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Tag: corinthians

  • Mission – 1 – What?

    Mission – 1 – What?

    What is your mission in life?

    Do you have one? Have you ever thought about your daily life in terms of what GOD wants you to do?

    Christians typically don’t think of our day to day life in terms of mission, but rather we ‘send missionaries’ away to other places to ‘spread the Gospel.’

    The Apostle Paul addresses the mission of Jesus Christ in his opening advice to the church:

    1 Timothy 1:15 The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.

    Jesus Christ has a mission to save sinners. Our Lord paid the price for our sin. He continues to save us from the penalty of sin and death. Paul confesses his own sin, as should we.

    Jesus had a mission to accomplish in His three-year ministry which He continues to accomplish through those accepted by God as part of His body, the church.

    What is the mission of our church?

    Many churches and most Christians will take some approach to mission to accomplish the sending out of missionaries (as Jesus sent out His Apostles).

    We support or hire missionaries to accomplish the mission of Christ, rather than approaching our own lives as being one sent as an ambassador from God into this perishing world in the Name of Christ Jesus to save sinners.

    The church of this century has corporately fallen into a worldly check-list of ‘christian’ things that we do through others for others in the Name of Christ.

    A brief look at our corporate church websites will include visions and missions not unlike a Fortune 500 focus constructed with a secular and worldly-relevant appeal. I do not condemn us for laying a groundwork for the important business Christ has given us to accomplish, yet even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing.  [2 Corinthians 4:3]

    Sending missionaries makes our church feel good. We ourselves seem to have no mission for Christ in our daily life beyond the doors of a building we call our ‘church.’ (We contribute to missions as a small portion of our meager offering.)

    How easy it is as a church or as a Christian for us to either get caught up in goals of our ‘mission’ or to ignore them entirely.

    What is my mission as a member of Christ’s church?

    If we approach our typical intention to a mission individually we might take a systematic approach. Vision pyramidOur local body of believers may only make the connection to mission as we understand it’s meaning from the Latin root: Mid 16th century (denoting the sending of the Holy Spirit into the world): from Latin missio(n-), from mittere ‘send’.

    Mark 16:15-16 “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.

    Perhaps as Christians it is time for us to take another look at mission more in terms of the reason Christ Jesus has already sent us into the world to live as ambassadors of Heaven to a fallen world. Perhaps the time of our return should be taken with more of the daily intentional seriousness of the Apostles.

    The Letter of Paul to the church at Philippi

    3:14 I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. 15 Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you. 16 Only let us hold true to what we have attained.

    Do we press on toward this goal of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus in the same way that the Apostles remained so focused on God’s ambassadorial mission for our daily lives… until we are called upward to the time and place we will receive our resurrected eternal bodies?

    If a ‘christian’ is to have a Christ-like mission, shouldn’t we look to Christ Jesus as our example for our day to day life?

    Is your life a mission for Christ?

    Do you have any thought at all of how God the Father, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit would use you in the lives of others?

    To be continued…

  • My Love – 7 – Love never ends…

    My Love – 7 – Love never ends…

    1 Corinthians 13

    The Way of Love (agape)

    7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

    8 Love never ends.

    Once again, the ‘love‘ we proclaim though scripture from this letter of Paul to the church at Corinth is the agape love of God. Christ’s love and perfect earthly example should permeate every kind of love relationship we have with others, including of course, the love of a husband for his wife and a wife for her husband.

    You can never love too much.

    You can love in the wrong way,

    but never too much.

    Suppose we take the famous scripture of the ‘love chapter’ and put it into the context of ‘The Four Loves’ described by C.S. Lewis of the four Greek words for love. And let’s take this a step further for a moment and begin with the way the world first thinks when the word love is mentioned:

    Eros bears all things, Eros believes all things, Eros hopes all things, Eros endures all things.  Eros love never ends.

    Is this true?

    I can testify by my own divorces that eros love (romantic love) often bears little, believes only at first, hopes less and less and indeed Eros love does end. This, of course, is why our vows before God are so important to our Christian marriages.

