18I hated all my toil in which I toil under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to the man who will come after me, 19and who knows whether he will be wise or a fool? Yet he will be master of all for which I toiled and used my wisdom under the sun. This also is vanity. 20So I turned about and gave my heart up to despair over all the toil of my labors under the sun, 21because sometimes a person who has toiled with wisdom and knowledge and skill must leave everything to be enjoyed by someone who did not toil for it. This also is vanity and a great evil. 22What has a man from all the toil and striving of heart with which he toils beneath the sun? 23For all his days are full of sorrow, and his work is a vexation. Even in the night his heart does not rest. This also is vanity.
Ecclesiastes 2:18-23 English Standard Version
In the past those who sought to build a legacy for themselves and for their gods built physical structures as their contribution of worship that would outlast them for what may have felt like the foreseeable future. Often times these people themselves were considered to be their god’s exclusive representative on earth. Such was the case with Roman Emperors and Egyptian Pharaohs. When this thinking passed into Christianity, the apostles were considered God’s representatives, Peter being chief among them. For centuries the heirs of the apostles ruled together in relative peace over the body of Christ as the Church Fathers but when Peter’s successor claimed dominance over them all, the church split into East and West. During this time the old ways of the god’s representatives building structures of worship to the gods for their legacy re-entered the body of Christ. It resulted in the building of Cathedrals and monuments to God who, frankly, didn’t ask for His legacy to be built with sticks and stones. Some recognised this as foolishness and so insisted rather that God’s legacy was the people within the church and therefore the organisation of those people called the Church. This enshrined theological treatises, and legal codes of conduct that eventually came to characterise whole governments as God’s lasting legacy on earth. Like it or not, this is where we currently find ourselves in the 21st century–still believing that God’s legacy and, therefore, our inheritance, is wrapped up in the nations; in a word–power.
Can this be true? Does the legacy of the King of Kings hinge on the conduct of the governments of earth acknowledging His existence and therefore His political power to be exercised through His children who have inherited the birth right of that power? This seems like a resurgence of the pagan kingdom’s theology which we find recorded in the scriptures. An apparent cycle of representatives narrowing their rule to exclusivity and building massive structures to draw more people into the worship of the god whom they represent which may or may not characterise the God of the Bible. Is there a better way? Is our inheritance so feeble that to give up political power would be the proverbial selling of our birth right for a bowl of lentils? I think not.
We who claim the Scriptures as our source one of confirmed revelation from God know that the Scriptures have plenty to say about our inheritance and that none of what it says characterises the capricious flow of earthly political power. The adjectives used to describe God’s legacy are as follows: imperishable, unspoiled, unfading, reserved. By contrast here is an example of how the Word describes the brevity of life and His control over it.
15As for man, his days are like grass; he flourishes like a flower of the field; 16for the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place knows it no more.
Psalm 103:15-16 ESV
He changes times and seasons; he removes kings and sets up kings; he gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those who have understanding;
Daniel 2:21 ESV
Do we have understanding? There is no legacy for us here on earth. Nothing that continues much the same as it was. All is changing including the times and the seasons. One day is hotter or colder than the next. One year full of storms and destruction and another full of gentler weather. The sun rises every day yet at a different time and falls again at a different time every night. One eon is full of war, pestilence and grief and another of peace, health and prosperity. Legacy by contrast speaks of unchanging transcendence that is present from the moment it is created it to the moment all things collapse into nothingness. In that vein let us continue the Psalms passage.
17But the steadfast love of the LORD is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him, and his righteousness to children’s children, 18to those who keep his covenant and remember to do his commandments. 19The LORD has established his throne in the heavens, and his kingdom rules over all.
Psalm 103:17-19 ESV
To claim to have any kind of legacy here on earth is to deny what we have just learned. The only one with true legacy is God. These truths set us up to explore how the Scriptures describe God directing the kingdoms of the earth.
The king’s heart is like channels of water in the hand of the Lord; He turns it wherever He wishes.
