The Church God Wants Us To Be

The Church God Wants Us to Be

Based on 1 Corinthians 16;13-14

Khen Lim




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On his dying bed, the U.S. Secretary of State (1861 to 1869) and architect of the Alaska Purchase, William Henry Seward was asked if he had any last words to remember him by, he said, “Nothing, only ‘love one another.’”

Last words are like parting shots. They are like the final opportunity to say something useful or something worth remembering or something that would work out to be quite important. The Apostle Paul probably knew this when he put his finishing touches to close his first letter to the Corinthians. Because of that, it pays for us to follow through and see what it is that Paul wants to tell us as he concludes 1 Corinthians.

We know the author as Paul of Tarsus, a missionary church-planter under the direct instructions of Jesus Himself. His first letter to the church of Corinth was written almost thirty years after Christ had risen. Paul meant the letter for the new congregation of born-again Christians in a church that was established only three to four years prior.

We call them Corinthians but more importantly, they were all brand-new believers of Christ, spiritually wet in the ears and living in one of the most pagan of ancient Greek metropoles. That’s no different to running a fledgling church right in the epicentre of a busy Chinese village in Malaysia proliferated by pagan-worshipping temples at every corner of every street.

So obviously the Corinthian Christians would have struggled in their calling. It’s highly probable that in the whole of Corinth, the only Christians are those who attend this specific church that Paul had written to. Confusion would have reigned and mistakes would have been rife among the Corinthians. There would surely have been ten-fold more questions than there were answers and some of these questions would have been worrying enough for Paul to write and resolve.

Paul’s first letter – the Bible encourages us to refer to it as 1 Corinthians – deals mainly with two topical concerns. With the first concern, Paul used the first six chapters to address church conflicts and strife as well as their leniency towards immoral conduct in their fellowship. It is the rest of the letter that Paul answers the questions that the Corinthians had asked him and it is these that better described the distorted perceptions of Christianity and the state of confusion that pervaded among the congregation.

For example, some of the Corinthians had espoused the idea that only special visions or spiritual insights unique to the person defined ‘real spirituality.’ Even more disturbingly, there was the belief that such a person was not only beyond scrutiny but was above normal concerns of life. In roughly the same vein, Corinthians appeared to embrace the notion that anyone who was anointed the spiritual gift of speaking in tongues was exempt from learning about God’s Word or even toeing the line of proper Christian decorum and protocols.

It was this muddied background that 1 Corinthians should best be understood and it points to why Paul’s letter was written not along the lines of supernatural ecstatic encounters but instead he grounded their faith on the primacy of God’s truth, the inerrancy of the Gospel and the exhortation to live in holy obedience and servanthood.

Against all this, Paul’s last words in the letter would have to be profound. His final touches would need to make strong sense for the letter to be included in the New Testament. In and amongst his final words are two verses that are appealing enough for us to take a look at. 

In fact, if you study it closely enough, you might agree with me that in it are simple and clear – and important – clues of the kind of church that God wants us to be. In these verses, we find five critical values, the principles of which Paul laid out for the Corinthians to hear and understand, to embrace, heed and remember if they desire to be on the same page as God:

“Be on guard. Stand firm in the faith. Be courageous. Be strong. And do everything with love.” (1 Cor 16:13-14, NLT)

Two separate groups of commands are fairly clear in these two verses. The first four fairly much gel together while the last one stands on its own. However, when put together, they flesh out the two opposite sides of the same coin – the two equal and opposite sides that define the Christian fellowship or church life in equal importance. This is in much the same way as how love can be tender and tough at the same time when we love our children – tender as we whisper lovingly in their ears but tough when we need to inculcate discipline, morals and civic consciousness into them as they grow.

Equally so, a church that develops in a healthy manner requires both values just the same. We are tender in heart in the way we are compassionate and forgiving but at the same time, we are also tough minded because we have to be capable of thinking lucidly about the things we need to do and achieve. 

