Toubabou

I was reading in 2 Corinthians, chapter 4 tonight, and something new struck me. We’ve been studying the Bible methodically, going slowly forward through the whole thing. Currently we are in Ephesians, so you see that my personal study time is somewhat behind. Anyway, we’ve discussed how the Corinthian church was really messed up, and how the Galatians, Ephesians and Philippians all needed help with various aspects of their walks. As I read chapter 4 tonight, however, it struck me how confident Paul sounds about the ultimate triumph of the Corinthians. He boldly asserts that when he is raised to new life, and ushered in to the presence of God, that the Corinthians will be there as well. The context does not seem to imply that they are there for punishment, rather by the grace of God in Christ, their victory is complete.

Then a second thing struck me: The Corinthians, etc. are known to us primarily because Paul wrote these corrective letters to them. We struggle with the same issues, and so the letters are very useful to us. And, wow! God used the most messed up churches in the first century to provide for our spiritual needs, here in the twenty-first. We don’t have an epistle to the Jerusalem church, or to the Antioch church. Those spiritual giants weren’t suitable for God to use to instruct us. Rather, the flawed Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, et. al. were the perfect “jars of clay” for God to use for our benefit.

DOCTRINE MATTERS: Christ’s Focus on the Cross: Was it ME?

This is a subject that has deeply concerned a number of us at our church. How can the church be built upon a broken foundation? When we don’t recognize heresy for what it is, we lose our grip on the faith.

We’ve just completed Galatians, and I was asked to teach the first of our lessons on Ephesians. The theme we saw in Galatians was “How are we saved?” The answer, of course, is by grace, through faith. As I read through Ephesians to prepare for the lesson, I saw that the theme of Ephesians could well be “Why are we saved?” The answer, in almost every case, doesn’t even refer to us. We are saved for God’s glory, and to serve God’s purposes. This frightens many moderns, but I think that comes from an idolatrous perspective. If God is on my level, then it is wrong for him to seek his own will over mine. If God is above my level, however, then I am here to serve him. How wonderful that serving him is rewarding to me, but I must remember that the reward is a side-effect of his character, not the purpose for his salvation.

Running back to the linked article, there are several suggestions in the comments there for alternative endings to the song. The one that played in my head the first four times, or so, that I heard the song was this:

Crucified, laid behind a stone You lived to die, rejected and alone. Like a rose, trampled on the ground, You took the fall, and after all attained the crown.

The point is that my mind, even after the first few times I heard the song, so wanted there to be an orthodox ending to this hymn of praise, that it rebelled against the heretical ending. Now I just keep quiet or leave the room when the song is played.