Proverbs 21:1 NIV
Judging from this verse and the one above from the book of Daniel, does it seem like God’s legacy is at stake when Christians are not in political power? Does the channel of water, even the people of God as His beloved children, have any say as to where we are channelled? Or does God pull the levers that redirect the flow of water in His fields that gives water to another part and redirects it away from another? He is the King of Kings, and the Lord of Lords. The Master whose house we are building and whose fields we are tending; the house being the people of God and the field being the World. Our inheritance as the people of God is the righteousness that comes from Christ which is itself imperishable, unspoiled, unfading, and reserved for us in Heaven. He has extended this towards all people and their children and their children’s children.
Salvation effectively tears down all earthly kingdoms, not to set up a singular earthly kingdom where God is the King and we are His earthly subjects but where the benefits of citizenship to God’s Spiritual Kingdom extend to all humanity over the whole face of the earth regardless of political makeup. He moves people across seemingly impossible boundaries because, in actuality, those boundaries are not recognised in God’s Kingdom. He sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous because there has never been a government nor will their be who can prevent it and believe me, we would if we could! He extends freedom to the captive, sight to the blind, and peace to the possessed at great personal cost to those who by virtue of exploiting those people for money reject His legacy and Kingdom in favour of building their own. This is the lunacy of legacy; that we would dare to think that in 80 to 100 years, or dare I say the whole of the 2000 years since Christ walked this earth, that we could build something financial, political, social or institutional to pass on to our children that was worth all of the unrighteousness it took to build it and that that legacy is worth more than the inheritance of the righteousness that comes from Christ Jesus.
Remember what Jesus taught about serving two masters? I encourage us to think of legacy when we read it. We cannot build two legacies, one will always cancel out the other.
No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.
Writer and Editor of Ammi Ruhama Community Christian Union. Also published on Baseline Christianity.
Daniel L. Bacon
ARC Guide Level 3 Ideal for those well acquainted with our thought process at Ammi Ruhama Community.
How the immaterial kingdom which God has established in Christ is tied to the material household He has called us to live in and the necessity that we should not divide the two.
The Divided House
Modern day Christianity is punctuated by church splits. From The Great Schism that split the Roman Catholic Church from the Eastern Orthodox Church in 1054, to the Protestant Reformation in 1517, to the innumerable schisms, divides, and dissolutions that followed thereafter and to this day and highly likely tomorrow as well. The lack of meaningful unity in the body of Christ is the worst kept secret ever. As the children of God, we grow more estranged from one another as time pushes us further on and apart from these events. At times we have even taken up arms against one another such as in The Crusades, The American Revolution, the American Civil War, World War I and II, The Troubles in Ireland; we could continue and expand but the evidence is sufficient; we are a house divided, and unless we can unite, we will fall.
24 If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. 25 And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand.
Mark 3:24-25 English Standard Version
Let me be clear, God is not divided against Himself. His Kingdom remains strong and immovable, but by dividing the house of God we have effectively ensured that the Household of God remains divided contrary to God’s desire that we should be as one with one another and God as God is one with Himself. Increased recognition of the unfailing unity of God’s Kingdom will result in the unity of the Household of God. In the same way, increased division in the body will result in the continued downward spiral of the body and House of God.
Ecumenical-Lite
Ecumenism is the belief that meaningful unity in the household of God means being under the same umbrella organisation, the same preacher, the same theological statement, the same code of conduct, and the same marketing strategy for the gospel. Yeah, it leaves a bad taste in pretty much everyone’s mouth. Whenever anyone starts talking about unity among the people of God, there is a certain group of believers who let out an audible sanctimonious groan. Unless the kind of unity being written or talked about is the kind where we are one with ourselves in our own respective local churches, we get antsy that what is being preached is ecumenism. To put our minds at ease, material ecumenism is not biblical unity, nor what I am calling for in this examination of the Kingdom and Household of God. Understand however, that this means that if we think Biblical unity looks like pockets of isolated ecumenism in our respective local churches then we are still miles off from what the Bible teaches. If I claim any aspect of the flesh as the unifying factor for unity with my brothers and sisters in Christ, I have put something in God’s place. This includes proximity, mission statement, experience, and any other material thing. In plain words, Biblical unity may not be material ecumenism as we have just detailed, but neither is it the ecumenical-lite that we currently have where, “If you’re under my roof you’ll obey my rules”.