It is unthinkable to imagine a church that is inverse in character – mean-spirited instead of tender-hearted and then insipid, rudderless and weak in the mind rather than tough and determined. In other words, while we are hard on one another, we lack conviction to do the right things to advance the church. It is this question of balance that Paul sought to address with the church in Corinth.

The four values of tough-minded faith

1 Corinthians 16:13-14 highlights the first four values that foreshadow the tough mindedness of our faith. In the language the verse was written, it seems to be written from the perspective of a drill sergeant more so than a theologian. Perhaps that is because the verse reflects strong grammatical imperatives that resonate like big commands that spurs us to keep doing the right things and stop swaying about. These commands encourage us to toughen up, to steel ourselves and gird our strength in readiness for a tough fight.

 

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1. Be on guard

In the verse, the first value reads as, “Be on guard.” In other words, stand up and watch. Scan the horizon from left to right and back. Look up. Look down. Check everywhere and stay alert. If you think all this sounds very militaristic, you’re not wrong. There’s that familiar feeling that the enemy is watching us and we need to be especially cautious and vigilant. We’re in dangerous times and if we’re not careful, the enemy would strike. Many a times, all it takes is just for that one strike and we’d be down and done in.

This same term is also found fairly prevalently in the New Testament particularly in reference to how we are to stay on guard for Christ’s return and hence, the coming judgement. Jesus says in the Gospel of Matthew:

“So you, too, must keep watch! For you don’t know what day your Lord is coming. Understand this: If a homeowner knew exactly when a burglar was coming, he would keep watch and not permit his house to be broken into. You also must be ready all the time, for the Son of Man will come when least expected.” (Mt 24:42-44, NLT, emphasis mine)

Paul also makes use of the same term in his call to spiritual vigilance:

“For you know quite well that the day of the Lord’s return will come unexpectedly, like a thief in the night. When people are saying, ‘Everything is peaceful and secure,’ then disaster will fall on them as suddenly as a pregnant woman’s labour pains begin. And there will be no escape. But you aren’t in the dark about this things, dear brothers and sisters, and you won’t be surprised when the day of the Lord comes like a thief. For you are all children of the light and of the day; we don’t belong to darkness and night. So be on your guard, not asleep like the others. Stay alert and be clearheaded.” (1 Thes 5:2-6, NLT, emphasis mine)

Never make the mistake that we can all afford to be relaxed. The enemy is often stealthier than we think. It’s when we think we can take our eyes off or relax our grip that our spiritual enemies will seize the opportunity to strike. As for what these spiritual enemies are, Christian scholars, theologians and thinkers have come up with terms we can relate to – the world, the flesh, the devil – and all are usable. Whenever we come across anyone in church who is grievously wounded inside and hurting badly, chances are it’s one of those words we can all use. In short, that spiritual enemy has just found a way in and hurt that person awfully.

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2. Stand firm in the faith

The second value in the same verse is, “Stand firm in the faith.” Again, it sounds like that same drill sergeant breathing down our necks. Not only must we stay alert, we are to uphold our position once we engage with the enemy. We must not budge. We cannot give in. Not even an inch. We are to maintain our position and hold back the enemy line. We are to keep our ground to ourselves and not cede one bit.

The part that says, “in the faith” tells us that it isn’t the act of believing but instead, the object of what or who we believe in that is crucial here. In other words, we could rewrite that to say, ‘stand firm in who we believe in’ and you’d be correct. In the Epistle of Jude, we find that same phrase – ‘the faith’ – recurring:

“Dear friends, I had been eagerly planning to write to you about the salvation we all share. But now, I find that I must write about something else, urging you to defend the faith that God has entrusted once for all time to His holy people.” (Jude 1:3, NLT, emphasis mine)

This second value – particularly when firmly strung together with the words ‘the faith’ – has very strong relevance today because of the increasing decadence of the modern Christian life. When we look around at how the world has encroached into the church, we see disturbing cracks that challenge our faith. 

