Unsettled by the continuing lack of meaningful concern and action over disunity in the body of Christ I have set forward the same arguments you’ve been reading from this site since its inception into proper print format. The House that Stands: Seeking God’s Kingdom and Unity in the Body of Christis now available in print and as an e-book from Amazon.
Christians of all stripes have worked on meaningful solutions to all kinds of problems we have encountered in our time on this earth, but unity with God and with one another is not one of them. We pay tribute to the reality of the global church or even perhaps the church that transcends life and death but cannot grasp that most believers are nothing like us, and yet we are called to be as one with one another and God as God is one with Himself. The House that Stands attempts to guide the reader’s thoughts towards these foundational truths with medium to short chapters probing the depths of unity in the body of Christ as it relates to the Kingdom and House of God.
I’ve grown tired of lip-service calls for unity among the people of God without the hard theological and philosophical work of determining what the underpinnings of that unity are and if we can continue much in the same way and yet somehow do life together or if we need a fresh start. What I’ve written is a start towards those ends; contemplations that will be familiar if we’ve talked recently as they have been my focus for some time now. Some of it will be difficult to understand and other parts perhaps too simplistic, but none of it is meant to be read once and ticked off the list of reading material. These are my ever-present meditations, and I offer them for you to meditate on as well. The chapters are medium to short in length and while deceptively short, they should have you thinking along the lines of how exactly we are supposed to be as one with one another and God as God is one with Himself in our lifetimes.
18 Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise. 19 For the wisdom of this world is folly with God. For it is written, “He catches the wise in their craftiness,” 20 and again, “The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are futile.” 21 So let no one boast in men. For all things are yours, 22 whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours, 23 and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.
1 Corinthians 3:18-23 English Standard Version
The Wise of this World Distinguish Themselves
What craftiness God catches the wise in, what thoughts of self importance, what notions of irreplaceability, distinction and professionalism. The wise of this world promise good things to those who follow their wisdom as if they were there’s to give! They promise access to the universe, 5 keys to success, the life of our dreams, the husband or wife of our dreams and heuristics to make those difficult decisions a breeze. They have received a little bit of knowledge and deign to know everything and to market that knowledge to the world. The wise of this world distinguish themselves as being other.
When the wisdom of the world enters the church it enters by gradations of distinctions of belief as if to say that we are distinct because of our wisdom, “We are distinct because, in our wisdom, we believe the Bible,” when, if we truly believed the Bible, we would know that we are not distinct at all but that all things and all people are made freely available to all people. Communion is not ours to give and take, if we make ourselves distinct we make ourselves distinct unto ourselves and away from God. We would do well to remember that it is not our table we invite people to sit at, but the Lord’s, and at His table sit a great many people we alienate by claiming to be the only ones with valid invitations.
Paul’s final note is an interesting one that seems to echo Jesus’ promise in John 14 before he goes to the cross
12“Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father. 13Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14If you ask mee anything in my name, I will do it.
John 14:12-14
All things belong to everyone because everyone belongs to Christ and Christ belongs to God. Therefore all things are from God and whatever we ask in His name, He provides for us. For those paying attention, it is mind-bendingly unsustainable by the world’s systems and so we must become foolish by the world’s standards that we may become wise.
Writer and Editor of Ammi Ruhama Community Christian Union. Also published on Baseline Christianity.
Daniel L. Bacon
Commentary on Paul’s Letters to the Corinthian Church
ARC Guide Level 1 Ideal for those getting acquainted with our thought process at Ammi Ruhama Community.
1 Corinthians 3:10-17
10 According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled[b] master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. 11 For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. 12 Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw— 13 each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. 14 If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. 15 If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.
16 Do you not know that you[c] are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? 17 If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.
1 Corinthians 3:10-17 English Standard Version
Wicker Dwellings and Roman Villas
Paul builds out the construction metaphor and says that if another builder comes on site, assumingly Peter or Apollos or any other mature believer, that they must build on top of the foundation that is Christ and will be either rewarded or suffer great loss based on the work they have done when it is tested by fire (likely persecution). He says that the proverbial work being done is the building of the temple of God which is done to specification (by the Spirit) and that anyone who thinks they can build using the materials they are used to building with like wood, hay and stubble; the usual iron age building materials for a double walled, wicker dwelling stuffed with straw for insulation and topped with a stubble roof, will find that these are unfit materials for the house of God and will burn up in the day of testing. These materials are used symbolically for the wisdom of the world, while the adornments of gold, silver and precious stones are symbolic of the wisdom from the Spirit. One type of dwelling comes from a deep, generational custom, especially among the farming community of building the same dwelling, the same way every ten to fifteen years and moving with the land when it goes fallow. The builder of the wicker dwelling builds only for themselves for the next 10-15 years. The builder of a Roman Villa, by contrast, does so not only for their own sake but for the sake of generations who would come after them. In this way, Paul sees his work and the work of Peter, Apollos and the other mature believers as progressive to the point of testing. If what is built on top of the foundation is made of wood hay and stubble, it will need to be rebuilt every ten to fifteen years and moved to where the soil seems more fertile as the common human wisdom says. However, if what is built is made with permanent things and adorned with gold, silver and precious stones like the temple of Solomon then the world will come to us to marvel at the beauty of the temple which we have built to God. The twist is that we collectively; the whole people of God who have received mercy are the temple of God built either with wood hay and stubble or adorned with silver, gold, and precious stones and headed for the day of testing. Will we burn up and move to more fertile ground to build another straw hut, or will we build the house of God on the foundation that is Christ and adorn it with silver, gold and precious stones?