Meaningful Unity & The Mind/Body Problem
When we do not take meaningful steps towards Biblical unity among the people of God, we enshrine meaningful practices which maintain and protect the divided household of God as the ideal in its pragmatism, if woeful in its Biblical authenticity. By contrast, each step we take towards Biblical Unity is away from pet peeves and pet theologies; those grey areas we love to hate that keep us divided as the body of Christ and our own private interpretations. It has been said that, “doctrine divides,” but I tell you that true doctrine is revealed only by the Spirit of God through the Word of God and that Biblical unity is in love, faith and hope in the gospel of Christ. This should not surprise us as the kingdom that Jesus came to establish is not a fleshly kingdom, but a spiritual kingdom; therefore, Biblical unity is a spiritual reality with physical implications.
Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.”
Jesus to Pilate, John 18:36 English Standard Version
The King of all creation crucified that day said that if the Kingdom of God was of this world, then we would fight to win the Kingdom, and fight to defend it through acts of the flesh. But you may say, there are physical commands for us to do in the scriptures. If the Kingdom of God is not of this world; if it is a spiritual reality, a spiritual union, a spiritual ecumenism, why meet physically at all? Why have physical commands at all? This, my friends, is the misunderstanding of the century. As born and raised materialists who flirt with idealism, we tend to believe that the material gives birth to the immaterial. That the body gives birth to the mind–that acts of the flesh make one spiritual–this is not Biblical thinking. The immaterial always precedes the material in the Word. God speaks and creation comes into being, He calls David a King when he is yet a Shepherd and it comes to pass. On the inverse side of immaterial becoming material, hatred and lust feature as repeated themes in the Word giving examples of the immaterial as a seed bearing the fruit of the material.
For as he thinks in his heart, so is he.
Proverbs 23:7 New King James Version
24 Whoever hates disguises himself with his lips
and harbors deceit in his heart;
25 when he speaks graciously, believe him not,
for there are seven abominations in his heart;
26 though his hatred be covered with deception,
his wickedness will be exposed in the assembly.
Proverbs 26:24-26 English Standard Version
You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason frankly with your neighbor, lest you incur sin because of him.
Proverbs 26:24-26 English Standard Version
21 “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ 22 But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother[a] will be liable to judgment; whoever insults[b] his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell[c] of fire.
Matthew 5:21-22 English Standard Version
27 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ 28 But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
Matthew 5:27 English Standard Version
The implications of this are that there is no mind/body problem in the Word of God. We are seen not as two-in-one but as one. We are immortal, immaterial souls with mortal, material bodies for use as interfaces of communication with God and with one another. What we think in our minds becomes our reality, so much so that to entertain thoughts of hatred and lust is seen as the same as planting a seed in the ground with the inevitable outcome of producing after their respective kinds. Hatred is the heirloom seed of murder and lust the heirloom seed of adultery just as surely as sowing the Spirit produces love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and faithfulness, and gentleness and self-control. Immaterial produces material. The fact that our feeble minds fail to grasp the whole sense of its mechanics doesn’t come into the consideration of whether it is true. God breathed into our nostrils producing a spirit and we became living beings.
then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.
Genesis 2:7 English Standard Version
As immortal, immaterial, beings we inhabit physical bodies, as previously mentioned, interfaces that support intersoul-communication with God and with one another. However, as I have written inIntersoul, the interface is broken. It is our life’s work to continue Christ’s ministry of reconciliation; to repair the interface and bring everything and everyone under the rule and reign of Jesus. This brings us back to the question at hand. If I am an immortal, immaterial soul, why are there demands on my physical body in the Word? Surely the body is superfluous or purely sinful and, if so, ‘to Hell with it!’ This is what some early thinkers thought and produced Docetism; a heresy that has successfully kept Western Christians afraid of idealism for centuries. (I will address this a little later but a defence against Docetism is outside of our scope). If our bodies are interfaces for intersoul-communication, then when we communicate with others we communicate in the body and we fulfil our purpose. The body is meant to communicate the best news ever to one another. Remember that the interface was not always broken. We, through Adam and Eve walked and talked with God with no secondary interface between us. We were naked before Him and without shame. Only after the fall did secondary interfaces become necessary for communion with Him. The best news today is that we can again appear before God without a secondary interface as God the Son has become our intermediary before God the Father and God the Spirit the interpreter of our innermost hearts. This is us individually. Gathered, we become a megaphone declaring the goodness and mercy we have received from God via the unity of one voice coming from one mind in one Spirit. Where one of us is a defiant candle–a pin prick of light in a world of darkness, collectively we are a city on a hill whose light pollution can be seen by the world for miles around.