While the Bible tells us about sexual abominations, we see many churches accepting gay pastors and same-sex marriages. When the Bible is firm on Creationism and the young earth, there are plenty of Christians who tell us that this is only a metaphor and should not be taken literally. Neither of these exemplify what ‘standing firm in the faith’ means. Instead, it’s just the opposite. For these Christians, they have given up.

Modern Christians like to make things up along the way to placate the convenience of being a Christian. It’s meandering to suit their personal agenda. It’s like reading only the parts of the Bible that they’re happy with but leaving the rest behind. For them, the narrative is simple enough because to them, it doesn’t make one iota of difference what you believe so long as you believe. That’s plain stupid and baseless. Nowhere in Scripture does God say anything near to this tripe.

Our Christian faith isn’t about choosing what parts to believe in and tossing those we’re not comfortable with. We also cannot twist and connote our way through Scripture to justify what we do and don’t do. It is not our interpretation that saves us but instead, it is the entire truth that is revealed in Christ Jesus. It is not the religiosity that saves us but rather our steadfast trust in the Living God that is unveiled to us in Christ and for all of that, we must stand firm in the faith.

In chapter fifteen of the same letter, Paul defines this signature faith:

“Let me now remind you, dear brothers and sisters, of the Good News I preached to you before. You welcomed it then and you still stand firm in it. It is this Good News that saves you if you continue to believe the message I told you – unless, of course, you believed something that was never true in the first place. I passed on to you what was most important and what had also been passed on to me. Christ died for our sins, just as Scriptures said. He was buried and He was raised from the dead on the third day, just as the Scriptures said.” (1 Cor 15:1-4, NLT, emphasis mine)

In chapter four of his letter to the Ephesians, Paul describes what it’s like to stand firm in the faith:

“Then we will no longer be immature like children. We won’t be tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching. We will not be influenced when people try to trick us with lies so clever they sound like the truth.” (Eph 4:14, NLT)

Paul’s emphasis on standing firm in the faith is not without reason. The rife confusion and tumult in the Corinth church was primarily caused by misguidance. There were evidently those who promoted the importance of ecstatic experiences and spiritual outpourings over whatever that was taught in God’s Word and believed based on Scripture. 

The obsession over supernatural evidences became the main context of Christianity, supplanting what was deemed basic Christian conduct and the legitimacy of the Good News. In fact it was erroneously thought by some that it wasn’t what you believed that mattered but more about how you believed that was important.

The problems that Paul had to grapple with continue to haunt so many churches around the world today. Perhaps, that’s why his letter to the Corinthians is in the Bible as a constant resounding reminder? As to what it is for which we are to stand firm against, Martin Luther, the unwitting instigator of the Reformation movement extolled what we today call the ‘Five Solae of the Protestant Reformation’ as the basis on which we true believers of Christ must be willing to lay our lives for. The word ‘Solae’ comes from the Latin word ‘sola,’ which means ‘alone.’

Hence the five solae form the underlying bedrock of Biblical principles that are upheld by theologians and church fathers as fundamental to the doctrine of salvation that is central to Western Protestantism. Here, each sola is one item of faith that undergirds the Protestant Christian faith and each is in contra to what is taught by the Roman Catholic Church. Of the five, three of the solae are particularly relevant given our context:

Sola Scriptura

Translated as ‘Scripture alone,’ this is the doctrine that holds that the Holy Scripture alone is the sole inerrant definer of our faith and practice. It is not human traditions, social mores, worldly wisdom or fatuous personal claims of spiritual outpourings or ecstatic experiences that are defining. What instead fleshes out our faith is God’s revelation that is central to His Word. Sola Scriptura is the formal principle of most, if not all Protestant Christian denominations and to all Reformers, it is of unprecedented importance. 

Sola Christus (or Christo)

In English, this means ‘Christ alone’ and it centres our basic belief that salvation can only come from the atoning work of Christ and no one else, and that Christ and only Christ is the mediator between us and God the Father. Without Christ, there is no hope of salvation. It is only because of what Christ committed to do on the cross that forgiveness for our sins becomes a possibility. If not for Him, all are lost and we’d be drowned in our piles of sins forever.

