2 Corinthians 13: Spiritual Integrity

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.

1 Corinthians 1: Integrity and the Christian Life

1 Corinthians 1

What marks the Christian life? Paul in writing to the Corinthian church is forced to admonish them for their failure to live according to the grace of Christ. In essence, their faith in Christ does not coincide with their lives. They needed integrity.

Paul begins 1 Corinthians by responding to the report that he hears from Chloe’s household (v. 11) about their behavior. They have broken into quarrelsome groups warring against each other. Unfortunately, the church today often looks eerily similar. We argue about music, traditions, and everything else that we can think of. But Paul will have none of this among people whom he loves so dearly. Instead, Paul appeals to the unity they have in Christ (v. 13) and his death on a cross (v. 17), because there is something about Christ and the cross that should mark Christians as different.

Instead of quarrels, Christians should be marked by the power and wisdom of God (v. 18, 24), namely Christ. But for the world this wisdom is foolishness and completely contrary to anything they can imagine. It is the foundation of ‘spiritual’ integrity.

Integrity is defined as an internal state or quality of being that leads to strong moral and ethical principles. We are not born with integrity rather it is cultivated within us. We can call it spiritual integrity because it derives from our union with Christ. In him we have been enriched in every way (v. 5) including that we can be strong (v. 8) and live with integrity. True spiritual integrity should mark our lives and there is no greater testimony. Therefore, since we have this foundation in Christ; then let us live with His integrity.

Posted By Aaron