Unified in Our Hope
It is necessary to understand and to contemplate, (while we make the connection between God’s Immaterial Kingdom and His Material House) why we meet in the physical world and not through some ethereal meditative, “soul casting state,” in which our souls could hypothetically commune with God and with one another, since we are citizens of a spiritual kingdom. Again, we are not preaching Docetism–the body is not inherently sinful–it is broken by us through sin. When Pilate asked Jesus if He was a King His answer is that if He was a King of a physical kingdom then his disciples would have fought to establish and maintain it, but that they didn’t because His Kingdom is a Spiritual Kingdom. So, if God is the King of a Spiritual Kingdom, what are the physical aspects of that Kingdom? If immaterial gives birth to material, then perhaps it is simply our understanding, that as immaterial beings in material bodies and simultaneously citizens of an immaterial kingdom, we accept the rule and reign of God in the immaterial, which gives birth to material fruits (fellowship, unity, love, commitment to one another, fields we did not sow, houses we did not build etc) and that we are then to use this to bless our neighbours. Do we do this as if we were preparing some earthly throne for Him to inhabit one day? No! His throne is in Heaven and will not be on earth until heaven meets earth. So we are, in effect, waiting for that event to take place. It is our hope for that future that keeps us going. This fact is, one of the most difficult to accept about Christianity. There is no world to save—that work was completed by Christ through the cross. There are no noble acts of gallantry to be performed by us in the name of God and Country–we will not outshine the work of Christ. The battle is won–Christ is the victor, and the retreating armies of Hell are fleeing the judgement to come. Will we set mortal flesh free? It will be enslaved again and usually by its own will. Should we save a mortal life and not share with the soul within them the good news of eternal life? Should we stand in the way of someone who has chosen another life and not place the choice of Christ before them? For some, this may seem like a meaningless life. What is life if there is no grand quest to fulfil? And to that I ask, will we fight evil in Eternity? Will we retain our resolve with a non-existent enemy at the gates when we are reposing in the glory of the Son? What is Sabbath living, but life lived as if our hope was manifest before our eyes. Life lived as if we would never hunger or thirst or be in dread again? It is in the quiet, contained life where we live at peace with all people and answer for the hope that we possess, that we acknowledge our confidence in the rule and reign of Christ our King. These may all seem like individual pursuits. But what is a Kingdom of one citizen? All who call on the name of the Lord are citizens of this Kingdom and, I am sorry to say this, but none of us are, ‘in the lord’s army,’ in this case. The war is already over, and the rebuilding has begun. We are the emissaries who go from town to town to spread the good news of Christ’s reign, rebuilding what was damaged in the war and using the vast treasury of our new King to do so. The fighting has ceased; what rebellion remains now, is fighting a lost cause that would see the old feuding kings re-established. We do not all believe that the war is over however, and some, instead of moving from town to town, have set up defences against the bordering towns thinking the enemy should be holed up within them. They use secret passwords and handshakes to show loyalty to a King who requires no such protection from His subjects. If time is the landscape of the Kingdom of God, then the Apostles started at the King and went out from Him to spread the good news of the mercy and love of the cross to all His subjects across time and space. Our distance from the King, then, is not a matter of material distance but immaterial. If it is immaterial, then we are in His courts even now while we expand the message of his rule and reign in our given time and space. The implications of this are incredible. Consider this passage from The Revelation. John writes,
9 After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, 10 and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” 11 And all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, 12 saying, “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.”