    The same could be said of friendship love or affectionate love. Friendships certainly end and so all-too-often does the affectionate love of a parent for a child or child for parent. These tragic endings fill counseling offices and psychiatrist couches.

    Love frequently does end; the other loves fail.

    Therefore I caution us that we can indeed love in the wrong way. We often do not, as sinful and unfaithful human souls, look at love from the perspective of God.

    We think that we have only so much love we can give – only so much friendship we can give – only so much love for one child or for our mom or for our dad to give – only so much we can endure and hope and believe for the love of our life, the wife or husband of our vows. After all, ‘we are only human.’ We are limited in the flesh; we are limited in our love for one another.

    All this would be true, except for the one love for which we were created by God – agape love, which permeates our very being and relationships to every other.

    You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your strength and all your mind. (Sound familiar?)

    Other loves only become timeless in the overflowing love of Jesus Christ when the deep well of God’s love pours forth from our sinful hearts into the love-starved souls of others.

    We are made for Him and we are made for each other. We are created to love each and all; but only in the right way and with the love of God pouring from us.

    When we are empty, God will give us more.

    When we have given all, God will give us more.

    When we cannot bear this soul, God will give us more.

    When we can no longer believe, God will give us more.

    When we have lost all hope, God will give us more.

    When we cannot endure, God will give us more.

    When we think our Eros romance

    or our Philia friendship 

    or our Storge affection

    will end;

    God will give us more.

    For Agape love is not only unconditional,

    the Agape love of God is eternal.

    Agape love never ends.

    The King James English actually encourages us in God by assuring:

    Charity never faileth.

    And the NASB & other versions translate agape: Love never fails.

    Yes, Paul points out that other signs of God working in the lives of the church may fail at times. (We are just a gathering of His imperfect sinners.)

    God gives us His gifts to use in His way in our mortal time.

    Pour forth the unfailing love of Christ Jesus. Embrace every soul in His love.

    (Love one another, as I have loved you, our Lord commands.)

    The love of the church may be evident through varying gifts to different saints (Christians) as different times. Yet Love never fails. God’s own love and charity towards us never fails His purpose.

    It is appropriate reminder to us as I conclude this 7-part series on My Love, to remind us of the love of God for me, a sinner, and for you.

    God has not failed us.

    The Cross of Christ Jesus never fails.

    We are saved by the grace of the sacrifice of our Lord, Christ Jesus.

    As we near the end of these last days I appeal once more to your faithfulness to the Lord Who IS faithful to those who love Him. Be faithful to God in every kind of love God so richly gives to you from the deep spring of His eternal love.

    Have you failed in your love? Have you failed God? Have you failed your beloved to whom you are wed? Have you failed a friend? Have you failed a parent or a child who needs your unconditional love?

    ekpiptō – to fall out of, to fall down from, to fall off; to fall from a thing, to lose it; to perish, to fall: from a place from which one cannot keep,  from a position, to fall powerless, to fall to the ground, be without effect of the divine promise of salvation

    In Christ Jesus, we have God’s unfailing love. By grace we cannot fall. God’s love never fails.

    Peter reminds the faithful of the importance of us not failing Christ Jesus, if indeed He IS our LORD.

    2 Peter 3: NKJV

    10 But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements will melt with fervent heat; both the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up. 11 Therefore, since all these things will be dissolved, what manner of persons ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, 12 looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be dissolved, being on fire, and the elements will melt with fervent heat?

    17 You therefore, beloved, since you know this beforehand,

    beware lest you also fall from your own steadfastness, being led away with the error of the wicked;

    18 but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

    To Him be the glory both now and forever. Amen.

  • My Love – 6 – If I have not love

    My Love – 6 – If I have not love

    ‘I’m not happy.’

    ‘I met someone’

    IF you claim to be a follower of the Bridegroom of the church, Jesus Christ and things don’t go quite your way, would you tell Jesus to ‘get out’?

    Would you look for someone better, who might make you happy in this world?

    (Did God really say, “Don’t eat of the fruit of that tree?”)