Sola fide

Latin for ‘faith alone,’ a better way to put it is ‘justification by faith alone.’ This is a uniquely Protestant Christian doctrine that explains to us that God’s forgiveness is granted to and received purely through faith alone. No ‘works’ can override God’s grace because we’re simply too fallen and sinful by nature and we’re so under the curse of God that we’re nowhere capable of saving ourselves from God’s wrath. 

But through God and the resurrection of His Son, Jesus Christ, that pathway to a divine judicial pardon – justification, in other words – is now available and solely so through faith alone. So there’s no hope in trying to earn God’s pardon because nothing we do will convince Him. We can neither buy our way in nor perform works of grandeur to impress Him. Our relationship with God is His gift that we receive through faith alone.

(Note: The remaining two solae not covered here include Sola Gratia (grace alone) and Soli Deo Gloria (glory to God alone))

Having a good understanding of these solae allow us to have a better view of the kind of church that God wants us to be. But there’s more.

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3. Be courageous

In the New Living Translation (NLT), it says, ‘be courageous.’ Other translations use slightly different words but they direct us in the same way. The New International Version (NIV) says, ‘be men of good courage’ while the King James Version (KJV) prefers, ‘quit you like men.’ The Living Bible puts it as ‘act like men’ and the Moffatt New Translation (MNT) calls it, ‘play the man.’ In our typical modern parlance, the equivalent term might as well as ‘be like a man’ or ‘take it like a man.’

So now we have it – we are to stay alert and watch and once we’re under attack, we must hold our ground and stand firm. Now we’re commanded to ‘be courageous.’ In all the alternative words we’ve come across, maybe we can now say that we are to be as bold in battle as we are made to be. At least, if we keep to the drill sergeant’s narrative style, that is what we can imply.

However how Paul puts it could point us in two equally compelling directions. Most would agree that the above version is more about masculine courage although that does not mean that females aren’t courageous. In the wider context of what ‘masculine courage’ means, we need to consider – and acknowledge – that typical warriors of ancient times were essentially men. In that manner, the advice therefore is not to be a wuss. Paul calls us not to be a weakling or an ineffectual person. We cannot fail to carry out what we need to do out of fear or lack of confidence.

The other viewpoint suggests that maybe, ‘to be courageous’ asks of us to be a matured adult rather than to behave like a child. In other words, regardless of whether we’re talking of a man or a woman, the concept directs us to consider the importance of conducting ourselves with appropriate maturity. In that sense, gender doesn’t come into play because in either case, Paul’s words tell us to not behave like a child. In that regard, remember Paul’s talk about milk and solid food in the same letter when he admonished the Corinthians:

“Dear brothers and sisters, when I was with you, I couldn’t talk to you as I would to spiritual people. I had to talk as though you belonged to this world or as though you were infants in Christ. I had to feed you with milk, not with solid food, because you weren’t ready for anything stronger. And you still aren’t ready, for you are still controlled by your sinful nature.” (1 Cor 3:1-3, NLT)

Many chapters later in the same letter, Paul brings up the issue of maturity:

“Dear brothers and sisters, don’t be childish in your understanding of these things. Be innocent as babies when it comes to evil but be mature in understanding matters of this kind.” (1 Cor 14:20, NLT)

What is Paul actually saying? What does it mean when adults behave like children? The word ‘childish’ means ‘to be silly and immature.’ Alternative words for ‘childish’ include babyish, infantile, juvenile, puerile, foolish, irresponsible etc. They all refer to conduct that is undesirable and unpleasant. One such example is throwing temper tantrums. Adults are supposed to be have grown up and weaned themselves of such foolishness. 

Therefore, for an adult to act like a child can mean his behaviour wreaks of meanness, selfishness, uncontrollability, indiscipline and inappropriateness. We may become demanding, whining and petulant and we could resort to shouting to get our way. As people are wont to say, kids will always be kids. However when an adult acts like a kid, that is something else altogether.

