If you could impart one word of wisdom to another, what would that be? What is it that you wished someone would have imparted to you when you were younger? Paul has been preparing Corinth for his third visit. So what does he want them to do and understand before he gets there?
Paul’s desire for the church in Corinth is for them to live holy lives. His fear is that they would still be quarreling, jealous, angry, divided, slandering, gossiping, arrogant, and disorderly. He again brings up his strength in weakness theme that we discussed in chapter 12. We started off 1 Corinthians talking about integrity and at the end of the saga Paul’s desire for them has not changed. He wants them to have spiritual integrity that is founded in the power of Christ (v. 3).
Paul’s charges them to examine and test themselves (v. 5). So here are four application questions to ask and examine ourselves with:
- What are we to do? Simply we are to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength, and to love our neighbors as ourselves (Deut 6:5, Lev 19:5).
- Where are we to do it? We are to do it everywhere, with our family, work, neighborhood/community/world, and church.
- Why should we do it? We should do it because we have a Savior who loves us and died for us so that we could live in his power and therefore because we belong to him and love him.
- How are we enabled to do it? We are enabled to live holy lives out of our love for Christ, and out of our weakness and reliance upon God. There is power when we acknowledge and confess our weakness to God because we belong to him already. As a wife expresses love to her husband just because she loves him so should the church express love towards our bridegroom. When we are filled with God’s love for us, we are then able to love him in return (1 John 4:19). This is true spiritual integrity.
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