to me in these past weeks. It is a word of scripture that says it is more blessed to give than to receive, and I am often persuaded that that is so when it comes to the preaching of the word. Perhaps the preacher gets more out of it than they who listen. Certainly he has the easier part. It's much easier to stand here for an hour and a half than it is to sit on a hard seat for an hour and a half.
Nonetheless, thank you for your evident enjoyment of the word of God and your willingness to work hard. It is a heartwarming thing to see people in this modern and far advanced age with sufficient belief in the validity and inspiration and authority and interest of God's word to devote themselves to hard work of a Saturday evening to understand it a little better. And thank you for the warmth of your fellowship and the spirit that you have brought along to these studies each evening. My apologies to those of you who have been somewhat disappointed in the meetings on the previous occasions.
I have to warn you, you'll be even more disappointed this evening, you'll see. Eh, I know it must be terribly frustrating to come along to a series of lectures on a well-loved epistle, all keen to know the answers to particular verses and particular problems that have interest and perhaps vexed you for many seasons, hoping that the preacher will give you at last the answer, or at least tell you what he thinks, whether you agree or not. It must be extraordinarily frustrating when the preacher doesn't tell you what he thinks, doesn't even mention the verses, and instead of dealing with these extraordinarily interesting puzzles, concentrates on the simple things that you have known long since and for many years.
Well, I'm sorry. My excuse is that, of course, I attempted the impossible in attempting a survey of this epistle in seven, uh, uh, sessions, and to attempt to do it at all, I chose, as you have seen, to select two particular themes. Now, tonight, as you have heard, our second session has to be devoted to the answering of the questions that you have graciously put in. And so, because I was rather slow last week in getting to the point, I have some unfinished business, and we have to consider, uh, two great sections of this epistle in the hour and five minutes that now remains to us.
So let me remind you, if I may, to begin with this evening, what it is, what themes they have been that we have been concentrating on in this epistle. We have noticed that, like us, the Corinthians were full of mistakes that they made, both in their individual and private lives and in their church fellowships. What interested us more was, in the first place, the way that Paul goes about correcting their mistakes. He will, on times, lay down the law, quote rules and regulations, and bid this the Corinthians recognize that the things that he ordains are the commandments of the Lord.
But more prominently even than that is his habit, that when he comes to correct the faults of the Corinthians, he does so by bringing them back to the basic gospel of their salvation. That is a marvelous cure of most ills, if not of all ills, for the people of God, constantly to come back to the basic, glorious, and wonderful facts and truths of our gospel. It is possible, little by little, to inch away in our church experience from the basic principles of the gospel.
So we have been tracing that technique of Paul's, uh, the way he corrects the faults of his fellow believers by bringing them back to the gospel. Because that is so, we found a second strand of interest in this epistle. Because Paul is so frequently expounding the gospel, it comes about naturally that he gives us to see what is the Christian philosophy of man. He answers the question, what is man? What does it mean to be truly human? And supremely, not just what does it mean to be human, but what does it mean and will it yet mean to be a redeemed human being?
For it is a wonderful thing to be human. I hope you are of that opinion. It is a wonderful thing simply to be human. But oh, what an indescribable wonder it is and shall be to be a redeemed human. Ah, you sit here for a long time tonight in some pain and strain for, for two hours and a half. Ah, but you've got a long while yet to go on being human, haven't you? Ah, and if I could, uh, once more impress it upon all our hearts, the wonder of being a redeemed human being.
Perhaps you will even tonight catch sight again of the glories that are beyond, and rejoice with joy unspeakable and already tinged with the glories of heaven. So then tonight we shall do that same method. We shall have to consider two areas of fault, two major areas of fault, and study how Paul answers them by bringing the people back to the gospel once more. And then, as we hear his answers, we shall perceive yet further the wonders of what it means to be redeemed human beings.
So our first area of study in this first session are chapters twelve, thirteen, and fourteen of the epistle, and here's hoping you've done your homework to have read them recently before we come together. The general area of fault in these chapters, uh, occurs in relation to the topic of spiritual gifts. Now, as Paul observed in chapter one of the letter, the church at Corinth was marvelously, richly endowed in spiritual gifts.
They came behind in no gift, waiting for the revelation of the Lord Jesus. And those words, let's recall them again, show us what the purpose of gift is. Ahead of us lies that glorious event, not just the coming of the Lord Jesus, but the revelation of the Lord Jesus. The one whom, having not seen, we love, and though we see him not yet, do we rejoice with joy, unspeakable and already tinged with glory. Oh, do you find yourself wondering from time to time, my fellow believer, perhaps as you doze off to sleep at night, maybe, or in your serious study, what he will really look like when you see him?
