SUMBER KRISTEN: KOTBAH BAHASA INGGRIS
melayani jemaat dan hamba Tuhan
melayani jemaat dan hamba Tuhan
A question occurred to me as we were worshiping in the first
service: "Do I really, wholeheartedly love the people sitting
around me in church this morning?" Assuming that the answer
to that is yes, the next question is, "What does that look
like? How do I express my love for these folks?"
Around Valentine's Day my wife Candy and I began co-teaching the
Song of Solomon in the Old Testament to the newly-marrieds class
here on Sunday mornings. You probably know that beautiful love
poetry about the marriage of Solomon, the king of Israel, to his
wife Shulamite. Then last week Candy and I celebrated our
twenty-second wedding anniversary. So for the last month we've
had an ongoing conversation about what it means for us to live
together in the Lord in a loving marriage relationship, about
the nature of a loving lifestyle of intentional, sacrificial commitment.
I found a wonderful quote from C. S. Lewis in his book The
Four Loves. He talks about the event of falling in love:
"In one high bound it has overleaped the massive wall of our selfhood; it has made appetite itself altruistic, tossed personal happiness aside as a triviality and planted the interests of another in the centre of our being." (1)
That's what it means to really love another person.
We're going to study the apostle Paul's first letter to the Corinthians
in 16:13-24. Paul, this great-hearted shepherd of the church in
Corinth, is making his final, very loving appeal to a church that
has a lot of problems. His closing concern for Corinth is that
they experience a vibrant and loving community life. This passage
describes relationships marked by the kind of selflessness, altruism,
and concern for others that C. S. Lewis expressed. In the last
message (Discovery Paper 4540) I quoted
2 Corinthians 5:14, where Paul described what motivated him and
his apostolic associates in ministry. He said, "...Christ's
love compels us...." (NIV). There is a sense in which the
verses we'll look at in this message summarize what the compelling
or controlling love of Christ looks like in the life of the church.
The theme of love in the body of Christ is like an arrow that
shoots all the way through our passage. It starts in verse 14:
"Let all that you do be done in love." Verse 20: "Greet
one another with a holy kiss." That's the affection of love
expressed among believers in the body. Verse 22: "If anyone
does not love the Lord, let him be accursed." There Paul
is concerned about hypocrisy, about love that is not genuine in
the body of Christ. Verse 24, where Paul himself brings his own
pastoral greeting: "My love be with you all in Christ Jesus."
Now, if you've been studying through this very long letter, you
know that most of it is in the form of rebuke and correction.
Chapters 1-14 dealt mostly with bad behavior among believers.
Chapter 15, the great resurrection chapter, dealt with bad theology.
Even chapter 13, the beautiful love chapter, was written because
Paul had to deal with lovelessness and insensitivity in that body
of believers. Yet this letter comes out of deep, loving concern
for and commitment to these people. It's like God's love for us.
The writer of the book of Hebrews says, "...Those whom the
Lord loves He disciplines" (12:6). So this is very loving
discipline from the apostle. Remember how Paul began his letter.
Even though he had hard things to say, in the opening paragraph
he wrote, "I thank my God always concerning you, for the
grace of God which was given you in Christ Jesus, that in everything
you were enriched in Him, in all speech and all knowledge, even
as the testimony concerning Christ was confirmed in you...."
(1 Corinthians 1:4-6). We see from Paul that love may have to
be tough-minded at times, but it's always hopeful, confident,
optimistic, and very grateful.
EXHORTATIONS FOR A LOVING COMMUNITY LIFE
Verses 13-18 are marked by a series of commands that Paul gives.
If we want to have vibrant love life in our community, then we
need to pay close attention to the call that we're going to hear
from the apostle in these verses. In verses 19-24 he talks about
some relationships that evidence vibrant community life among
believers.
Let's read verses 13-14 where this list of apostolic exhortations
begins in this call to vibrant, loving community life:
Be on the alert, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. Let all that you do be done in love.
