1 Corinthians 14:1-25 - Edifying Order

Marc Minter

FBC Diana

1 Corinthians • Sermon • Submitted 3 months ago • Presented 3 months ago

1 Corinthians 14:1–25

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Main Point: The mission of the gathered church is to glorify God by edifying one another through the ministry of the word of God, purposefully engaging our minds.

Notes

Transcript

Introduction

Everyone (well most everyone) loves a feel-good story or a feel-good experience. Some of you watch YouTube videos of feel-good moments just so you can cry about it. Some of us watch movies or read books again and again because the stories we encounter there stimulate us at some gut level, beyond what mere words can say. And for some of us (maybe many of us?) we want our Christianity… we want our church experience on Sundays… to move us emotionally. I just heard a Christian this last week say that she could feel the Holy Spirit among a group of Christians because of her emotional sense of stimulation.

For those of you who know me, you might be surprised to learn that I too have feelings… and I too emote on some occasions. But we have come to a passage in 1 Corinthians that is far better aligned with my personality, which is not given to sentimentality or expressive emotion.

Christianity and church certainly ought to engage our hearts and our passions, but the main idea of our passage today is that the mission or purpose of the gathered church is to glorify God by edifying one another through the ministry of the word of God, purposefully engaging our minds. The Apostle Paul was highly interested to get the disordered and chaotic and unhealthy church of Corinth back into order, and this included a re-ordering of their expectations and their focus on what they were doing when they gathered each Sunday.

Let’s consider how we too might benefit from a re-ordering of our priorities with regard to our emotions and our minds, our sentiments and our intellects.

Please stand with me as I read 1 Corinthians 14:1-25?

Scripture Reading

1 Corinthians 14:1–25 (ESV)

1 Pursue love, and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy. 2 For one who speaks in a tongue speaks not to men but to God; for no one understands him, but he utters mysteries in the Spirit. 3 On the other hand, the one who prophesies speaks to people for their upbuilding and encouragement and consolation. 4 The one who speaks in a tongue builds up himself, but the one who prophesies builds up the church.

5 Now I want you all to speak in tongues, but even more to prophesy. The one who prophesies is greater than the one who speaks in tongues, unless someone interprets, so that the church may be built up.

6 Now, brothers, if I come to you speaking in tongues, how will I benefit you unless I bring you some revelation or knowledge or prophecy or teaching?

7 If even lifeless instruments, such as the flute or the harp, do not give distinct notes, how will anyone know what is played? 8 And if the bugle gives an indistinct sound, who will get ready for battle? 9 So with yourselves, if with your tongue you utter speech that is not intelligible, how will anyone know what is said? For you will be speaking into the air.

10 There are doubtless many different languages in the world, and none is without meaning, 11 but if I do not know the meaning of the language, I will be a foreigner to the speaker and the speaker a foreigner to me. 12 So with yourselves, since you are eager for manifestations of the Spirit, strive to excel in building up the church.

13 Therefore, one who speaks in a tongue should pray that he may interpret. 14 For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays but my mind is unfruitful. 15 What am I to do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will pray with my mind also; I will sing praise with my spirit, but I will sing with my mind also. 16 Otherwise, if you give thanks with your spirit, how can anyone in the position of an outsider say “Amen” to your thanksgiving when he does not know what you are saying? 17 For you may be giving thanks well enough, but the other person is not being built up.

18 I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you. 19 Nevertheless, in church I would rather speak five words with my mind in order to instruct others, than ten thousand words in a tongue.

20 Brothers, do not be children in your thinking. Be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature.

21 In the Law it is written, “By people of strange tongues and by the lips of foreigners will I speak to this people, and even then they will not listen to me, says the Lord.” 22 Thus tongues are a sign not for believers but for unbelievers, while prophecy is a sign not for unbelievers but for believers.

23 If, therefore, the whole church comes together and all speak in tongues, and outsiders or unbelievers enter, will they not say that you are out of your minds? 24 But if all prophesy, and an unbeliever or outsider enters, he is convicted by all, he is called to account by all, 25 the secrets of his heart are disclosed, and so, falling on his face, he will worship God and declare that God is really among you.

Main Idea:

The mission of the gathered church is to glorify God by edifying one another through the ministry of the word of God, purposefully engaging our minds.

