Grace OPC Sewickley PA

Sermon Book: 1 Corinthians

One Body, Many Members

About this sermon

Paul compares the church to a body, one body with many members, all baptized by one Spirit into one body. The foot cannot say it does not belong because it is not a hand, and the eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you.” God has arranged the members as he chose, and he gives greater honor to the parts that seem weaker. Small congregations share fully in the glorious body of Christ. At the Lord’s Supper believers are reminded that they are united to one another and to the risen Christ.

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Sermon transcript

Let’s turn together in our Bibles to Paul’s letter to the Corinthians. As you’re turning, I want to thank the session for having me come again. It’s always a joy to be with you. We’ll read together from 1 Corinthians chapter 12, beginning at verse 12. Through verse 27. Hear now God’s holy word. First Corinthians 12, beginning of verse 12, page 136 in the Bible I have in front of me.

For even as the body is one and yet as many members, and all the members of the body, though they are many, are one body, so also is Christ. For by one spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and we were all made to drink of one spirit. For the body is not one member, but many.

If the foot says, because I am not a hand, I am not a part of the body, it is not for this reason any less a part of the body. And if the ear says, because I’m not an eye, I am not a part of the body, it is not for this reason any less the part less a part of the body.

If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole were hearing, where would the sense of smell be? But now God has placed the members, each one of them in the body just as he desired. If they were all one member, where would the body be?

But now there are many members but one body, and the eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of you. or again the head to the feet, I have no need of you. On the contrary, it is much truer that the members of the body which seem to be weaker are necessary, and those members of the body which we deem less honorable, on these we bestow more abundant honor, and our less presentable members become much more presentable, whereas our more presentable members have no need of it, but God has so composed the body giving more abundant honor to that member which lacked, so that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it. If one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it.

Now you are Christ’s body and individually members of it. As far as reading, let’s bow our heads in a word of prayer. Our Father in heaven, this is your word, and we ask in Jesus’ name, that by the power of the Holy Spirit this morning, you would speak to us. And when you hear and answer this prayer, we know to give you the praise. In Jesus’ name, together we pray, amen.

Well, 1 Corinthians chapter 12 comes after chapter 11. And to understand chapter 12, beginning at verse 12, we should very quickly take a look back at 11. And in chapter 11, beginning at verse 17 and following, Paul is giving instruction concerning the Lord’s Supper, a sacrament. And we know what’s been happening in the Corinthian church. It seems that the rich people in the congregation were taking care of their family and not sharing with those who were less rich and factions had developed and Paul condemns them for being divided. So the division in the church was manifested here in the sacrament.

Then as we begin to look at chapter 12, we see a continuation of the theme that the body of Christ, the church of Christ, is one. And in the verses up to verse 12, we see that there are gifts given to the body, all given by God’s Holy Spirit. And then finally, we come to our section in chapter 12, beginning at verse 12, concerning the church as the body of Christ.

And that’s where I’d like us to focus our attention this morning. Now, as Paul talks about the church, remember the church in Corinth was not the stellar congregation. There were sins in that congregation that were horrible. Nevertheless, he’s writing to the Corinthians and he’s writing to us today about life in Christ and life in the church. And he’s going to call in our passage, the church, the body of Christ. And this isn’t the only time that he uses a phrase like that. Let me read a couple other verses if you’d like to follow. Go ahead, but I’ll be going quickly.

In Romans chapter 12, beginning at verse 5, Romans 12, 5 and following, Paul says this, so we being many are one body in Christ and individually members of one another. So there’s body and members again, Romans 12, five. And the purpose in Romans 12 was for the people in the congregation to be satisfied with the tasks that the Lord had given to them. Then a few other passages, for example, in Ephesians 1, 23, Ephesians 1, 23, Paul described the church as this is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. Once again, the church is connected to the body of Christ, and this time, the glorious, the full body of Christ.

And then one more, Colossians 2.9, Colossians 2.9. For in him, that is in Christ, dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. Christ fills all and all, Christ is glorious in his body. And the church is called the body of Christ in our passage. Now, as we look at these many verses in chapter 12, beginning at verse 12, going through 27, please notice that the section is divided into two parts.

And I know it’s getting close to lunchtime, but it’s sort of like a sandwich. A sandwich has bread on the outside and bread on the outside, and what’s interesting is the stuff on the inside. Well, the analogy doesn’t work with scripture, because the stuff on the outside is interesting, too. So let’s switch the analogy to an Oreo cookie, because you’ve got chocolate on the outside, chocolate on the outside, and that pig fat and sugar on the inside, which is really good, too, which is a basic food group. So however you wanna look at it, that’s the structure.

We’ve got these, okay, now I’ll be academic here. We’ve got books and bookends. If you’ve got a shelf of books, and you’ve got a number of books, you need to have something heavy on the ends, book ends, to keep the books together, and that’s the structure as well.

So, what’s Paul teaching? There are two important parts to the teaching, and here are the book ends. The book ends found in verses 12 and 13, And again, in verse 27, the bookends is Paul’s teaching concerning our union with Christ that’s manifested in our baptism. The bookends are union with Christ.

And the good stuff in between, again, whether it’s a sandwich, an Oreo cookie, or just books, the good stuff in between is that the body of Christ, although many, is one. So that’s the structure, and this morning, we’ll look at it in those two parts, and we’ll start with the bookends concerning our union with Christ, baptism, and being in the church.

So turn with me, if you’d like, to verses 12 and 13 and verse 27, 12 and 13 and verse 27. In 1 Corinthians 12, 12, In 1 Corinthians 12, 12, for even as the body is one and yet as many members and all the parts of the body, though they are many, are one body, so also is Christ. Now here, you’ll have different translations of that last phrase. And all of them are difficult because Paul is speaking in a peculiar way. So is Christ is how Paul ends this. Christ is a body and the church is Christ’s body. Now, we’re not going to try to unravel all the intricacies of that relationship.

What is clear for us today is that if you belong to Christ, if you have come to him by faith, you have been united to him. And you have been united to him in his body through your baptism. And you have also been united to other members in that union.

So there’s a couple things for us to emphasize as American Christians living today, not 2000 years ago, during Paul’s time. So often we Americans are what some people call Lone Ranger Christians. That is, it’s me and Jesus. As long as I’ve got my personal relationship with Jesus, things are good. Well, it’s good to have your relationship solid with Jesus. But Paul’s teaching is that in our union with Christ, we are united to each other. And there’s a simple way to express this. You can choose your friends, but what’s the end? What can’t you choose? Your family. So you can choose your friends, but your family is a given. And this is your family.

This is the body of Christ that meets here. We’ve been united to Christ and we’ve been united to each other. But this morning, as we look at verses 12 and 13, I want to emphasize something that I trust you all know and understand, but I want you to see it with new eyes this morning. The body of Christ is spatially locatable in heaven. He is resurrected. But when you came to saving faith, you were united to the glorified risen Christ in his glory. That means no matter what role you play here on the earth, whether you’re a student, whether you’re retired, whether you’re a captain of industry, we need to see ourselves wrapped in that beauty. The glory of Christ is our glory.

There’s a whole book written on the church by a good Reformed author by the name of Kuyper. And the title of the book expresses what Paul is talking about here. The title is The Glorious Body of Christ. This church is a part of the glorious body of Christ.

At the seminary, we talk with students who come from different congregations, some small, some big. And at times, especially those of us who aren’t in the megachurches, at times we feel like, well, we’re not very glorious. We’re not very large. Just thinking about, as Pastor Brett was reminding us of the upcoming General Assembly The OPC, like the RPCNAs, it’s not one of the biggest megachurches at all. It’s not that big, it’s not that glorious in terms of wealth or power, and this congregation isn’t either, but in Christ.

In Christ, the glory that is Christ’s is ours. Paul underlines that in verses 12 and 13. And by our baptism, we’ve been engrafted into this Christ. That’s what he talks about particularly in verses 13, the first part and the second part. Look at verse 13, the second part. We’ve been made to drink into one spirit. And here he’s perhaps talking about either baptism or the Lord’s Supper. But the sacraments that are an important part of this teaching are ours and they are connected to Christ in His glory. Jump with me now to verse 27 and see the other bookend. Now you are Christ’s body and individually members of it.

Let me ask you, how do you see yourself when you look in the mirror? As you groom yourself for church, Who do you see? What do you see? Do you see yourself in the light of verse 27? Do you see yourself actually as a member of the body of Christ? Do you know who you are? And as you think about who you are in Christ, how does that make you feel about your sins? You know that you’ve sinned. And then you read in verse 27 that you’re individually a member of Christ’s body. And doesn’t that cause some consternation? How can someone as sinful as me yet be united to Christ?

Or perhaps you don’t feel like that at all. Perhaps you think that the church is pretty lucky to have you. That way, yeah, you laughed. Good, good, that’s the right response. You need to see yourself as a sinner saved by the glorious Christ and given the honor of Christ. You need to see yourself as a sinner saved by Christ.

And as you think about your life, how important was coming here this morning? I mean, given the 20 or 30 different things, the options that are ours on any given Sunday, where do we fit our priorities? The Lord gives us one day, and if we’re pious, two hours in that day to be together. And I’m so thankful that this congregation has a meal together. You enjoy fellowship together. How important is that? We need to keep our priorities straight. The word of God sets our priorities.

And we have been made members of this body. And we’ve been made members through the sacrament of baptism. Let’s talk a little bit about baptism and how important it is here to Paul. Paul says, although we are many members in one body, 12, so is Christ, because we’ve been baptized into one body in verse 13. And then again, you are Christ’s body, individually members of it.

Baptism is the sign of that reality. And here we, in this congregation, in our denomination, we baptize our babies. And as we think about baptism, let me ask you, sometimes do we have the tendency to see it simply as a sign? In other words, something that we do, but does it have reality in our lives?

Children, you’ve been baptized. And perhaps you’ve not yet professed your faith. So let me ask you kids, do you know who you are? Do you know that you’ve been set apart to be Christ’s in your baptism? And let me ask, as we adults think about our children, continuing the analogy, the inside part of the one body, many parts, how do we view our children in the congregation?

Well, sometimes they seem to be like little toes, don’t they? Something just to fill out the shoes, sometimes not very important. And sometimes they’re little toenails or sometimes they’re ingrown toenails, right? I mean, sometimes they can seem to be problematic.

So how do we view our children? Do we view them as little disciples? That should be our view of our own children. That is, we nurture them to know Christ in a way that’s appropriate to their age, a way that’s appropriate to their emotions. We work with them in their Bible classes. We work with them in knowing how to pray. That’s what Paul wants us to see in baptism. Even the children who have been baptized are members of the body of Christ. I trust that we see them that way.

And then going beyond the kids, those of us who are adults and we too have been baptized. Does that reality play an important part of our daily lives? Do we see the work of Christ morning and evening in our lives? And let me ask you, are you personally confident of that reality? Do you know that you have been washed clean in the waters of baptism? I trust that that’s the case as well.

Well, let’s turn our attention to the center part, to the Oreo, the cream-filled part, the body parts. And Paul presents it three different ways, three different times. First in verses 14 to 16, then verses 20 and 21, and then in 22 and 23. Let’s turn first of all to 1 Corinthians 12, verses 14 to 16. For the body doesn’t consist of one member, but many.

And then Paul goes on and has talking body parts. Now this is an interesting passage of scripture, isn’t it? Can’t you see VeggieTales doing something with this? You’ve got body parts that shouldn’t be able to talk, talking. And he does it not once, but three times. He has feet, in this passage, he has feet talking and hands talking. And they’re complaining that they’re not the right body part. Well, the issue isn’t trying to figure out what body part you are or what role we play. The issue is that the talking body parts are unhappy with their place. And that’s wrong. Now jump with me to verses 20 and 21. First Corinthians 12, 20 and 21. But now there are many parts but one body, verse 21.

And the eye cannot say to the hand, I don’t need you. Or the head to the feet, I have no need of you. Now he’s returning to this personification of body parts. The same kind of image in verses 14 to 16, but with a new mix and a different point. Now in this analogy, the eye can talk. So before the feet were talking, the hands were talking, now the eyes are talking. And what’s happening in the second analogy? Well, it’s again clear.

Some body parts might exalt themselves over others and think that they don’t need each other and Paul’s going to ridicule that as foolishness. It’s the third analogy, I think, that’s the most interesting, in verses 22 to 23, verses 22 and 23. On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable. Now, on the contrary, you have different translations, but the meaning is clear. He’s saying, just a minute, just a minute. No, the way that this argument has been going has got to be reversed. We’ve got to switch gears. It’s a strong contradiction.

He’s arguing that your body parts that seem to be the weakest, and here he’s talking about body parts that we cover. Those body parts that seem to be the weakest are given the most honor in our body. And it makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? Now there’s a parallel metaphor in verses 23 and 24a that’s very similar. There’s a parallel. But his overall teaching in 24 and following is that you’ve got certain body parts that don’t need to be covered, certain body parts that it’s a shame to have uncovered, so they need to be covered, and we give those parts more honor. It’s a repetition of the argument found in verse 18. And what is the point? You need all the parts. You can’t have a part cut out. You live with a whole body.

And he speaks about sensitive body parts being covered with honor, and I would think that Paul’s perhaps referring back to Genesis. That there was a time when Adam and Eve were uncovered and unashamed, but after the presence of sin, they were shamed, and parts had to be covered. What parts? The weaker parts.

Paul’s meaning is clear with this great sandwich in between the three times of presenting all the different parts, but yet one body. Look at verse 25. I think verse 25 gives us what we need to understand this part. So there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. The same care.

Again, your Bibles may translate it differently. And the word that Paul’s using is a word that we know in English, the word sympathy. our word sympathy comes from the word that Paul is using there. And it doesn’t mean sympathy the way we use the word sympathy. That’s why the translation doesn’t say sympathy, but it says that we might have fellow feeling, that we might have care for one another. We care for our body when something happens.

If you walked outside the church right now, and a gust of wind came, and a little piece of gravel blew off the parking lot and went into your eye, what would happen? You’d double over, and you’d be miserable, and you’d desperately try to get this wee little piece of gravel out of this one sensitive body part. Do you see what’s happening? Your whole body reacts to the little piece of gravel in your eye.

Your whole body is in pain. It takes over, and it controls your body. That’s the fellow feeling that our body has. And you get the thing out, and you go, oh, boy, that’s better. And you feel entirely better, even though just one little part was hurt. That’s the image that Paul wants us to have. It’s something that transcends culture. All of us understand the pain when you have an ingrown toenail or some just little thing that can ruin your whole day. We have this kind of feeling. And then Paul’s very specific. So forget the pain part, think about the honor part. One part of the body is honored, the whole body is honored. One part of the body is in pain, the whole body is in pain. And that needs to be our identity as members of this body.

So have you ever wondered how sometimes, doesn’t it seem that Pastor Brett and the elders in their prayer requests and in their pastoral prayer, I mean, don’t they seem to pray too long sometimes? And it’s this missionary and that missionary and this need and that need. Come on, you know that sometimes it seems too long.

But I wanna tell you, the elder can’t help it. because he has fellow feeling. People far away in Uganda, or even as far away as Japan. I mean, talk about far away. People, perhaps, will never see. Nevertheless, we have fellow feeling for them. If a piece of gravel is in their eye, we’re impacted. When they’re honored, we’re impacted. When that mission does well, The body does well. And when they’re brought low, we are brought low.

Is it too important? Sometimes does it seem that it’s too long and the answer’s no. It’s so important to Paul that here in this little passage, she uses the same analogy three times. And as I was thinking and praying about this sermon, I thought, Paul, you only needed it once. I mean, it’s an image that’s so clear. Why again and again and again? And I couldn’t help but to think about Peter. And Peter denied Christ. And how many times did our Lord ask him, Peter, do you love me? It took three times to get the message through Peter’s thick skull.

And I guess I need three times of body parts. Many parts, one member. Even I can get it after three times. How about you? That’s why it’s here so often and pounded and pounded so well. So finally, as we think about our unity in Christ, our unity with Christ in our baptism, and our unity with each other, let’s think about the Lord’s Supper. It seems that for the body of Christ, something happens. We’re inaugurated into the body as children.

And as we grow and as we learn, as we walk with Christ and we become better acquainted with the mysteries of God, we are permitted to take the Lord’s Supper. And when we take the Lord’s Supper, We’re refreshed and reminded of who we are, united to each other, but also united to the risen Christ. So we don’t have the Lord’s Supper here every week, but as we do celebrate the Lord’s Supper, we need to think of these things. And in the weeks when we don’t celebrate the Lord’s Supper, I’d like humbly as a visitor to tell you, to suggest as strongly as I can, to cultivate the kind of fellowship that Paul is talking about here.

Again, you’ll have it during lunchtime, a time of actual physical fellowship. But I’m talking about that deep fellow feeling that Paul is stressing, which is part of congregational life. If this congregation wants to manifest obedience to Christ, it will manifest love and care for each other in times of need, in times of being honored. This really helps us to understand life in the church because of our unity with Christ and because of our unity with each other in Christ. We need on Monday morning and Wednesday evening and over the weekend to see ourselves as members of a rather large family. Fellow laborers working together for the glory of Christ in this area called to labor and to live in this congregation, in this area, this time, this denomination. and to see an intimate connection with men and women who are not physically connected to us, like the missionaries, to remember them in prayer, and to be ready when there’s an invitation, for example, for free labor, to be ready when we can to give freely of the gifts that are ours.

The Lord has given to each one of us gifts We are fingernails and toenails and ears and eyes. So let’s give to the Lord that which is his due because we can’t help it. Christ has done this for us and out of joy, not trying to become righteous, but because we already are righteous in Him, we walk as men and women united to the risen Christ in His glory, and we see that glory manifested in the faces at the other end of the pew. And when these good things happen here, Christ is honored, and it is surely a work of His Holy Spirit.

Let’s pray together. Our Father in heaven, how can it be that men and women like us, men and women who were lost in their sin, have had their feet set upon the rock, the rock who is Christ Jesus the Lord. And how can it be that you left the realms of glory, tabernacled among us, took our sins upon that tree, And you were raised from the dead in fulfillment of scripture. And now by the power of the Holy Spirit, you have called us men and women to be united to you in your resurrection body. Oh Lord, may we walk with that sight set before us. Our sight not set upon the things that we see with our eyes, but that heavenly reality, which is real which is true and receive the glory we ask in Jesus name.

Amen. Let’s continue worshiping him. Turning in the Psalter, the book of Psalms for singing, the red one, to Psalm 115, selection D. Psalm 115, selection D. In this Psalm, as we are just about to sing, the Lord is mindful of us. The Lord will bless the house of Israel. He will bless Aaron’s house. He will bless each one of us, whether we’re great or small. Being united to Christ is a life of divine blessing.