Or that first moment when he shall be revealed and we see him no longer through a glass darkly, but face to face, whom, having not seen all these many years, we have learned to love. Oh, what a wonder it will be. And in that split second of a moment, the gracious work of God's redemption will be complete, and we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. You come behind in no spiritual gifts, says Paul, waiting for the revelation of God's son. That's why gifts are given, to prepare the people of God for that inexpressible wonder of seeing the Lord Jesus and being like him.
What there is of them. For a baby can be like its father, can't it? And a grown-up man can be like his father, only there's more of the grown-up man than there is of the baby. We shall all be like Christ, what there is of us. Which set Paul working his fingers to the bone, so he tells us in the Epistle to the Colossians, against that glorious day that he might present every fellow believer that he get he could get his hands on, that he might present them fully grown, fully mature, not spiritual babies anymore, but adult, fully grown, redeemed men and women.
There lies the purpose of gift. And seeing each believer has a gift, whatever that gift is ultimately directed towards that glorious end, the increase of the body of Christ against the day of his coming. But it is evident when we read these three chapters, three eleven, uh, twelve, twelve, thirteen, and fourteen, and particularly from chapter fourteen, that the dear Corinthians had got their gifts out of perspective and out of proportion.
The particular culprit among the many gifts was apparently the gift of tongues, given originally as a sign to unbelievers, says Paul. A self-evident miracle when unbelievers could hear the gospel being preached in their own native tongue, being preached by men who had never learned their language, as happened on the day of Pentecost. A sign, therefore, for unbelievers. Like other gifts, of course, its use would benefit the user by reflex action.
It was but many among the gift, it was but one among the many gifts. But from the length at to which Paul has to go in chapter fourteen to urge upon his fellow believers that there were gifts more important than tongues, and that if only they loved the people of God, they would seek not tongues, but those gifts more calculated to help people to the maximum. From the length he is obliged to go, we gather then that they had got this one gift all out of proportion.
And then we learn from the end of chapter fourteen, they not only concentrated very strongly on this very exciting gift, but that if you had attended their assembly, uh, ge- uh, church meetings, you would have found that there they were all over the place practicing it simultaneously, you'll see. It must have been an inglorious noise, but there they were all carrying on all together, you see, instead of doing it in a sensible fashion, one by one. And apparently the prophets weren't much better either, and they had to be exhorted to do this in proper order, only three at the most, and one by one in turn.
For what reason, we shall see in a moment. But if that was the trouble, our chief interest tonight is to notice how Paul deals with it. And he deals with it by bringing them back to this wonderful part of the Christian gospel, this most glorious achievement of our salvation. How shall I find words fit to describe it? He brings them back to what here is called the body of Christ.
To the wonderful fact that through the redemption that is in Christ, all believers have been formed into the body of Christ. So let's turn to thinking about the body of Christ for now some moments. Please will you notice that when Paul talks to us about the body of Christ, he is not just using a parable, saying to his fellow believers, you know what, you all really, if your church gatherings are going to function efficiently, you ought to look at yourselves as a body.
That is perfectly true. But Paul was not the first man ever that had used the body as a metaphor, as a parable. The Roman historians relate how that at one stage the plebs, the ordinary people in Rome, got fed up with their blue-blooded overlords and went, like the miners, on strike, do you see? And seceded and said, you get on with it, you, uh, you, you, you blue-blooded lot, you aristocrats, you get on with it. They marched out of the city and were for seceding. And at that juncture, one of the aristocrats went out to the people and pleaded with them.
And he used precisely this thing, he used the parable of a body, and through his eloquence was able to persuade the people that the body politic, uh, you see, is like a body. All the members need each other, and we aristocrats need you workers, and you workers need us aristocrats, you see. And what will you get up to if you go on strike and you miss our contribution as aristocrats? And dear, oh dear, what will happen to us as aristocrats if you plebs go and run away and there's nobody to dig our fields, you see. And by the clever use of that, of the body as a parable, he persuaded the plebs to give up their strike and come back and live in the city and cooperate with the aristocrats, you'll see.
He used the body as a parable. I want to make the fo- the point here to begin that when Paul talks to us and says that we are the body of Christ, he is not simply using a parable. He is not saying you ought to behave as a body. He is, in the first place, saying you are a body. Whether you behave like you should or you don't behave like you should, the glorious fact of redemption is this: you are a body. And why that is important, we shall see now, as Paul tells us how it is we have been constituted as a body.
And you'll see. He doesn't say aim to be a body. You have been constituted a body. Not, of course, a body that in all respects is like our physical body. You mustn't argue the body of Christ necessarily has a liver and a spleen and so many lengths of colon and all that kind of stuff, you see. That would be to carry an analogy too far. But the body of Christ is a real entity, a living organism, and it bears certain resemblances to a human body. For those, more and on.