Plural Not Singular
This is not a new passage to most of us. We have heard this passage preached again and again and again as a personal call to holiness, but it is in fact a continuation of Paul’s analogy of the one who plants and the one who waters, only this analogy focuses on the one who lays the foundation and the one who builds on it. It is Paul’s version of, “a house divided against itself cannot stand”. When Paul says, “do you (plural) not know that you (plural) are God’s temple, and that God’s Spirit dwells within you (plural),” this is another corralling statement by Paul to say that the Spirit of God is in all of us that we have all been given a portion of the Spirit of God and so when we dwell in unity we adorn ourselves as the temple of God with silver and gold and precious stones, and that the world sees us and marvels at the beauty of the temple and proclaims that Jesus was sent from the Father. However, when we live in our little enclaves we build ugly little huts of human wisdom for ourselves until the next wave of popular Christianity moves through and the fallow land around us causes us to burn our old models and move on to the next big thing; a slightly bigger wicker hut.
But I, brothers,[a] could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. 2 I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready, 3 for you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way? 4 For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not being merely human?
5 What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. 6 I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. 7 So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. 8 He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor. 9 For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field, God’s building.
1 Corinthians 3:1-9 English Standard Version
The Through Thread
Paul asserts, if there was any question about where the Corinthians were on the spectrum of being naturally or spiritually minded, that they are in fact quite naturally minded; unobservant of spiritual things and, as a result, full of jealousy and strife, pitting Peter, Apollos and Paul against one another by claiming to hold exclusively to any one of their teachings as being distinct from another. Today we might say that they believed that they had distinct truth claims on the gospel of Christ. Paul’s point here is that they only saw their respective words, analogies and arguments for the gospel and not the through-thread of the Spirit of God which joins them all together. He uses the example of being a labourer in God’s field or a builder of God’s building.
From Simple Seeds and Stones
Paul relates his work in the gospel to sowing seeds or laying a foundation. Seeds were sown by broadcasting them which is literally walking for absolute miles back and forth casting the same seeds over a large area. Foundations were laid by digging a hole and dropping massive stones into the hole and surrounding them with smaller stones to fall between them to give a solid base to build on later. Both of these are rather boring, laborious jobs that rely on seeing the bigger picture to see the significance of what would otherwise seem to be busy work. Paul says that while putting seeds or stones in the ground might seem like simple work, it is this work that allows for others to come along and add water that activates the seed when the sun hits the soil around it allowing it to become a more complex fruit bearing plant. In the same way putting stones in the ground prepares the way for the more complicated work of building the walls, hanging doors or setting a roof on top. They are all the same work, for the same person and so are all connected. The point is that from the simple seed of the gospel comes the fruit of the life of one controlled by the Spirit, and from the foundation that is Christ comes a building made of precious stones–both themes Paul will return to later in the letter.
Fulfilling the Assignment
Paul’s use of, ‘assignment,’ is not as permanent as it might sound. In the same way that his later use of, ‘gift,’ of the Spirit is not a once for all time gifting but rather a living manifestation of the Spirit of God. In the same way, our, ‘assignments,’ (some call them vocations) from God are less like homework or employment and more like listening to and obeying the voice of His Spirit. Too often we think of a “call into ministry,” as being a lifelong commitment to one job within the body in the same way that we think that, having once manifested the gift of administration, the Spirit won’t manifest Himself in us in other capacity and that, that’s our life’s purpose. What happens is that God uses us in some way, either to speak or to teach or to call people to Himself and it feels so good to be used by Spirit of God in any capacity that we attempt to reproduce the environment in which it happened. I felt this same pull after inviting a homeless man into my garden to live for a week. We walked very closely together for that week as we discussed spiritual things and worked on procuring more stable living conditions for him. I felt afterwards that God must want me to start a homeless ministry, but when I prayed and searched the scriptures for confirmation God asked me to let my experience of being used by the Spirit be what it was and to let it go and to continue to listen to His voice instead. He told me that if I went forward with starting a homeless ministry that it would be a hinderance to other’s responsibility to invite the homeless into their homes and feed them their food and walk with them for the week that He calls them to do that. My assignment had been completed; I listened and obeyed and was shown the state of the body of Christ as a result.