Revelation 7:9-12 English Standard Version
Consider this, that every tribe; tongue and nation will be present on that day. Every single one! This was and will be from the beginning of time until the events of the revelation of Christ at the end. This will include every grouping of people that has been formed or separated; those still to be formed or contemplating to be formed. Every iteration and collection of clicks, whistles and words, every form of government will be standing before the throne of God speaking with one voice the glory and praise of the Son. If you thought I was going down a rabbit trail let me assure you that this is biblical unity. This is identification with the Son. This can never be the result of having been the same in the flesh. Is there any continuity in the flesh that John gives us? Perhaps that we are all perceived as human in all our brokenness and that while we have all received mercy from God, we should be standing in His presence shouting aloud His praises, and not be looking around to see whom we think should not be there. I guarantee that there will be people standing before the throne of God who will be just as surprised to see us as we are to see them. One or both of us may have lost everything in the all-consuming fire of the day of the Lord but we ourselves have been saved. So, what prevents us from shouting His praises together before we get there? What organisational values enshrine our division? What precepts of purpose perpetuate such a travesty against the precepts of God? The immaterial has given birth to material life in Christ and we sit denying it based on our organisation in the flesh. As I have written previously–this is to our shame. We who have been called by the Spirit of God into the Spiritual Kingdom of God which spans time and space are so full of pride that we believe that our iteration of Christianity will be the only one present on that day. I choose to believe the Word when it says,
For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.
1 Corinthians 2:11 English Standard Version
Paul says this considering the Corinthian division thinking themselves to be special, when all that they had received in Christ was given to them. There are vastly more divisions today. Perhaps if we had listened then, it would not be so today and because of our unity we would have presented the world with the truth that the Son was sent from the Father and they would have believed. Some believed anyway because they saw examples of unity in their own context, but these, my siblings, were the exception instead of the rule. Remember, however, that even if we had, we are not preparing an earthly throne for Christ to sit on. He sits on a Spiritual throne in our hearts and the day and time of His return is kept by the Father until the end of days and every generation that He has ordained to exist has existed. There is no quota to meet and fulfil, but only a life lived in service and obedience to our King who dwells in unapproachable light.
Flaming Hoops of Failed Glory
If we read the Bible in the light of God spreading the news of God’s established Spiritual Kingdom through His people, then we no longer read it as if it says, “this is who to exclude,” but read it, as it often explicitly says, “why did you think you were special and exclude them from my Kingdom?” The first step towards organising ourselves in the material according to the Spirit is to re-ground ourselves in the Word of God and take note that we are not special. There were no flaming hoops for us to jump through when we received the gospel that means that we have a corner on the market of the gospel of Jesus Christ. If we are the people of God, then we have received mercy for our shortcomings in glory and there is nothing of ourselves for us to boast about. Not our education, our pedigree, our governance, our economics–nothing. It is a Spiritual Kingdom with material fruits, and any of those material fruits that come to pass are because of the work done by God and not by us. By recognising that we have received everything we possess in and from Christ we can then identify what we have received in Christ, who He has made us, and the rights we now possess as heirs of God and His Spiritual Kingdom.
Further Reading
I have written about the rights of the people of God inThe Christian’s Bill of Rights and in other posts marked under the same category, but the topic is nowhere near exhausted. Every generation will have to have this conversation with itself. There is no distinction in Christ. The wildest of derivations of our hearts and intents do not preclude us from being included in the Kingdom of God if we call on the name of Jesus to be saved.
Conclusion
To conclude, God’s immaterial Kingdom is made manifest in His material household. Increased belief in Spiritual ecumenism will result in increased physical ecumenism under God. This is not due to the homogenising effect of modern day Judaising, but rather that we all love and obey God, identifying with the Son of God in His death, burial and resurrection and look forward to His coming return. Maranatha.
Materialism is the butt of every Dad joke. A child comes to the father of their youth, and say, “Dad, I’m hungry,” to which the beloved father figure replies, “Hello Hungry, I’m Dad!” It pokes fun at the idea that our whole identity could be the sum total of our physical markers, desires and chemical reactions. This would be akin to someone ‘coming out,’ to us and us responding, “Hello Gay! I’m Cis!” It’s ludicrous! But, our culture still does it–quite a bit, actually. We define ourselves and others concretely based on what we can see rather than on what we cannot see; our souls. This results in massive division, as what we can see is rather diverse and our mindsets cannot cope with how to categorise such diversity into unity. We cry out in our materialism with Shylock,
If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? If you wrong us, shall we not revenge?