But how did we become the body of Christ? Well, says Paul here in one Corinthians twelve and verse thirteen, in one spirit were we all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greek, whether bond or free, and were all made to drink of one spirit. This is how the body of Christ was brought into being. This is how it was formed. Pray then notice the double operation. In one spirit, you were all, we were all baptized into one body.
The first operation, baptism in the spirit of God. Second process, and were all made to drink of one spirit. Two processes. Dual same. So we must ask ourselves now what they were. Let's take the first one. You were baptized in one spirit. Not you were baptized by one spirit. It is not the Holy Spirit that does the baptizing, is it? The Holy Spirit is the person into whom we have been baptized in one spirit.
It's a help to grasp it, isn't it, if you remember the first man in the New Testament to talk about this. He was John Baptist, and he talked in this fashion. He said, you know, my dear contemporaries, I baptize you in water, but there comes one after me, he shall baptize you in the Holy Spirit. Do you see the parallel and the contrast? I baptize you in water, says John Crito, if you can visualize him. Here stands John the Baptist in his old camel hair and what have you, munching his, uh, locusts and wild honey. But anyway, here he stands, and if you come to John the Baptist for baptism, John the Baptist will place his firm hand around the nape of your neck somewhere.
You'll see, take you down into Jordan, and John will put you into the water. John baptizes you in. By contrast, the Lord Jesus, when he baptizes us, he takes us and puts us not now in water, he takes us, he baptizes in the Holy Spirit. So we were baptized in the Holy Spirit. We were put in the Holy Spirit. And that is magnificent, isn't it? All you my seniors who are on the way to glory longer than I have, and you've known this ever since you were sweet seventeen and you're now ninety seven, Ha.
Oh, let it come to you with marvel tonight. For the Holy Spirit is not so much stuff, is he? The Holy Spirit is the divine person. Tell me if you can, the ultimate of this mystery, that the risen Christ has taken you, frail bit of humanity, sinner to boot, and not only cleansed you from your sin and destintine- destined you to some drafty little seat just inside the portals of heaven. But taken you one time sinner and cleansed you and put you into God the Holy Spirit.
How do you bear the wonder of it? And not only so. In one spirit we were baptized into one body, and we were all made to drink of one spirit. The complementary operation. You'll see you put the two things together. To baptize, we were baptized in the Holy Spirit. Well, then Christ put us in the Holy Spirit. That wasn't enough. There had to be the second operation in which the thing was reversed, and we were made to drink of the Holy Spirit, that is, the Holy Spirit goes into us.
Yes? If you're baptized in water, you go into the water, don't you? If you're made to drink a glass of water, the water goes into you. How were we formed into the body of Christ by this double activity? Christ put us in the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit in us. We all say, but pray explain, how is that? That's a marvelous operation, doubtless, to be baptized in the Holy Spirit and made to drink of the Holy Spirit, but how's that got anything to do with the body?
Well, Paul has just ob- asked us to observe the human body. He says in the preceding verse, doesn't he? For as the body, that is the physical body, is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, being many, are one body, so also is the Christ. So, look at this human body, the particular one that stands before you tonight. If you can bear it, the experiment will be short, and then you may shut your eyes again. Uh, but uh, as you observe, this human body standing in front of you is one body, but it has many members. By what art of mechanics or something? By what nuts and bolts and Meccano odd bits and pieces is this contraption kept together, this body of mine, this physical body?
How do the fingers manage to keep on and not fall off? And how do the feet? We'll say simple, my dear brother, it's the bones and the muscles. It isn't, is it? Not really, not ultimately. Not that I know anything about anatomy, but you'll say if you were to put a bullet through my head and lay me out on the floor and come back in a hundred and fifty years time, you would find some of the members had dropped off, notwithstanding the bones and the muscles. Oh, oh, why do they drop off for? Do the nuts come unscrewed or something.
No, no, no. Because, you see, the ultimate thing that keeps me together is this. The old blood that's in me goes coursing round my veins right down to my little toe and up to my head, you see. And the blood carries the oxygen. And if the blood gets cut off and the oxygen gets gets cut off, I die. And if the oxygen and what have you gets cut off from my foot, that goes gangrene and falls off. Horrible. And you'll say, but uh uh uh uh, that is the secret of the thing keeping together. You say, well, tell us a bit more.
Um, this oxygen stuff, uh, where is it? Well, the interesting thing is, it's I'm in the oxygen, and the oxygen is in me. Yeah? You say it's getting complicated now. Well, you're getting it free. A lot of people pay a lot of money for this in their medical schools. I'm in the oxygen, and the oxygen is in me. Yeah? You must have the both one at the same time. It's no good having one without the other, is it? You'll say, if you were to come up to me after this session, don't please, but if you were to, uh, and get me by the throat, the oxygen would be in me, but I couldn't get at the oxygen in the outer air, as you'll say.