So let’s stand and sing together from the heart. ♪ As the world has fallen apart ♪ ♪ I am still here at your side ♪ ♪ Be the best of everyone’s children ♪ ♪ Be those children who fear the Lord ♪ ♪ Whenever they reach your door today ♪ ♪ May the Lord’s love after you ♪ ♪ After your words fill the ground ♪ they and children still increase. Blessed be the fruit of the womb, even later on in the world.

Therefore, heaven and earth are full of the Lord, urging him to the sight of men. Following the benediction, we’ll raise our voices singing hymn number 29. And now may the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make his great face to shine upon you. May he remind you that you and your baptism have been united to him, even his glorious resurrected body. And he is faithful and true and will complete the work that he has begun to his glory. Amen. Praise to the Lord.

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April 1, 2012
Vos on the Kingdom of God: Misconceptions of the Kingdom

About this sermon

A Morning Instruction class on Geerhardus Vos’s chapter on misconceptions of the kingdom. Some overemphasize the future, holding that Jesus taught only an end-time kingdom; others overemphasize the present, as nineteenth-century liberalism reduced the kingdom to an ethical program of being good. A future millennial reign of Christ on earth as a political ruler is another way of misreading the kingdom’s nature. Scripture teaches a kingdom already present in Christ and still to come, when he hands it over to the Father.

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Sermon transcript

First Corinthians 15, I’m going to read verses 20 through 28. But in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order, Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ.

Then comes the end when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. For God has put all things in subjection under his feet. But when it says all things are put in subjection, it is plain that he is accepted who put all things in subjection under him. When all things are subjected to him, then the son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things in subjection under him. That God may be all in all.

Let’s pray. Our gracious Heavenly Father, help us as we look into your word this morning, that we may really understand it, and that in understanding it, we may embrace it and practice it in our lives. Help us as we study the nature of your kingdom, that we may enter into that kingdom, and that we may enjoy all of its blessings through our Lord Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray, amen.

All right, this morning our task is to cover chapter five in Voss’s book, The Kingdom of God and the Church. And the title of that chapter is Current Misconceptions Regarding the Present and Future Kingdom. Two connections to make as you look and listen to that title. One, the previous chapter, four, also had to do with the present and future kingdom. So this is going to be an elaboration or continuation of what you just covered in chapter four. The other connection to make is what does he mean by current?

Well, he’s writing the book around 1905. So the current misconceptions he’s talking about were existent about 100 years ago. Does that mean this is out of date? By no means. Those current misconceptions are still with us, and I’ll try to point that out in some ways as we go along. All right, well, quickly, a review of Chapter 4 that we covered last week. What does Jesus teach regarding the present and future aspects of the kingdom?

What Voss presents, he describes as the older view on the subject, and I think what he means there is the orthodox view, the Bible-believing view that had been current for a long time at the time that he was writing. And in that older or orthodox view, the kingdom has both a present and a future aspect in Jesus’ teaching. Now, by virtue of Jesus’ own coming, the kingdom of God became present. When you think about the way Jesus began his preaching, for example, in the beginning of Mark, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand, or the kingdom of God is at hand. The coming of Jesus brings about the coming of the kingdom.

So we have a present kingdom. Let’s see if my pens work now. We have a present aspect to the kingdom. And Voss points out a number of characteristics of the present kingdom, but I think He may point out more than three, but I identified at least three, and they are helpful to understanding the nature of the kingdom. So we’ll ask for some volunteers to read here, and Carl, I know you’re always ready to help here, so would you read us Luke 16, verse 16?

Just hold that, and I’ll pick out a couple more here. Doris, you have scriptures there with you, okay? Would you look up Matthew 13, verses 31 through 33? And Bruce, if you could look up Matthew 13, verses 24 to 30. We’ll read those parables in reverse order. Yes, you want those again? Doris, Matthew 13. 31 through 33. And Bruce, you back up to Matthew 13, verses 24 to 30. All right, and let’s go back to you then, Carl. You have Luke 16, verse 16.

The law and the prophets were proclaimed until John. Since then, the gospel of the kingdom of God is preached, and everyone is forcing his way into it. One of the points of Luke 16-16 is simply that the kingdom must be present because Jesus speaks of it as present and is on a day. The time of the prophets, the time of John the Baptist are passing away, but now it’s the time of the kingdom.

But another I hope you can see this anyway. Maybe it’s better than a blank sheet. Okay. One of the implications of Luke 16, 16 is that the kingdom is spiritual and therefore invisible. This is simply the result of the context of when and how Jesus makes the statement. He says that people are forcing their way into this kingdom. Can you see it at the time? No. Jesus is not a secular ruler. He doesn’t have a territory with boundaries that people are, you know, signing up as citizens and becoming naturalized citizens of this kingdom. It’s clearly something that is spiritual and invisible. So that’s one of our first characteristics of the Present kingdom, spiritual and invisible.

Next, Matthew 13, 31 to 33. He presented another parable to them, saying, the kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed which man took and sowed in his field. And this is smaller than other seeds, all other seeds. But when it is full grown, it is larger than the garden plant and becomes a tree so that the birds of the air come and nest in its branches. He spoke another parable to them. The kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three packs of meal until it was all leaven.” Okay, we have the two parables in this text, the parable of the mustard seed and the parable of the leaven.

Both of them are images of gradual growth. The mustard seed is a little seed, but then it grows, and then it grows into a large bush. And the leaven is hidden in the dough and gradually works its way into leavening the whole lump. So this gives us a second characteristic of the present kingdom, that it is gradual in its growth for its timing. And the next one, backing up to the previous parable in 1913, and another parable to them saying, the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field.

But while men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed tares also among the wheat and went away. But when the wheat sprang up and bore grain, then the tares became evident also. And the slaves of the landowner came and said to him, sir, did you not sow good seed You want us then to go and gather them up? But he said, no, lest while you are gathering up the tares, you may root up the wheat with them. Allow both to grow together until the harvest, and in the time of the harvest, I will say to the reapers, first gather up the tares and bind them into bundles to burn them up, but gather the wheat into my vine.

The third characteristic of the present kingdom One way to state it is that it is imperfect. And one of the helpful things about the parable of the wheat and the tares is that it tells us not only about the present kingdom, but also about the future nature of the kingdom. The imperfection of the kingdom is present in that the wheat and the tares are there simultaneously. There’s something that has yet to be done to this field in order to bring it to its proper state.

It has to come to the harvest. And it is at the harvest time that the weeds and the wheat are going to be separated. So the parable gives you both the present state of the kingdom, its imperfection in which the weeds and the wheat are mingled together, but also that there’s coming a future state of the kingdom when the wheat and the tares or wheat and the weeds will be separated at the time of the harvest, which was clearly speaking of the final judgment.

Now that also connects with the text that I read at the beginning of class, 1 Corinthians 15, which says that Jesus must reign until all his enemies are put under his feet. It doesn’t say that Jesus must reign when or someday in the future when all the enemies are under his feet. It says that Jesus is reigning now so that there is a present reign in which Jesus’ enemies are still being subdued. And then there’s a future aspect to the kingdom, a future reign when they are all under his feet and he will deliver the kingdom over to his father.

All right, so we have these three main characteristics of the present kingdom. There are three corresponding characteristics to the future kingdom. Okay, so the present, and boy, this is gonna be, it’s no help, this green one. All right, if we think about the future kingdom, of the present kingdom, you will get what the future kingdom will be like.

Not opposite of spiritual, but the invisible. Instead of invisible, we’re going to have a visible kingdom. Okay, so in contrast to the present, we’re going to have a visible kingdom. We’re going to have a kingdom that is sudden or instantaneously revealed at the Day of Judgment. And we’re going to have a kingdom that is completely perfect or faultless. I want another way of expressing it. Just a little bit of explanation on these things and then we’ll move into chapter five.

The visibility of the kingdom will manifest itself in things like the general resurrection when all will be raised from the dead and that will be visible, will be manifested in the judgment when the The weeds or the tares are gathered together and burned, and the wheat is gathered together into God’s kingdom, which we understand to be the same thing as what Jesus is speaking about in Matthew 25 and separating between the sheep and the goats, and all of that will be visible. The instantaneous or sudden appearance of that kingdom is clear from the nature of the actions that occur, the resurrection, the final judgment. And then the perfection of that kingdom, God will remove out of his kingdom every fault, everything that causes stumbling, and it will be an eternal state of blessedness.

All right, what Voss explains in chapter four, which we’re reviewing here, is that Both of these conceptions are part of the teaching of Jesus regarding the kingdom of God. And one of the reasons that the kingdom of God is a difficult concept is that there really is no single place in which all of these features of the kingdom are brought together in one passage. And so if you’re not paying attention to the whole counsel of God, to the whole revelation of the scriptures regarding the kingdom of God, then it’s easy to fall into a one-sided viewpoint of the kingdom. Because if you were to focus merely, for example, if you focus merely on the parable of the mustard seed and the parable of the leaven, you would focus on this idea of the kingdom being something that comes gradually. And if you were not to read this in this context that it occurs with the parable of the wheat and the tares, which shows the other aspect of the kingdom as well as the gradual nature of it, that there will be a final sudden consummation. If you take one of those parables by itself, you end up with a one-sided a picture of what the kingdom is.

And what the older orthodox view that Voss was explaining attempts to do is to take into account all of the data of the scriptures about the kingdom of God and to arrange them in a biblical way. And that arrangement is the result that Voss gives you in chapter four. that there is both a present and a future aspect to the kingdom. And those two aspects are aspects of one kingdom. It’s not two different kingdoms, but one kingdom of God. And yet that one kingdom of God manifests itself quite differently in the present versus the future.

All right, now we’re ready to move on to chapter five. Voss deals with several misconceptions in Chapter 5, but they fall into two main classes, and the roughly half of the chapter deals with one class of misconceptions, and then the other half of the chapter with the other kind of misconception. We have misconceptions about the kingdom which overemphasize the future phase of the kingdom. And we have misconceptions that overemphasize the present phase of the kingdom. So the organization of chapter five is quite simple.

He takes it in good eschatological fashion. He begins with the future. He begins with those misconceptions that relate to overemphasizing the future of the kingdom And then the second half of the chapter deals with misconceptions that overemphasize the present. All right, so beginning then with those features or those views that overemphasize the future.

On page 41, you find this statement. Some writers, he’s speaking about some writers, especially of the class who insist that Jesus had no other than the eschatological conception of the kingdom. What does he mean by that? You know that eschatological means pertaining to the end. In this context, we could also say pertaining to the future.

He’s talking then about some writers who insist that the only view that Jesus had of the kingdom was one that was future-oriented or eschatological. Now, one of the things that Voss does not do in this book is to mention the names of the people whom he’s writing against.

So you have to make some inferences here, but it’s virtually certain that the principal writer that he’s referring to in this case is Albert Schweitzer. It might be a little helpful to you if you have a little background on Schweitzer’s view of Jesus and Jesus’ teaching of the kingdom. He presents this view in his famous book, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, What Schweitzer does in that book is that he reviews the work of theologians over the previous century. The book appeared around 1905, 1903 in German, and I believe it was first translated into English about 1910. So Voss is writing just about the time when Schweitzer’s book is on the shelves in theological bookstores. And it’s not that Schweitzer is the only one espousing these views, but he became perhaps the most famous, and certainly this book, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, was very famous.

Well, back to what was he doing. He was reviewing the efforts of about 100 years of theologians attempting to get behind the text of the scripture, because they had become skeptical of the authority of the scripture. Theologians attempted to get behind the text of the scripture to the, quote, real Jesus, unquote. If we can’t trust the descriptions and accounts of Jesus in the Gospels, then what was the real Jesus like? And of course we end up then with people spending enormous amounts of effort trying to sift through the gospel accounts and trying to reject what they regard to be inauthentic and retain what they regard to be the authentic message that has somehow survived all the myths that were laid on top of it, presumably, by the evangelists.

So Schweitzer is writing in that theological world, in a world of theological skepticism, in which the gospels are not taken at face value, or certainly not taken as the word of God, but the attempt is made to separate between what Jesus himself did and said, and what the gospel authors said that he did and said, but really were in some sense mythological. And what happens throughout the 19th century as this process is going on is that people reinvent Jesus in their own image.

And one of the wonderful things about Schweitzer’s book, it does have a positive value in a negative way. One of the wonderful things about Schweitzer’s book is he points out with devastating accuracy that all of these writers were simply reading back into Jesus their own 19th century liberal ideas. their own 19th century concepts of what righteousness and goodness and so forth was. They thought, well, if I know already what righteousness and goodness are, and I believe that Jesus, for my religious reasons, I believe that Jesus must have been the most righteous and best person that ever lived, then clearly Jesus must have been the best exponent of my views of goodness and righteousness that ever lived. And Schweitzer pointed out that that’s all they were doing. They had no sense that Jesus might have a different agenda than they did. And so they created or invented their own mythology and they called it the historical Jesus.

So Schweitzer devastatingly critiques all of those views. But then when you get to the end of the book, he finally puts forward his own view in which he says that Jesus taught that the kingdom was entirely future. In fact, Schweitzer thought that Jesus expected the end of the world to come in his own lifetime. And therefore, of course, Jesus was mistaken. So after debunking all of the other attempts that had been made prior to his time to reconstruct the historical Jesus, Schweitzer falls into his own pit. He falls into it on a slightly different side, but he falls into the pit nevertheless.

He says, Jesus expected that the end of the world would come in his own lifetime. and that the coming of the kingdom would coincide with the judgment and the end of the world. And so from the point of view of Jesus’ present ministry, the kingdom is future, according to Schweitzer. Late in his ministry, Schweitzer makes this further, misconception of Jesus’ ministry. He says Jesus started out thinking that that kingdom would come merely by the Israel hearing his message and repenting and becoming more righteous.

But he became disillusioned by this and that towards the end of his ministry he believed that he would have to die, he would have to offer his life in sacrifice in order to usher in that kingdom, that his own death would become the crisis that would bring about the end of the world and the final judgment and the coming of the kingdom. All of this sounds rather fantastic, doesn’t it? In effect, what Schweitzer says is that Jesus was a religious madman, a religious fanatic, who believed in something that failed, believed in something that never came to pass.

And it is a matter of amazement to me how Schweitzer could be regarded then as some kind of hero of the faith in the 20th century. a man who portrays his own Lord, his Savior and Lord Jesus, as a mistaken, deluded, religious, fanatic, a man who was essentially insane.

This is the view that Voss is very gently, in a way, very gently, and in a very civilized way, criticizing. He’s showing an enormous amount of restraint in the way that he criticizes Schweitzer’s view. There’s one aspect of Schweitzer’s view that Ross focuses on, and that is, well, two aspects.

The aspect that the Schweitzer thought that Jesus was thinking only of a future kingdom, but also Ross picks up on the fact that Schweitzer’s view involves a particular nature of the kingdom as well. It’s not merely that the kingdom that was coming was future, but that the coming kingdom had a particular nature. To be specific, Voss brings you around to the point that according to these writers, of whom Schweitzer was the chief, Jesus’ view of the kingdom was exactly the same as what the contemporary Jews expected. That is, the Jews of the first century. And Voss brings out three characteristics of this viewpoint that the contemporary Jews had. Oh, boy.

Not only is it not readable, it’s indelible. because all the things you’ve been saying, I can think of passages that entirely contradict in the Bible what he’s saying. So, was he really right? He was a victim of the same disease as those whom he was criticizing. He did not believe that the Gospels as we had them were authentic, and so he felt free to reject anything that didn’t fit his hypothesis.

This is the problem with this whole process. own procedure is that you can make any image of Christ that you want simply by saying, well, these texts that don’t agree with my image are not authentic. They were added later by the church tradition. And the real Jesus is contained in these statements that I’ve identified, and I put together this portrait that I make up. Well, let me see if I can do this without writing it on the board. Sorry, we’re having technical difficulties today.

The aspects, or the way he, what Voss criticizes then is not only the view that Jesus taught that the kingdom was purely future, because of course we’ve seen many passages in which Jesus teaches that the kingdom is already present, But he also criticizes the view that the nature of the kingdom was what the first century Jews expected it to be. And there are three characteristics of this, which I was going to put on the board, but I think you can keep them in mind if I just say them verbally.

The Jews thought that the kingdom of God was a political thing, a national thing, and a sensual thing. So keep those three adjectives in mind, political, national, and sensual. They’re all there in the chapter that we’re reading, chapter five. All right, first, political. What the Jews were expecting was that when the Messiah came, then the Jewish nation would become the political rulers of the world. The Messiah himself, of course, would be at the pinnacle of that. But the idea is therefore inherently political. The Messiah is going to be like Caesar.

He’s going to be the emperor over the known world. In this context, Ross uses the word kiliastic. And I think I will have to erase this. I’m going to get a little water. That did it. All right. Achilleism is one of these scholarly words. It’s simpler than it may sound. It’s just a foreign looking word. It comes from the word kilia in Greek, which simply means a thousand.

Kiliasm is very close to what we would call today premillennialism. The idea that there would be a thousand-year reign of Christ on the earth before the end of the world, before the final judgment and the final resurrection. Now when we think about premillennialism as one of the views of eschatology, often we focus on the timing of it. That’s why we have a pre and we have other people who are postmillennials and amillennials.

But an interesting other way of looking at this is to think about the nature of the kingdom that is being portrayed. When you say that what we’re hoping for is a future 1,000 year reign of Christ on earth, then what we’re saying is we have, if we take that view, we have an inherently political view of the kingdom, that Christ is gonna rule like an emperor on earth, like a Caesar, like the head of the United Nations, or whatever you wanna call it, that there’s gonna be a political rule of Christ on earth.

This is what Schweitzer thinks that Jesus was expecting. The second aspect of this is the nationalistic part that it’s not merely political. It’s not merely that Jesus would be a political ruler, but that the Jews, the nation of the Jews would be right up there with him. Okay.

So, This expectation of first century Jews is that the end of the world is going to mean that we, our nation, will be the rulers of the world along with the Messiah. And then finally, the sensual side of this, by using the word sensual, Voss is not suggesting that there’s anything immoral about this view. But what he means is that this view focuses on things that can be sensed, material things, such as prosperity, rule, authority in this world, and so on. All right, so in contrast to this, what Voss does is he points out several passages in the New Testament which contradict each of these features of the kingdom that supposedly Jesus expected and which historically it can be shown the Jews of the first century did expect.