Shylock, The Merchant of Venice
Shakespeare appeals to the materialist mindset of his day in finding commonalities in our material experience to appeal for our common humanity with one another. But, no matter how many correlations we amass to signify our common humanity, a simple diversion like an accent or the colour of someone’s skin can still elicit the strongest of discriminatory behaviour. This suggests that materialist reasoning fails to cut to the heart of the sins of racism, sexism and othering–simply appealing to common humanity is not enough for us to treat one another as common souls.
A New Classification I Give You
I don’t like using the words we have invented for the classification of those who differentiate themselves from others because it has the same effect for us as their divisiveness does. We don’t associate with racists because they don’t associate with other races. By the very notion of calling someone a racist we acknowledge the validity of defining someone’s whole identity based on their outward appearance. The materialist answer to this quandary is to ‘not see colour,’ which prompts another word materialists use called ‘erasure’. We ‘erase,’ women or people of colour in an attempt to fix in our minds that our blood all runs red–it runs red in muskrats as well but most of us don’t claim that we ought to treat them like people. So, I propose a new term, a term that promotes the love, mercy and understanding that we ought to be showing one another regardless of if we are material girls living in a material world, or idealists who believe in the unity of all things. This word is Agility.
Agility speaks to how nimble one is in their thinking and adaptability to any mental or physical situation based on both mental and physical preparedness. Ones agility may be present ideologically, politically, culturally, religiously, or, indeed, physically; any mode in which we can imagine there will be intersoul communication. So, one may be classified as ‘ideologically agile,’ but perhaps, ‘culturally clumsy,’ while this may seem like painting the pig, it acknowledges each one’s journey and that some of us continue classifying others in divisive ways, but, we will rise above divisiveness and encourage growth by the mass removal of pejoratives. Afterall, what is to be gained by speaking about someone pejoratively? Will they see the error of their ways as we scoff at them from behind our keyboards? Will they turn from their wickedness and see the light of Christ in our haughty eyes? No. The more we capitulate to materialist demand for concrete and divisive pejoratives, the more we live by the flesh instead of by the Spirit. Agility is also rather easily determined in a person–it is seen by their agreeableness, their winsome take, their ability to present the truth to anyone without trite talking points. It is in their humility to say, “I don’t know,” and in their expert intersoul communicative skills.
So the next time someone asks, “whose hungry,” and the group all responds extatically, “I AM!!” Have the bravery to gasp audibly and retort, “It must have been a popular name that year!”
It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that even pagans do not tolerate: A man is sleeping with his father’s wife. 2 And you are proud! Shouldn’t you rather have gone into mourning and have put out of your fellowship the man who has been doing this? 3 For my part, even though I am not physically present, I am with you in spirit. As one who is present with you in this way, I have already passed judgment in the name of our Lord Jesus on the one who has been doing this. 4 So when you are assembled and I am with you in spirit, and the power of our Lord Jesus is present, 5 hand this man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh,[a][b] so that his spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord.
6 Your boasting is not good. Don’t you know that a little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough? 7 Get rid of the old yeast, so that you may be a new unleavened batch—as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. 8 Therefore let us keep the Festival, not with the old bread leavened with malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
1 Corinthians 5:1-8 English Standard Version
The Fellowship of Light in Bodily Language
Paul draws yet another example of the body’s immaturity in the Spirit; instead of letting the light of love cast out all darkness, as we hear from John. They hid the light and made space for darkness within their hearts and within their fellowship. A member of the body, very likely one of these influential people calling people exclusively after themselves took his father’s wife (likely one of many) for himself. An act so dishonourable, and divisive that, Paul says, it can only have come from malice towards his father and the wickedness of his own unchanged heart. Paul doesn’t spell it out as black and white as John does later on in the century, but rather gets right down to handing down judgement on this man. Ultimately, Paul says that the ‘old leaven,’ their old gentile lives, are what is causing all of this immaturity and sin to enter the body and cause such division and defilement of the body. The natural state of the body is to reject diseased tissue not to accept it or to attack healthy tissue.