I should go black in the face. I must have the oxygen in me, and I must be in the oxygen. And if you were to take me to Cape Canaveral, wherever it is, the Americans put up rockets into the sky, and you'll say, Gooding, we're going to send you for a ride, uh, don't free free, sit on top of this thing here. Uh, hold tight now, take a deep breath because we're going to push you up now into space, you see, and there's not a lot of air up there for you to breathe, so take a take a big deep breath, my boy. So I take a deep breath, and the rockets go off, and out I go into space, you'll see. What happens now? Well, the learners will tell me, they say you'll go pop.
Because it's no good having the oxygen in you if you're not in the oxygen. And it's no good being in the oxygen if the oxygen can't get into you. You've got to have the two, haven't you? To have a human being that keeps together many members but one body, you must have the two, and you must have it simultaneously. There is no such thing as a true believer who is not baptized in the Spirit, is there? Well, if you could find a believer that wasn't baptized in the spirit, that believer wouldn't be in the body of Christ.
You've got to have the both things simultaneously, and that is the wonder of it, all the wonder of it all. What is this great thing that Christ has done? Risen to glory, he shed forth his Holy Spirit, baptized his people in the Holy Spirit. I repeat, the Holy Spirit is not some gas like oxygen. He is a person. We may helpfully perhaps distinguish, as the theologians do, between the person of the Holy Spirit and the energies of the Holy Spirit.
The New Testament simply says that we are in the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit in us. I said earlier that when our blessed Lord Jesus ascended into heaven, the very face of heaven was changed. Never before had a glorified human being with a glorified human body been in the divine presence. That was the first major marvel of his ascension, followed by this extraordinary thing that the risen Christ, authorized by God, having received the promise of the Father, shed forth the Holy Spirit, baptized his people in the Holy Spirit, and an entity was formed that had never existed before.
You You'll will say. but how has that formed this body of Christ? Well, madam, I hope you enjoy this next bit you meant, but it's fact anyway. If you are in the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit in you, and I am in the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit's in me. You and I are in the same person, and that same person is in us. We have the same life. And just like, to use a faint analogy, the blood in my body is one second down in the feet and the other second up in the brain.
And it's all one life that keeps the members together. That's why we are members of that same body. Because you're in him and he in you, and I, by his grace, are in him and he in me. And we share the same life. You may not always think it true, that standoffish old Englishman. How distant the man feels and seems. It's true nonetheless. One body. In the Lord. Oh, in my heart of hearts, I don't apologize for reminding you of it.
Oh, if only we could get hold of it more deeply. It would solve a lot of questions without our having to think too much about them, actually. So then, thus have we been formed. It's not an ideal to be aimed at, it is a reality. We'll say, I can't really believe it. You will say I'm in the body of Christ and he's in that body with me. Don't feel like it, particularly on Mondays.
Yes. This is the fact, isn't it? How you say, how can Christ be in heaven and me on earth and we be joined? Well, how can your feet be on the floor, sir, and your head about four feet above it? Hm? Not really difficult, is it? I was reading, as I do for my bedtime reading from time to time, one of these popular science books written for the innocent, semi-learned public, you'll see, and this was about wrinkles in time. And the good scientist was telling us all how he and his, uh, fellows made a tremendous discovery. Now, generally recognize, so he said, that the galaxy that we are in, yeah?
Planet Earth goes around the sun, yes? So we go twizzling around the sun every year. But the sun is one sun amongst billions of suns that form a group called the galaxy, and you can see a bit of it if you go out on a dark night and look up and see the Milky Way, you're looking at our galaxy edge on, yes? And the old galaxy has spiral arms like a Catherine wheel, such as we used to play with on Guy Fawkes night, and uh, goes round. What this scientist discovered is that the whole galaxy is not only going round, it's being drawn in a particular direction. And it is traveling in that direction over a million miles a min- an hour, over a million kilometers, I beg his pardon, over a million kilometers each hour.
How does that come about? Because there is some gigantic structure, very distant from our galaxy, that is exerting its pull on the galaxies, so it keeps the galaxy together, but all the same it is drawing us to itself at the rate of a million kilometers an hour. Did you feel that bump last Tuesday? You say, no, I didn't notice any bump. Of course you didn't. No one has ever felt it yet. Isn't that funny? Do you know, the more one knows about science, the easier it is to be a believer, isn't it, Watt?
That, uh, there can be such a gigantic power, of those vast differences, able to exert its influence on our whole galaxy, to pull it at the rate of a million kilometers an hour, and we don't feel it. Ah, that's a good example, isn't it? We mustn't, uh, start by our feelings, you know. You know, if we're prepared to believe the scientists who do their delicate ex- experiments and find it is so, we just believe them.