As to whether the kingdom is political or national, all you need to do is turn to Mark chapter 12. We’re running a little short on time here, so I won’t have those verses read in their entirety. But in Mark chapter 12, verses 13 through 17, Jesus has the controversy about whether you should pay the tax to Caesar. And he ends that by saying, render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s. In other words, the kingdom of God is so utterly different from the kingdom of Caesar that you can simultaneously render unto Caesar the things that are his and render unto God the things that are God’s.

And perhaps even more pointedly, in John 18, 36, where Jesus is being interrogated by Pontius Pilate, he says, my kingdom is not of this world. Again, the reason that Jesus doesn’t fight Pilate He goes on to say, if my kingdom was of this world, then we would have a battle. I would be fighting you with all of my forces, but my kingdom is not of this world. The reason that Jesus does not fight is because the nature of his kingdom is different from the nature of Caesar’s kingdom. Voss points out that the Jesus view of the kingdom is not nationalistic either.

It does not focus merely on the Jews. Jesus in various places prophesized that Israel will reject him and that the Gentiles will be brought in. The kingdom will be taken away from the Jews and given to a nation that is more worthy of it. And we understand through the later teaching of the New Testament that it is not a nation in the ordinary sense.

What is meant is that the kingdom of God will be given to the Gentiles in general. The kingdom of God will not be a nation like the other nations of the world, but will be like the leaven in the parable of the leaven, that leavens the whole lump, that we are not a separate lump or a piece of the lump. The kingdom of God, the church, leavens the whole lump, leavens the whole world, and is not of that nationalistic nature. And finally, the kingdom of God is not something that focuses on material things.

Voss points to Mark 12, 25, where Jesus is arguing with the Sadducees about the nature of the resurrection. And he says that in the resurrection, they shall neither marry nor be given in marriage, but will be like the angels in heaven. There’s something different about the future kingdom that will not involve things that are perfectly right and proper in this world. You see, by sensual, Boss is not talking about something that is immoral.

He’s simply saying there’s a lower level of this world that is concerned primarily with temporal and material things, but the kingdom of God is concerned with higher things. Now he also, warns us that there is a danger here of going too far, of what we could call over-spiritualizing the future kingdom. He points out that heaven and hell are physical realities.

And further, that the resurrection of the body, which is part of our hope for the future, the resurrection of the body means that there is a physical aspect to the future kingdom. but that the physical aspect of the future kingdom will not look like what we are experiencing now.

It will be raised to a higher plane. It will be something different. But it will not be something disembodied, which would be to fall into the ancient Greek error that the body was the prison house of the soul, and that the most wonderful thing to look forward to would be to get rid of this body, get rid of the physical aspect of our nature, which is not the case in biblical revelation. We’re looking forward to the resurrection of our bodies, the transformation of our bodies into what Paul calls a spiritual body.

Seemingly a contradiction in terms, but to convey to us that there’s something physical about the future world but that it is at a higher plane and a different form than what we experience now. All right, well to sum up here and then move on quickly to the last half of chapter five. What we are seeing in Schweitzer’s view that Voss criticizes is strikingly similar in a different way, in a different form to what we see in much of evangelical eschatology today.

Most evangelicals have adopted some form of dispensationalism. And dispensationalism looks forward to exactly this kind of earthly rule of Christ, a thousand year reign of Christ on earth, ruling over the whole world from Jerusalem as a political ruler with the nation of the Jews in charge. Strikingly similar to what the Jews expected in the first century. It’s what the dispensationalists say is the nature of the coming kingdom. The only difference is that the dispensationalists believe the scriptures are authoritative, and they believe they can derive these things from the Bible itself, whereas Schweitzer did not accept the authority of the scriptures.

All right, in the second half of the chapter, Voss deals with what he believes is the greater need of his hour, which is to guard against overemphasis on the present phase of the kingdom. In 1905, that was exactly correct. The prevailing liberal theology of 1905 had no use for a future kingdom. They were all about the here and now. Today, I would suggest that we have to deal with both misconceptions about equally.

On the right, as it were, we have the dispensationalists overemphasizing the future kingdom and misinterpreting it in this political, national, and sensual way. And on the left, we have the liberals denying that there’s any supernatural aspect to the kingdom, and therefore thinking of it as something that is purely imminent in this world, something that belongs to this world and simply is a matter of human righteousness. Now Vassa’s discussion in the second half of chapter five is aimed at this second view, the liberalism of the latter part of the 19th century. Now today we tend to give the label liberal in theology to every variety of false teaching that denies the authority of the scriptures. And that is a convenient label, but keep in mind that is all that it is. It’s simply a label, and like any other label, it can be misused and it can be insulting to the person to whom you apply it. So just a brief caution here on how we use labels.

For our purposes, it’s important to recognize that when Voss was writing, he was talking about a specific type of liberalism. And in church history, the word liberal is used to refer to this specific type of teaching that came out of the second half of the 19th century. To be very brief here, this kind of liberalism conceived of Christianity as a system of ethics One way I’ve heard this described by Larry Wilson, the pastor that you may know, has been in our presbytery a long time and has recently taken a call out to Canada.

But Larry says that when he was growing up in the Methodist church, the message he heard was, it’s good to be good, and it’s bad to be bad. More eloquently and elaborately stated, but when you boil it down, What he was being taught was purely ethics. Do the right thing, don’t do the wrong thing.

That’s the nature of the gospel, isn’t it? No. But that’s what the 19th century liberal theologians eventually came to. That the whole point of the gospel was simply ethics. And the kingdom of God, as far as they conceived it, was simply the progress of society. especially of modern Western culture.

A large part of what we regard as cultural imperialism today comes from that viewpoint. What we have to offer the third world, according to this kind of theology, is not the gospel of the saving grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the forgiveness of sins and everlasting life. What we have to offer these third world countries is our culture, our advanced civilization that has progressed farther than theirs. And you see how arrogant this is in approaching the other nations of the world that way. This theology was wedded to the idea of progress.

And just another little footnote here, it might be helpful for you to think about this. The origin of Darwinism, it comes about in the same time period, in the same intellectual atmosphere. When Darwin wrote The Origin of Species, published in 1859, it may have been that, and scholars have taught about this, that the theory was acceptable to people, more acceptable than it might have been a century earlier, because it seemed to fit the idea of progress. Biological evolution appeared to be the idea of progress working itself out in the natural world. This would come as a great support to these theologians who are saying the whole idea of the kingdom of God is progress, and you see it’s based on the way God created the world. You see the natural world has had a progress, and so our idea of the kingdom is connected to the best of modern science, they might say. So that’s merely to say how powerful the idea of progress was in the latter part of the 19th century.

Now Voss critiques this by pointing out that it rests on a spirit of anti-supernaturalism. People who deny that there is any such thing as the supernatural gravitate towards this kind of view. If there’s no such thing as the supernatural, then there’s no such thing as a miracle, and there’s no such thing as a coming judgment, and there’s no such thing as a resurrection, and there’s no such thing as a resurrection of Jesus, and there’s no such thing as a resurrection of the people of God at the end of the ages, when you’ve given up all of those things and deny them vehemently, what are you left with? If you’re left with any religion at all, it has to be a religion of humanity, a religion that is purely ethical, purely based on natural forces and the ethical abilities of human beings. And when you take that view and theologians that took that view would have to deny the future orientation of the kingdom that Jesus taught.

And as I said earlier, they’re using the same kind of sieve that Schweitzer used. I’m going to sieve out of the scriptures what I think I can accept. I’m going to deny everything else as inauthentic. And after I’ve used that horrible sieve to sieve out the gospel, what am I left with? I’m left with a kingdom of gradual progress of human ethics, of human capacities. and ability to improve ourselves.

Well, to draw the lesson to a close, Voss points out that this is the result of that first wrong step, that fundamental and major error of denying the supernatural, which is in effect to deny that God exists. People still talk about God who would deny the supernatural, but what they are doing is essentially denying who God is and denying that God exists.

But the scriptures are a book that is full of the supernatural, from Genesis to Revelation. And if we are to believe the scriptures, then we have to recognize that the nature of the kingdom in itself is supernatural. Now Voss makes a very important point here that’s helpful to us at the end of the chapter. It is not the case that the present kingdom is a matter of natural abilities and human ethical progress, and that only the future aspect of the kingdom is supernatural. Rather, he says, both the present and the future of the kingdom are both supernatural, The only difference is the way that God is working in the present and in the future.

In the present, God is working invisibly in the regeneration of human souls. That is supernatural. Do not forget that as the gospel is preached and as we hope to make an impact through evangelism and missions. That is not a human activity. It is not simply that we’re persuading people with human arguments to embrace the gospel. They will not embrace it. They cannot embrace it unless God does something supernatural in their hearts, regenerates them, brings them from death to life.

This present kingdom, as invisible and as gradual as it is, is just as supernatural as the last judgment and the resurrection of the body. It is operating in a different way, in a different sphere, or to put it more exactly, God himself is acting differently and in a different sphere presently, but it is still God who is acting.

All right, then what are we to make of the kingdom and the view of the kingdom as both present and future? The kingdom is a kingdom that involves much more than what these misconceptions would allow to it. Because it has these many aspects to it. It has these many facets to it. It’s not merely future. It’s not merely present. It’s not merely inward. It’s not merely outward.

And the kingdom of God embraces all of these things in its different aspects. And some of those things will be taken up in the next few weeks in the chapters involving the kingdom of God as the sphere of saving power, the kingdom of God as the sphere of righteousness, and so on. Those are the many facets or some of the many facets of the kingdom that the scriptures and Jesus reveal to us. All right, that’s all we have time for today, so you’re dismissed.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

April 24, 2011
The Resurrection as Final Satisfaction

About this sermon

The resurrection of Christ, the firstfruits, guarantees the resurrection of those who belong to him. Every human being bears the image of the first Adam, a man of dust, frail and mortal. Believers will bear the image of the last Adam, the man of heaven, raised in a body that is imperishable, glorious, and powerful. The whole creation groans with them, waiting for that day. The hope of seeing one another again in the resurrection is true, and it satisfies the deepest longing of the human heart.

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Sermon transcript

Our scripture reading this evening comes from 1 Corinthians chapter 15. 1 Corinthians 15. We will begin at verse 20 in our reading tonight. This is the word of God. Let us give attention to it. But in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all died, so also in Christ shall all be made alive, but each in his own order. Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming, those who belong to Christ.

Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father, after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. For God has put all things in subjection under his feet.

But when it says all things are put in subjection, it is plain that he is accepted who put all things in subjection under him. When all things are subjected to him, then the son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things in subjection under him, that God may be all in all. Otherwise, what do people mean by being baptized on behalf of the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why are people baptized on their behalf?

Why are we in danger every hour? I protest, brothers, by my pride in you, which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord. I die every day. What do I gain if, humanly speaking, I fought with beasts at Ephesus? If the dead are not raised, let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die. Do not be deceived. Bad company ruins good morals. Wake up from your drunken stupor, as is right, and do not go on sinning. For some have no knowledge of God. I say this to your shame.

But someone will ask, how are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come? You foolish person, what you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain.

But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body. For not all flesh is the same, but there is one kind for humans, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish. There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is of one kind, and the glory of the earthly is of another. There is one glory of the sun and another glory of the moon, another glory of the stars, for star differs from star in glory.

So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable. What is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor. It is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness. It is raised in power. It is sown a natural body. It is raised a spiritual body.

If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. Thus, it is written, the first man, Adam, became a living being. The last, Adam, became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first, but the natural, and then the spiritual.

The first man was from the earth, a man of dust. The second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also those who are of the dust. And as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.

The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of God abides forever. Let us pray. We praise you, O Lord, that you are the author of all truth, that you are the God who never lies and never turns back on your promises to us. And so we pray that you would grant us open ears to receive these great and precious truths from you, that as we hear your voice, that we might be strengthened in the inner man to serve you more and more. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen. We’ll be focusing this evening on verses 42 through 49. Let me begin with a question.

What is the last step of your sanctification? Perhaps you might think when I overcome, finally, that last besetting sin. Or hopefully, for the sober-minded, you wouldn’t say it was yesterday when I achieved perfection. Or some others might think, well, when I die, when I put off this mortal body and am taken into the presence of Christ. But none of these is really the final step of sanctification.

Because you remember, sanctification involves a putting off and a putting on. Sanctification is more than, much more than being an upstanding moral citizen. It is about being conformed, shaped. into the image of Christ himself, of the new and last Adam. As our Shorter Catechism says, sanctification is a work of God’s free grace wherein we are renewed in the whole man after the image of God and are enabled more and more to die unto sin and to live unto righteousness. And so, have you ever thought about how sanctification encompasses both the inner man but also one day the outer man, our bodies?

I believe Paul’s writing here and his teaching indicates that the resurrection of our bodies is the final culmination and consummation of our union with Christ in his glory, that we will see him as he is, and as John says, we will be like him because of that. In Corinthians, sanctification is a dominant theme, isn’t it?

And it’s a very remarkable book because it’s bookended by the cross in chapter one, as Paul emphasizes, that true spirituality. is formed and shaped by the wisdom of the cross. And he ends his letter speaking of the resurrection of Christ. And as it were, the Christian life, the church’s life, is lived in between these two realities of the cross and the resurrection. And that in the meantime, we are being formed into Christ’s likeness. He says in chapter 2, we have his mind, we have the mind of Christ. In 1 Corinthians 3, he says being united to Christ means we have his spirit.

And as he goes through the book in various ways, we have the love that is poured into our hearts, the gift that the spirit brings. But he ends his epistle, he ends the book by speaking of spirituality, true spirituality, in terms of the glory of the resurrection.

Now, some in Corinth were evidently thinking, the resurrection, that’s too fleshly, that’s too bodily. Because isn’t it about escaping from our mortal bodies? Isn’t it about leaving the prison house of our created physical bodies? And to this Paul responds with a very emphatic no. In glory, we will have our bodies on that last day. They will be the self-same bodies, but renewed, recreated, renovated, so that they will be shaped according to the kingdom of God in all its consummation reality.

And so he tells the church, he exhorts the church to hold on to that hope. Because, in fact, to give up the promise of the resurrection is to give up the whole faith. He says in verses, 16 through 19. If the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. So if you call into question the whole idea of the resurrection, you obviously undermine Christ’s own resurrection. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Without the resurrection, he says, we are the most pitied, pitiful of all people, if it is not true. But because it is true, we are to have this great hope, this great hope that we will be conformed to Christ, the first fruits from the dead. So let us consider this evening how conformity to Christ will be ours in the glorified body.

Firstly, we must consider the frailty of the first Adam. Because before we’re conformed to the second Adam, we share in the constitution and the makeup of our first parent, Adam. He writes, the first man, verse 47, was from the earth, a man of dust. You could say if you were to translate his name literally, his name was Dusty, Adam of the ground. And so the stuff of our bodies is the stuff of this present created order. Now, children, some of you might have heard one of your family members saying, you have your mother’s eyes or your uncle’s ears or your brother’s lips. There’s a family resemblance, we notice, but when you look at all of humanity, we all share a family resemblance, don’t we, to our first parent, Adam. We’re made of the dust of the ground. And we only are alive because of God’s life-giving breath that he made and gave to Adam. We are a dusty people sharing in the image of the man of dust. Verse 49, we have borne the image of the man of dust. And so what he is speaking of here, and this is important to remember, that when he speaks of the body being sown, He’s not speaking of corpses, of dead bodies, but of our bodies now in this present age, as they were originally created.

So it was sown, firstly, perishable in verse 42. Perishable. Our bodies are liable to falling apart. Even Adam’s body was not his permanent, it was not an eternal body. It had, you could say, an expiration date. And by our very natures, we cannot last forever. Now, as a result of sin and the entrance of the curse, The progress of entropy and the fact that things tend to fall apart goes very quickly. Old houses, old cars, old clothes. We know the perishability of so much around us. And we know the perishability of our own bodies.

But secondly, he says, it is sown in dishonor. Probably better translated as sown in humility. Compared to the future, to the glorified existence, our present lives and the way we live now is humble in comparison. If you could think of in terms of clothing, we have not royal robes presently, but the clothing of a servant.

And this is what Paul is seeking to emphasize for the church. We can’t enter eternity as we presently are. We have to be changed. There has to be a renovation that we undergo. Notice as he says later in the chapter, I tell you a mystery, verse 51, we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed. In other words, we will not necessarily all die because there will be those who are alive when Christ returns. But whether we are dead, asleep in Christ, or whether we are alive, what is the necessity? that we must all be changed from this present body and its perishability and its humility to one of imperishability and of glory. Next, he says, it is sown in weakness. It is raised in power.

How much do we realize this, the fragility, the constraints, the vulnerabilities of our present existence? How much we have to spend taking care of our bodies in terms of medicine and other treatments? And this is felt especially in old age, where the writer of Ecclesiastes so beautifully portrays life in the body, particularly in older age, when he says, remember your creator before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars are darkened and the clouds return after the rain and the day when the keepers of the house tremble and the strong men are bent and the grinders cease because there are few and those who look through the windows are dimmed. Comparing a body in poetic terms to a city that is But here we have the weakness of present existence and we know that to be true when we are sober minded.

But it is also a natural body, verse 44, a natural body of this present world order. But what is the comparison to? It’s compared to a spiritual body, which is to come. Now here is something we should all do, I think, when we read our New Testaments. When we read the word spiritual, we have a tendency to understand it in terms of not physical. And yet what Paul almost all, means all the time by this word is of the Holy Spirit. And so we should capitalize it, capital S, spiritual.

It is a body of the Holy Spirit, not temporary, but shot through with his fullness and with his power. And so the Apostle Paul tells the church, exhorts the church, to see how we are right now looking like our first parent, Adam, in his present form. in our present existence. And as Job says, we must realize that man, he will fly away like a dream and not be found. He will be chased away like a vision of the night. His bones are full of his youthful vigor, but it will lie down with him in the dust. In the dust.

This is true of all of us, and we must come to terms with that, that we cannot place our ultimate hopes in the continuation of our present lives, in our present bodies. And this is why it’s so crucial to see with the apostle in Romans 8 that the creation together with our bodies are longing for something better.

As he says in Romans chapter 8, Verse 19, the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. All of creation In a way, shares our longing to be clothed with immortality. The creation, not through its own doing, but through our sin, subjected to futility. But notice what he says. Verse 23, not only the creation, but we ourselves who have the first fruits of the spirit grown inwardly as we eagerly await for adoption as sons. Adoption of sons in its final state. What does he say? The redemption of our bodies. This is the great object of the Christian’s hope. The redemption of our very bodies.