    IF you are unfaithful to Christ’s love, would it not be adultery?

    christian whoreThough you claim to be a follower of Jesus, so had Judas!

    This is the unfortunate false witness of some with a cross in front of their home, ‘christianity’ claimed before ‘friends’ as religion, their stamp of approval before the world. These claim many things by the ‘Blood of Jesus,’ yet their more bold witness of worldly sins again crucifies hope in His body and true Bride, the church.

    Some have heard the following, even at weddings, known as the ‘love chapter.’

    IF Jesus Christ is your love, listen then to true love, you adulterers of Christ!

    1 Corinthians 13

    The Way of Love

     If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.

    I have heard in churches the noisy gongs of ‘single moms,’ divorced grandmas and others clanging the noise of their own ‘higher’ worship, ‘tongues of angels,’ God’s messengers; as if we should follow these women, rather than Christ Jesus as Lord. Will they who are not bowed down to their husband or any man in Christ not lead the faith astray with their babel?

    2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.

    I have heard prophesy given in the church. Is it from God? Why then did the church not record the very prediction of God given? Is the prophesy confirmed and witnessed to the glory of our Lord, Christ Jesus? Yes, sometimes; but believer beware of the wolves in our midst.

    Have you not endured some claiming such superior knowledge and understanding of mysteries who would teach us of their ‘faith to remove mountains’ in their Sunday school class or church small group?

    Did you experience the embrace of Christ’s love in their Pharisaical instruction? Did you hear love for you in their teaching or prophesy?

    I, too, have received prophesy and spoken it. The revelation of the Lord is a terrible and awesome thing!

    Some prophesy has not yet come to pass. For all I know, I may have been given some spirit of deception to accomplish the Lord’s overpowering purpose. Yet in these last days we must fear the Lord, always listening for the approaching trumpet of truth over the blaring cries of some claiming ‘understanding.’

    Read your Bible and pray for revelation by the Spirit of Truth in scripture.

    3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

    ‘And though I bestow,‘ states the King James; bestow, an interesting word more related to charity as we understand it – charity, agape love of God, used in application throughout these verses of the love chapter.

    Bestow: to feed by putting a bit or crumb (of food) into the mouth; of infants, young animals etc.; to feed, nourish to give a thing; to feed someone, feed out to

    Feed on God’s word in scripture. Nourish your spirit in prayer.

    Does this not also bring to mind the love a father and a mother, given to their child, their teen, their grown adult children, even their spouse given in marriage into your own family? Is this not also the gift of adoption given by our Heavenly Father through Christ to gentile believers (like most of us)?

    Are we not all poor and needy, dependent on our Father’s forgiving gracious love?

    Though I give to the poor, but have not love…

    Is that our charity of witness?

    Now that I have shared the seriousness of God’s love for us, allow me to share the more familiar actions of love often and appropriately shared at weddings:

    4 Love is patient and kind;

    love does not envy or boast;

    it is not arrogant 5

     or rude.

    Are you patient to your spouse, to whom you are joined to each other and God by your vows?

    Is your husband (or wife) patient with you – patient for you?

    Is your love for your beloved partner until death – kind?

    Are you, dear father, and you, dear mother, kind to your son – kind to your daughter – kind to each and all of your children (obedient and faithful, or rebellious and hateful)? Are you kind to your adopted child, your step-child, your child (even an adult child) given into your nurture by God to raise and guide in the Lord, Christ Jesus?

    Is your love patient and kind even to your prodigal teen?

    Is your love for your spouse, your children, your brothers and sisters in Christ ALWAYS patient and kind? Lord help us, impatient and unkind sinners!

    It does not insist on its own way;

    it is not irritable or resentful;

    it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.

    Are you just another ‘spoiled child’ of God in your relationships with others in your daily life?

    7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

    Lord: Convict us and forgive us, for the sake of your Son, our loving Savior, Jesus Christ. Help me – help us to love you more and more; help us, miserable saved sinners, to love those you love with your overflowing agape love.

    8 Love never ends.

    To be continued…