Shall we not believe God and his word? How distant heaven is, I couldn't begin to tell you. Oh, but the reality is there. The gracious life of the Holy Spirit of God pulsating from the risen Lord and down into me and down into you, and enver- enwrapping us all, forming us into one body. Because that is a reality, certain implications follow, and Paul helps us to see them by using still the analogy of the human body.
And I want to just to point out a few of these, and then we must pass on. One, a body by definition is not one member, but many. So the, uh, verse fourteen says, do you notice that? The body is not one member, but many. If it were just one member, it wouldn't be a body, would it? It's not one member, but many. What follows from that? Well, to take the human body, for instance, it is, it is not one member, but many.
So then if a foot shall say, because I am not the hand, I'm not of the body, that would be nonsense, wouldn't it? You'll see, to start with, how do you suppose God constructed the human body? Do you suppose he sat there upon his throne and said, I design our body now. Now, what I could do with is a foot or two to put on this body. Now, any good feet around here? Where is there a good foot? Oh, you wouldn't qualify as a foot now, not good enough. Oh, you look like a likely foot. Well, because you're a likely foot, I'll put you in the body. That's not how you get into the body of Christ. By having a gift or by using a gift.
You don't get in that way. You say, how do you get in? Well, I just told you. By being baptized in the Holy Spirit, having made to drink of the Holy Spirit, and being in the body of Christ and growing therein, you'll find that you will develop a gift, just like the fetus in its mother's womb develops, and as it develops, a this member and that member appear. That's the way round it is, isn't it? So we don't get into the body because we have a special gift.
We first get into the body and then discover that God has planned us as a gift to the body. And if the ear were to say, I'm not the eye, and therefore I'm not of the body, that would likewise be nonsense. And the point of the analogy? Well, what Paul is going to argue is this. If somebody were to tell you that if you don't speak with tongues, you are not in the body, and you haven't been baptized in the spirit, that would be wrong, wouldn't it? Utterly false.
Do all speak with tongues? No, certainly. Do all prophesy? No. Are all teachers? Of course not. You imagine somebody saying that if you're not a teacher, you're not in the body. That would be nonsense, wouldn't it? Why is it false to say that if you, uh, are not a teacher, you're not in the body? If you don't speak with tongues, you're not in the body. If you don't prophesy, you haven't been baptized in the spirit. Why is that false? Three reasons. If the whole body were an eye, the body would be grievously defective, wouldn't it? Says Paul, if the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing?
If the whole body of Christ was made up with teachers, it would be a curious entity, wouldn't it? It would be seriously defective as a body. To be a body, it needs all the gifts. Secondly, why would that be false to say if you're not a teacher, you're not in the body? Because you don't have any, any final decision as to what gift you have. God has placed the members in the body as pleased him, says verse eighteen. And thirdly, verse nineteen, if they were all one member, then it not only would it be true the body would be defective, you could go further than that and say if they were all one member, it wouldn't be a body at all.
One colossal great eye is scarcely a body, is it? So does Paul regulate the mistaken emphases of the Corinthians by bringing them back to the great glorious fact of the body of Christ, and then drawing out its implications. Second practical implication. All the members are necessary for a complete body. And therefore the eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of you.
Even the most feeble are necessary, says Paul, necessary, that is, to a complete body. Now I'll tell you a secret about my own body. My eyes don't like gravy. No. Especially when people splash it in my eye and thus deliver it. No. Can't see the point of gravy, not my eyes can't. It's horrible stuff. Do you know what? My eyes need the old gravy. And mercifully in the body, there's a stomach that thinks gravy is marvelous stuff, you see.
And the job of the stomach is to minister the old gravy, to digest it and pass it on to the eyes, you'll see, and a good many other things. My eyes don't like cream buns either, nor rashers of bacon, but they need it, you'll see. And therefore the eye can't say to the stomach, you blind alley, you. I don't any need of you, nor what you go in for. I'll tell you a secret, if you promise not to tell anybody else. Some people say we don't care much for teaching. The gospel is the main thing. Oh. You don't like these chaps that go into all this detailed exposition and theology, you don't?
No, you say I can get on without that. Well, God bless you. I'm telling you, you need it, like my eyes need the gravy, you'll see. And that's why God has some of these other folks who do like this kind of stuff, actually. And they process it and pass it on to you, whether you know it or not, in a form, let's hope it, it's palatable, and get you the vitamins. You can't say of any gift, I have no need of you. You see, all are necessary.
All are by God's arrangement, interdependent. Some folks with some big gifts can easily slip into that sadly wrong idea that they are so important, that they don't need the other. And even me. I need you, my brother. I need you. With all the theory in my head, oh, how I need you. And your prayers.
