Sermon Tone Analysis

1. Unity in the Church is from the Spirit (vv.1-4)

A. Cutting away the bad spots

Paul introduces for us the reality of the flesh and Spirit in the life of a believer.

He is talking to the church, those whom “have been called into the fellowship of his Son (1:9).

Paul is not calling into question their conversion to Christ, but he is calling out the sin in their midst.

Paul is highlighting for the church in Corinth and us today the spiritual battle of the Christian life.

As Christians, we are saved from our wages of sin that we committed against a holy God.

Our Lord has disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame by triumphing over them (Col 2:15).

This means that Christ defeated the reign of sin and death in the world but its effects are lasting until Christ returns.

Sin has lost its sting but not its influence over those saved.

The Spirit has come upon the life of the believer, but the flesh still remains.

Paul calls the flesh in other places:

-the old self:

Paul teaches the Romans that their slavery to sin has been defeated.

They can have victory over the temptation to sin but the temptation still resides in the old man, our flesh.

That flesh will remain a constant nagging on our new life in Christ until He returns to make all things new.

That victory on the cross defeated sin’s enslavement and it guarantees sin’s defeat on a daily and moment by moment basis.

Paul’s message to the Corinthian church is a rebuke of their disunity.

Their divisions and factions, which emanated from the cultural ideologies and spilled into the membership at Corinth, was a mark of flesh living and not spirit-living.

In other words, their factions were driven by the sinful flesh still present within them.

Paul states that he cannot “speak to them as spiritual people…but as infants in Christ.”

Again they are in Christ, but acting like children because infants are not mature.

This plays on their opinion of themselves that Paul earlier addressed in calling them “mature” which in fact they were immature spiritually because they failed to see the sinful division that existed among their congregation.

Paul uses the image of feeding them with milk, like a baby, instead of solid food like a maturing adolescent because they were not able to handle such things in their diet yet.

In other words, Paul is saying, “you still have much to learn.”

The overall point in these verses is to expose their “strife” and “jealousy” as evil and reflective of rotten fleshly fruit of their old lives and not representative of the Spirit’s work in their new life in Christ.

When we live according to our flesh, we are dishonoring Christ and therefore being led astray in our sin!

Paul mentions one major component of their disunity is the jealousy that they have that leads to their strife or division.

Jealousy is translated from a GK word that means zeal or being zealous for something.

Colin Brown defines zeal as “the intense and earnest efforts to reach a goal” withe positive side leading to enthusiasm and the negative leading to envy and jealousy.

For Corinth, their jealousy was a worldly jealous that came from competition against one another in the church.

Church is not about competition but about complementarity in the body of Christ.

We are brought together as one body and therefore any jealousy we have towards one another is really a dissatisfaction in what God has done for us.

Jealousy comes from selfish discontentment.

Therefore Paul is calling out their sin and wants them to turn from it.

With this challenge before us, we must consider ourselves and evaluate if we also have sin among us as a church.

God will not bless a church that allows sin to remain among its midst.

Oftentimes its hard to address such situations, but for the glory of God’s holiness and his Son’s work of redemption, we must deal with any sin that dwells in our hearts individually and corporately.

-This leads me to the action for believers- Fighting our Flesh as we live by the Spirit!

B. Fight the Flesh

Paul does not give them steps of positive obedience like he will do with other issues he addresses with the Corinthians.

For example:

1 Corinthians 5:13 (ESV)

13... “Purge the evil person from among you.”

1 Corinthians 6:18 (ESV)

18 Flee from sexual immorality.

But we can derive the command from other verses of Scripture in relation to the fight we have with our fleshly sin.

Paul states in Eph 4:22-24 “22 to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, 23 and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, 24 and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”

Paul tells the Ephesians that we have to put off the old self.

This requires an action of obedience for the believer…to fight the flesh by putting off or repenting of our sin.

It literally means to de-robe or physically take off clothing.

The old life and all its habits and customs and worldviews can easily creep back into our lives as we strive to live holy.

The life of the believer is the consistent process of removing the old grave clothes that we wore when Christ rose us spiritually from the dead.

We are no longer bound by those grave clothes, constricted and immovable.

But they still need removing.

Paul states Put them off to the Ephesians and the Colossians and by rebuking the Corinthians, he likewise is calling them to this change.

Application: you and I have defeated sin all day long today.

Maybe you overlooked an offense from your spouses mouth this morning.

Or you showed patience instead of anger with your kid writing on the wall or talking sarcastically to you.

Maybe you men turned your gaze away from a beautiful woman or ladies from a immodest article of clothing that would tempt your brothers to stumble.

The point is that Christ has gained us the victory over the flesh when we rest in him and we live by the Spirit.

We must be resolved to fight the flesh moment by moment, day by day, until Christ returns, knowing that He is our strength in our daily battle!

C. Be Led by the Spirit

Paul makes this distinction in our passage, that a believers we can be people of the flesh, giving into our sin, or people of the Spirit, being led by the Spirit through the word of God.

Paul uses this language in Galatians 5 in the famous passage re: the Spirit-controlled life.

Turn with me.

Notice that Gal 5:16, 18, 25

Paul uses synonymous terminology that encpasulates a new life in Christ that is fighting the flesh.

When one fights the flesh, he is ..

Walking in the spirit (16)

Being led by the Spirit (18)

Living by the Spirit (25)

In step with the spirit (25)

All of these commands are referring to a believer’s life that is engaged in Spirit-led activity that is centered, not on emotion or feeling, but on the word of God and a spirit of prayer.

The idea of concurrent acts of the Spirit in us and the obedience of the believer works together so that one walks in the Spirit and fights the desires of the flesh.

**It is important here to state that genuine believers in Jesus Christ cannot remain in sin.

Some might say that a wayward child, spouse or friend is just not “fighting their flesh.”

I think a good picture of a true fight is that punches are being thrown by both opponents inwardly.

What I mean is that a person fighting the flesh will reveal a heart that seeks holiness and might be struggling in weak moments, where they fall into sin.

But some, out of fear for the damnation of their loved ones, convince themselves that people who have turned their back fully on Christ, are just wayward and fighting the flesh.

Those who reject Christ, turn from his word and his church, are satisfied in the world’s grasp are not fighting the flesh, they are of the flesh, controlled and happy in it.

They are lost and we need to see them as such.

Then and only then, will we do more than just invite them back to church.

Instead, we will preach to them the only true message that saves-the gospel.

Unity is Spirit Led

So then, Paul is calling the Corinthians, once again to turn from their division and factions, and turn towards unity.

Their sects of loyalty to Paul or Apollos was dishonoring Christ and his church.

Paul writes in v 4,

The Spirit of God leads God’s people to be unified because God is unified as Father, Son and Spirit.

There is unity in the Godhead that models unity in the church.

God’s people should not collect themselves in cliques, or small group kingdoms that disassociate with the rest of the body.

Being divided only cripples the purpose and work of the church from fulfilling its mission on this earth.

Being led by the Spirit is being unified as a body.

So then, we have to fight our flesh when our desire might be isolate ourselves into sub groups in the church, thinking our small group bible study is better than the next.

Or we have to fight the flesh when showing loyalty to one particular leader but not the other because we have more in common with them than the other elders.

Or even divide generationally, not seeing the benefit that the younger generation can learn from the older, or the singles can learn from the married couples.

There are many ways to divide in the church but unity is a fruit of the Spirit.

2. Humility is Spirit led(vv.

5-9)

Secondly, points out that not only is unity a fruit of the Spirit in the church, but so it humility among its leaders and its people.

A. God’s Sovereignty Humbles Us