Because in this age, we realize so much is breaking down and falling apart. And if it was simply about living in terms of the first Adam, we would only waste away with no hope. But the reality in Christ is that though our outward nature is wasting away, our inner man is being renewed day by day. The resurrection has happened for Jesus, as we will see, and it’s significant for us, but our inner man is connected with that renewal, with that resurrection power. So right now, there are two principles at work within us. But one day what’s taken place in us by regeneration in our souls and our spirits will be true of our bodies as well. They will be constituted, imperishable, glorious, powerful, spiritual, we will resemble not finally the first Adam, but the last Adam clothed with his righteousness.

So secondly, see with me the splendor of the last Adam in our text. As was the man of dust, so also those who are of the dust, verse 48. And as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven. We will be sanctified in terms of our image bearing with Christ.

Now who is Christ in his resurrection? He is called the man of heaven. And he’s also called, as we read in our text in verse 20, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. Now, this is a very crucial. description of Christ. Because it says that while the resurrection for Jesus was unique, it was not an isolated occurrence.

In other words, there is a connection between his resurrection and ours, just as there is a connection between the first fruits of a harvest and the rest of the harvest itself. Now, we tend to think of first fruits perhaps as the fruit that first appears on a tree, for instance, in spring or summertime. But, in fact, if you think back to the Old Testament background, the offering of the first fruits, the feast that accompanied that, was taking the whole, what was part of the whole harvest which had come, taking the first part of that and bringing it before the Lord. In other words, the first fruits meant that the whole harvest had come. And so what’s very remarkable is that Paul is saying that when Christ is raised on the third day, when he emerges from the tomb as the last Adam triumphant over sin and death, that he does so and brings the whole resurrection to bear in his own body and the resurrection promise to us who are in him. He is the first fruits.

Children, if you’ve ever seen a train coming into the station, you know that when the first car of that train comes in, what follows right behind but the rest of the train, the rest of the cars? So with Christ, when Christ is raised, he is the first one. He is, as he says in Colossians 118, the firstborn from the dead. But right behind him, as our brother is the rest of the family, is the whole church.

He is the one who is not only the first fruits, but able to give life to our mortal bodies. Notice in verse 45, the first man, Adam, became a living being. The last Adam became a life giving spirit. The first Adam receives life as God breathes into him, mouth to mouth, nose to nose, that spirit of life. But Jesus now in his glory, in his resurrection, is able to breathe eternal life onto his people, into his people. And he becomes this life-giving spirit, the one who recreates us, fathers us after his own image. By a man came death, but by a man has come the resurrection of the dead.

We are conformed to him, yes, in his sufferings. And this is something Paul speaks of over and over again, that if we are to believe in Christ, we must share in our cross bearing and in his reproach. But we’re also conformed to his glory. In the Brothers Karamazov, after a series of many tragic events, you remember If you have read that, all the hatred and bitterness, all the tragedy that befalls the characters and the lives of the story.

And at the end, a bunch of kids ask Alyosha, the Christian brother, can it be true what’s taught us in religion? That we shall all rise from the dead and that we shall live and see each other again. And isn’t this a question that we all have in our hearts? Is it true? And the word of God says it certainly is. The resurrection is yes and amen because of our Lord Jesus Christ. We need to keep this before our minds and our hearts.

I remember the testimony of a dear sister in the Lord who was dying and she said, pray either for healing now, but even if it doesn’t happen now, healing will happen at the resurrection. And that’s what we should think of and how we should perceive and receive the news of glory, that it is going to be our final healing for sick and battered sinners for those who even lie in the dust.

We will be raised imperishable. the splendor of Christ and his glory not fading from us as we reflect his glory. We’ll be raised in splendor with no blemish or spot or wrinkle or any such thing in either our souls or our flesh. We’ll be raised in power, no tiredness or weakness. No more of the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. Both will be in perfect harmony with one another. It will be finally a spiritual body. No more warring between the flesh and the spirit as he says in Galatians 5.

But now we will desire only that which is righteous and good in that day, the son of righteousness will rise with healing in his wings. And this is our great hope. And this is why we are able to say with the apostle that we count everything as loss for the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus our Lord. Knowing him, Philippians three, that we may share in his sufferings, what does he say? Becoming like him in his death, But when we become like him in his death, we will also become like him in his resurrection, that by any means possible, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. Brothers and sisters, it is a certainty. We can be confident about it. Why? Because God has said, I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and of Jacob.

He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. His word promises that we will be in full and eternal union and communion with him. That we will no longer resemble our first father, Adam, in his frailty, and yes, even in our rebellion, but we will be fully sanctified When he appears, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.

As the hymn says, so are we now where Christ has led, following our exalted head, made like him, like him we rise, ours the cross, the grave the skies. Alleluia, amen. Let’s pray. We sing a new song of praise unto you for the work of newness and of salvation that you have wrought through our Lord Jesus Christ.

We thank you that he gave himself for our sins to rescue us from this present evil age. And that as the triumphant head in his glory and in his resurrection, he calls us to share in that glory and promises that we will when he returns. We ask that you might fortify us until that day, help us to persevere without expectancy, without longing, without hope, to be clothed with full righteousness and immortality, to see the face of our risen king. We ask, oh God, that you would forgive us our many sins, forgive us of our doubts and our unbelief, and help us to have that faith and that confidence before you, that we might live lives pleasing to you as we have this great joy. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

January 9, 2011
Christ the Second Adam

This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “By Way of Reminder” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, September 15, 1996.

About this sermon

In 1 Corinthians 15:44-45 Christ, the second Adam, gains a spiritual life in a spiritual world on our behalf. The classic fourfold estate of man frames that gain, and Calvin’s heavenly-mindedness models ours.

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Sermon transcript

Tonight we are reading from 1 Corinthians 15. We will begin our reading at verse 35. Give your attention to God’s infallible word. But someone will say, “How are the dead raised? And with what kind of body do they come?” You fool! That which you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And that which you sow, you do not sow the body which is to be, but a bare grain, perhaps of wheat or of something else. But God gives it a body just as He wished, and to each of the seeds a body of its own.

All flesh is not the same flesh, but there is one flesh of men, and another flesh of beasts, and another flesh of birds, and another of fish. There are also heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is one, and the glory of the earthly is another. There is one glory of the sun, another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars. For star differs from star in glory.

So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown a perishable body, it is raised an imperishable body. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.

If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. So also it is written, “The first man, Adam, became a living soul.” The last Adam became a life-giving spirit. However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural, then the spiritual. The first man is from the earth, earthly. The second man is from heaven. As is the earthly, so also are those who are earthly, and as is the heavenly, so also are those who are heavenly. And just as we have borne the image of the earthly, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.

Now I say this, brothers and sisters, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Behold, I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed in a moment, at the sound of the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed.

For this perishable must put on the imperishable, and this mortal must put on immortality. But when this perishable has put on the imperishable, and this mortal has put on immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: Death is swallowed up in victory. O Death, where is your victory? O Death, where is your sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Therefore, my beloved brothers and sisters, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your toil is not in vain in the Lord. Our Father, even after the pattern established in and by You, we rise to labor and we lift our hands to work.

And Lord, we are asking, even in the light of the coming glory of heaven and the promise of eternal life, that we would give ourselves completely and wholly to our tasks. Father, refresh us, not with natural strength, but with the very strength of the risen Christ, that we might be about the work you have entrusted to us and the vocations to which we have been called. Lord, may we labor energetically, being diligent, working as unto you. Father, may those who are called to service in your church give themselves completely to their tasks in the power of Christ. And may those of us who have labors in this world be strengthened by you, our God, with the power of Christ, to perform them well. Our God, save us from sloth, deliver us from laziness, and Father, may you yourself be our escape from apathy. This we pray, even through Christ, who gave himself completely to his calling, that we might be saved.

Amen. Tonight I want to take you one step further in this journey, which is intended to reinforce the perspective I have endeavored to declare from this pulpit over the years of my service and ministry here. In order to take that step this evening, I want to take you to 1 Corinthians 15, and to a passage that requires careful attention from us. I draw your attention to the latter part of verse 44. As it reads in the King James Version, there is a natural body and there is a spiritual body. Or as the New American Standard Version has it, if there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.

Paul, in keeping with that latter interpretation or rendering, which is more accurate to the Greek, suggests that the one, which he has mentioned in the previous part of the verse, entails the other. The natural body entails the spiritual body, meaning that the natural body demands the spiritual body, and that the two are inseparably linked. In other words, Paul envisions a progression from the one to the other, one that is conceived of here as inevitable.

Now, in making this assertion, Paul openly operates from the vantage point of his faith, a faith which has made clear to him the purposes and intentions of God, a faith which embraces Jesus as the promised Christ raised from the dead. Jesus Christ himself, in his resurrection, is the proof of what he has just stated in this text. So it is in verse 45 of this chapter that Paul goes on to quote Genesis chapter 2, verse 7. “The first man was made a living soul,” so goes the quote. The apostle means this statement to correspond to the natural body that he has just mentioned in verse 44.

He then goes on, however, to complete his thought by speaking about a further Adam, the last Adam, who was made, according to the King James Version, or who became, according to the New American Standard Version, a life-giving spirit. I say life-giving spirit, deleting the article there intentionally. I also say life-giving spirit, meaning by that the capitalization of the word spirit, bringing into view the person of the Holy Spirit. Now, admittedly, what Paul has to say at this point is not easy to understand in every regard.

We may well recognize immediately, for instance, that the last Adam, of whom Paul speaks, is the Lord Jesus Christ himself. But what can the Apostle mean when he says that Jesus Christ, as the last Adam, became a life-giving spirit? This verse speaks as if a change has occurred in Christ himself, as if Christ, the Eternal One, has been subjected to change. But if Christ is eternally God, eternally the Son of God, one in union with the Father and with the Spirit, how then is Paul able to speak of him as undergoing a change? And further, if the Son and the Spirit are actually distinct persons of the Trinity, how then can Paul speak of Christ as if Christ has become the Spirit?

Setting these difficulties aside for the moment, we must be certain of this point. Paul intends the phrase about the last Adam in verse 45 to correspond to his statement at the end of verse 44, the statement about the spiritual body. In other words, Paul, now bold because of what God has done in Christ by raising him from the dead, declares with infallible certainty that there is a natural body and there is a spiritual body, and that the one follows the other according to a certain divine inevitability. If there is the one, then there is the other. Paul’s point is this.

The last Adam has made clear and certain the nature and the meaning of the first Adam. The last Adam has made clear and certain the nature and the meaning of the first Adam. The first Adam, in having been made a living creature by the breath of God, was constituted a natural body. However, the first Adam, in his created state and in his natural body, was intended from the beginning for something else, something more, something higher.

What Adam, in his natural body, was intended for, according to the argument of the Apostle Paul, was the spiritual body—moving from the natural to the spiritual. Adam, in keeping with the revelation in the early chapters of Genesis, was meant to move through the probation set before him with respect to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He was meant to move through that probation from the natural body existence to the spiritual body existence.

That was symbolized by the tree of life. Indeed, as Paul says in verse 46, the spiritual is not first, but rather the natural, and then the spiritual. The matter of Christ’s resurrection is the central point at issue. The matter of Christ’s resurrection is the major focus of this chapter, because according to the Apostle Paul, that resurrection is what accomplishes what God intended in the first place for Adam and his posterity.

Adam, by his fall, fails to achieve the spiritual body. Adam, because of his sin, fails to achieve the spiritual body. He fails to be brought into that spiritual body and the world to which that body belongs. Therefore, Jesus Christ, as the last Adam, gains what Adam forfeited. He gains what Adam failed to gain.

This means that the spiritual body is what is given to Christ in his resurrection. And for Christ to become a life-giving spirit describes the reality of what Christ has become and that world into which he has entered by way of the resurrection. It is a world from which he now dispenses life as the head of a new humanity. 1 Corinthians 15, verse 45, is therefore no evidence that Paul never professed a Trinitarian faith. Instead, it is evidence of a magnificent and full grasp of God’s saving work in Jesus Christ, effected in and through the resurrection of our Savior. The focus is not Christ’s divinity, but his humanity and his thorough identification with those for whom he gives his life.

He actually takes upon himself their life, for he, like them, is found in a natural body, a body which now, due to Adam’s fall, is subject to sin’s ravaging effects and to the decaying effects of death, or as it is spoken of here, corruption. But Jesus, our Savior, having been in the natural body, is raised from the dead, and as the last Adam gains in resurrection the blessed reward meant for humanity from the beginning, namely spiritual life in a spiritual body in a spiritual world. Spiritual life in a spiritual body in a spiritual world. This is, according to the Apostle Paul, what has always been the divine aim for humanity.

This is confirmed further by this text through a couple of additional considerations. First of all, there is a double movement in verse 45 that Paul subtly emphasizes. As we have already noticed, there is the movement from the created Adam to the resurrected Christ, or from the first Adam to the last, or from the natural body to the spiritual body of the risen Savior. But there is also the movement not just between these two figures and two states, but within them.

You see, even in Adam’s creation, there is a forecast of that which is preached by the Apostle Paul here, as he reflects on Genesis 2:7. Adam moves from dust formed by God to becoming a living soul, in-breathed by God Himself, in-breathed by the Spirit, if you will. The movement in Adam’s creation anticipates the spiritual state to which he is destined. Just as he is moved from dust to a living body, he is to move from a living body, that is, a natural body, to a spiritual body. The pattern of what is to be effected in Christ is forecast in Adam’s creation.

That which is accomplished in re-creation is anticipated in original creation. In confirmation, the last Adam—moving on to consideration of Christ himself—does not only contrast with the first Adam and stand over against him, but also differs from what he was formerly, by virtue of taking to himself a true body like ours. This means that the force of Paul’s argument is doubly powerful, driving home his point all the more. However, another point Paul is making here is this: the movement from the natural to the spiritual is independent of sin. Sin hinders and cuts off access to the spiritual, and effectively destroys any hope that a person, in and of himself, could achieve that goal.

But Paul’s quotation of Genesis 2:7 speaks of the first Adam before the fall. Paul’s statement about the natural first and then the spiritual in verse 46 establishes the fact that the order and progress of things as outlined by him here always was the order and the plan of God, and that this is independent of sin. This means that the spiritual body and the world to which it belongs are not the consequence of sin, nor were they made necessary because this world was ruined by the Fall. The spiritual body and the world to which it belongs were always the goal which God had in mind for humanity. This world and man’s natural body were never intended, even from the beginning, as humanity’s ultimate goal.

It is precisely here that much theology, and even much Reformed theology, has become profoundly confused. I say profoundly confused. Originally, Reformed theology taught adamantly and very clearly the Reformed doctrine of the fourfold estate of man. The Westminster Confession of Faith, for instance, was solidly committed to the doctrine of the fourfold estate of man. This doctrine views man in his successive states: first, in innocency before the fall; then, in sin after the fall; then, in redemption because of Christ; and finally, in glory and in heaven. The tendency has now become, even among Reformed thinkers and preachers, to compress the fourfold estate of man into the threefold estate of man, a position in which the third and fourth estates are blended into one, in which redemption and glory are merged and indistinguishable.

This is done in the interest of making man’s redemption merely a function of this world, merely an extension of what takes place in and to this world, so that what is achieved by redemption is merely the restoration of the created order, which eventually expresses itself in a perfected, this-world order and arrangement. This is perpetually and eternally. We are playing, despite our protestations of orthodoxy, with secularism. The Reformed Church is positioning itself for its own fall. And that is because it has developed a love affair with nature.

This position that merges the third and fourth estates—redemption and glory—goes on to suggest that heaven, the vocabulary of heaven in Scripture, and the vocabulary of glory, are simply the Bible’s way of speaking about a perfected, this-world order and arrangement of things.

Paul tells us that the second Adam is the Lord from heaven, verse 47, who stands over against the first Adam, not because of sin, but because of the resurrection. He stands over against the first Adam, who by his created nature is earthly, while the last Adam is heavenly. He goes on to tell us that the earthly is earthly and the heavenly is heavenly, verse 48, and that while we are earthly, we shall become heavenly in our own resurrection as we are conformed to the image of our Savior, verse 49. This is brought about by the Lord from heaven and the resurrection power resident in him. Yes, we shall be raised in our bodies, even as Christ was raised in his. But such is the radical nature of this transition for us, such is the radical nature of putting on the spiritual body and the heavenly world of the Spirit to which that body is suited, that Paul states his case in the most disjunctive manner, as if the one state is mutually exclusive of the other.

Indeed, as he says in verse 50, flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God. Now, we all believe in the resurrection of the body. Paul believes in the resurrection of the body. This is a chapter defending the resurrection of the body. But in verse 50 of this chapter, Paul says that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.

Why would he make such a statement? He makes this statement so that you will pause and understand what he is saying. Yes, there is continuity as you move from one world to the other, but there is also radical discontinuity. Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God. Verse 50. That world of the Spirit, that heavenly order into which we, in our glorious spiritual bodies, shall be brought. Here is the plan and purpose of God for his elect. Here is their joy and their hope.

Now I want to test you to see whether you are true Calvinists. Did Calvin love heaven? I challenge anyone to prove that he did not. And if the advocates of the spinning earth who are currently in the Reformed Church still claim to be Calvinists, I challenge them to reread the third book of Calvin’s Institutes, where they will find that the man they claim as their champion was not the advocate of the spinning earth, but of the eternal heavens. In fact, I will go so far as to say: remove heaven from Calvin’s theology, and you have no Calvinism as Calvin preached and taught it. Period. Exclamation point. End of message. Amen.

Our Father, may we not be afraid of charges of Platonism or of world flight, or of being so heavenly-minded that we are of no earthly good. Instead, O God, may we stand firm in the proclamation of the Apostle Paul, not so that we might twist it to support our own preferred theology, but so that we might truly hear the inspired servant of God.

Oh Lord, we would plead with you for ourselves and for your church. That we would love your word, and that we would receive the fullness of that revelation which is set before us. Even in keeping with the plan and purpose which you intended for your people, even from the beginning. Namely, that we were destined.

For spiritual bodies in a spiritual world. And Lord, we would capitalize the S at the beginning of spiritual, meaning bodies appropriate to the Holy Spirit in a world in which the Holy Spirit reigns and rules. We plead with you, O God, that you will bless us even as we give ourselves to labors that are appropriate to us in this world, that we would not despise those labors, those responsibilities, the demands, and even the ethical challenges that are brought to bear upon us because of our place in this world. Instead, O God, with the light of heaven shining in us, even the glory of our hope, even the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the spiritual body and the spiritual world, the Holy Spirit himself, may we give ourselves to our labors in ways that please you, thus being transformed from a dark place to the glory of your name. We ask these things, looking unto you through Christ, who is risen in his spiritual body, who has gone into that spiritual world, who intercedes at your right hand.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

September 15, 1996
Faith, Hope, and Love

This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “I Corinthians 13” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, September 1, 1996.