Sermon

1. Prioritizing Edification (v1-5)

As we begin to try to make sense of our passage today, one of the ways that we can keep from getting too far off track is by looking for the major emphasis or the main idea. In any given text of Scripture, there are many doctrines and/or commands we might identify… sometimes explicitly and sometimes implicitly. For example, our passage begins by mentioning “spiritual gifts,” and these 24 verses are certainly about “spiritual gifts” (v1). But the emphasisof our passage is not a comprehensive study of all “spiritual gifts;” it has a specific focus on comparing two “spiritual gifts” in particular – “prophesy” (v1) and “tongues” (v2).

So, it is definitely worthwhile to study “spiritual gifts” more broadly and to consider what the whole Bible has to say about them. But that’s not a productive way to get to the heart of what Paul is saying to the church of Corinth here. We want the text of Scripture itself to guide our study of it, and we want to assume that the Bible knows what we ought to be asking and thinking even better than we do.

Now, there are various ways we might try to discover the emphasis of this (or any) passage. We might read the verses through again and again in order to follow the logical flow of the author’s argument. We might look for words that indicate a purpose-statementor conclusion-statement (like “therefore” [v13, 23]) or words that indicate a direct address (like “brothers” [v6, 20]). And we might also look for repeated words or ideas that link all the verses together as one continuous unit.

As I studied our passage this week, I used all of these methods, but the one that is easiest (I think) for us to see right away is the use of repetitive words or phrases. We can tell that our passage is all about the edification or the “building up” of “the church” or the gathered body of believers on the Lord’s day.

In v3, it is the “one who prophesies” that “speaks to people for their upbuilding” (v3). In v4, Paul says that the “one who prophesies builds up the church” (v4). In v5, the Scripture says that the “one who prophesies is greaterthan the one who speaks in tongues… so that the churchmay be built up” (v5).

And this theme of upbuilding and repetitionof the phrase continues in our text. In v12, Paul urges the Corinthian Christians to “strive to excel in building up the church” (v12). And in v17, Paul warns that even the best expression of spiritual thanksgiving (if it is spoken in an unknown language[i.e., a “tongue”) is not as good as an “intelligible” word (v9) becausethe “person” hearing it “is not being built up” unless he or she understandswhat is being said (v17).

I think we can safely say that the edificationor the “building up” of “the church” is what our passage is all about. In fact, this first section (v1-5) is the most emphatic of our text, and Paul’s method here is not only to emphasize edification but also to contrast two particular spiritual gifts – one that “builds up” or edifies the self and another that “builds up” or edifies “the [whole] church.”

We will get more into the meaning of “prophesy” (v1) and what it means to “speak in tongues” (v4) in just a bit, but right here at the beginning, we want to note the way in which our passage prioritizesthe edification or the “building up” of “the church” when it gathers or when it “comes together” (v23).

If I were to ask you, “What is the mission of a local church?” how might you answer? Some people might say that the mission of the local church is to glorify God. This is certainly true, but it’s not distinctive of a local church. All Christians ought to live their whole lives to the glory of God. It is the chief or main reason humans (and all of creation, for that matter) exist. We exist to glorify God!

Some people might say that the mission of the church is to be an evangelistic witness to non-Christians. And this is certainly true as well. But this too is not exclusive to our weekly gatherings. We ought alwaysto be witnesses to our friends, our family, our neighbors, and others around us.

Some people might say that the mission of the church is to servethe community or to work for the well-being of society. And Christians definitely ought to live in the world with charity and compassion and justice and virtue. But evangelism and serving the community and a whole host of other aims are better understood as those efforts we (Christians) make as a scattered church.

Gospel conversations with non-Christians, aiding the poor, defending the weak, freeing the slave, participating in civil institutions, ministering to the orphan and the widow… these are efforts that we undertake as individualChristians or even as various organized groups of Christians out in the world. These all represent the broad mission of the scatteredChurch of the Lord Jesus Christ.

But the mission of the local church is quite narrow. We find this mission (i.e., the narrow mission of the local church) summarized in Jesus’s Great Commission statement at the end of Matthew’s Gospel. Jesus gave His disciples (and all who would later become disciples) this narrowmission when He said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matt. 28:18-20).

And this mission to “make disciples” by “baptizing” new believers “in the name of” the God of the Bible (who is Father, Son, and Spirit) and by “teaching” believers to “observe” or “keep” or obey “all that [Christ] has commanded” is highlighted in our passage as “building up the church” (v4-5) or edifyingthe people who are gathered in the name of Christ as His disciples.