This challenge to be alert, to be on guard, is like a call
to wake up, to come to life, to pay attention to what's going
on around us spiritually instead of being indifferent, apathetic,
or spiritually listless. That challenge appears twenty-two times
in the New Testament. If we're not wide awake as we live out our
Christian life, if we're taking things for granted spiritually
or lightweighting the Scriptures and their claim on our lives,
then we're making ourselves very vulnerable--to satanic attack,
to the temptation to sin, and to false teachers who aren't going
to tell us the truth about the love, grace, and call of God in
our lives. Spiritual vigilance is absolutely necessary for vibrant
life in the church.
The second command is to "stand firm in the faith."
That's not the faith of trusting, it's the faith of truth. You
could translate it "Stand firm in the content of the gospel."
It's what Jude described as "the faith which was once for
all delivered to the saints" (Jude 3). Remember how confused
these Corinthians were about what was true and what wasn't true.
Like the Ephesians, they were being "carried about by every
wind of doctrine" (Ephesians 4:14). The nineteenth-century
Princeton scholar Charles Hodge said, "We should not consider
every point of doctrine an open question." Vibrant church
life in Corinth was threatened because they wouldn't take a firm
stand on many things. Too much was very tentative and relative
for them doctrinally.
In the third command Paul, using the parlance of his day, challenges
these Corinthians to "act like men." In antiquity most
people associated courage with the manliness of a battle-hardened
soldier. Mature believers, men and women alike, are controlled
by the Spirit of God and not by anything else. We have a growing
confidence in the Lord himself, in his sovereignty in our lives.
We're also becoming more courageous in the face of opposition
and difficult things that challenge us and confront us. Again,
we've seen the opposite in the Corinthians' immaturity. Back in
chapter 3 Paul called them babies, and in 14:20 he challenged
them, "Brethren, do not be children in your thinkingbut in
your thinking be mature." So another mark of spiritual vibrancy
and vitality is courageous spiritual maturity at work.
The fourth command in verse 13 is to "be strong." Now,
we can't make ourselves spiritually strong, and the Scriptures
never ask us to do that. The verb here is in the passive voice.
Literally it says, "Be strengthened." We talked about
Timothy in the last message. Remember his shyness, his struggle
to believe that God really could accomplish things through him.
So Paul wrote to him, "...Be strong in the grace that is
in Christ Jesus" (2 Timothy 2:1). That's very similar to
what Paul wrote to the church in Ephesus: "...Be strong in
the Lord, and in the strength of His might" (Ephesians 6:10).
Both of those are also in the passive voice. We're called to submit
ourselves to the Lord so that he can strengthen us.
Paul bases the imperative on the indicative rather than the subjunctive
because he is so convinced that God will make us strong, that
he will finish the building process in us. In the opening paragraph
to the letter Paul wrote, "Therefore you do not lack any
spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to
be revealed. He will keep you strong to the end...." (1 Corinthians
1:7-8a, NIV.) God calls us to be strong, and the promise is that
he will make us strong "so that you will be blameless on
the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God, who has called you into
fellowship with his son Jesus Christ, our Lord, is faithful."
(1 Corinthians 1:8b-9, NIV.) We can count on that.
The final command in those opening two verses is to "let
all that you do be done in love." It is to put others above
ourselves. This verse echoes chapter 13. In his letters Paul always
establishes love as a motivating force for ethical behavior. The
"all that you do" applies to the Corinthians' feuds
over favorite leaders, their struggles with Paul personally and
with his authority, their marriage relationships (chapter 7),
the spiritually strong people's domination of the spiritually
weak people in the body (remember Paul's challenge, "Knowledge
makes arrogant, but love edifies" [8:1]), the abuse of the
poor at the Lord's supper by the wealthy people in the church,
and their failure to serve and build up the church (chapters 12-14).
Paul's point is that when the love of Christ really controls us,
we won't live out abusive, insensitive relationships with one
another because we'll respond to Jesus' desire to express his
life through us.