About this sermon

The series closes with faith and hope shown to exist in service to love rather than apart from it, the three eternally bound together in the members of Christ’s body. In the end, it is Christ himself who most fully exhibits the very love this chapter describes.

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Sermon transcript

We are reading this morning from 1 Corinthians, chapter 12, beginning at verse 27, and we will read through the conclusion of chapter 13. This is 1 Corinthians, starting in chapter 12, verse 27. Give your attention to God’s infallible, holy word. Now you are the body of Christ, and each one is a member of it.

And God has set some in the church: first apostles, secondly prophets, thirdly teachers, then miracles, followed by gifts of healings, helps, governments, and diversities of tongues. Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Are all workers of miracles? Do all have the gift of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret? But covet earnestly the best gifts, and I will show you a more excellent way.

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith so that I could remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing. And though I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and though I deliver my body to be burned, and have not love, it profits me nothing.

Love suffers long and is kind. Love does not envy. Love does not boast, is not puffed up, does not behave itself unseemly, does not seek its own, is not easily provoked, thinks no evil. Rejoices not in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth. Bears all things. Believes all things. Hopes all things. Endures all things. Love never fails.

But when there are prophecies, they will come to an end. When there are tongues, they will cease. When there is knowledge, it will vanish away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is partial will be done away.

When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child. But when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know even as also I am known. And now these three remain: faith, hope, love. But the greatest of these is love.

It is no small measure, O Lord, that you have given to us in the provision of your Word. It is no small matter that we have in our hands and before us the very Word of God. Lord, may we tremble with a right and proper fear, and may we reverence you even as you speak to us from your Word. May we delight, O God, in this address from you, and may we be quick to respond in prayer and in demonstration of the sincerity of our lives, which match what we say, what we express, and even what we expect. We pray this in Jesus’ name, the very living Word of God. Amen.

Our journey through this glorious chapter, 1 Corinthians 13, is coming to a close. We have arrived this morning at verse 13, the most familiar in a string of familiar verses. And now these three remain: faith, hope, love. But the greatest of these is love.

Now in one sense, the Apostle Paul has given us here in this thirteenth verse the most sublimely simple gem to be fitted into his expertly crafted rhetorical and literary psalm and hymn of praise to love. How powerful the beautiful symmetry of his argument. He begins with love’s necessity and its superiority to all spiritual gifts in verses 1 through 3. This leads to love’s character and its indispensability for gaining all other spiritual excellence, verses 4 through 7. And this in turn leads, in verses 8 through 12, to love’s permanence and its unique ability to bring into focus the eternal quality of Christian life. Thus we arrive at the conclusion.

The crowning affirmation here in verse 13 is that love reigns supreme among the other spiritual graces of faith and hope. But what might appear at first glance as a simple statement concluding this carefully crafted rhetorical and literary passage by Paul, upon closer examination is anything but simple. Its depth surpasses the power of a well-argued or well-concluded case, for here the apostle pushes the limits of our spiritual understanding, not merely to follow his argument in this chapter, but to journey with him into the very nature of God himself. The awesomeness of the matter begins to become clear. What exactly is contained in this verse? To begin with, this 13th verse connects with earlier verses in the chapter.

It connects with verses 7 and 8, particularly the beginning of verse 8, where Paul writes, “Love never fails,” or as we have maintained, “love never falls,” meaning it never collapses, never suffers ruin. Love is like God himself, a fortress and a rock. All else may dissolve, the world itself may dissolve, but love, like God, stands firm.

But also notice what Paul says in the previous verse, verse 7, where he speaks about faith and hope. Love, Paul states, believes all things. That is where faith is mentioned. Connect this with verse 13, where faith is also brought into view. Paul continues, “Love hopes all things.” Thus, faith, hope, and love are present together, as seen in verses 7 and 8. Love, therefore, seems to encompass faith and hope. Faith and hope are connected to love and serve it.

In Paul’s understanding, in his definition, this means that all three—faith, hope, and love—belong to the same order, belong to the same heavenly, eternal realm. To be sure, they have been revealed in the Lord’s actions from ancient times, even as he acted for his people Israel. But now, in this latter age, the age of the Church, they are brought into this world, appearing as a gift through the coming of God’s own Son, and by way of Jesus Christ’s saving work. In Jesus Christ, and because of Him, and because of the heavenly kingdom He has brought, the unchanging nature of love is established, and the enduring character of faith, hope, and love is conclusively revealed.

You, however, upon reflection, may be troubled by this interpretation. You may be thinking, as many have, that the Apostle is simply continuing the series of contrasts laid out in the latter part of verse 8 through the conclusion of verse 12. The point is that faith, hope, and love endure in the present order of things, but love is the greatest because, unlike faith and hope, it continues forever. It continues into heaven itself. After all, you may say, what sense does it make to claim that faith and hope continue to function when the perfect and complete state of affairs arrives in the world to come?

What role, then, does faith play in such an environment? Does it not become unnecessary? What role does hope play in such an environment, in a completed state? Have we not reached the end? What role would hope play in such a state?

In fact, you point out, Paul deliberately sets faith in contrast to the world to come in a text such as 2 Corinthians 5:7, where he says, “We walk by faith and not by sight.” Faith therefore pertains to the present circumstance, our present environment, and our earthly existence. When our earthly existence ends, we will enter the world of sight, and faith will no longer be necessary. We might also cite another text by Paul, where he speaks about hope. Romans 8:24 says, “For we are saved by hope, but hope that is seen is not hope, for who hopes for what he sees?”

The clear implication of these two verses—2 Corinthians 5:7 and Romans 8:24—is that both faith and hope belong to the present, earthly, temporary state of affairs. Love, on the other hand, shows its excellence because, while it also manifests in this present, earthly, temporary state, it alone continues forever. Now, admittedly, this seems to be the natural reading of verse 13 in 1 Corinthians 13. But even though that seems to be the natural reading of this text, it does not fully grasp Paul’s intention.

He does not mean to suggest that faith and hope belong to the world of prophecy, tongues, and special spiritual knowledge, and that with those gifts of the Spirit they will cease and be done away with, as it seems from verse 8 through verse 10. Nor does he mean to say that faith and hope belong to the childhood and limited understanding of the Church’s present earthly existence. Neither is his point to suggest that the excellence of love over faith and hope is because love continues forever, while faith and hope do not. What we must see is that the “abideth” of verse 13, spoken of regarding faith, hope, and love, connects with the “never faileth” of verse 8 and what has preceded from verse 7. In other words, love, supported by faith and hope, abides with them. All three belong to eternity. They all come forth from eternity, they come to us as gifts, and they exist in, from, and unto that realm.

Therefore, in verse 13, the contrast between faith and hope on the one hand, and love on the other, is not between the temporary nature of faith and hope and the permanent longevity of love. Rather, love’s excellence above faith and hope rests in its spiritual and moral capacity. Its excellence is not found in the relationship it alone sustains to eternity, but in the relationship it sustains to the very heart of God. To journey into love, that is, the kind of love Paul has in mind, is to journey into God himself.

For as John says in his first epistle, in the fourth chapter, God is love. But if this interpretation is correct, then in what sense can we speak of faith and hope as belonging to the eternal order? In what sense do faith and hope continue in eternity? To answer this question, you must remember the sense in which Paul is speaking about love.

For he has in mind not so much our love for God, although that is fundamental and primary, although the love of which he speaks in all of its directions is grounded in the person of love, rather he is grounded in God. Rather, he has in mind that love which is specifically directed toward the fellowship of believers, a love for the Church and for the members of the body of Christ.

A love which, like God’s love to us in Christ, gives of itself sacrificially, even to the point of expending its own life, and that on behalf of others, and despite their unworthiness to receive such an offering. The faith and hope presented to us in verse 13 are meant along this very same line. Paul, in effect, throws us a curve. There is a bit of a twist in his use of language here.

For this faith and this hope do not have God as their object, although He is rightly so. This faith and hope, spoken of by Paul, also have in mind the fellowship of believers—a faith and hope directed toward the church and toward the individual members of the body of Christ. This is the faith that believes all things, as spoken of in verse 7. Such a faith lives in full confidence in others, born of the love that believes all things. That is, it sets aside suspicion and refuses to attribute evil to fellow members of the household of God. In heaven, such faith as that shines, glimmers, and bears anything that would compromise its expression.

Are you often amazed by the Apostle’s goodwill? Are you sometimes puzzled by his persistent willingness to think well of others, how he begins even with this congregation and describes them as saints? Do you know a saying where he describes these people as saints? The word saint means holy one. You can translate that as glorified one. He sees these people as if they are already in heaven, and he treats them accordingly. He will not allow himself the luxury of approaching them on any other basis. He truly expects them to live up to their heavenly identity and to behave in keeping with it. But he begins by calling them saints.

This is the love expressed even in the Apostle, which believes all things good about those who have been united to Christ. Such faith as this is at work in Jesus Christ Himself, who is now at the right hand of His Father. Even as Christ, from that position, views us as we truly are in Him. You must complete the sentence: as we truly are in Him. And as He knows, we will be in glory.

The hope of which Paul speaks here concerns our hope regarding others, our hope in others, by which we are forever delighted in their attainment. We are never disappointed in our expectations of them, and we are never jealous or envious of them. We fully expect their service to God without harboring resentment toward them at all. Such hope belongs to Jesus personally, as He, in keeping with His Father’s call of the Church and His Father’s call of us, lives in full expectation of our service to Him and to His Father.

Although this faith and this hope are glorious, the greatest of these is love. Love exceptionally brings to light the inner nature, the true and genuine motivation and allegiances, the bonds of affection, and the interior resolve of the heart. God, by and in His love, delights in giving Himself to His people. Not even their sin, not even their corruption, not even their fall with Adam deters Him. Such is His love, and in His actions He reveals His heart for His own. Humanity’s supreme failure is with respect to love, despite the fact that the world and humanity often speak about love as if they were experts on the subject.

Humanity, generally speaking, fails to reflect God and His great purpose. This is true even from the fall of Adam. Adam, in his sin, refused to offer himself for his fallen wife, Eve. She fell first. He still had his innocence. He saw her in her condition and refused to give himself on her behalf.

If Eve is a church, and Adam is a Christ, neither Abraham nor Isaac will sacrifice themselves for their respective wives, but will involve their wives in lies in order to save their own lives, following in the line of Adam, their father. By the magnification of grace in Judah, progenitor of the line of the Messiah, the step is taken by Judah, who offers himself to save his half-brother Benjamin. Later, Moses, when the nation of Israel is in the balance at the foot of Mount Sinai, and God has said, “I will destroy them,” Moses says, “Blot me out, save them.” And David, through his own sin, brings a plague upon Jerusalem, and then presents himself as the offering to God, saying, “Stay the plague, Lord; hate me, spare the people.”

The excellence of love expressed in these individuals is reflected later in Paul himself, who says in Romans 9:3, “For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh.”

This excellence of love draws near to the love of Jesus Christ, who is himself the perfect image of God. Here is the love commended to you by Paul in this chapter. It does not come from this world. It comes to you as a gift from heaven. It is found in Christ, in whom you are found. Won’t you live in and from this grace? Won’t you believe all things good and hope all things good with respect to your brothers and sisters in Christ? Won’t you be what you are in Christ? Won’t you love here on earth in the church, even as you will love in heaven?

This, my brothers and sisters, is the most excellent way. Our Father, we come to the end of this glorious chapter. And Father, we ask to be filled with its message, just as you have made us alive to it. And Lord, we pray that we would never separate the love we have read and heard about from Jesus Christ, the one in whom this love resides. We pray, Father, for well-being in this assembly, that the faith, hope, and love spoken of by the Apostle would be wonderfully displayed among us. May we know the way in which the faith and hope that Paul speaks of support the love he declares, even through eternity. We will believe all things good about our brothers and sisters in Christ, and we will hope all things good for them, rejoicing in their service to you. We pray, our God, that while we are here in this world, while we still face struggle, we might be regularly brought back to this message, refreshed by it, strengthened in it, for your glory and for the honor of Christ, our Savior. For we pray this in his name.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

September 1, 1996
Love’s Permanence and the Preacher’s Humility

This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “I Corinthians 13” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, August 25, 1996.

About this sermon

Love’s permanence and Paul’s own handling of Corinthian boasting return here, with Paul’s humility held up as a model for preachers themselves. Along the way come reflections on homiletics, the art and discipline of preaching well.

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Sermon transcript

Our scripture reading begins in Matthew 5, and we are reading from verse 38. Matthew 5, verse 38. Give your attention to the infallible word of God. He has heard that it has been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. But I say unto you that you resist not evil.

But whosoever shall smite you on your right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man will take you to law and take away your coat, let him have your cloak also. And whosoever shall compel you to go a mile, go with him two miles. Give to him that asketh you, and from him that would borrow of you, turn not away. He has heard that it has been said, You shall love your neighbor, and hate your enemy.

But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you. That you may be the children of your Father who is in heaven, for He makes His Son rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what do you more than others? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? Therefore be perfect, even as your Father who is in heaven is perfect.

Then turning to 1 Corinthians 13, reading at verse 8, love never faileth, but whether there be prophecy, they shall fail. Whether there be tongues, they shall cease. Whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child, but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly. But then face to face. Now I know in part, but then shall I know, even as also I am known.

Father, in the confession of our faith, we are also confessing the power of your Word. We are saved by your Word, even as that Word presents to us savingly the Lord Jesus Christ. Your Spirit works in and with the Word, for the Word is the Word of the Spirit. We thank you for your Word. And Father, we can confess also that in our lives, when we have been discouraged, when we have been overcome by doubts, fears, and the difficult situations we face in this world, your Word has come to us with refreshment, and we have been revived. O Lord, bless us today by your Word, and may we receive it fully, and go from this place as those who have absorbed it and are also committed to living it.

We pray this to the glory of your name, for the furtherance of the fellowship that is ours in Jesus Christ within this assembly, and also to the end that we may be most useful to your church and to your kingdom. Amen. Verses 8–12 in 1 Corinthians 13 have as their theme love’s permanence. Now, this is not the love of the world, or the love that the world generates. This is the love that has come from heaven, this is the love of God, this is the love that is manifest in Jesus Christ and in him alone.

For the end of this section, in that thirteenth chapter, the Apostle Paul employs two images to illustrate his point. In verse 11, he speaks about his own movement from childhood to adulthood. When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child. But when I became a man, I put away childish things. And then in verse 12, he speaks about first seeing things in a mirror, and then seeing them as they really are. For now, we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. That is the New American Standard translation. As Joseph said to Pharaoh, concerning his dreams, your dreams are one. So we say about Paul’s illustrations here, they are one. That is, their intention is one and the same.

At the very heart of Paul’s intention is the contrast he is establishing between one time and another. In the first instance, a contrast between the time of childhood and the time of adulthood. In the second instance, a contrast between the time of mirror-gazing and the time of seeing not the image, but the real thing.

It is possible for us to lose our way in these illustrations. First, because they are illustrations. As illustrations, they contain a built-in temptation for the people of God. They can obscure or eclipse the purpose. They can become ends in themselves. People can become overly focused on the illustration and lose the point. Second, because we do not keep in mind the force of Paul’s contrast in these illustrations. This is also a reason why we lose our way while making our way through them.

With regard to this latter matter—keeping in mind Paul’s contrasts—Paul has in mind the difference between the present imperfect earthly state of the Church’s life and the future perfect heavenly state of the Church’s life. In the midst of this difference, the prominence of the love that comes from the gospel of Jesus Christ and its constancy. In verse 8, Paul tells us, “Love never fails.” That is love’s permanence. Over against this permanence of love is the impermanence of the gifts of the Holy Spirit—prophecy, tongues, and knowledge—listed here.

These gifts, as wonderful as they are and as they are the gifts and ministry of the Holy Spirit, are nevertheless marked by partiality. For we know in part and we prophesy in part. Furthermore, they are marked by temporariness; they are temporary. But when the perfect comes, Paul writes in verse 10, the partial will be done away. The time at which the perfect will come is the time of Christ’s return and the arrival of the kingdom of heaven in its final, complete glory.

Paul’s two illustrations in verses 11 and 12 are meant to drive home his point. He draws upon the natural distinction between the immaturity of childhood and the maturity of adulthood. He uses this distinction to serve the transition from the world of the partial and temporary into the world of the complete and permanent. He then draws upon the technical distinction between the artificial and indirect reflections in a mirror and the direct gaze in the reality of the face-to-face encounter. Now, there are many things to say about these illustrations.

For one thing, they serve so well Paul’s immediate purpose in his argument. In the first instance, verse 11, he places the extraordinary gifts, in which some Corinthians boasted as if they were the apex of spiritual maturity, in the context of childhood. And in the second instance, verse 12, he places the extraordinary gifts, in which some of these Corinthians boasted as if they were the apex of spiritual wisdom and knowledge, in the context of dim and even distorted, but at the very least indirect reflections of the real thing. This is a clear rebuke. Paul could not have chosen more effective images to challenge Corinthian arrogance. There is a power to these images that cannot help but put vain Corinthians in their place, if they are still listening. Those who have imagined themselves to be so high, so mighty, so endowed, are now being described through these illustrations as if they were engaged in childish things. And not only that, these people have imagined themselves to be in direct contact with the most profound knowledge that comes from heaven.

And the apostle uses the image of a mirror to convey to them that what they are actually engaged in is a dim and even distorted reflection. But you must keep in mind that Paul, by his illustrations here in verses 11 and 12, has no intention of being cruel, as if he were devoid of the very love of which he speaks. In fact, it is to preserve that love and to maintain that perspective that he uses the first-person pronouns in these illustrations. When I was a child, verse 11, verse 12, for now we see through a mere dim light. Do you grasp what the apostle is doing, even though he means to put the Corinthians in their place? He does so by placing himself in their position.

Do not miss the depth of this action, illustrated by Paul in his language in verses 11 and 12. To the extent that these vain Corinthians have exalted themselves above their fellow church members, insisting on a distance between themselves as the elite and the rest of the church, to that extent and more, Paul has humbled himself. His high office as an apostle and his privilege in possessing all the spiritual gifts do not prevent him from identifying even with the least gifted of the Corinthian saints. Such a condescension on Paul’s part underscores the common life shared by the great apostle and all members of the assembly, all the people. He, as it were, humbles himself to share in the lack of gifts of the least of the Corinthian saints, while they, even if they are so lacking in gifts, are exalted to share in his office and in his glory.

But consider this carefully. Illustrations are difficult. Often they do not make things easier to understand, but instead make them more complex. This is the mistake people make with Jesus’ parables. They are not merely simple tales. Likewise, remain with the Apostle through this.