Friends, the mission of the gathered church (as distinct from the scattered) is to glorify God by edifying one another through the ministry of God’s word. We baptize new believers according to the teaching of God’s word, and we teach one another how to live as Christian disciples (both by example and by instruction) according to God’s word.

And our passage today is greatly interested in highlighting the importance of intelligible or understandable teaching according to the word of God.

2. Speaking Intelligibly (v6-12)

Looking now at v6-12, we may begin to get a better idea of the meaning of “prophesy” (v1) and what it means to “speak in tongues” (v6). We know that the Apostle Paul wants the Christians in Corinth to “earnestly desire” the “spiritual gift” of “prophesy” because he said so in v1. And we know that “the one who prophesies” speaks words of “upbuilding” and “encouragement” and “consolation” because Paul says so in v3.

And in v6, that contrast between “tongues” and “prophesy” continues. Paul lists “prophecy” among other “benefits” he himself might bring to the church in Corinth… “revelation” or “knowledge” or “teaching” (v6)… And all of these came along with the office of an Apostle… Apostles (like Paul) spoke the specially revealed word of God with authority, because they were specially commissioned and empowered by Christ to do so.

Then, in the next several verses (v7-12), Paul uses two analogies (“instruments” and “languages”) where he implies that “prophecy” or “prophesying” is “intelligible” (v9) and “meaningful” (v11)… in contrast to “tongues” which are “indistinct” (v8) to those who hear them and “not intelligible” (v9) to the one who doesn’t know the meaning of the language.

Drawing upon all of this description in our passage today, from the rest of the Bible, and from the way Christians have usually understood “prophecy” or “prophesying” throughout history, I’d like to offer this basic definition: Prophesying is speaking or explaining the special revelation of God’s word.

In the OT, those who prophesied were special men rarely called out by God to be His spokesman to a certain person or group for a particular time. In the NT (during the spectacular and unique period when Jesus was revealing the mystery of God’s plan of salvation, and when capital “A” Apostles were walking around, building the foundation of the NT Church), believing men and women, believers young and old, all kinds of people were prophesying as a fulfillment of God’s promise that everyone in the New Covenant would knowGod through Christ and that every person who repents and believes would be indwelt by God’s Spirit.

And throughout both the OT and the New, God Himself decided which of those words of prophecy would be written down as part of the totality of God’s revealed word… to be handed down from generation to generation. For example, at the end of John’s Gospel, he wrote, “Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written” (Jn. 21:25). But the stuff John did write down, he wrote “so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name” (Jn. 20:31).

The point is that there were more words from God spoken by prophets and Apostles and various Christians who lived during the apostolic period than what we have in the Bible today, but God inspired the authors of these words that we do have to write them down as “they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” in the doing of it (2 Pet. 1:21). In other words, God has left nothing out in His revelation to us, and what we have in the Bible are the only words that we can most assuredly say today are THE WORDS OF GOD.

We may still say today, “Thus says the Lord,” but we can only do that today by pointing to the text of the Bible. If we say “the Lord told me” or “I believe the Lord is saying” without a Bible citation, then we are claiming an authority that we just don’t have. We may say good and true things, but we must never claim the authority of God’s word for anything other than what has been authoritatively revealed and written down as God’s word.

This is what it means to prophesy. This is what Christians have largely understood to be the task of prophesyingthroughout the centuries after the apostolic period. Again, prophesying is speaking or explaining the special revelation of God’s word.[i] And this is what Paul wanted the Christians in Corinth to “earnestly desire” (v1).

In our passage today, the “spiritual gift” (v1) of “prophesying” is presented as far better than the gift of “tongues” precisely because “tongues” are “not intelligible,” but “prophesying” is(v9). And, therefore, “prophesying” is the sort of “manifestation of the Spirit” that will “build up the church” (v12).

Before we go further in our text, let me also say just a little something about what it means to “speak in tongues” (v13). I argued last Sunday that there are some spiritual gifts (tongues included) that did not continue after the death of the last Apostle, and this is the nearly universal perspective of Christians throughout the centuries. It is very rare in Church history to read about anyone claiming that “tongues” were a spiritual gift that continued later on. And this position only became popular among some Christian groups and denominations that emphasized a “latter day” renewal during the mid to late 1800s and early 1900s, which expected the soon arrival of the second coming of Christ.

It also seems to me that the old English word “tongues” has become quite unhelpful in the conversations about spiritual gifts and what we ought to expect to experience as Christians today. The word means “languages” and it refers to a real languages spoken in the world which is unknownto the Spirit-empowered speaker but known or understood by someone else.