‘Be courageous’ takes on a slightly different tone when we consider this as a call to act accordingly. Here, Paul asks the Corinthians to be considerate towards one another and be accountable for their own actions, to cease making childish demands and get their own way but instead to concede with humility and most of all, to be a little more cerebral when it comes to making decisions. In other words, think before talking or acting.

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4. Be strong

Here is the last of the four values that appear overtly militaristic in tone. So far, Paul has asked us to be vigilant at all times, to stay firm in our faith especially when we’re under attack and then to be bold even as we put up a good fight. In the next step, we are to “be strong.” The implication here isn’t just to ‘be’ strong but to keep the strength going as long as it is needed. We all know that no battle is ever won in a single day. In other words, we need to keep at it, to work on it and to apply ourselves consistently and determinedly. That of course also means that our strength must not ebb as we inch our way to victory in the fight of our lives.

There is also a subliminal suggestion that the term ‘be strong’ does not tap into our own ability. Strength here might not necessarily be physical in nature. In a spiritual warfare, strength therefore is an attribute that we gain not from within ourselves but from God. To fight a spiritual war, we need spiritual (and not physical) strength that only God can supply. What it means then is that the spiritual strength belongs exclusively to the Lord. It isn’t our own. And because it never will be, it suggests very strongly that we need to be solely dependent on Christ for the strength that we don’t have.

Paul’s prayer for the people of the church of Ephesus reveals very clearly where this spiritual strength comes from and what it does for us when we have it:

“I pray that your hearts will be flooded with light so that you can understand the confident hope He has given to those He called – His holy people who are His rich and glorious inheritance. I also pray that you will understand the incredible greatness of God’s power for us who believe Him. This is the same might power that raised Christ from the dead and seated Him in the place of honour at God’s right hand in the heavenly realms.” (Eph 1:18-20, NLT, emphasis mine)

In the same letter to the Ephesians, he again brings up the source of this great spiritual strength:

“A final word: Be strong in the Lord and in His mighty power.” (Eph 6:10, NLT, emphasis mine)

In Zechariah 4:6, the prophet reaffirms this same strength of the Lord:

“Then He said to me, ‘This is what the Lord says to Zerubbabel: It is not by force nor by strength but by My Spirit, says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.” (Zech 4:6, NLT, emphasis mine)

Paul’s emphasis on using God’s strength tells us a great many things about how we conduct ourselves and what kind of church God wants us to be. And in doing so, he is also indirectly telling us that there will be battles that we’ll never win without leaning on God, enemies that are too powerful and hurdles that are too plentiful and insurmountable for us to rely purely on our own physical or mental devices.

In the world we live in, we tend to see only the things our eyes can see but we constantly forget or belittle the ones we don’t. Spiritual warfare is about the rampaging evil that tears us asunder when we least expect it because we are not alert enough and when we decide to fight it on our own terms, we realise too late that we don’t have what it takes to win it. It is only when we come to grips with the realisation that in any spiritual war, only the supernatural power of God will do the trick because nothing else will. And that supernatural power of God exists in the Good News.

However, this isn’t the end. If our fight is all about being tough, rough and brash, we’ll have Rambo crashing into our churches and destroying whatever fellowships we have because he exhibits all the meanness and ugliness that will mar all that we have built within our congregation. It is at this point that Paul brings to light, the exquisitely wonderful balance between being tough and gentle, being firm and yet giving, being hardened on the outside but a big softie on the inside. That’s where Paul’s fifth and final value touches us beautifully.