Paul goes so far that in the very illustration designed to confront the proud and the unloving, though gifted, Corinthians, he demonstrates the love he advocates and exhibits it toward these very people, for they are included as well. You see, if the gifted have been deliberately placed in the context of immaturity, in the context of childhood, as Paul says in verse 11, and deliberately placed in the context of seeing dimly, through distorted and indirect reflections, as he says in verse 12, then Paul equally places himself in those same contexts. He writes, “When I was a child,” not “when you were a child.” For now we see in a mirror, dimly, he does not write, “For now you see in a mirror, dimly.” How powerfully then the conclusion of Paul at the end of verse 12—neither accusatory nor breathing in arrogant and brutal hostility against those who are his opponents, even toward those at Corinth who have behaved so unbecomingly. Instead, Paul, by his inclusive first-person pronouns, sets himself squarely in the midst of their circumstance, not emphasizing his exalted position but his lowly posture, for he, like them, belongs to the era of immaturity and the epoch of reflection. He, with them, now knows in part, but then he, with them, shall know fully, even as they shall be fully known. Do I have to spell it out for you?

The love spoken of by Paul in this chapter—the love now observed in him, living and vibrant as he uses these illustrations—is in fact the kind of love that suffers long, is kind, does not envy, does not boast, and so on. We can move on from verse four through the entire sequence of statements that the Apostle sets forth.

In short, this love is nothing less than the love of God. It is love that is possible only in God. I am telling you that, apart from yourself, you do not have the ability to love in this way. It is not within your power. In short, this love is the love of God made visible in and through Jesus Christ—a love that gives itself, even to the undeserving. Such love is seen in the cross of Christ and in the sacrifice of our Savior for us, who are sinners. For while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Herein is the love of God made clear. Paul’s illustrations therefore teach us about love, even as it is personally expressed in him. Very well could the Apostle say earlier in this epistle, in chapter 11, verse 1: Be imitators of me, even as I am of Christ.

And here is the love of which Jesus Himself spoke when He said: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. If you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Even the tax collectors do the same. If you greet only your brothers, what do you more than others? Even the Gentiles do the same. Therefore, be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.

Finally, with regard to these illustrations, I make a point about homiletics. What is homiletics? You might observe that it is a plural noun with a singular verb. Homiletics is the discipline practiced by preachers and those who aspire to be preachers. It is the study of the art of preaching, the craft of preaching.

And in that regard, we should not forget that Paul’s illustrations, here and elsewhere, serve the interests of the gospel and the kingdom over which God has established His own Son. Unfortunately, much preaching loses sight of the fact that biblical and therefore sermonic illustrations are on a very short and tight leash.

In my early days of preaching, I believed the illustration was the most important part. I will go even further: I believed that the illustration was the message. Often, these illustrations were more than vivid descriptions. I doubt they were ever the carefully focused images that the Apostle Paul uses here. Sadly, they were often broad, self-indulgent verbal paintings. Some were embellished stories from evangelical tradition.

Some were even openly personal stories from my own life, which I used to support my sermon or, better yet, my religious message. Their purpose was more aligned with a kind of religious romanticism, where the true meaning was not the revelation of the kingdom of God or salvation through Jesus Christ, but the emotion they sought to create—whether laughter or tears, or perhaps the feeling I hope to convey to you that you must go out and act.

I thought the greatest people in the world were those who could make you laugh in one moment and bring you to tears in the very next. Men like that were my heroes, and I wanted to be just like them. See, I made you laugh. Now the challenge will be to make you cry. Personally, I was sobered by this approach when I realized not only was I preaching the sermon so that I could tell my stories, but that the people were remembering the stories and not the word of God.

Good preaching, I am now convinced, keeps in view the short and tight leash clearly evident in Jesus’ parables, and also clearly evident here in Paul’s message and the illustrations he uses. With that short, tight leash, the kingdom of God never loses its preeminence, and salvation in Jesus Christ never loses its central importance for us. May God bless His Church with good preaching.

Let’s pray. Our God, the love seen in Paul is merely the reflection in the Apostle of the love of Jesus Christ. The love seen in Paul for his opponents is the same love he has found in his Savior. Lord, we ask that, as this man sought to be instructive to the Corinthians, we might have preachers of the word who are equally concerned to be instructive, not only by their words but also by their actions. Father, may it please you to grant to your church good preaching, so that your people may be well fed and built up in the faith which we commonly confess. We ask this through Christ, who not only precedes us in love but also precedes us in preaching and in responding to the word of God. Amen.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

August 25, 1996
The Finality of Christ’s Work

This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “By Way of Reminder” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, August 25, 1996.

About this sermon

Roman, Lutheran, and Reformed views each reckon differently with the finality of Christ’s work, and that finality rules out any reliance on ongoing personal experience. Even Calvin’s view of the covenant was incomplete, and Warfield and Vos later closed that gap for the Protestant legacy.

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Sermon transcript

Tonight we are reading from 1 Corinthians 1, and we are beginning at verse 18. Give your attention to God’s holy word. 1 Corinthians 1, verse 18: For the word of the cross is to those who are perishing, foolishness. But to us who are being saved, it is the power of God. For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the cleverness of the clever I will set aside.

Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God, God was well pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.

For indeed, Jews ask for signs and Greeks search for wisdom. But we preach Christ crucified: to Jews a stumbling block, and to Gentiles foolishness. But to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength. For consider your call, brothers and sisters, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble. God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things that are strong. And the base things of the world and the despised, God has chosen the things that are not, that he might nullify the things that are, so that no one should boast before God.

By his doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption. But just as it is written, Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord. Our God, there are those all-important matters that are so central to our minds in our reflection upon our faith and your word.

At the same time, O God, we would not set aside those matters that might be considered secondary or peripheral. To this end, O Father, we would honor your Spirit, by whom and through whom your word comes, as well as the one whose ministry includes the ordering and structuring of your people. Therefore, O God, as we respect your word in regard to those central and all-important matters for our salvation, we also respect your word in regard to the government of your Church. Father, we ask for humble minds and teachable spirits, that we may not go beyond your word, but remain faithful to what you have revealed. To that end, O Father, we ask that we may be faithful to your word as it has been honored in the system of government we have embraced.

May this system of government be for our good and for your glory. We ask, therefore, Lord, that you would grant to your Church good and strong ministers of the word, righteous and true elders who can lead well, and deacons who are merciful and able to serve others. Do bless our officers here and also throughout your Church. May we be aware, O God, of how you bring us together with other Christian communities, even those who differ with us on matters of church government.

Yet, O God, may there be grace in us, insofar as we agree on the central matters of the gospel, so that your Spirit may work through us to bring unity among your people. This we ask through Christ, who is Head and King of the Church.

Amen. This brief series I have entitled, By Way of Reminder. I am engaged in it because, from time to time, it is well that I call your minds once more to the basic orientation of this pulpit. That is for the sake of newcomers, for the sake of long-time members, and for the sake of you children, who may be at the point in your lives when you are ready to grasp more fully what is presented in this church. If I were to identify a distinctive note for this ministry and this pulpit, taking my cue from 1 Corinthians chapter 1, verse 30, and from the way in which our Reformational heritage expounds upon that verse, that note would be finality. The finality of Jesus Christ and His sacrifice for us. The finality of Jesus Christ and the nature of His saving work on our behalf.

If you want to know what the Protestant Reformation was all about, here it is in one word—finality. The Reformers confessed the finality of Christ’s death and the nature of His saving work, and surely the sufficiency of that saving work on behalf of sinners. Rome denied and continues to deny that finality and sufficiency. According to Rome, Christ’s cross merely renews sinners for a probationary state, as if they were being returned to the Garden of Eden and, like Adam, given a fresh choice between life and death. There is no finality in the preaching, ministry, and message of the Church of Rome. The Reformers, on the other hand, saw Christ’s death and the nature of His saving work in connection with a definitive, final resolution.

This means, then, that there is a dimension to the Reformers’ proclamation that recognizes the eschatological significance of Christ’s work and the finality of Christ’s work. And at least as far as Calvin and the Reformed Church’s perspective are concerned, this death of Christ and the nature of his saving work bring believers, in principle, into a final state of affairs. Grasp this point, for you see, it explains the Calvinistic emphasis on the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints. It is only the Calvinists and the Reformed churches that have consistently proclaimed the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints, because Calvin and those of Reformed persuasion understood that the finality of Christ’s death is connected to the believer’s position in relation to that death. There is a finality in Christ’s sacrifice and offering, and there is a finality in the believer’s position in relation to that death and not in relation to ongoing saving work. Thus, the perseverance of the saints.

Something final has taken place. Do you hear the emphasis? In Paul’s words, the point he makes so powerfully and forcefully in 1 Corinthians 1:30, “For by God’s doing we are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.” Do you hear the finality of what the Apostle is stating there? But there has been a breakdown in the Reformation, from the Reformation, precisely at this point. Yes, you heard me correctly. There has been a breakdown in the Reformation and from the Reformation precisely at this point. The Lutherans hesitated. That is why some of you are here tonight. You are former Lutherans. And you know that the Lutherans hesitated.

Now, some have suggested that there was a weakness in Luther himself. To be sure, the finality of Christ’s work on the cross and the nature of his saving actions. But at the same time, some have asserted that there was a weakness in Luther himself. This is because there was a tendency toward an anthropocentric theology on Luther’s part, as opposed to a theocentric theology, such as that found in Calvin. By beginning with the question of my own justification, or with the issue of humanity’s possible justification before a holy God, it has been observed that Luther proposed a flawed system—one that at the outset capitulated to human need before considering God’s glory. There was a tendency in Luther toward a man-centered theology. Subsequent generations of Lutherans have then failed at a number of points, as has been contended. Building on this weakness in Luther and in others, Scripture has been compromised by the conviction that only those scriptures in which the doctrine of justification by faith can be clearly discerned are genuine scriptures.

Thus, there are scriptures in the canon, and there are other writings in the canon that are not considered equally authoritative. You remember Luther’s own case with respect to the epistle of James in this regard. He called it the epistle of straw. The effect of this was to produce a canon within the canon. Scripture, in effect, was set over against Scripture, even suggesting that there are contradictions within Scripture as one moves from one section to another. We must now address Luther’s disciple, Melanchthon.

For Melanchthon abandoned Luther’s steadfast commitment to Augustinianism, his steadfast commitment to predestination and election, and the sovereign disposition of God in the salvation of sinners. This led Lutheranism into a semi-Pelagian position, which made salvation a cooperative effort between God and humanity. This position obviously leads not only to a compromise regarding the doctrine of salvation from humanity’s perspective, but also a compromise concerning the sufficiency of Christ’s death, and certainly undermines any possibility for the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints within confessional Lutheranism. Finally, Lutheranism took a step away from the finality of Christ’s death by making Luther’s own religious crisis—the experience through which he came to conviction on the doctrine of justification—the very avenue into the New Testament doctrine of salvation itself.

Luther’s experience of justification was judged to be the key to Paul’s teaching. But Paul’s experience on the road to Damascus was also judged to be a key to understanding that doctrine. Thus, experience—whether Luther’s or Paul’s—was elevated above the doctrine itself. It is not difficult to see in all this the growing emphasis on humanity and its experience, even as such emphasis begins to overshadow the finality of Christ’s sacrifice and the sufficiency of it.

There are reasons, then, why we are not Catholic. There are reasons why we are not Lutheran. But to criticize Rome and Luther does not leave Calvin untouched. For he too had weaknesses. Yes, Calvin, perhaps more consistently than others, recognized and upheld the finality of Christ’s work. And there are certainly passages in Calvin that urge us toward a fuller understanding of the covenant over which Christ presides, in which we are included. There is much language in Calvin concerning union with Christ. All of this is true. But at the same time, Calvin was not able, in a thorough and consistent manner, to grasp the firmness of that finality which Scripture proclaims regarding Christ’s work.

Like Luther, Calvin clearly saw that the gospel presented in the Scriptures—especially the doctrine of justification by faith alone—means that Christ gave himself for us. Amen. What was less clearly expressed in Calvin was the complementary truth of the gospel: that Christ’s work means our incorporation into Christ, since Christ is our covenantal head. In other words, it is not only Christ for us, but Christ in us, and we in Christ.

This truth was not expounded or emphasized as fully as the doctrine of justification by faith alone. In fact, there is a sense in which we must say that justification by faith alone has its proper context only in this other precious doctrine: Christ in us and we in Christ. This weakness in Calvin and in subsequent Calvinism made it especially difficult for Calvinists to understand the proper relationship between the full sufficiency and finality of Christ’s death and their own subjective experience of salvation. In other words, the proper relationship between redemption accomplished and redemption applied.

For example, Calvinists often seem unable to grasp the fact that the justification of the believer is grounded in the full, adequate, primal, and final justification of Christ. Before you are justified, Christ himself has already been justified, and the certainty of your justification is the certainty of his. The reason your justification is final is because Christ’s justification is final, and you share in that. The reason your justification is sufficient is because Christ’s justification is sufficient, and you share in that.

But to state the case more fully, the same applies to other aspects of our subjective appropriation of redemption. The same applies to our adoption and our sanctification. Your adoption is in Him, first of all and foremost, and because of Him. You must never think of your sanctification as something you do on your own, since Christ has already done everything else for you up to that point. Christ, therefore, precedes us in the experiences of justification, adoption, and sanctification through His death and resurrection. Your justification, adoption, and sanctification are an entering into His work through union with Him in His death and resurrection. Christ’s resurrection is His justification. It is also His adoption, whereby He is declared to be the Son of God. It is also His sanctification.

You may want to examine the opening verses of Romans 1 in this regard. These weaknesses, which we have discussed this evening—these weaknesses of Rome, these weaknesses in Luther, and also, yes, admittedly, in Calvin—have become the occasion for the religious struggles of the last 480 years. Both the denial of Christ’s finality by Rome and the incomplete affirmation of that finality by Lutherans and Calvinists have promoted new quests for security in a misguided Christian rationalism and a misdirected Christian pietism, neither of which have much to do with genuine biblical Christianity. In that last statement, I have just surveyed for you the history of Christ’s church in the eighteenth century.

There it is: the pietists reacting to insufficient proclamation, and the rationalists responding with their form of objectivism. But in the nineteenth century, it is a whole new situation. In the nineteenth century, that rationalism and that pietism actually—imagine it—joined forces, embraced one another, and in the liberal gospel and this new gospel, which is no gospel, became bold to claim an autonomy for its own religious perspective and commitment.

It had no difficulty asserting that Luther’s doctrine of justification was merely a hangover from his Jewish upbringing, and the fact that he still, unfortunately, looked at God as a judge who demanded legal satisfaction from sinners. Here were Protestants saying such things—liberal Protestants saying such things. But despite these vestiges of Judaism in Paul, according to the liberals, the real message from this man was what he had learned from the Gentile pagan mystery religions and their notions about spiritual union with a Redeemer. Thus, in the liberal version of Christianity, the doctrine of the Spirit and spiritual union with the Redeemer became paramount, set at odds with and antithetical to Paul’s doctrine of justification by faith. Paul is at war with himself.

But even more, according to these liberals, Jesus became the promoter of a new religion, at the center of which stood the figure of Jesus, a religion demanding full faith in Jesus. According to the liberal, Jesus never intended to become the object of faith; he only set himself forth as an example of faith. According to the liberal, Jesus did not come to save us; he never intended such a message; he only came to lead us to higher ethical standards.

Thus, the nineteenth century brought the Protestant Church to a critical point and placed her at the end of her resources. Protestantism, having begun well with its declaration of the finality of Christ’s sacrifice for sinners, has, through certain weaknesses, compromised that commitment. Its nineteenth-century expression abandoned the finality of Christ’s sacrifice, treating it as something novel and unusual in Paul’s teaching, and something absent in Jesus’ teaching.

Is this our legacy? We are vastly outnumbered. The liberal church has, for the most part, controlled matters from the end of the nineteenth century through the entire twentieth century. Is this our legacy? It is into this desperate situation that the importance of old Princeton and Westminster Seminary becomes clear, and the importance of a confessional Orthodox Reformed theology. Yes, those institutions, and we ourselves, reflect the weaknesses already observed in Protestantism and in Calvinism generally. At the same time, there stood B. B. Warfield, and there stood Gerhardus Vos, especially Vos, who would fight against both the liberal assault and against the failures of Protestantism generally. Boss will concede that the Reformers themselves placed too much emphasis exclusively on the doctrine of justification, the doctrine of Christ for us.

But he will also contend that the entrance into Paul and into the gospel proclaimed by the Apostle is his doctrine of the Spirit, the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, and by that Spirit union with Christ. He will go on to say that Paul’s doctrine of justification by faith is indispensable and essential. And as indispensable, essential, consistent, and particularly focused, it is an outworking of Paul’s overall doctrine of the Spirit and of our union by the Spirit in Christ’s death, resurrection, ascension, glorification, present heavenly reign, and consummate return. Furthermore, he contends that Jesus’ message about himself, his own self-consciousness, his own self-disclosure, and his teaching about the Kingdom of God and the Church are equivalent to Paul’s doctrine of the Spirit and Paul’s doctrine of union with Christ.

It all hangs together. Vos makes the case, and no one has answered him. Thus Vos reasserts the Protestant doctrine of the finality of Christ. But in full fashion, I intuit a more capable doctrine of the finality and harmony of the word of God in its entirety.

It is upon this foundation, then, that Mason and Van Til and Stonehouse and Murray and Gaffin build. In their efforts, they have been especially aided by a Dutch exegete by the name of Herman. I can say only that it is extremely important that the Church listen to these men if she is to breach the wall. Without the blessing of the Holy Spirit, which the Holy Spirit has been pleased to confer in and through these men, there will not be any breach. Here, then, is appropriate progress for Reformational theology.

Here is faithful exposition of the full finality of Christ and the sufficient, final, harmonious, and consistent witness to Christ in all of the Scriptures. This is so that you might know that your salvation from beginning to end is not only by Christ, but in Christ. And by virtue of the Holy Spirit’s ministry, a miracle takes place with regard to you, so that you are actually a participant in Christ’s death, resurrection, ascension, glorification, present heavenly session, and his eventual return. Truly, by God’s doing, you are in Christ Jesus.

Listen to the words of Scripture. You are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption. To this end, just as it is written: “Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord.” Amen. Our Father, bless us.

In our progress with regard to the truth of Your word, may the fullness of that finality and sufficiency in Christ and in Your word be honored by us. And Lord, we ask that, as far as we are concerned, we might give way in our boasting about ourselves, so that our boasting might be in You, and that because of all that You have done for us, and yes, in us, through and by Christ. Father, may this be a church that always honors the finality and the sufficiency of Christ’s death and the nature of His saving activity. We pray this through Christ, who even now has incorporated us into Himself, that we might appear.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

August 25, 1996
Good Preaching and Bad

This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “I Corinthians 13” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, August 18, 1996.

