Monday 23rd May - 1 Corinthians 3

Today’s chapter is 1 Corinthians 3, you can read it here

Tom writes:

For a weak and trembling man Paul kicks pretty hard. His rebukes of the church  - “you are still worldly” (v3) and “do not deceive yourselves...” (v18) - are robust to say the least. To understand how such robustness can be in bed with such trembling we must distinguish between the message and the messenger. We’ve seen Paul all the way through Acts and we know that he is uncompromising about his message. God is the immovable object in Paul’s life. God has revealed himself to Paul and has sent Paul to testify to who He is. You never catch Paul adding ‘maybes’ or ‘from my perspective’ to his statements about the character or work of God. “You are God’s field”. “You are God’s temple”. “If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him.” Instead, Paul trembles about himself. Paul trembles over the meagreness of himself and Apollos and the saints of Corinth. He is fearful that they will become the focus instead of Jesus. We are nothing, he says. The only one who counts is God, he says. Paul sounds like an accident-prone delivery man realising he is carrying a ming vase. The more conscious he is of the value of the vase, the more alert he is to the risk of him wrecking it. This sounds so far removed from most of my “ministry” up until this point.

Far too often I’ve bent over backwards to allow different perspectives on the character of God. I’ve added way too much wiggle room into my presentations of who we are in Christ. What have I been thinking?! I’ve been acting like a mere man, I have been building with straw. At the same time I realise I’ve been far too focused on myself as the messenger. I can’t remember a sleepless night about the content of a message, except for when that content caused someone to criticise me for it. I have been anxious over conversations not because someone believes something wrong but because they believe I am wrong! In this I have been worldly and I can deceive myself no longer. I ask Holy Spirit to lead me in a better way. It is God who makes things grow. It is Him I need to present to people in his pure unadulterated form. And whether they like me or loathe me it makes no difference in the end, for all things are already mine and yours in Jesus Christ.