 

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The core value of tender-hearted faith

Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 16:14 (NLT) says it all: “And do everything with love.” After all the tough sergeant talk, we come down many notches to a far softer demeanour. Yet, for those familiar with 1 Corinthians will know that in this letter just three chapters earlier, Paul’s expert exposition on the matter of love is epochal and seminal:

“If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I had the gift of prophecy and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge and if I had such faith that I could move mountains but didn’t love others, I would be nothing. If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing.” (1 Cor 13:1-3, NLT)

The first three verses of the letter’s thirteenth chapter resonates like no other. Paul makes an unchallengeable case for love that there are no excuses for not loving others. There are no tasks in our lives, no endeavours in all our activities and no reason whatsoever not to love others. There are no achievements that we can achieve at the peak of our lives and careers where we can do them meaningfully if we didn’t have love in our hearts for others.

Paul’s reason for expounding so poetically about love is because he found a sad lack of among the Corinthians. In the absence of love, he discovered a church that was perpetually in conflict. There was a great deal of embarrassing in-fighting based on who they think they were and who they assumed their adversaries were. They thought they knew enough not to be bothered with love. And for all the reasons for justifying that love wasn’t necessary, Paul outlines what love really is not just to the Corinthians but to all of us who care enough to learn from him:

“Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful and endures through every circumstance.” (1 Cor 13:4-7, NLT)

No church can ever survive without love. It doesn’t matter how much money it has, how rich some of its congregation members are or how varied and huge its ministries are. It doesn’t matter how high profile its outreach missions may be or how huge their attendance numbers are. Without love, it will collapse under its own weight. It’s just a matter of time.

Genuine love in church must prevail in many forms and not just one. There must be real love in our praise and worship. We must not just speak of love but act it out. We must mean it when we say we love. Our love for God must be far above what we prefer for ourselves. When we say ‘love thy neighbour,’ it doesn’t just mean the person sitting next to us in the pews but everyone whom we live next to, work alongside and those who come across in our lives. To love our neighbour is to care for his needs more so that we care to glamorise our efforts. Love must not seek its own but instead, we must indulge in the very love of giving because it embodies the self-sacrificing love of Christ.

Love must also be in the way we forgive with the swelling of our hearts. It must therefore not be done grudgingly or as a display of legalistic obligation on our part. We cannot get even no matter how pained we are from the transgression. Neither can we justify telling that person off or retorting or express fury and anger. We cannot also harbour angry thoughts even if we don’t show it on the outside. In love, there is no relevance whatsoever as to who is and isn’t wrong. We love those who wrong us and they love us back even when we are the transgressors.

If there is such love powerfully evidenced in our churches, people will flock in to find out how, what and why. People from the outside never see or experience such love in the world we live. Love’s false counterpart lives in the flesh of the world. In church is God’s love shared among His children for the world to see, to experience and then to savour. It is therefore only when unbelievers witness how we love one another without conditions that they will desire to learn from us so that they too can and will do the same.

For all these wonderful sounding words, let’s all face it – it’s tough to make it happen. There’s no mistaking that this love ain’t easy at all because if it were, there’d be no hate in this world. If it were, everyone would have great days every day. If it were, there’d be no sin left in the world to overcome. Even when you love someone, there’s always the chance that it might not be reciprocal. The same thing can of course happen in reverse – someone else might love you but you might still harbour enough dislike or anger not to respond in kind.

Love isn’t just about nice-sounding poetic words. It never is purely about words. Love is eternal, meaning that no matter the age, it doesn’t age. We love when we’re young. We still love when we’re old. And regardless of who we are, where we live and how old we are, we need that love all the time. Love is so compelling that somewhere deep inside each of us, we really demand it as often as possible so much so that it is, in so many ways, our lives’ single greatest desire of all time. We may have all the things in the world we’ve dreamed of having and want no more but with love, we are insatiable.

To be the church God wants us to be requires the best in each of us. Our fighting spirit. Our determination. Our ever-standing faith. And our strong desire to love and be loved. All of these constitute what Paul’s last words in his letter to the Corinthians. It is never an easy task but it is a challenge worth taking up:

“Be on guard. Stand firm in the faith. Be courageous. Be strong. And do everything in love.” (1 Cor 16:13-14, NLT, emphasis mine)