About this sermon

In 2 Corinthians 11 Paul sets his ministry against the “super-apostles” and their different Jesus. Good preaching follows Paul, who proclaimed not himself but Christ crucified, and who served his hearers as Christ’s servant. It tells the history of redemption, showing from Moses and the prophets that Christ had to suffer before entering his glory, and it places hearers within that drama. The church errs when it ordains men on an inner sense of calling or a passed examination alone; preaching needs a real gift and a true message.

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Sermon transcript

We are beginning our scripture reading this morning in 2 Corinthians 11, and we start at verse 1. This is 2 Corinthians 11, and we are reading from verse 1 before we turn back to 1 Corinthians 13. Let us give our attention to God’s infallible word. I wish that you would bear with me in a little foolishness, but indeed you are bearing with me, for I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. For I betrothed you to one husband, that to Christ I might present you as a pure virgin.

But I am afraid that, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds may be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ. For if one comes and preaches another Jesus whom we have not preached, or you receive a different spirit which you have not received, or a different gospel which you have not accepted, you bear this well. For I consider myself not in the least inferior to the most eminent apostles. But even if I am unskilled in speech, yet I am not so in knowledge.

In fact, in every way we have made this evident to you in all things. Did I commit a sin in humbling myself that you might be exalted, because I preached the gospel of God to you without charge? I did not rob other churches, but took wages from them to serve you. And when I was present with you and was in need, I was not a burden to anyone. For when the brethren came from Macedonia, they fully supplied my need, and in everything I kept myself from being a burden to you, and will continue to do so. As the truth of Christ is in me, this boasting of mine will not be stopped in the regions of Achaia. Why? Because I do not love you. God knows I do. But what am I doing?

I will continue to do what I am doing, so that I may cut off opportunity from those who desire an opportunity to be regarded just as we are in the matter about which we are boasting. For such men are false apostles, deceitful workers, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. Therefore it is not surprising that their servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness, whose end will be according to their deeds. Again I say, let no one think me foolish, but if you do, receive me even as foolish, that I also may boast a little. I am speaking not as the Lord would, but as in foolishness, in this confidence of boasting. Since many boast according to the flesh, I will boast also. Turning to 1 Corinthians 13, verses 11 and 12: When I was a child, I used to speak as a child, think as a child, reason as a child. When I became a man, I did away with childish things. For now we see in a dim mirror, but then face to face. Now we know in part, but then I shall know fully, just as I also have been fully known. Pray together. Dear Father in heaven, we are all your children. And yet there are differences among us. Some of us are old and some of us are young. Lord, may we who are old remember the things that you have taught us, that we might be a great help to those who are young, with respect to the matters of your word. And Father, we who are young, may we not waste precious time, but give ourselves, as opportunity affords us, to your word. And take advantage of those blessings that are laid before us, even in the worship of our God, that your word is sung and read and preached, so that when we are old, O God, we might have these things stored up in us to your glory and our good.

We pray it through Christ our Savior. Amen. Like the Apostle Paul asking the Corinthians to bear with him in a little foolishness, I ask you this morning to do the same—to bear with me in a little foolishness. In Paul’s case, in 2 Corinthians, we witness the Apostle, to be sure, sarcastically resorting to boasting in order to answer those who boasted in themselves and made their boast the foundation of their religion.

In my case this morning, I feel compelled to offer a brief reflection outside the usual preaching format in order to address the kind of teaching that passes for preaching in our time. My own judgment is that preaching, as it exists across much of Christ’s Church today, is in very poor condition. Furthermore, and I am deeply grieved in making this statement, since it may affect some of those gathered here this morning, my judgment is that genuinely good preaching can no longer be recognized by many in the Church. And tragically, too often, good preaching no longer captures the interest of many in the Church.

Now, I am not saying there are not many skilled speakers in this country and throughout the world. Ministers who are eloquent, who are effective public figures, who are excellent communicators—whether calm or energetic in delivery. But please understand me: I do not oppose effective speaking ability in preachers, as if dullness or awkwardness were especially commendable in those who serve. After all, the modern Church has allowed too many to enter the ministry of the gospel who have no proper calling, simply because they lack public speaking ability.

The Orthodox Presbyterian Church has been guilty of this very thing—seemingly suggesting on occasion that all a man needs to become a minister of the Word is a deep inner sense of his own personal calling, or the ability to pass his official presbytery examinations.

In my early days in the Presbytery of Ohio, this very presbytery passed a man for licensure who preached one sermon that was widely regarded as poor by everyone present. Yet he continues to be licensed. He preached that sermon, claiming he had left his notes in Philadelphia, and he made that excuse during the introduction of the sermon. In rendering its judgment, the presbytery stated that, after all, every preacher has his bad day.

Thus, that young man was licensed as a preacher in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church without any evidence that he could deliver a public presentation, let alone preach effectively. But had this man been a skilled public speaker, that fact alone would not have identified him as a good preacher, or even as a preacher at all.

However, you may well point out to me that Paul, in the very text we have read this morning—2 Corinthians 11, particularly verse 6—seems to emphasize his own lack of skill as a public speaker. Perhaps then, in keeping with Paul’s sentiments expressed at that point, ability in public speaking cannot be required in the ministry of the Word. We would do well to remember, in this regard, that Paul was merely restating and responding to the criticisms he had received from the disciples of those polished rhetoricians—highly trained and well-rehearsed masters of the communication arts—who had imposed themselves upon the Corinthian assembly. Paul’s style, the management of his material, and his presentation actually differed from professional expectations and violated the standards of rhetorical craft. His self-deprecating remarks, such as those found in 2 Corinthians 11, verse 6, and elsewhere in the Corinthian correspondence, were a humble protest against the demagoguery of these elitist critics. This protest extends to defining good preaching in terms other than those demanded by his opponents.

But if good preaching demands adequate public speaking ability, and at the same time must not be confused with speaking skill in itself, then what makes for good preaching? Good preaching, my dear friends, is not oratory. It cannot be equated with mastery of public speaking 101. Good preaching does not rely on the principles and calculations of Aristotle’s rhetoric.

Instead, it originates from the revelations received by and communicated through the Hebrew prophets. Good preaching stands in the line of the book of Deuteronomy. Moses’ magnificent sermon was preached to a people whom God had redeemed and led through one world, even as they were poised to enter another. Consider the context and the forcefulness of what I have just said. Good preaching stands in the line of the book of Deuteronomy, a magnificent sermon in itself, preached to a people whom God had redeemed and led through one world even as they were poised to enter another. Good preaching stands in the line of the prophet Isaiah. His book-length sermon is magnificent, to be sure, exalting grace for that portion of Israel whose fate was shaped by the downfall of the Northern Kingdom, and that deliverance a token of God’s enduring covenant, his enduring promises, and an anticipation of the universal final blessedness for the people of the Lord, whom he would gather from the ends of the earth. Even as he bestowed upon them his mercies through the anguished death and vindication of his faithful suffering servant. I just gave you the book of Isaiah.

Good preaching ultimately rests in the preaching of Jesus Christ. He preached and proclaimed the good news of the proximity and the arrival of the kingdom of heaven. I am emphasizing that good preaching is defined by content and substance more than by style. Her preaching rests, then, in the preaching of Jesus Christ, as he, through his preaching, explains the reality of the kingdom, effectively placing his hearers before the demands of that kingdom, while establishing those who believe in him within the kingdom’s superior, though hidden, blessings. That is what preaching does. Good preaching takes its direction from Jesus Christ, who, on the day of his resurrection, traveled with two men on the road to Emmaus and explained to them from Moses and from all the prophets why it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and by that route alone to enter into his glory. Good preaching follows Paul, the apostle, who was determined not to preach himself, but Jesus Christ and him crucified.

And to the extent that he was a factor, he presented himself as a servant to those to whom he endeavored to communicate that message. The apostle did not hesitate to tell his hearers that the very end of the ages, the fullness of time, the end of history, and the very consummation of the law had arrived in the coming of Jesus Christ, and that these hearers were partakers of the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ. And that, as sons of God, bearing in possession the Holy Spirit of God, they were blessed with a heavenly life that is already given to them, even as they presently awaited the appearance of their great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. The Church and the world is insistently and consistently declared to be the mighty acts of God. It sets forth before the people, supremely, that mighty act of God’s redeeming work in his eternal Son, our Savior Jesus Christ. And that, for the purpose of seeing those tears of the Word placed by grace within, and living by grace within the flow of the drama of salvation.

You are no spectator; you are a participant. You are in it. You are right up against those mighty acts of God, and it is the job of the preacher to tell you that. To preach in this manner, as the Apostle Paul said to the Ephesian elders, is to declare the whole counsel of God. Acts 20, verse 27.

Good preaching draws the hearers into the text of the Scriptures, there to be confronted with the awesomeness of God Himself, the certainties of His justice, and the comforts of His grace. It does this for the purpose of gathering all His elect into a holy assembly, even His church, in and through Christ. Good preaching calls men and women, young and old, to repentance and faith in Jesus Christ, so that they may be delivered from this present evil age and made citizens of the kingdom of heaven. Good preaching understands that we stand between the times, a time in which the old has ended and the new has come, even as we await the end of this world and the return of our Savior.

Because of all these things, good preaching is God-centered, not man-centered. Enough of these stories about you and others. As comforting and as reassuring as those stories may be, they are not what preaching is about. Preaching is not about what has happened to me. Preaching is about what God has done, and my relationship to it.

Good preaching, therefore, is God-centered, not man-centered, not self-centered. Good preaching is Christ-centered, not morality and behavior-centered. Good preaching is Scripture-centered, not headline-centered. Good preaching is event-centered, not idea-centered. Good preaching is Church-centered, not culture-centered, and good preaching is history-of-redemption-centered, not history-of-the-world-centered.

But good preaching is even more, for it actually issues from God Himself. And in some way is always conscious of or catches the truth that all truly good preaching is a transcendent, heavenly exercise, wherein the preacher, as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 2:17, speaks in Christ in the sight of God.

Unfortunately, much of present-day preaching is nothing of the sort. For much of the Church—conservative or liberal, Calvinist or Arminian—contents itself with preaching based upon the concerns of this world. More than the Scriptures, such preaching emphasizes the world’s wisdom, its problems, and its fears. As one prominent Reformed leader has stated, in my judgment, misunderstands the matter entirely, the effective preacher must be a careful observer and interpreter of the present time, understanding the cultural ideas, the political realities, the influential movements, and the pressing challenges of a given era. It would seem, given this approach to preaching, that preachers must be competent in history, cultural anthropology, sociology, politics, psychology, and, of course, in the study of current popular culture. Because, of course, we want to reach beyond. Most importantly, then, it would seem, according to the definition and description provided by this Reformed author, preachers are the heralds of relevance. They are the apostles of the anecdote and analysis, who have mastered modern times because they, in the words of this Reformed expert, are preaching for modern times. This is a very different approach from that which I presented to you earlier in this message. This Reformed author goes on to define what he means by preaching.

It is the proclamation of the Word of God in all its relevance. There are certain aspects of relevance that may not apply to us in our particular circumstances. The full relevance of the Word to the contemporary situation in which real people, as opposed to abstract or unreal figures, are called to responsibility before God. Let me read that again: “…the proclamation of the Word of God in all its relevance to the contemporary situation in which real people are called to responsibility before the Word.” Rather than seeing the hearers of the Word placed by grace within the flow of the drama of salvation, in which God is sovereign, this approach allows the so-called contemporary situation to determine the Word’s relevance.

We determine what the scriptures mean. But good preaching does not so much make the text meaningful for you in your contemporary situation as it makes you and your contemporary situation meaningful within the text. You understand the general principle at work in this matter of preaching. We are being told by those who hold positions in practical theology in nearly every theological seminary in this country that we, as the Church of Jesus Christ, today live in a situation that is both quantitatively and qualitatively different from that of the first Christians. Consider the title of a recent book on preaching: The Ancient Text and the Modern Preacher. Consider another title, from an evangelical leader: Between Two Worlds. He does not mean between this world and the world above. He means between the world of the first century and the world of the twentieth century.

By making that kind of division, these individuals have established the priority of the contemporary situation. They have mandated the accommodation of the word to our own lives and situations. The sovereignty and sufficiency of the word are abandoned. They can no longer function. And this is what is so tragic, because these Reformed authors have become closet liberals. Liberalism has also been called modernism. Why? Because liberals believe the modern situation controls everything, and you are at the center.

The Bible and good preaching see things otherwise. Their interest is to draw you into the drama of redemption as it is proclaimed in Scripture, so that you might see the sufficiency of the word, and live not for yourself, but for God. But why have I engaged in this bit of foolishness this morning, this bit of non-preaching about non-preaching?

Because we have come in our study of 1 Corinthians 13 to verses 11 and 12, and to the difficult aspects of homiletics that those verses raise. These aspects are particularly revealing in light of present-day attitudes toward preaching and what goes into preaching. I have in mind Paul’s use of illustration. Paul’s use of illustration. Our next message, I trust, will at least be a sincere effort at good preaching, in which we will look at Paul’s personal illustration of his movement from childhood to adulthood, verse 11, and his illustration of looking into a mirror, verse 12. And if this message has been of value to you, perhaps you will be better equipped in that next message to judge whether it is good preaching or not. Pray for me that I might preach well.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

August 18, 1996
Eternal Love and Temporary Gifts

This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “I Corinthians 13” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, July 7, 1996.

About this sermon

Paul draws a sharp contrast between eternal love and the merely temporary spiritual gifts the Corinthians boasted in. That boasting exposes a human pride that must be thoroughly undone before love can take its rightful place.

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Sermon transcript

We have been working our way through the various versions of 1 Corinthians 13, one translation at a time, and this morning we are using the New English Bible translation. This is the New English Bible translation, and we are beginning at 1 Corinthians 12, verse 27, and reading through to the opening statement in the fourteenth chapter, the first verse. So let us give our attention to God’s holy word. Now, you are Christ’s body, and each of you a limb or organ of it.

Within our community, God has appointed in the first place apostles, in the second place teachers, then miracle workers, then those who have gifts of healing, or the ability to help others, or the power to guide them, or the gift of ecstatic utterance of various kinds. Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? Do all have gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Can all interpret them?

The higher gifts are those you should strive to attain. And now I will show you the best way of all. I may speak in tongues of men or of angels, but if I do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. I may have the gift of prophecy and know every secret truth. I may have faith strong enough to move mountains. But if I do not have love, I am nothing. I may give away all I possess, or even surrender my body to be burned. But if I do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient. Love is kind and does not envy anyone. Love is never boastful, nor conceited, nor rude. It is never selfish, nor quick to take offense. Love keeps no record of wrongs. It does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. There is nothing love cannot endure. There is no limit to its faith, its hope, and its endurance. Love will never come to an end.

Are there prophets? Their work will come to an end. Are there tongues of ecstasy? They will cease. Is there knowledge? It will disappear. For our knowledge and our prophecy are both incomplete, and the incomplete will disappear when completeness comes. When I was a child, my speech, my outlook, and my thoughts were all childish. When I grew up, I put away childish things. Now we see only a reflection in a mirror, dimly. But then we will see face to face.

My knowledge now is incomplete, then it will be complete, just as God’s knowledge of me is complete. In a word, there are three things that last forever: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love. Put love first. What can we say about these extraordinary verses? Particularly now, as we come to the latter part of this chapter in 1 Corinthians 13, verses 8 through 12, we may well be struck by them. They shine like a fine gem, so many-sided and so brilliantly. In these verses, Paul builds to the close of his argument for the unique and transcendent love of Christ’s gospel and of Christian experience.

That love revealed in Jesus Christ as the Father in Heaven offers Him up for sinners. That love fulfilled in Jesus Christ as Jesus offers up for us that perfect obedience from which our love for others flows. Now, these verses. They begin with a masterful transition statement at the opening of verse eight: Love never fails. It never collapses. It never suffers ruin. Love, like God Himself, stands like a fortress. These words at the beginning of verse eight connect with the previous verses we have examined, particularly verses 4 through 7. At the same time, they lead us in the most satisfying way into the verses now before us, verses 8 through 12.

Love’s permanence, that is, love’s eternity, revealed in Jesus Christ, demonstrates its ability, because of Him, to place us in the exalted atmosphere of the heavenly kingdom. This love now asserts itself in our lives, shaping and guiding our attitudes and behavior. The greatness of this love, which I possess, is the greatness of God. According to Paul, Jesus Christ proves this by the way He contrasts love with the special gifts of the Holy Spirit, which He has been discussing.

These gifts, even in their remarkable expressions, belong to the realm of the partial and the incomplete. In contrast, gospel love endures into the realm of perfection, completion, and fullness. The world will come to an end, and all the special gifts will come to an end. We know in part, we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away. This emphasis by the Apostle Paul thus highlights the temporary nature of the gifts. They belong to the realm of the temporary and will cease, as he says. They will be abolished. On the other hand, love belongs to the eternal order. When the perfect comes, the gifts will have ceased, but love will remain. It never fails. It never suffers ruin.

Paul, in these verses, effectively highlights the limitations of the special gifts. He does so in a church where these gifts have been sought after and boasted about, as if they were the unique expressions of the unlimited glories of the coming kingdom. As if, by possessing them, those who had them were already in glory itself. However, Paul’s argument is even more decisive than merely pointing out the partial and temporary nature of the gifts. Observe the progression from verse 8 through verse 12. First, in verse 8, Paul speaks in what we might consider the most striking manner.

It seems, according to the vocabulary of the Apostle here, that in one sense Paul is describing the temporary nature of these gifts. True, love never fails, but if there are prophecies, if there are tongues, if there is knowledge, you must recognize the force of Paul’s deliberate construction. It is as if Paul were leaving open the question of the gifts’ existence, as if they had become a mere possibility. If they are prophecies, if they are promises, if they are knowledge, then they are temporary. Of course, the Apostle Paul does not leave things at this point; he does not leave the gifts in a state of uncertainty. He does not do so because of the undeniable reality of these gifts, a reality he knows firsthand, since he has received them all. He argues, as it were, from their temporary nature in order to reestablish their purpose in his argument.

But even as he reestablishes these gifts, effectively creating them anew, he does so in the most cautious manner, using language that is limited and, to some, may seem to diminish their value. He does not simply emphasize their partial and temporary character, but he also connects them with immaturity and childishness, as if they belong to a world of infants. And as you move toward the twelfth verse, he also suggests their connection with indirect and unclear images, which fall short of face-to-face communication. He could not do more to emphasize their temporary nature. This is holy Scripture. It is also remarkable reasoning. When we come to verse 11, that well-known passage in 1 Corinthians 13, Paul continues his contrast between the partial and the perfect, the temporary and the eternal.