On the day of Pentecost, when all of the Christians gathered in Jerusalem were “filled with the Holy Spirit” they “began to speak in other tongues” or “languages” (Acts 2:4). And many of the Jewish people who were gathered in Jerusalem that day were from various “nations,” and they heard Christians “speak in [the] language” known to foreigners from other lands (Acts 2:6). They were “amazed and astonished” because Galilean Christians were speaking of “the mighty works of God” in languages that they themselves did not know (Acts 2:11).

In our passage, speaking in “tongues” is described as “giving thanks [to God] with your spirit” (v16). And Paul says that all of the “languages” of the world have “meaning,” but only to those who understand them (v11). Therefore, the spiritual gift of “tongues” is (biblically speaking) the ability a Christian can have to speak a word of praise to God or a word of thanks toward God in a real language of the world. The Christian speaking the language may not know the words, but he or she knows that what he or she is saying is “thanksgiving” or praise(v16)… This is why it “builds up” the one speaking in tongues (v4).

Once again, “tongues” was a spiritual gift that signaled the spectacular arrival of the Messiah and the arrival of the New Covenant in/through Christ. One cannot overstate the significance of this spiritual gift among those who believed and followed Christ during the days of the Apostles.

But it is important to note that even here in our passage today, the Apostle Paul himself is arguing that “tongues” or the miraculous ability to speak in an unknown language is a spiritual gift that is not helpful or productive to the edification of Christians who are gathered as a church on the Lord’s day.

At FBC Diana, we don’t require that every church member believe the same about the gift of tongues. If you don’t agree with the way I’m describing tongues as an obsolete spiritual gift, then that’s ok. But what we doteach and practice among our church is what we see in 1 Corinthians 14… that “tongues” ought not be expected or permitted among our church gatherings.

Even if you do believe that tongues are for today, Paul’s argument here in our text is (1) that “tongues” are “unfruitful” for the “mind” (v14) and (2) that the purpose for our church gatherings is the edification or the “upbuilding” (v3) of the “whole church” (v23)… which makes “prophesy” (not tongues) more desirable.

3. Engaging the Mind (v13-19)

During my childhood and teenage years, I was a regular church attendee. My mom was a single parent, and she was very busy with work and parenting, but one of the things that we never wondered about was whether or not we were going to be at church on Sundays. Back in those days, church was an all-day affair, and we were at church Sunday morning and Sunday evening every week.

The two churches that we regularly attended (we attended one in Duncanville, TX, for years, and then we found one a little closer to home in Waxahachie, TX, when I was a young teen)… those two churches heavily emphasized a personal and experiential and emotional relationship with Jesus. The songs we sang were about knowing and experiencingand loving Jesus, and the sermons that were preached were about having a real and experiential relationship with Jesus. But I don’t remember much teaching at all about who Jesus is, about how to experience Jesus by reading and applying the Scriptures, or about what the Bible says a real relationship with Jesus actually looks and feels like.

I knew I was supposed to “feel” the “moving” of the Holy Spirit, but I didn’t know who the Holy Spirit is or what it might actually mean for Him to “move.” I knew I was supposed to “trust” in Jesus, but I didn’t know what Jesus had promised to do or how I should learn to trust Him. I knew that Jesus was the center of all Christian belief, but I didn’t know much at all about what the Bible says about the person and work of Jesus Christ.

It wasn’t until my late teens that I learned “believing” Jesus meant believing stuff about Jesus. It wasn’t until years later that I learned “following” Jesus meant knowing His word and living in light of it. It wasn’t until years later that I learned the good news of the gospel tells the story about what God did in Christ to save sinners and bring them into a new way of thinking and speaking and acting.

Now, let me be quick to say that a lot of my ignorance was probably due to the fact that I was not a Christian until later on in life. But even this was something that I don’t remember being pressed on very much. “Being a Christian” was far more about how I felt than about what I actually believed or how I lived. If anyone would have sat me down and asked me a few direct questions, it would have been apparent that I was ignorant and lost… I didn’t even know that I didn’t know, and I was no more a Christian than any of my peers who never went to church.

It seems to me that our passage today is aimed right at this sort of emotive and sentimental and “spiritual” Christianity which is probably common to a lot of our experiences. And the key emphasis of v13-19 is the importance of engaging the mind when the church gathers on the Lord’s day.

