The Fellowship Project
Paul has already established the foundation of “The
Fellowship Project.” In the body of
Christ (contrary to human nature and our weakened wills) superiority is to give
way to unity and ownership is to be replaced by fellowship. In the body, harmony is not a matter of
everyone agreeing with me! Of course
that doesn’t mean that there are no standards, no absolutes, and no truth.
·
When God speaks – we affirm!
·
When God commands – we obey (when we fail to do
so we call it sin)
·
When God promises – we confess (when we fail to
trust we call that false)
Yet, when God is silent we will not be strident and where
God has allowed Christian Freedom we will not pass church law!
Building atop that foundation, Paul made clear the
dichotomy that exists between faith and unbelief, between human nature and
divine revelation – that the cross is non-sense to those who don’t believe, the
cross is offensive to those who don’t trust but to we who believe the cross is
the wisdom of God and the power of God.
The next building block in this (the Fellowship Project)
is how we, who view the cross as the wisdom of God, will exercise spiritual
wisdom ourselves in our own life. True spiritual wisdom is found in judging
one’s self in light of God’s revelation and in loving others in light of God’s
revelation.
True spiritual wisdom is found in judging one’s self in
light of God’s revelation what we might call the necessity of the cross; and
true spiritual wisdom is found in loving others in light of God’s revelation
what we might call the sufficiency of Christ.
In my opinion, judging himself in light of God’s
revelation is exactly what Paul does in vs. 3 of chapter 2. “When I came to you, I was weak. I was afraid and very nervous and I didn’t
speak with persuasive intellectual arguments.”
The way Paul speaks of himself there you’d think he was
Gomer Pyle or the teacher in Peanuts.
Nothing could be further from the truth; Paul was a profound
orator!
Picture this…you’re traveling in a foreign country,
you’ve come to the University town in which the intelligencia congregate you’re
surrounded by, degreed philosophically minded people, and you want to tell them
about Jesus (now mind you Jesus is a totally foreign concept to them for
although they are educated, the person and work of Jesus has never been in
their curricula.) What do you do?
Paul gravitates toward their artwork and monuments; when
he finds one dedicated to an unknown god he says, “I see good people that you
are very religious, you even have a monument to an unknown god, what is unknown
to you I can tell you about. The God who
made the heavens and the earth and every creature on it, He set the seasons and
gave breath to its people…as a matter of fact even your own poets whom you
educated folk have read have said, “we are his offspring”, well that God is not
far off or uninvolved with us! In fact,
He wants all of us to turn to Him and have a relationship with Him and He has
proven this through the sacrificial death of Jesus whom He has raised from the
dead.
·
Sound like someone without rhetorical skills?
·
Does this sound like someone without persuasive
intellectual arguments?
·
Does this really line up with Paul’s self assessment?
I believe these are the words of a man who knows that
while he might be good with words and before crowds, he also knows that in and
of himself he isn’t good with or before God. These are the words of a man who
is judging himself in light of God’s revelation.
This is a testament to the necessity of the cross, it
verifies our lost condition.
The Fellowship Project comes to a crashing halt and the
church ceases to be the body of Christ when her members begin believing that
they are worthy of God’s call, that they have earned God’s admiration and that
they dwell within His body based on their ability, performance, or work. No matter how talented or brilliant we are,
no matter how many degrees we have or from whence they come, regardless of how much
we stand out from the crowd, in the Light of God’s revelation we can’t stand
before Him on our own. That is why
Christ came! That is the necessity of
the cross.
Judge ourselves in light of God’s revelation enables us
to love others in light of God’s revelation as well. Paul declares that such was his aim in I Corinthians
2:2, “…while I was with you I decided to know nothing but Christ crucified.”
While judging ourselves in light of God’s revelation
flows out of fully embracing the necessity of the cross, loving others in light
of God’s revelation flows from trusting in the sufficiency of Christ. This begins by knowing that they (WHOEVER
they are and whatever they have done) they are as precious to God as we
are. They, whoever they are, are as important
to God as we are. They, whoever they
are, are as cherished by God as we are.
Paul had every reason to wash his hands, start a new
church, worry about the other congregated bodies and forget about Corinth,
every reason but ONE: the sufficiency of Christ. Were these folk a pain? Yep! Did they offend? You bet! Had they failed to be what they were called
to be? No question! Sound like people
you know? What do you do with folk like
that? Love them and serve them
passionately because of the sufficiency of Christ.
-Pastor Kevin Kritzer
