Therefore let us keep the Festival, not with the old bread leavened with malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. (1 Corinthians 5:8)
Paul’s appeal to Christians is to live holy lives, as God’s holy people. Because of God’s goodness to us, Christians are to be those who live differently - we are to live according to God’s pattern, not our own.
Our approach to how we live in relationship to others, to possessions, and to God is to be different. What would that look like for us? How are we to be different? Why should we be different?
I am writing this not to shame you but to warn you as my dear children. (1 Corinthians 4:14)
This Sunday is Mothering Sunday, originally a day for people to return to their mother church. This might be their home church, cathedral, or the nearest large church. A day to recall their introduction to the Christian faith. More recently, this has become synonymous with Mother’s Day: a day to recall and celebrate the impact mothers have on our lives, and to celebrate family life.
Paul, writing to the Corinthians, describes them as his dear children. Whatever our experience of motherhood, or however Mothering Sunday might make us feel, Christians are part of a family, with a perfect, heavenly, Father who provides for us. We have the church as our mother, who nurtures us in our faith, points us to our brother Jesus, and to God as our Father.
Already you have all you want! Already you have become rich! You have begun to reign – and that without us! How I wish that you really had begun to reign so that we also might reign with you! (1 Corinthians 4:8)
The church in Corinth seemed to think that they had made it. They looked around at themselves and thought that they had everything God planned for them, that they had achived the pinnacle of the Christian life. The reality, however, is that they had not got there yet. It’s very easy for us to do something similar, and to think that life is good - it is, and can be, but there is so much more to come.
Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives among you? (1 Corinthians 3:16)
Our focus in 1 Corinthians has been how we live as God’s holy people. In this verse, the apostle Paul gives us a great reason as to why we should live as God’s holy people. We are God’s temple - the place where God is - and we have God’s spirit - God - living among us. Why should we live as holy people? Because we already are holy people - Paul just wants us to live as the people we already are.
we declare God’s wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. (1 Corinthians 2:7)
As we return to 1 Corinthians, we see the amazing news that God has revealed something to us that is for our glory. What is that mystery? How can we get glory from it? How does it affect how we live?