When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I thought as a child, I understood as a child. When I became a man, I put away childish things. Now, at this point, many commentators move directly from verse 11 to verse 8 without pause. At this point, in verse 11, they find themselves facing great difficulty, unable, as it were, to follow Paul’s reasoning. For it sounds to them as if Paul were deliberately connecting the gifts to childishness and immaturity, as I have already suggested. But these commentators object. How can this be?

How can the gifts of the Holy Spirit, by which the revelation of the great God comes to the Church, be described as childish and immature? There is a sense in which their objection is rightly taken, and it should be acknowledged. But the contrast is not between the gifts and love in themselves, but between two successive stages: childhood and adulthood.

Paul’s point is to illustrate the transition from one state to another—the transition from this world to the next—by appealing to the transition from childhood to adulthood. His purpose is to provide an illustration that sets the transition from the present world of the partial and temporary to the future world of the complete and eternal. While Paul has this purpose, he also subtly suggests that the gifts are an immature expression of Christian activity. He follows the same approach in verse 12.

The mirror offers only a dim and even distorted reflection. The movement is from the time when we see God reflected as by a mirror, even through the Holy Spirit’s revelatory gifts, to the time when we shall see him face to face. This is a movement from our partial knowledge in the present age to the full knowledge of the age to come, when I shall know just as I also have been fully known. As with the illustration of childhood and adulthood, so here with the image in the mirror. As we are confronted with these statements in verses 11 and 12, we may find ourselves hesitating to accept such comparisons.

The gifts of the Holy Spirit are linked with childishness and dim reflections, not as a mere comparison. Paul’s method here is consistent and forceful. If you follow him in verse 8, if you pay attention to what he says in verse 8, you will have no difficulty understanding what he is striving to express in verses 11 and 12. If he places the gifts in verse 8 in the category of what is temporary, you will have no difficulty understanding his intention in verses 11 and 12, where he connects them to childishness and to dim reflections in a mirror.

Paul’s method has as its goal the complete undoing of human pride in spiritual matters. There is purpose in his approach. His method aims specifically, in this context, to remove Corinthian pride, and this for the sake of exalting genuine gospel love.

Many of the people in Corinth viewed their gifts and endowments as the most perfect and highest expressions of heavenly glory in this present life. They displayed these gifts openly before others, treating them as anything but partial or temporary. According to them, this was the language of heaven. This was the substance of eternity, if one could see it at all within the realm of this creation. How could Paul speak of these gifts as if they did not exist? These gifts, which they had come to enjoy and with which they had been endowed, were now dismissed by Paul as if they were nothing. Even when their existence was acknowledged, how could Paul bring them so harshly into association with childishness and cloudy reflections in a mirror?

But Paul speaks the truth. He presents the case for genuine gospel love. The gifts will come to an end. They belong only to this world. Yet, of equal or greater importance to Paul in this context is his confrontation with the Corinthian sense of superiority, which misinterprets God’s goodness so completely that it now obscures the very essence and existence of the gospel. The gospel, as centered in the love of God and the love of Jesus Christ, is thereby undermined.

You see, these people have subjected love to a standard of their own making, a standard that would render love nonexistent and inoperative. They reduce love to something partial and temporary. They classify it with childish things and shadowy reflections. Such is the effect of their vanity. Paul has turned their attitude back upon themselves and placed it directly upon their own heads.

If you are disturbed that Paul uses the language of non-existence with regard to the gifts in verse 8, and if you are unsettled by his connection of the gifts with things childish, immature, and dimly perceived in nearness in verses 11 and 12, then understand that behind what Paul is doing is an activity engaged in by the Corinthians themselves. In effect, they work toward the non-existence of love in their understanding and definition of the gospel.

I have never met a person proud in their spirituality who truly loves. It is as if they are incapable of it. Paul knows whereof he speaks. The kind of activity in which the Corinthians presently find themselves blots out love. It totally eclipses love, as if it were non-existent and non-operative in the definition of what religion is. Now, you may feel that you are off the hook, because recently you have not been engaged in prophecy, you have not been speaking in tongues, and as far as you know, you have no gift of knowledge. But you understand what the Apostle has done here. He has taken the highest things in order to include everything lower beneath them. Thus, every endowment is addressed by the Apostle’s instruction concerning the higher order of revelatory gifts.

Does it matter whether you are a minister, an elder, or a deacon? You are also addressed by these words. All lesser and more common endowments are in view. Does it matter that you are just a plain pew sitter? Not at all. Whatever endowment you may have, or whatever may be the measure of your presence in the body of Christ, you are also addressed. When the highest is addressed, the least is addressed as well. And this applies wherever spiritual pride or supposed superiority might be found.

And that strikes at the other point, does it not? The universal character of love and the obligation that is placed upon us all regarding it. We may not have the gift, but we are told we have the love. Therefore, remember what you have heard here today from the Apostle and from this pulpit. Remember for yourself that wherever spiritual pride arises, gospel love will disappear. You can count on that. Let us pray.

Our God, we would hear You again. We have spent much time with this passage over the course of our lives, and we may well think that it is all old and familiar. We may think, Lord, that it is tried and true material, to be sure, but we know it all already. Yet even this, Lord, reflects a kind of spiritual pride in us. Father, we plead with You that our eyes may behold the wondrous things in Your word, and that our ears may be open to what You are saying. May You help us, O God, with the depth of these matters, so that there may be depth in our souls, and because of Your mercy, grace, and work within us, we may be capable of great service to Your people and to the church. Hear us, Lord, as we labor with these matters, for surely many of us are struggling with them right now. Lord, may we put behind us all spiritual pride, and Lord, may Your love in Jesus Christ shine brightly in us and for You.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

July 7, 1996
Love, the Fruit of the Spirit

This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “I Corinthians 13” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, June 16, 1996.

About this sermon

Love is the principal fruit of the Spirit, and three common misunderstandings of 1 Corinthians 13 fall away in its light. Love is an atmosphere Christians dwell in, centered on Christ himself, more than a rule to keep.

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Sermon transcript

One of my thoughts as we make our way through our sermons on 1 Corinthians 13 is that we might read as much of this letter to the Corinthians—the first letter to the Corinthians—as we can during this series. We have read the first three chapters, and we have read from other portions of 1 Corinthians. This morning we are at 1 Corinthians 4, and we will be reading from that passage, then moving on into the thirteenth chapter. Let us give our attention to God’s holy word in 1 Corinthians chapter 4.

Let a man regard us in this way: as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. Moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found faithful. But with me, it is a very small matter that I should be judged by you or by human judgment. Indeed, I do not even judge myself. For I know nothing against myself, yet I am not thereby justified. The one who judges me is the Lord. Therefore, judge nothing before the time, until the Lord comes, who will bring to light the hidden things of darkness and will reveal the purposes of the heart. Then each one will receive praise from God.

These things, brothers and sisters, I have applied in a figure to myself and to Apollos for your benefit, so that you may learn in us not to think of anyone beyond what is written, and so that no one of you may be puffed up in favor of one against another. For who makes you different from another? And what do you have that you did not receive? If you received it, why do you boast as though you had not received it?

Now you are full, now you are rich; you have reigned as kings without us. And I would to God you did reign, that we also might reign with you. So I think that God has set forth us, the apostles, last, as though appointed to death. For we are made a spectacle to the world, to angels, and to men. We are fools for Christ’s sake, but you are wise in Christ; we are weak, but you are strong; you are honored, but we are despised. Even to this present hour we both hunger and thirst, are naked, are beaten, have no certain dwelling place, and labor, working with our own hands. Being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we endure it; being defamed, we entreat. We are made as the filth of the world and the off-scouring of all things to this day.

I write not these things to shame you, but as my beloved sons I warn you, for though you have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet you do not have many fathers. For in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel. Therefore I urge you to be followers of me. For this reason I have sent Timothy to you, who is my beloved son and faithful in the Lord. He will bring you into remembrance of my ways, which are in Christ, as I teach everywhere in every church. Now some are puffed up, as though I would not come to you.

I will come to you shortly, if the Lord will, and will know not the speech of those who are puffed up, but the power. For the kingdom of God is not in word, but in power. What will you? Shall I come to you with a rod, or in love and in the spirit of meekness? And then from 1 Corinthians 13, verse 4 and following: “Love suffers long and is kind. Love envies not, love does not seek its own, is not puffed up, does not behave itself unseemly, does not seek its own, is not easily provoked, thinks no evil. Rejoices not in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth. Bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

We will pray together now. Our Savior and our God, deliver us from perfunctory prayer and superficial prayer, so that we may present to You our open hearts as we approach You in petition and in thanksgiving. Our God, there will be much prayer today among Your people, even on behalf of Your people. Lord, regarding this means of grace, we ask You for integrity. Whether it is here in the pulpit, at home at the dinner table, or privately as we offer our petitions this afternoon or this evening, may we concentrate fully in our prayers. And bless us, Lord, according to Your grace, in keeping with Your will, and may our requests be conformed to Your purpose. In this present instance, Lord, we ask You as one person for a common heart that thirsts for Your Word.

May we give our attention to our God, through Christ, who Himself prays perfectly. Amen. Love is the principal fruit of the Spirit. It is mentioned first in Galatians 5:22, and the listing of the fruit there. Love is the principal fruit of the Spirit of God. It is thoroughly indispensable as well for the expression of all spiritual maturity.

This is the intention of what Paul is saying to us here in 1 Corinthians 13, verses 4 and 5. Such high estimation and such high language about love commend themselves to us because love is commended to us, being at the very center of God’s action toward us. For while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5:8. But further, this exalted estimation, this high language about love, commends itself to us because it takes us, according to the testimony of another apostle, into the very heart of God. John says, God is love. 1 John 4:8 and 16. Concentrating on the Apostle Paul this morning, we may well say that Paul, no less than John, is the champion for love. And how clear this is to us in 1 Corinthians 13.

Love here is not simply one more gift among many, particularly not one more gift among the many gifts that are spoken of here explicitly by the Apostles. Being very honest about what the Apostle is saying, what he is communicating here, this man, this servant of God, is pleading for love as an environment and atmosphere in which we live.

He sets us up for this consideration. The last verse of the twelfth chapter in 1 Corinthians has Paul speaking to us about the excellent way, the most excellent way, that way being the way of love. He has in mind, then, a route or a path—that is the image—a road on which we find ourselves, and in which we are to give expression to the various aspects of our Christian character, and in which we are to give expression to the various gifts that come to us along the way. This means, then, that the road, the way, in its most comprehensive sense, is greater than any of the particular endowments granted us for traveling in our journey. Love is greater than tongue-speaking. It is greater than prophecy. It is greater than knowledge. It is greater than faith. It is greater than charity. While this is the tone and the direction of the Apostle’s intention, he is pleading here for love as environment and as atmosphere, and in an even deeper sense.

And this is evident to us when we realize that he is providing to us, in this thirteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians, a description of Jesus Christ himself. Even though Jesus is not mentioned in the thirteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians, this chapter is about him. He stands at its very center. The love of God in Paul’s teaching is uniquely related to Jesus Christ, as I’m sure you know.

But consider some specific examples, some instances. The well-known conclusion of Romans 8, for example. For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus. Verses 38 and 39 of that eighth chapter of Romans. For Paul, we who have been saved by God’s grace cannot be separated from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus, because we who are his elect, who are his church, cannot be separated from Christ himself. We have been savingly joined to him.

Do you think of your salvation in these terms? Not merely in terms of a conscience freed from guilt. Not merely in terms of the recovery of purpose for living. Not merely in terms of a positive outlook, nor even in terms of the forgiveness of sins. Do you think of salvation concretely as your being united to Christ?

You are joined. This is the point for which the Apostle pleads. He knows how easily you may miss the meaning, how quickly you may become preoccupied with other matters, how likely you are to stop short of where you ought to be in your religious reflection and conscience. You are prone to stop just at the issue of sin. Christians have been forgiven by God on the cross. That is wonderfully glorious, magnificent, but do you understand the end and the goal that is set before you?

That we might be united to Christ, joined to Him. It is because of this truth that Jesus Christ is presented to us by the Apostle Paul as the environment and the atmosphere in which we live. We have taken up residence in Him; we are in Christ. Now, I will suggest to you that this explains some of Paul’s imagery throughout his writings—his imagery regarding the body, his imagery regarding the temple, and his building image. We are in the temple; we are in Him. We dwell, we reside there.

And such language as this builds upon the Old Testament vocabulary, does it not? For in the Old Testament, is it not God who continually reminds us that He is for us a fortress in which we may dwell? That He has become for His people a sanctuary in which they may abide? In Paul’s pastoral letters—letters that are unfortunately not received as they ought to be—you know what the pastoral letters of Paul are: the letters to Timothy and to Titus. Paul speaks about this matter once again, but in ways we might miss, because we are prone to treat them as mere religious rhetoric.

I have in mind 1 Timothy 1:14, very instructive in this regard, for this passage shows Paul making full use of the very idea we have just discussed. He tells us about the grace of God so abundantly lavished upon him, an unworthy and ignorant sinner. You may remember that in this context Paul calls himself the chief of sinners.

But hear what he says in verse 14 of 1 Timothy 1: “The grace of our Lord was more than abundant, with the faith and the love which are in Christ Jesus.” This is deliberate language on the part of the Apostle. The faith and the love which are in Christ Jesus. In other words, according to the Apostle’s confession at this point, the faith and the love necessary for his own personal vindication, his own personal justification, and his own devotion and sanctification, are found in Christ Jesus, not in himself. Jesus Christ becomes a place to dwell in—a place in which we are to be found, in which and from which we are to live. Joined to Christ, yet living in Him. Have you ever thought of Jesus as a house? Have you ever thought of Jesus as your home? I do try to stir your souls.

But the Apostle then repeats himself, this time with respect to Timothy. In 2 Timothy, again in the first chapter, verse thirteen, Paul speaks along similar lines. What he said about his own situation in the first chapter of the first letter to Timothy, he now says with regard to his beloved son in the faith, Timothy, in verse thirteen of the first chapter of the second letter. He says, “Retain the standard of sound words which you have heard from me, Timothy, in faith and love which are in Christ Jesus.” In 1 Timothy, Paul speaks about his own position in Christ; here in 2 Timothy, he speaks about Timothy’s position in Christ. But when considering the apostle’s doctrine and teaching as a whole, he does not leave things at this level—neither at the level of the apostle and his servant, nor at the level of his son in the faith, nor at the level of the pastor, such as Timothy is. For in 1 Corinthians, going back to 1 Corinthians, Paul speaks powerfully along these lines with respect to the whole Church. I have in mind 1 Corinthians chapter 1, verse 30.

But by God’s doing, you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God and righteousness and sanctification and redemption. Fundamental to the apostle’s teaching is this truth: Jesus Christ is our place of residence. And in him—that is, in the environment and atmosphere which Christ has become for us—we breathe in his faithfulness and his love, and we exhale these very realities into the Church and even into the world, to God’s glory. 1 Corinthians 13 radiates the love which is in Christ. Jesus. And that is the love that Paul has in mind. No other love will do.

Now, it is this Christ-centered approach to this exalted and precious chapter, 1 Corinthians 13, which refutes the many damaging misunderstandings of this text. One of the most damaging misunderstandings is the view that 1 Corinthians 13 represents only a brief moment when the Apostle rises to a higher and more true understanding of religion. 1 Corinthians 13 represents only a brief, although brilliant, moment when the Apostle rises to the greater and truer reality of religion. In other words, Paul in 1 Corinthians 13 presents an exception to his usual teaching and to what he says elsewhere. Here in this chapter, he sets aside the specific details of Jesus’ doctrine and Jesus’ theology, together with the foundation of that theology and doctrine in the particularities of Old Testament Judaism.

It is here especially that Paul addresses the universal concerns of humanity, apart from the specific elements of Christianity. You do not need to be a Christian to appreciate and apply the message of 1 Corinthians 13. It expresses a general religious truth. You do not need Jesus Christ in order to live in accordance with what 1 Corinthians 13 teaches. That is, you do not need him in any redemptive sense. This damaging misunderstanding does not end here.

It says that Paul had a glimpse into the eternally valid truth of absolute tolerance and acceptance. The Apostle Paul was not a modern advocate of political correctness or acceptance. This chapter presents him as moving beyond the narrow confines of a religion defined by exclusionary doctrine and membership in any particular group. As you would note, such an approach to this chapter cannot accept Paul’s language elsewhere, where he speaks about predestination, election, or even salvation by grace, unless that language is understood to refer to a predestination, an election, and a salvation that are common to all people, which all people may enjoy. Thus it is stated, thus it is held, that the Paul of 1 Corinthians 13 stands in contrast to the Paul found in all the rest of the writings attributed to him in the New Testament. In those writings, he uses language that clearly indicates his belief in the separation of believer from non-believer, the church from the world, and his belief that there is a heaven for the blessed and, according to the reprobation of God, everlasting fire for the damned.

This liberal position on Paul boasts of having discovered the highest moral ground. Although it may speak as if it were occasionally declaring its own anathemas against others—such as fundamentalists and strict Calvinists—it assumes a sense of superiority and a condescending attitude toward all its opponents. Ardent and insistent Calvinists may be utterly obnoxious, these liberals say; we may even drive them out of our churches. Yet we know they are included in any form of redemption that we believe is consistent with our view of religion. It is to our credit, and to the credit of our superior theology, they say, that we tolerate and accept these people. Not necessarily into our churches, but at least into the cosmic unity that we profess to be at the heart of all true religion. That the Christ-centered character of 1 Corinthians 13 makes it clear that we are not dealing here with an exception to Paul’s doctrine and teaching.

It is precisely the love that is in Christ Jesus, in all of its redemptive and saving glory, in all of its saving particularity, and in all of its reality regarding heaven and hell, that is patient and kind. Moving through those verses, then, chapter after chapter, only the love that is in Christ Jesus withstands jealousy, boasting, and arrogance. You have no strength to withstand such things as jealousy, boasting, and arrogance apart from Christ, when you are in Him. As we have seen from an earlier message, this love that is in Christ Jesus exercises a sovereign authority over the standards of respectable behavior. Indeed, it does not act in an unseemly manner, nor does it act unbecomingly, but it goes beyond the customs of the Gentiles and even beyond the laws of the Old Testament, finding its standard in Jesus Christ Himself, as He has truly become the environment and atmosphere in which we live. The love in Jesus is not selfish, it is not easily offended, it is not ruthless. It does not take pleasure in the failures and faults of others. Instead, it takes pleasure in the truth, in the realm of truth.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

June 16, 1996