How is it that Christians are “built up” or edified “in church” (v19)? Paul says, “I would rather speak five words with my mindin order to instruct others, than ten thousand wordsin a tongue” (v19). In other words, spiritual or emotional experiences (even legitimate ones or real ones) are not the purpose of our gathering together. That’s not to say that we don’t emote, but that’s not our purpose together… our purpose is to “instruct” one another by engaging our “minds” (v19).

Friends, look at what Paul is condemning here! Christians in Corinth were “speaking in tongues” (v13), and Paul affirms that what they were doing was “giving thanks” to God (v16). Isn’t that a good thing?! Why in the world would Paul have anything to say negatively about that?!

Well, Paul actually condemns this expression of genuine spiritual gifting, not because it’s sinful or wrong, but because it is not what God has intended for the “building up” of His people when they gather as a church (v17). Paul’s desire (which he makes clear in v19) is God’s design and command… and that is that the words we speak as a gathered church would be instructiveand mentally engaging.

Now, let me tell you a couple of things this does not mean and one thing it most certainly does mean.

First, this does not mean that church should be a dry intellectual exercise. We ought not aim for academic lectures or mere information download on Sundays. There are definitely better preachers, but our aim is to preach and teach in such a way that is convictional and passionate (in a way that fits our personalities) and to preach and teach with substance. You may sometimes leave here on a Sunday afternoon thinking that the preacher could have been more emotionally engaging (that’s almost always true), but I hope you never leave thinking that you weren’t challenged to believe the Bible more accurately or that you weren’t urged to strive for greater obedience to some biblical command.

Second, engaging our minds does not mean that we will all have the same mental or intellectual ability. We ought not preach or teach in such a way that some church members feel left out or overlooked. The gospel of Christ and the main teachings of the Bible are simple enough for most anyone to understand, and the regular preaching ministry should not make any church member feel otherwise.

Third (and now to what this does mean), engaging our minds does mean that the word ministry of our church ought to be intellectually or mentally engaging for all of us. There are doctrines that we all must learn and that we all must believe (not just the label, but the substance of it). I’m glad that some of you know the word propitiation, but on the last day you and I are desperately going to need to know the substance of what that word stands for.

Propitiation is the fancy word used in Romans 3, which teaches us that God put forward His own Son as the payment which satisfied His own wrath and justice against guilty sinners. How is it that God the Father can be both “just” and the “justifier” of guilty sinners?! God is both of these at the same time because He condemned Jesus in the place of the guilty in order that some sinners would be justified and God Himself would be the dispenser of true justice (Rom. 3:10-16).

And, friends, engaging our minds also means that the preaching and teaching ministry of our church will always include some stuff that is just over your head. There is so much that we don’t know, and my aim as a preacher is to beckon all of us to reach just a bit higher than where we currently are. The Sunday I preach a sermon that doesn’t stretch you intellectually farther than you’ve gone before is the Sunday that you should start planning to replace me as the main preaching pastor.

It is part of my job description to preach in such a way so that we all are “instructed” or “taught” by God’s word… the Greek word in v19 is the word from which we get our term “catechize” or “catechism.” Every preacher that stands at this pulpit is responsible to teach us all to believe the doctrines, to know the commands, and to apply what we learn to our everyday lives… and when preachers and teachers do that among the gathering of the saints on the Lord’s day, we are all “built up” in the Lord Jesus Christ.

4. Growing in Maturity (v20-25)

As we’ve come now to this final section of our passage and the final point of my sermon, I want to point out two big ideas here that both flow into the one main idea I’ve been arguing this whole time… that the mission of the gathered church is to glorify God by edifying one another through the ministry of the word of God, purposefully engaging our minds.

The first big idea I want to note is the goal Paul mentions in v20. There he says, “Brothers [i.e., Christians; brothers and sisters], do not be children in your thinking. Be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature” (v20). This verse speaks to the whole goal and purpose of the gathered church. God’s goal for all of us together is that we might all be “built up” to “maturity” (v20).

Paul’s letter to the church in Ephesus puts it like this: The reason Jesus gave gifts to the church – spiritual gifts that we all possess and also the gifts of pastor-teachers – the reason Jesus gave such gifts is to “equip the saints for the work of the ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes” (Eph. 4:11-14).

Friends, your soul depends on faithful pastors and teachers who will challenge you intellectually so that you will grow in spiritual maturity and be fortified against all those things in this world that would distract and deceive you. It’s not unimportant that you feel closer to Jesus, but it is far more important that you learn to be close to Jesus whether you feel like it or not.