SERVING LEADERS, LEADERS SERVING
In verses 15-18 there are two imperatives that are asking the same thing. We're being asked to respond submissively to leadership, but it is to be authentic, spiritual leadership. Look at how natural authority flows out of loving service. We're asked to submit to people whose lives authenticate the role of leadership that God has given them.
Now I urge you, brethren (you know the household of Stephanas, that they were the first fruits of Achaia, and that they have devoted themselves for ministry to the saints), that you also be in subjection to such men and to everyone who helps in the work and labors. And I rejoice over the coming of Stephanas and Fortunatus and Achaicus; because they have supplied what was lacking on your part. For they have refreshed my spirit and yours. Therefore acknowledge such men.
These three brothers from the church in Corinth, Stephanas,
Fortunatus, and Achaicus, who were visiting Paul in Ephesus at
the time he was writing this letter, probably delivered the letter
from Corinth that he was in part responding to.
For Paul, these men embodied the essence of verse 14. Apparently
the entire family of this one man Stephanas evidenced a loving
lifestyle of intentional, sacrificial commitment to the church
in Corinth. Twice in this paragraph Paul commands his Corinthian
brothers and sisters to voluntarily submit themselves to the leadership
that these men exercise. The first instance is in verse 16: "...Be
in subjection to such men...." The second is in verse 18:
"Therefore acknowledge such men." There's a great word
play between the last clause of verse 15 and the first clause
of verse 16, and it comes out well in the New Revised Standard
Version: "...They have devoted themselves to the service
of the saints; I urge you to put yourselves at the service of
such people...."2 The acknowledgment in verse 18 includes
both a recognition of loving service and the accompanying submission
that's called for in verse 16.
I looked these men's names up to see how they were referred to
in other places in the New Testament, and there is no hint that
these men were officers in the church; they aren't mentioned as
pastors or elders or deacons. But what they did was exhibit a
quality of life that leaders in the church in any age, men and
women alike, having any ministry responsibility, are to have.
The kind of spiritual leadership that we must exercise is always
based on servanthood. That was very difficult for the Corinthians.
They were stubborn, competitive, and arrogant. I think Paul believed
that if the Corinthians listened to these three men, God could
use them to bring order out of the chaos that was so typical of
church life in Corinth.
What were the specific qualifications for leadership that these
men exhibited? This is a very important checklist for any of us
in the body whom God has called to leadership or who might aspire
to be used by God as a leader in the church. Three statements
stand out.
The first statement is in verse 15: "They have devoted themselves
for ministry to the saints." Stephanas and his family together
loved the work of ministry, and they served the body on their
own initiative. That doesn't mean that they forced their way into
leadership. Rather, whenever they saw a need, they went to work
to meet it without waiting to be asked. They were solution-oriented
instead of problem-oriented, and they probably didn't care who
got the credit when ministry was accomplished.
The King James Version translates the verb "devoted"
as "addicted." (3 )They were serving in ministry so
consistently, so regularly, that it was like an addiction; they
were hooked on ministry. The writer of Hebrews praises this kind
of perpetual service of love: "For God is not unjust so as
to forget your work and the love which you have shown toward His
name, in having ministered and in still ministering to the saints"
(Hebrews 6:10). This addiction or devotion to ministry is not
affirming compulsiveness or drivenness in ministry. It's not being
a workaholic for the Lord. Remember, we are controlled by the
love of Jesus Christ, that internal direction that leads us into
ministry.
The second qualification for leadership is in verse 16. He speaks
of those who help in the "work and labors." The word
"labors" literally means "toil to the point of
exhaustion." Servant leaders work hard in the service of
Christ. They work hard for the good of the church, expending themselves.
We're called to hard work if we aspire to leadership in the body.