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.
14 The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. 15 The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. 16 “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.
1 Corinthians 2:14-16
The Natural and Spiritual Mind
Paul makes two statements about the naturally minded person in these two verses. First he says that they do not accept the things of the Spirit because they think they are inapplicable, childish and pure foolishness. Secondly he says that they do not understand them due to their spiritual source. The teachings of Jesus that come to mind are when he told a crowd full of people that if they didn’t eat his body and drink his blood they would not enter the kingdom of heaven. Jesus’ intentional guising of his teachings in parables to baffle those who thought that they could discern what he meant by human reasoning also comes to mind. Notice that Paul doesn’t say that the natural minded person doesn’t hear or see spiritual things, plenty of people heard and saw Jesus teach and perform daily miracles–it is that they don’t accept them as viable. They are on a completely different wavelength from the thoughts and intents of the Spirit. The natural minded person seeks only to be unambiguously certain in their factual accuracy; to be right. They equate being right with being righteous; to be able to answer any question with their own heuristic of human wisdom be it rationalism or empiricism or whatever they believe.
Paul then says something very interesting. He says that as a result of the natural and spiritual mind divide in the body of Christ, the spiritual person; the person channelling the Holy Spirit of God on a daily basis for their words and their actions like Jesus did, judges all things. They see all things as they should be and the things that are not, they speak the words of God to correct. However, the natural minded ones should not be judge them, because they don’t understand their judgements. Paul is about to define the natural mind even further in chapter 3, but at the end of this thought, he says that the natural minded believer who isn’t channelling the Holy Spirit has no reference for the things of God and therefore cannot judge those who do.
Writer and Editor of Ammi Ruhama Community Christian Union. Also published on Baseline Christianity.
Daniel L. Bacon
ARC Guide Level 2 Ideal for those acquainted with our thought process at Ammi Ruhama Community.
Examining the Claim that Unity Sacrifices Truth
6 If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. 7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. 8 If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
One of the reasons we often give for why we are not meaningfully one in the body of Christ is that we think that joining apparently disparate Symbiotic Organisations together would result in the compromise of what each of us believe to be the truth. Somehow it totally escapes all parties involved that that is exactly what happens when believers from out of town join our SOs. They compromise because our theological statement is probably somewhat different than their old fellowship. They will sign our theological statements and go on believing their own private theology while they are among us, which is likely what would happen if we attempted the merger of two SOs, only there would be three levels of theological belief. Each of the bodies from the SOs would believe their old statement of faith while the individual members would hold their own private theologies all while signing the new statement of faith–an amazingly terrible result if we were aiming for unity in love. So what then? Is the claim true? Only if one or more parties holds the whole truth within themselves.
We are only really comfortable with others publicly disagreeing with us if we believe that we are ultimately in the right, and that they will eventually come around to our view. The young disagree with the old because the young are naïve and have life to live before the truth will be revealed to them–in other words, we believe that they will eventually agree with us, and so believe that we are the originators of truth contrary to a Nerahist epistemology. We, generally, have no problem saying that we are one with young believers in our fellowship, even if they vocally disagree with us. I think this may instinctually be because we know that they are still growing, but it may also be because we have stopped growing and think ourselves to be without sin or as having arrived at the fullness of truth (something the Apostle Paul said not even he had done). In the spirit of Hank Hanagraaf, no one is bold or stupid enough to say of an 8 or 9 year old believer that because they don’t fully understand the hyperstatic union of the Godhead that, if they die, they will go to Hell; this is not the gospel of Christ. If this is the case and ongoing relationship is what moves us mutually closer to unity in love with one another and with God, then there is no reason for our current division except to perpetuate that division. However, if we are not the originators of truth and communion with one another in the light drives out wrong belief, then we can expect that we will arrive at unity when the darkness has been driven out of both us and them until there is no, ‘us and them,’ only one body with one Spirit and one mind in Christ.
So, can two symbiotic organisations be joined together to bring about the kind of unity that Jesus prayed for in John 17 without sacrificing truth? No. Not if we say and act like we are the originators of truth–a problematic conclusion for believers in Jesus. This is why I regularly call for church leaders to declare a year of Jubilee; to dissolve our SOs and allow the natural sifting process of the light of love to refine us in the truth as the scriptures say it will.