And your encouragement. And your wisdom. Ah, but once other thing, while every member, every gift, therefore, is necessary for a complete body. Now, there are some members in our physical body, and they are bigger than others, aren't they? You could cut off my little finger, and that would be a pity, because it's very important, my finger, it's the gripping finger, is it not? Wow. Um, that would be a pity you cut it off, but I should still survive.
You cut out my lungs or my liver, and I shouldn't survive, should I? So while all gifts and members are necessary for a complete body, all are not equally important. Some are greater than others. And how would you judge what is greater? For to that, finally, we have to cons- we have to bring ourselves. Seek earnestly, says Paul, the greater, the better, the greater, the bigger gifts.
If as a church you're going to seek, or yourselves as individuals, a gift, go for the bigger ones. What do you mean bigger? Paul explains it at the beginning of chapter fourteen, taking as his examples the two gifts, prophecy and tongues, and he declares that prophecy is greater than tongues. Why is it greater? Because prophecy excels to the edification of the church, that's why. It brings more benefit to others.
Now, on the day of Pentecost, they who spoke in tongues did a marvelous job, and as a result of the miracle God used them to perform, multitudes were brought to conviction and salvation. But to use tongues in the church, when folks couldn't understand what was being said. Well, because I'm speaking to God. Well, so you may be, my dear brother, but in the church, if you had to choose in the church what you would do, speak to God or speak to man, which would you do? We will say, my dear, I should be holy and I should speak to God. You'll be wrong in the church.
When it comes to gift, gift is given us to benefit the other people. You don't have to have a gift to speak to God, you know. Gifts are given, aren't given for that purpose. The various babe in Christ can speak to the Father. You don't have to be specially gifted to do that. You'll have to be specially gifted to teach your fellow members. You don't have to be a, an evangelist in order to hear the gospel, believe it, and get saved, do you?
Of course you don't. Anybody can get saved that believes. You have to have the gift of an evangelist if you're going to preach the gospel and lead other folks to Christ. Gifts are given so that we shall be able to help other people. You speak to God in tongues, but you don't speak any what Paul calls edification, comfort, and consolation to God because he doesn't happen to need it. It's my fellow believers that need edification and comfort and consolation. And therefore that gift is bigger, that is able to communicate that spiritual benefit to my fellow believers.
That is the function of gift. And therefore I am to seek the better gifts, the bigger gifts, when it comes to seeking. And because that is so, Paul then talks to us about our motivation. Why should I bother to seek a gift? And if I've got a gift, why should I bother to use it? I show you a more excellent way, says Paul. It is the way of love.
For love is the driving force in the body, isn't it? It's love of the other fellow, not love of myself. It's love of the others that should drive me to seek a gift. It's love of the others that ought to motivate me in using my gift. And if I seek a gift simply for my own benefit, and not for the blessing of the other members of the body, I am sinning against the very basic law of Christ.
I must preach to myself, mustn't I? I enjoy preaching sometimes. Woe betide me if that were my only motive. But if I preach just for the joy of it, because it profits me, and don't do it out of love to my fellow believer, I'm worse than nothing. I have offended against the basic law. Oh Christ. You know...
Of course. If you've got a gift, when you use it, you enjoy using it, don't you? There's nothing wrong in it. My hand, I hope it enjoys being a hand. I work it pretty hard, expect it to do all sorts of things, and the more it works, the more skillful it gets at doing things. I hope it enjoys being a hand. But what a stupid thing it would be if the hand just sort of wiggled about, and you say, well, why do you do that thing, you fingers, you? Why, I mean, why, why all this menagering about, nobbing and dancing around, hand? And the hand was how I like it, really. Oh, you say you do, yes, well, that's good. But wh- wh- who are you helping? What other member in the body are you helping?
Well, I'm not concerned with that. I- I'm just enjoying being a hand, you'll see. You are. You're a bit of an oddity, aren't you? Stupid hand. Only purpose the hand is in the body by the design of the creator so that it should help others. That is its raison d'être. So it is with every gift in the body. It's designer made to be a help to the others in the body. God calls us then, in our church life, to remember these things.
Our gifts are not fashion parades. Our gifts come to us because by God's grace we've been put into the body of Christ. Oh, may the wonder of it fill us through and through. Then let us remember our duties as we have seen them briefly again here. And when we ask ourselves, where shall we get the power from to love, to toil, to be patient, and all those other things, then the answer is that we are the body of Christ.
There is within us and available to us the resource. So often we forget it and go off on our own ambitious projects with self-indulgence. And then the Holy Spirit can't empower us, can he? We need constantly to remember that we are members of the body of Christ. And God, by his grace, has put us together, that there should be no schism in the body.