The second big idea I want to note in this last section is the fact that an emphasis on speaking intelligibly and engaging the mind and growing in maturity is good for both the Christians among us and the non-Christianswho may gather with us on any given Sunday.

So many churches seem to think that the way to really be a help to non-Christians who may be present on a Sunday morning is to avoid doctrine, to make emotional connections, and to downplay the importance of mental engagement. But our passage teaches us that this sort of thinking is just plain wrong.

I don’t have time to get into it more deeply this morning, but Paul cites (in v21) an OT prophecy about a time when “people of strange tongues” will “speak to [the] people” (v21). But the Scripture says that “even then they will not listen” (v21). Paul’s point in bringing up this citation is to say that sensational spiritual gifts that are not understood or comprehended by the unbeliever will only serve to condemn him or her further. Even if the unbeliever is hearing the very words of God, if they are not understandable to him or her, he or she may simply reject them as nonsenseor foolishness… they are not understandable.

Of course, Paul has already said (earlier in this letter) that the gospel clearly preached will often be rejected as foolishness to many of those who are hearing it, but it is through (and only through) the clearand substantial preaching of the gospel of Christ that some sinners who hear it will be made alive by God’s wisdom and power. In 1 Corinthians 1, Paul says, “we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and follyto Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the powerof God and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor. 1:23-24).

The reason why Paul has (yet again) returned to this important reality in the life and ministry of the local church is to point out that it is the ministry of “prophesy” (or speaking and explaining the the special revelation of God’s word)… it is through this sort of intelligible and mentally engaging word-ministry that the “unbeliever” or “outsider” will be “convicted” of sin and “called to account” before God’s revealed standard of justice… and the “secrets of his heart [will be] disclosed” so that he might “fall on his face” and “worship God” and “declare that God is really among” the Christians gathered here (v24).

Oh, brothers and sisters… I want that! Don’t you want that?!

Don’t you want your unbelieving friends and neighbors (when you invite them to come along to church with you) to have more than a feel-good experience? Don’t you want them to hear the word of God explained and applied so that they understand their sense of guilt and they can make sense of their disordered and painful lives? Don’t you want them to be challenged by the substance of God’s word, so that they must intellectually and spiritually and really come to grips with what is at stake if they continue in unbelief and sin? Don’t you want them to know that Jesus is someone they can trust, not just because of some nebulous idea of “trusting” Jesus, but because they have heard, and they now understand who Jesus is and why He is trustworthy?!

And don’t you want to grow out of your childish ways of thinking? Don’t we all want to grow to spiritual maturity… so that we will be able to persevere in following Christ and have more to hold on to in our dying moments than a mere feeling or sentiment? Don’t we all want to know (with both our heads and our hearts) what is our only hope in life and death?!

I sure do… and that’s why we must all remember and why we must all strive to give ourselves to the mission of the gathered church… which is to glorify God by edifying one another through the ministry of the word of God, purposefully engaging our minds.

May God help us.

Endnotes

[i] For a good representation of this idea, see William Perkins’s book The Art of Prophesying https://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/sdg/perkins_prophesying.html

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Aland, Kurt, Barbara Aland, Johannes Karavidopoulos, Carlo M. Martini, and Bruce M. Metzger, eds. Novum Testamentum Graece. 28th ed. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2012.

Chrysostom, John. Saint Chrysostom: Homilies on the Epistles of Paul to the Corinthians. Edited by Philip Schaff. Logos Research Edition. Vol. 12. A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, First Series. New York, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1889.

Ciampa, Roy E., and Brian S. Rosner. The First Letter to the Corinthians. Logos Research Edition. The Pillar New Testament Commentary. Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2010.

New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. Logos Research Edition. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995.

Sproul, R. C., ed. The Reformation Study Bible: English Standard Version (2015 Edition). Logos Research Edition. Orlando, FL: Reformation Trust, 2015.

The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. Logos Research Edition. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016.

The Holy Bible: King James Version. Electronic Edition of the 1900 Authorized Version. Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 2009.

The Holy Bible: New International Version. Logos Research Edition. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1984.

The NET Bible First Edition. Logos Research Edition. Biblical Studies Press, 2005.

Vaughan, Curtis, and Thomas D. Lea. 1 Corinthians. Logos Research Edition. Founders Study Commentary. Cape Coral, FL: Founders Press, 2002.

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