I love how William Barclay summarizes verses 15-16: "In the
early church willing and spontaneous service was the beginning
of official office. A man became a leader of the church, not so
much by any man-made appointment, as because his life and work
marked him out as one whom all men must respect. All those who
share the work and toil of the gospel command respect, not because
they have been appointed by a man to an office, but because they
are carrying on the work of Christ." (4)
The third qualification for servant leadership in the body of
Christ is summarized in verses 17b-18a. These three men were committed
to personal relationships. "...They have supplied what was
lacking on your part. For they have refreshed my spirit
and yours." As leaders, these three men were encouragers.
Paul missed his spiritual family back in Corinth. He longed to
hear from them and know what was going on with them. These three
men showed up and told him all the stories. They filled in the
blanks of what God was doing in people's lives. They lifted his
spirits with their presence. They had the same effect on the believers
in the church in Corinth. Paul says they brought the joy of companionship
to him. They got close to him. They were personally involved with
him.
It is true in any age and any setting that the best spiritual
leadership is warmly relational. All of us in leadership ought
to be approachable, engaging. We have no right to be aloof or
distant, and we ought to take the initiative in our leadership
of encouragement as these three men did in the body in Corinth.
As I reviewed these commands, I realized that I must apply them
personally to myself. If we care individually about the vibrancy
of our life here, if we want a love life that really honors Christ
and folds people in, then we've got to start looking at ourselves.
I have no right to look at anybody else. I can't evaluate any
other elder or pastor in this body. I must ask myself in the light
of these statements, "Am I spiritually alert to what God
is doing around me? Am I standing firm in the faith? Do I know
what I believe? Am I hanging on to it? Am I a person who is growing
in maturity and courage? Am I allowing God to strengthen me, or
am I still trusting my own natural strength and resiliency? Is
it the love of Christ that controls me in what I do in this body,
or is it something less than that? And finally, do I live submissively
toward the people who work hard in the church, regardless of their
title or official office or role, who pour their lives out for
the good of the church and the work of the kingdom?
OPEN HEARTS, OPEN HOMES
Now beginning in verse 19, we come to the closing greetings of Paul's letter. He describes some more wonderful patterns of Christian behavior. The exhortations we've already looked at and these greetings to come really give us a beautiful picture of Paul himself and of the warm relationships he built with people in the early church. Oftentimes Paul is pictured as a tough old swashbuckler adventuring across the Roman Empire. But in the process he fell in love with people, connected with them, and sustained those relationships for the long haul. Look at some of these evidences of vibrant, loving community life in verses 19-20:
The churches of Asia greet you. Aquila and Prisca greet you heartily in the Lord, with the church that is in their house. All the brethren greet you. Greet one another with a holy kiss.
Most of the letters of this period would end with a number
of greetings like this, because mail was so intermittent that
they never knew when the next letter would get through, so they
wanted to get in all the greetings they could when they knew that
the letter was going to be shipped.
The first kind of love we see here is love from church to church.
He brings greetings from the churches of Asia, and then in verse
20, "all the brethren" refers to the congregation of
the church in Ephesus. The love of Christ in our life as a congregation
produces love for people we don't know. And Paul is not mouthing
religious platitudes here. He's not stretching the truth to impress
his readers. Apparently these churches that he had traveled to
in Asia and this congregation in Ephesus were passing along genuine
salutations. They were honestly concerned about the welfare of
their brothers and sisters in Corinth whom they had never met.
When we as a church are committed to allowing the life of Christ
to control us and express itself through us, then we'll have the
same kind of concern for other churches, people in different circumstances
and places, people we may never have the privilege of personally
fellowshiping with. We can pray for those people. We can give
to meet needs that they may be experiencing. We can encourage
them.
Next he focuses on a wonderful couple, Aquila and Prisca. In other
places Prisca is called Priscilla. Aquila and Priscilla are a
wonderful Jewish husband-wife team who were dedicated to ministry.
Their lives were intertwined with the apostle Paul's. Like Paul,
they were tentmakers, and that was probably how they met initially
in Corinth. They had lived in Rome at one time, but had been driven
out of that city by Jewish persecution.
