“Become sober minded as you ought, and stop sinning; for some have no knowledge of God.  I speak this to your shame.” 1 Corinthians 15:34

Stop – But can we really do this?  Can we actually stop sinning?  Haven’t we all been told that sin is just part of our nature, that we can’t help it?  Why would Paul use such demanding language if in fact we are stuck in these mortal bodies and subject to sin every day of our lives?

I don’t think we really listen to the words.  We hear them, but then we filter them through our own versions of what we think is reasonable, and by the time we are done, well, the words just don’t have the same bite anymore.  We accommodate to our spiritual sloth.  We really don’t believe that God demands holiness.  We would rather believe that God is such a nice old man that he lets a few things slide now and then.  After all, we’re forgiven, right?  No sense getting too worked up about a little slip here or there.  Everyone makes mistakes.

We all need a crash course in seriousness.  If you read this verse in Greek and you compared it to verse 36, you would notice that Paul is quite particular about which word he uses to express this idea.  In this verse, he says, “me hamartanete“.  Literally you not sinning!.  This command is present tense, active.  STOP IT!   But just two verses later when he wants to say “not” he uses ou, a different word with the same English meaning.  What does this tell us?  Me is the Greek “not” that means we are to suppose that the thing does not exist.  It is the “not” that goes along with my will.  I will it not to be.  But ou is the “not” for something that absolutely doesn’t exist.  It doesn’t depend on my will or on any other conditions.  It just isn’t anymore.  It’s the difference between “I might not go to Seattle today” (it depends on me) and “Not a single ticket was available” (doesn’t depend on me at all).

OK, enough linguistics.  What does this all mean?  It means that not sinning is entirely up to me!  There is no “I’m just human” excuse.  There is no built-in must sin gene.  There is no one forcing me to sin.  It’s my issue.  So Paul says, “Stop sinning!” and he means it.  He means that you can actually stop.  You don’t have to sin.  There are no good (or bad) excuses.  God did not make you incapable of being holy.

It would be so much more convenient if the New Testament were originally written in modern English.  Then we could skate over the intensity of this command.  The verse would read, “Make every effort to be good.  Try hard.  Bust your butt being better.  But if you can’t quite make it, well, it’s the intention that counts.”

What version do you think God will use on the Day of Judgment?

“but then I shall know fully just as I also have been fully known” 1 Corinthians 13:12

Know Fully – The same verb two times.  The only difference is the verb tense, but what a difference it makes.  It’s the difference between what I will know and what God already knows.

Epiginosko is the intense form of the verb ginosko.  It means “to know completely, to be fully aware.”   The first time Paul uses the verb in the future tense.  I shall know fully sometime, but not now.  The second time Paul uses the verb in the aorist tense.  This is a Greek tense that means the action is completed and finished in the past.  And that’s the power of this verse.  Someday in the future I will know with the same depth that God has already completely known me in the past.  Both sides of this spiritual equation need some careful consideration.

Let’s start in the past.  God knows everything about me.  He knew it long ago.  Ever since He has known me, He has been fully and completely aware of all that I am.  There are no surprises about me waiting for God to uncover.  God knows me to the very depths of who I am.

No one in this world knows me this way.  I don’t even know myself this way.  Some of who I am is still hidden from me.  Some is unconscious.  Some is still working its way into my awareness.  But none of it will catch God off guard.  There is nothing, not one single thing about me, that God doesn’t know.  For those of us whose lives are riddled with unfaithfulness and disobedience, this is an overwhelmingly comforting revelation.  God really truly knows me and He still loves me!

And now the future.  The day will come when I will also know with this kind of depth.  Someday God will reveal to me who I really am – all the way to the bottom of me.  And in that same day, God will open my eyes and my heart so that I may also know Him intensely.  Beyond any of the tiny, earth-bound efforts I make today to know Him.  Beyond the limitations of my imagination, my emotional boundaries and my fragile dependence.  Some day I will be able to know Him with every cell of my being.  Some day the very atoms that make me will shout with joy, released from their broken world prison, free to shine with the Creator’s glory.  Not now.  Now yet.  But some day.