Paul had been assigned to sow seeds in Corinth. He did a bit of watering and harvesting while he was there as well as he attests, but his main assignment was to plant the pure seed of the gospel in their hearts and then leave it to the work of another whose assignment had been to water the seeds of the gospel. Paul generally allowed others to water and harvest, he took special interest in a few who he personally raised to full reproducing maturity in Christ but allowed the rest of the body to raise one another up to full reproducing maturity. He did not allow himself to be side tracked with the task of being the one to whom everyone outsourced their assignments–and neither should we. We all have our own listening and obeying to be getting on with, and only the Spirit knows our next respective assignments.
When people are exclusive by nature and surrounded by symbiotic organisations and secondary interfaces we seek out permission structures. We already naturally act in a way that seems right to us but as a type of social insurance we seek permission to be and to act the way that we do. We justify our choice lifestyle by even more choice sources. We end up attributing to God the things we love the most about ourselves. When this remaking of God in our own image is paired with adversarial unity we begin to believe that if God is like us then He is not like them. After all, He cannot be both us and them at the same time and in the same way and so our lifestyle becomes characteristic of the way we believe God expresses Himself. By claiming to be the people of God without having to receive mercy for the way we are, we attribute to God everything we love about ourselves. A permission structure gives us the illusion of objective consent from God.
If we want act whatever way we want to act, the seemingly logical thing to do would be to renounce our faith in God and go about living how we want to live. However, the draw of objective consent is too strong to deny. It is why we desire increasingly diverse representation so strongly; we want permission from the perceived authority to live the way we want to live. Let me be clear, it is right that we should seek permission from God and act accordingly, but an exclusive people will act as the gate keepers to the judgements of God. The best we can do is offer public advice about who God is and what He has done, who we are and how we should live accordingly, but spiritual noncompliance is not enforceable by the people of God. We are not the God police.
Lest we think that building permission structures is all about getting what we want, it is also about trying to explain what we experience. It is seeking permission to be upset, to be angry–to kill, to mourn, to experience suffering and pain–to die. It is seeking permission to live the way that we perceive that we were born when it is not socially or religiously permissible in our circles and in the circles of those we love. It is permission to marry and permission to divorce. This is largely because our centre of control is not naturally in our own selves. We act with the crowd and very rarely will someone be overtly individual without the consent of their piers, and even then it is a shaky permission until enough people agree. We talk in our culture about empowerment; giving permission for people to exercise their own agency, autonomy and purpose. Permission structures can be as light and airy as a family or as dense and heavy as a supreme court ruling. How do we break the cycle? Who can give permission to not ask for permission anymore? This is why people cast fews, read tarot and angel cards, roll dice, throw bones and everything else that we use to gain that sense of objective consent from God or the universe. We want to know that what we are doing, saying, believing and experiencing are the right things to do, say, believe and experience. We don’t just use these alternative measures, we also use rationalism and logic as our permission structures as well. If something, ‘make’s sense to me,” why not do it, right? If an outcome is natural then it’s just cause and effect, right? ‘Nothing we can do about it’. We even cite our genetics to show that we have no say, or responsibility in how we live, and indeed that it would be immoral to go against all that has been preordained by the objective consenting permission structures that are our natural born bodies.
Needless to say, but we can see why many people religiously stay within the confines of their born permission structures, be they Hindu, or Christian or Muslim, or Judaism or whatever they be. I say, let God be God and people be people. Let God give permission and let us be inclusive and act accordingly.
If the world we live in was created for the purpose of intersoul communion then the whole point of every life is to communicate effectively. Some would argue that it is simply to know, but if the point of life is to know the ultimate knowledge then once I know that knowledge my job is done and I have no incentive to communicate it–my purpose is met with a dead end. If my purpose, however, is to communicate effectively then my job is never done seeking the ultimate knowledge and communicating it to the world. We can know or think we know many things in isolation and fail to communicate that knowledge effectively and therefore fail in our purpose. I can know there is a God and tremble but not commune and be one with Him. The God who created the universe for intersoul communion desires communion with our souls and desires that we would have communion with one another. The content of that communication is where everyone differs. What information could I learn apart from which nothing else makes sense and by extension what message should I devote my life to communicating effectively to as wide and diverse a group as possible? These are worthy questions to pursue. In our infancy we must learn to communicate to survive and now we must become fluent in the best news ever and how that applies to our lives.
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