Priscilla must have been a remarkable woman, because in the six
times the couple's names appear in the New Testament, four times
Priscilla's name appears first. From that we get the impression
that she was probably the stronger of the two. She was a devoted
teacher, leader, and witness for Christ.
But Priscilla and Aquila worked wonderfully well together as a
team, serving the Lord and helping Paul. When Paul moved on from
Corinth to Ephesus, he took them with him to help plant the church
in Ephesus. And they were such a dynamic duo in ministry in Ephesus
that he left them behind to help lead that little church when
he headed on to Antioch. It was during that time that they poured
their lives into this young preacher Apollos, who was a little
confused about the nature of the gospel. Priscilla and Aquila
together helped Apollos come to a full and complete understanding
of the grace of Christ.
The reference here in verse 19 emphasizes their lifestyle of hospitality.
Their home was always open. They were leading a church in their
home in Ephesus. And like the three brothers mentioned in the
preceding verses, Aquila and Priscilla involved themselves in
people's lives. In Paul's letter to the Romans, he talks about
how Priscilla and Aquila put their own lives at risk to help him
out of a very difficult situation (we don't know what happened).
We also know from Paul's letter to the Romans that they returned
there and ministered, again hosting a church in their house.
Wherever they went, their home became a center for ministry.
Paul's very last letter before he was executed was to Timothy,
his young charge. Timothy was back in Ephesus then, pastoring,
and Paul sent greetings to Priscilla and Aquila, who had gone
back to Ephesus to help Timothy in his ministry just as they had
helped Apollos and the apostle Paul himself. In terms of how they
lived their lives, how they viewed ministry, how they used their
home, this couple is a wonderful model of flexibility, seeing
their vocation as furthering the work of Christ. Their marriage
relationship was wonderfully transparent. They were committed
to the premise that marriage meant ministry for them. Their home
was wonderfully attractive, a place of worship, hospitality, and
refuge in what was then a very dangerous world.
I don't want to name names as the apostle Paul does, but I am
so grateful that so many couples and singles here at PBC lovingly
open their hearts and homes as Aquila and Priscilla did. They
have been wonderful models for Candy and me during our twenty
years here. In the way they live their lives they have warned
us against a family life of self-indulgence and self-protectiveness.
They have encouraged us as this dear couple encouraged churches
in Rome and Ephesus and Corinth to actively live out our love
for people, to make ourselves vulnerable, to live openly and honestly,
to understand that our home is not our castle but a place for
community life and ministry.
The last statement of verse 20 is "Greet one another with
a holy kiss." In the body of Christ there ought to be wonderful,
genuine, spontaneous expressions of affection between brothers
and sisters in Christ. In Paul's day that holy kiss was a kiss
on the forehead or the cheek, from men to men and from women to
women. I wondered why Paul would command the church in Corinth
to do this. But remember what they were like as a church-cliquish,
having "in groups," exclusive, feeling superior. Paul
is saying no. We're all on level ground at the foot of the cross,
and greeting one another in this warm expression of affection
wipes out those barriers.
Today we might kiss and hug one another, and that's wonderful.
Or we might share a holy handshake. Whatever it is, we need to
define ways that we can honestly express the affection that we
feel for one another in Christ. We live in a day of tremendous
personal isolation and insulation. In most of our churches, demonstrations
of affection are sadly lacking. The danger most of us face is
showing too little rather than too much affection. One of the
problems in a church as big as PBC is that we too easily allow
strangers to remain strangers. The shy person who comes here isn't
often noticed. And some people, sadly, just don't want to experience
real fellowship. But if there really is genuine love here, then
we're going to find ways to make friends out of strangers and
show affection to our Christian brothers and sisters.
The last few verses show us how passionate Paul is about this
issue of love in the body. He takes the manuscript from his secretary
to whom he's been dictating, and he signs his own name, and then
he personally, in longhand, adds a little final note. We need
to imagine the apostle almost trembling, he feels these things
so deeply.