What hope lies before us!  What splendor awaits!  A day is coming when I will be caught up into the One Who made me and I will know Him without the veil.  That is worth waiting for!

“Pursue love” 1 Corinthians 14:1

Pursue – It’s all connected.  Start anywhere in the Bible and pretty soon you will find that you have traveled over all the themes.  Like a magnificently complex kaleidoscope, the words of Scripture are all connected.  Each one leads us to another, often reminding us of other nuances and other directions.  This word (dioko) is a good example.

Dioko means “to press hard after, to go after with a fervent desire to obtain”.  That’s what Paul wants us to do about love.  We know that Paul’s Hebrew background fills in the context.  Love means pressing through with the action steps that provide gracious benevolence to others.  Without action, love is an empty word.  Actually, without gracious benevolence toward others, love is changed into something far worse than an empty concept.  Love without action becomes the other side of dioko for dioko has a dark meaning as well.  It is the word we encounter in the Beatitude “Blessed are those who are persecuted.”  When love refuses to show itself in gracious benevolence, it is not apathy.  It is persecution!

God intends us to pursue love.  He wants us to constantly take the action steps of grace.  When we don’t, something else transpires.  We become the persecutors, the ones who make a mockery of God’s grace.  If love does not show itself, it turns inward and becomes the source of unspeakable terror.

There is a good reason Paul pushes us out the door into a world that is in desperate need of grace.  Paul knows that if we coddle God’s love, if we hold it for ourselves, if we use it for self-protection, we will subvert it into the other meaning of dioko.  The dark side.

There is no such thing as Christian theology without compassion for others.  When beliefs do not become traction on the ground of life, something has gone terribly wrong.  The real test of following the Lord is not all the information I can recite about Jesus.  The real test is my life.  That is the gospel that matters, the one most often read by others.  Wherever your behavior does not match the words of Scripture, you become the persecutor rather than the pursuing.

No wonder we need a fearless moral inventory.

“But by the grace of God I am what I am” 1 Corinthians 15:10

I am what I am – Would you be comfortable with this statement?  Could you stand up alongside Paul and proclaim, “By the grace of God I am what I am”?  That’s a remarkable claim.  It implies that Paul is satisfied with himself because he is the product of God’s grace.  Paul doesn’t make excuses.  He is not on a self-improvement program.  He doesn’t pine away with a constant complaint about his purpose.  He is what he is because love came to town.

I’m not so sure that I could say something like this.  I have a nagging suspicion that part of me is desperately seeking stardom.  I know that under the skin I want to be more, be better, be fuller.  I struggle with contentment.  I often catch myself thinking, “God, why don’t you do something important with me?”  I haven’t graduated from the ego-less training session yet.  God is waiting, patiently, gracefully, for me to come to terms with what I am.

Our culture is pre-occupied with purpose.  How we long to be counted!  How we pant after importance!  “Oh, Lord, if I just had a big enough purpose, then my life would matter.  Then I would be motivated.”  We are the products of self-actualization, cleverly disguised in spiritual choir robes.  Underneath it all, we still want to be more than just obedient slaves.  We want to have something more to claim that just eimi o eimi (I am what I am) by God’s grace.

How would you feel if all that you accomplished in life was to fulfill your duty as an obedient adopted son or daughter?  Would it be enough to have the Master say, “You completed the tasks I gave you” if those tasks were never noticed by anyone else?  How comfortable are you with just being His devoted servant – and nothing more?  I suspect that this is close to the heart of real submission.  It’s much easier to submit to a great cause, a wonderful opportunity or a recognized “spiritual” calling.  It’s so much harder to just be God’s janitor or bellhop.  But the path is clear.  If we are to be like the Son, we will have to learn sacrificial humility and submission unto death.  We will have to learn complete and total obedience through suffering.  How deep the roots of ego have sunk into our souls!  Then one day we finally see.  It’s grace.  That’s all.  That’s enough.  I am what I am by grace alone.  No credit due.