The medics tell me in their wisdom that there are processes in the body that are there to fight evil and keep the body free of germs and all other evil invaders. But sometimes they say these mechanisms go wrong, and they mistake the body itself for something foreign. And lo and behold, the very mechanism in the body that's meant to preserve the body starts eating up the body and destroying it.
Oh, my brothers and sisters, talk about gifts in the church. History has shown that perhaps the biggest schisms and rents in the body have been caused by the gifted, the specially gifted. Personality in human affairs is a difficult thing, isn't it? And when you get two high-powered charged personalities, you're liable to get a personality clash. That's known well in the world, isn't it?
My brothers, it can happen in the church. Powerful gifts. And then roaming outside the control of the Holy Spirit. They fail to distinguish between what is error that they may, they must fight, and fellow members of the body that they're meant to protect, and they ca- beg- begin to destroy the very body. It could make you weep in your more serious moments, couldn't you? Ah, the rendings of the body of Christ by people that were specially gifted, but their gift got out of control.
God speak to me and then to you. Lest we should mistake the goal of our gifts. They are meant to see to it that there is no schism in the body. I have but a few minutes more to deal with the second area of fault at which the Corinthians have come. Seeing the subject matter is so well known, fifteen minutes will suffice for us to survey the material.
Curry chop. I can almost smell the tea and the coffee are brewing next door. So let it nerve our faint endeavor. From chapter fifteen, we learn of another most serious fault that had developed in the church at Corinth. Some of them were beginning to say that as far as they could make out, there was no such thing as the resurrection of the dead. Now, when we first hear that, it would sound extraordinary, couldn't it?
How could any Christian man or woman ever begin to get it into their heads that there is no such thing as the resurrection? And yet some of these early Christians in Corinth got that precisely in their heads and were beginning to say it, there is no such thing as the resurrection of the dead. How did they come to it? I suspect in the normal way that these things happened. They were very good sense in their heads, seeking perhaps to witness to their contemporaries. Educated as some of them were in the schools of the day, they would have read a lot of Greek philosophy and Greek science.
I'm very good. Be careful, uh, how you criticize it. I taught it for many years. Mm-hmm. And it's good to know what the world is thinking, isn't it? Not stick your head in the sand. But, uh, there are dangers. In wanting to be intellectually respectable, it is so easy to trim Christian doctrine and to judge Christian doctrine by un-Christian standards.
It was a commonplace in many kinds of Greek philosophy that there was no resurrection of the dead. Some philosophies, like Platonism, believed in the survival of the soul. Plato wrote la- a large tome on the immortality of the soul to prove that the soul survives after the death of the body. Other Greek philosophers would have disagreed and said there is no survival of anything after death. The early atomic theorists, uh, do you see Leucippus and Democritus and the Epicureans would have held such a view. The notion that there is to be a resurrection of the body would have struck most serious Greek philosophers as absolute nonsense, do they?
And if you mention it, they might well laugh you out of court, like Paul was laughed out of the Areopagus court when he preached Jesus and the resurrection of the body. I suspect, therefore, that some of the Christians who tried to think in the church, they were not wrong in trying to think, but they had been unduly influenced by the pressure of their intellectual contemporaries, and now we're in danger of watering down the gospel. It has happened, hasn't it, in a remarkable way in the last one hundred and fifty years, when many leading theologians in this country and in others have come to the conclusion that science makes it impossible to believe in a God who intervenes in creation.
And therefore they have said the resurrection of the body of Christ could not have taken place actually. God would never intervene in the world, in the universe, and do such a thing. And so they have said we must take the resurrection and demythologize it to mean, well, any one of a hun- half a dozen things that you might care to, to say. The resurrection is simply saying that when you get down, you needn't stay down, you couldn't get up again and have another go because you believe in the resurrection, do you see? The late, the earlier Bishop of Durham was a singular example of that, wasn't he?
Believed in the survival of the soul, but not in the literal resurrection of the body. The sad thing about ma- much of that stuff is it had its rise in the science of the last century. It was never good science. It was certainly bad theology, but it never was good science. And the science that gave rise to that kind of thing is now passé, it's gone by, and a very new look of scientists has taken their place. That be, by the by, these people had these false ideas into their heads.
How does Paul deal with it? By bringing the dear believers once more back to the gospel. Oh, forgive my emphasis, but as I go old and crotchety, the more it is impressed on my heart that the need of the church in all ages and from time to time is to get back to the gospel. So here at the beginning of chapter fifteen, Paul spells out what the gospel is. I make known unto you the gospel, my brethren, which I preached, which also you received, wherein you also stand, by which also you are saved.