6 Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. 7 But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. 8 None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. 9 But, as it is written,
“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him”—
10 these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. 11 For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. 12 Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. 13 And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.[d]
1 Corinthians 2:6-13 English Standard Version
The Spiritual Mind
In answer to the unwritten question of, “why didn’t you teach us the things that Peter and Apollos are teaching?” Paul says, “actually, I did–I shared a few interpretations from the Spirit to those of you who were mature enough to hear them.” In saying this, Paul is crystal clear that the wisdom he shared was not his own but wisdom from the Spirit of God who interprets spiritual truths like the whole of the Word of God to those who are spiritual.
Nerahism
We believe that all truth is revealed truth. That we have the whole of the truth in front of us, but that in order to see it, the truth must be revealed to us by the Spirit of God. We have all had the experience of having read a passage our whole lives thinking that we know the meaning only to read it in the Spirit of God and for it to take on a next level, life changing meaning. Paul later calls this, “knowing as we ought to know,” we call it, Nerahism (pronounced: Nearism). The Hebrew nir ‘ ah means, “he let himself be seen; showed himself”. It is the basis for this epistemological belief. Nirahists believe that we are always on the receiving end of truth and wisdom and never the origin and thus never the authority. We can mature in that wisdom as we listen and act on it, but it always the wisdom from the Spirit and so is freely available to all believers.
And I, when I came to you, brothers,[a] did not come proclaiming to you the testimony[b] of God with lofty speech or wisdom. 2 For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. 3 And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, 4 and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, 5 so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men[c] but in the power of God.
1 Corinthians 2:1-5
Paul asserts that when he came to Corinth to proclaim the testimony (some manuscripts say, ‘mystery,’) of God, he allowed it to be a mystery and didn’t really express it in the format of a traditional oration; a well prepared and even better delivered speech. What he proclaimed was the fact that the Christ had come and was crucified. Keep in mind that it was always Paul’s habit to come into the synagogues first and so this message would not have reached the gentile believers until afterwards. We already know from 1:14-17 that Paul did not make it his mission to make many converts and baptise them as he did not consider it his mandate from the spirit; only to communicate the simple message that the Christ had come and was crucified. Paul also says that he made no effort to put on a show of physical prowess as he was sick and weak at the time when he came to them as well as trembling and afraid. His work was done rather out of his weakness in the demonstration of the Spirit (read: Paul’s manifestation of the Spirit through the fruit of the Spirit in his life) and of power, presumably the power of the gospel as previously stated in chapter one but also likely in miracles.
Further Thoughts
We don’t really know what to do with the fact that Paul did not present a succinct five point gospel message with an alter call and a baptismal pool ready to hand. We know his reasoning; that the people of Corinth would not put their faith in his wisdom but in the power of God to save; that is, in Christ. Paul’s frustration is that when the Corinthian believer’s encountered the wisdom of Peter and Apollos, meant for the spiritual digestion of more mature believers, they went ahead and placed their faith in human wisdom anyway. If we take anything from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians perhaps it should be that all truth is revealed truth that takes a certain tolerance to adjust to. If and when we are exposed to a concentration of truth that is higher than our tolerance we tend to think that it originated with the author or speaker and attribute to them the things of God and so slide into the slippery slope of leader worship which Paul was warning against.
The message of the gospel is special revelation from God to everyone who receives it. There are some who say that if special revelation is not saying anything new then we don’t need to hear it. That it would be like a special report flashing across a news screen about old news everyone already knows. But if we applied the principle of “If it’s not new we don’t need it,” to the Bible then we could cut out the majority of the Bible as most of it is God repeating Himself ad nauseum to generation after generation after generation of people who are the recipients of special revelation from God even though he told someone else that one time–in fact, we could cut out most of the New Testament as He isn’t saying anything new there that isn’t deeply rooted in the Old Testament! The mystery of the Gospel is that God reveals Himself afresh to each one who receives it so that we do not place our faith in a leader’s wisdom or a culture’s wisdom or an ethnic wisdom that would exclude anyone who proclaims Christ and Him Crucified.
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