OBEDIENCE, THE TEST OF LOVING THE LORD
Look at verses 21-22. He once again says they must be loyal, wholeheartedly obedient, devoted to Jesus Christ. And they ought to be longing for Christ's return.
The greeting is in my own hand-Paul. If anyone does not love the Lord, let him be accursed. Maranatha.
This is a final call to obedience for the Corinthian Christians.
But instead of calling for obedience to apostolic authority, Paul
puts it in the ultimate language of Christian obedience: "If
anyone does not love the Lord...." That covers the entire
letter. To insist on human wisdom over and against the gospel
of Jesus Christ is not to love the Lord. The same is true for
living in incest, attending idol feasts, and so on down the list
of problems we've studied. The ultimate issue for Paul is not
their obedience to his letter but their love for the Lord Jesus,
or their lack of love and their failure to obey the word of Jesus
Christ. Disobedience is to reject Christ, and Paul says the result
is that they will place themselves under the curse, the anathema
or the wrath of God. In the words of 2 John, "Anyone who
goes too far and does not abide in the teaching of Christ, does
not have God...." (verse 9). John goes on to say such a person
should not be welcomed into the Christian fellowship.
The final exhortation is given in the confident hope of Jesus'
return. That's the word "Maranatha." It means "Lord,
come quickly." This verse is a marvelous example of tough
love, speaking the truth but confident that the Lord Jesus will
return and set everything right.
A LOVING SHEPHERD
Paul closes the letter in the last two verses with a beautiful prayer of benediction. I was struck by the loving shepherd's heart that comes out in this prayer. Verses 23-24:
The grace of the Lord Jesus be with you. My love be with you all in Christ Jesus. Amen.
He closes it with the same spirit in which he opened it. In
1:3 he greeted them, "Grace to you and peace from God our
Father and the Lord Jesus Christ." Despite the strong language
of verse 22, Paul has to close with a positive, prayerful note
of encouragement. He's convinced of the effectiveness of the grace
of God at work among them. Grace will triumph.
This is the only one of Paul's letters that he ends with an affirmation
of his love for his readers. It's amazing when you think of the
church to which he expressed it. This was the church that resisted
him the most, that was the most fractured in its love life. But
he says, "I love you"-not just in himself but because
of the relationship with Christ that has transformed his life.
Out of that he can express his love for the church, because he
knows that's the only kind of love that lasts, the only kind of
love that makes a difference, the only kind of love that's tough
enough to survive in the face of the personal rejection and insult
he has experienced from this church.
The question I asked at the beginning was, "Do I love the
people seated around me in church this morning?" I realize
that I will love them to the extent that I have fallen completely
in love with the Lord Jesus Christ. If we have problems in our
relationships of love, our relationship to Christ is at stake.
Remember how Lewis defined what it means to fall in love: "In
one high bound it has overleaped the massive wall of our selfhood;
it has made appetite itself altruistic, tossed personal happiness
aside as a triviality and planted the interests of another in
the centre of our being." (1 )
Those are all humanly impossible apart from the work of Jesus Christ in us, changing us.
NOTES
1. C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves, © 1960 by Helen
Joy Lewis, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., New York. P. 158.
2. New Revised Standard Version, © 1989, Division of Christian
Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in
the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
3. The Holy Bible, King James Version, © 1970, Thomas
Nelson Inc., Camden, NJ.
4. William Barclay, Letters to the Corinthians, ©
1954. The Westminster Press, Philadelphia, PA. P. 186.
Scripture quotations taken from the HOLY BIBLE,
NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION are identified as such herein. ©
1973, 1978, 1984 International Bible Society. Used by permission
of Zondervan Bible Publishers. All other Scripture quotations,
except where noted, are taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE.
© 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995
The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.
Catalog No. 4541
1 Corinthians 16:13-24
32nd Message
Doug Goins
March 21, 1999
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