I make known, I say, in what words I preached it unto you, if you hold it fast, except you have believed in vain. Meaning, if the gospel is tr- not true, you have believed in vain. But if it's true, then here it is. It's the gospel of your salvation. Now here are its contents. I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how Christ died for our sins. Yes, that's true. That isn't quite the full statement of the gospel. The gospel is how Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures. We are not left to decide the meaning of the death of Christ for ourselves.
The gospel is not that he just died for our sins, it is that he died for our sins according to the scriptures. It is the scriptures, and the Old Testament scriptures in particular, that give us the thought models by which we can analyze the significance of the death of Christ. You see Paul at it in this epistle. Christ died for our sins. What does that mean? Well, according to the scriptures, let's cite one example. Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us. How is that ancient scripture relevant and practical to us? Because by God's wisdom, that ancient Passover by which Israel was redeemed was planned by God as a thought model, by which we may analyze the significance of the death of Christ.
I hope you are expert in the offerings, well, you all are, aren't you? And the tabernacle, have a vested interest in that, and, and, and the Psalms and the prophets. You say, why? That isn't very practical. Oh, my good sirs, madam, practical? What do you mean? These things are planned by God to be thought models. You say, what is that? Well, I suspect you've watched on TV, and or you will do this week, while some learned science scientist will try to explain to you the insides of an atom, and he'll throw up on the screen all sorts of models.
He'll tell you they're only models. They help you to envisage the old atom. They're models to help you think and analyze. And God, in his good wisdom, has given us an Old Testament full of it. Full of thought models to analyze the death of Christ. That's why you hear so much of the Old Testament preached, isn't it? Good. Yeah. And the next bit is Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures. He was buried. You say, how is that relevant? Well, most of you will be one of these days.
And he was buried as literally as you may be. Oh, this is gospel now, isn't it? Can anybody say anything to me when I come to that point? And my body is put into the grave. Yes, there's a gospel, there's a savior who died, you see. And the gospel is that he rose the third day. Marvelous. You've left a bit out. According to the scriptures, first line of evidence for the resurrection of Christ, the Bible, of course.
The Old Testament that indicated that the Messiah would first die for our sins, be buried, and then rise again. Ah, you'll see when his body was a real human body, wasn't it? In the grave he saw no corruption. The third day, the very processes of death were reversed, and he came out of the grave. It has implications for every single man and woman. The scientists tell us that the chemistry of the universe is practically consistent all the way through.
They also tell us that our universe is liable to run down. The sun up in the sky is running down, certainly. One day our p- our planet will go fat. In that sense, we live in a dying little part of the universe. Any hope for it? Oh yes. If the chemistry of the universe be the same from end to end, then if the body of Jesus Christ came out of that grave bodily, it carries an implication and a message of hope for the whole physical universe all the way through.
For the promise is not only will God raise the bodies of the dead, but one day he will restore the whole heavens and the earth. Oh, what a hope it is. You say, well, you've reminded us of the gospel. I left a bit out, haven't I? For the gospel is not merely that Jesus died, that he was buried, he he rose again according to the scriptures, but that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.
then he appeared to about five brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain until now, but some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all, as unto one born out of due time, he appeared to me. That's the gospel too, isn't it? The evidence for the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. What evidence have we got? Does our gospel demand that people believe it by blind faith because our grandmother said so? No, says Paul. The gospel is not only that Christ re- was risen and ra- ri- rose from the dead, but that he was seen.
Here's the evidence. It's exhilarating, isn't it, when a preacher comes to preach the gospel in the church, or better still, outside it, and preaches the evidence for the resurrection. Yes. You don't need to preach it every time you preach the gospel, do you? But you haven't preached the whole gospel, unless from time to time you preach the evidence for it. Now our time is gone, and I must not weary you more.
My point has been made that to h- to correct the faults of the Corinthian church, Paul brings them back to the gospel. I can't cease without reminding you of the wonderful implication of this part of the gospel for what it means to be human. Oh, what does it mean to be a redeemed human being? Ah. One day, if the Lord hasn't come, they will sow us in the ground, won't they?
Sown in weakness. Sown in corruption. The stench and decay of the grave, an insult to humanity. Now that's not the end of the story. For God has started again with a new kind of human being. The first man was a living soul and could perpetuate the race by physical reproduction.
But God has long since started again. There's a new Adam, there's a new beginning, there's a new head of the race, and he generates the race. Not by physical reproduction. He is a life-giving spirit. And if you are his, my good friend, already has he put within you that very spirit, already in you as you sit there, that very spirit that was in, is in you now, one day shall take your mortal body and raise it and change it and fashion it like the body of our blessed Lord Jesus.
And this corruptible will put on incorruption, and this mortal put on immortality. Then shall come to pass the saying that is written, death swallowed up in victory. And that will be the springtime. And if that be the springtime, oh, what shall the eternal summer be when no autumn or winter will ever come again?
