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Scripture Reading: 1 Cor. 1:2, 10-13; 2:14-16; 3:1-4, 16, 21-23; 6:13b, 15a, 17, 19-20; 12:12; 14:5, 12, 37; 16:18
In 1 Corinthians there are many special things which cannot be found in other books of the Bible. Chapter 1 tells us that Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God (vv. 24, 30). Wisdom is for planning, purposing; power is for carrying out, accomplishing, what is planned and purposed. A rich person’s capital is his power. But even if you are rich, powerful, you still need the wisdom to carry out things with your riches. If a car does not have gasoline, it does not have the power. But if a person does not have the adequate wisdom, he cannot drive the car. Both power and wisdom are needed to drive the car. In God’s economy Christ is God’s power and wisdom.
In the wisdom of God, three main things are included: righteousness, sanctification, and redemption (v. 30). Righteousness is for our past. Our past was a mess, but Christ is our righteousness for our past. Sanctification is for our present. We have to be holy, sanctified, but not by ourselves. Christ Himself is our sanctification. He is our sanctifying life for the present. In the future He will be our redemption for the redemption of our body.
In chapter 2 there are many wonderful items. Here Paul speaks of the mystery of God and of the things God foreordained and prepared for us which no eye has ever seen, no ear has ever heard, and which have not come up in man’s heart (v. 9). But God has revealed them to us through the Spirit, and they have been graciously given to us by God (vv. 10-12). God has foreordained, prepared, revealed, and given Christ to us as the Lord of glory (vv. 7-8) and the depths of God (v. 10). First Corinthians 2 also says that we have the mind of Christ (v. 16).
I hope that we would remember five items in chapter 1: power, wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. All these items are Christ Himself given to us as our divine portion from God. In chapter 2 we have to remember three things: the Lord of glory (v. 8), the depths of God, and the mind of Christ.
In 1 Corinthians 3 we have seen the planting, watering, growing, transforming, and building (vv. 6-14). We are God’s farm and God’s building, and we are growing in life on God’s farm to be produced as precious material for God’s building.
In chapter 3 Paul also speaks of the temple of God (vv. 16-17). The temple here is collective and corporate, not individual. We are many, but the temple is one. We can be made one by being fed, watered, built up, and transformed. By growing and being transformed, we become the gold, silver, and precious stones, and we are built up together to be the temple of God. We are the temple of God, and the Holy Spirit dwells in us.
At the end of chapter 3, Paul said, “All things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or things present or things to come; all are yours, but you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s” (vv. 21-23). We need to realize that all things are for us, so all things are for the temple, the church. All things, including the heavens and the earth with all the plants, animals, and human beings, are for the church. Even Satan and the demons are for the church. Surely we hate Satan and the demons, but in His sovereignty God uses even them for the building up of the church.
Things present, things to come, life, and even death are for the church. All things are for the church. This is the fundamental point of God’s purpose. God created the heavens, the earth, the angels, and all human beings for the church. God even allowed one of the angels to become His adversary, Satan, for the church. God also allowed many of the angels to rebel for the church. Everything is for the church.
The Corinthian believers foolishly said that they were of Paul and of Apollos, but Paul said that both he and Apollos were theirs. The church is not for Paul; Paul is for the church. Everything and everyone is for the church. All things are yours, and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s. This means that all things are for the church, the church is for Christ, and Christ is for God. All the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Christ (Col. 2:9), Christ is in the church, and the church is the center of the whole universe.
Now let us consider chapter 4 of 1 Corinthians. In verse 15 Paul said, “Though you have ten thousand guides in Christ, yet you do not have many fathers; for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel.” The Corinthians were not Paul’s students; they were his children. He was their begetting father.
In chapter 5 there is one striking point. Paul told us here that he could be far away from Corinth yet still attend the meeting there in his spirit. Verse 4 says, “In the name of our Lord Jesus, when you and my spirit have been assembled, with the power of our Lord Jesus.” Paul said that when they met, he was there in his spirit. This shows that we can be far away from a place, yet still be there in our spirit. Paul not only attended their meeting but also exercised the Lord’s authority to deliver a sinful one to Satan (v. 5). The apostle’s spirit was so strong that his spirit was assembled with them to carry out his judgment upon an evil person.
Now we come to chapter 6. Verse 17 says, “He who is joined to the Lord is one spirit.” This is a marvelous verse showing the believers’ organic union with the Lord through believing into Him (John 3:15-16).
First Corinthians 6 also tells us that our physical body is for the Lord and the Lord is for our physical body (v. 13). Do you have some trouble in your body? If so, you should pray, “Lord, my body is for You, and You are for my body. You have to take care of my body.” Chapter 6 is very deep. It reveals that not only our spirit but also our body is the dwelling place of God. Our body is a temple of the Holy Spirit (v. 19).
This corresponds with Romans 12, which says that if we are going to have the Body life, the church life, we must present our physical body to the Lord (v. 1). We may say that we love the Lord with our heart and serve the Lord in our spirit, but what about our body? We cannot say that we love the Lord and leave our body at home away from the church meetings. We also should have the realization that our body is for the church in the way that we dress. If we realized that our body is for the church, the Body of Christ, we would say, “Lord, how can I misuse my body? How can I usurp my body for other purposes? My body must be solely for Your Body. My body should not be an advertisement of the flesh or of the world. My body should be an advertisement of the Lord’s Body.”
We need to remember these three points: (1) he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit; (2) our body is for the Lord, and the Lord is for our body; and (3) when we use our body properly, we have the Body life. If we misuse our body, the Body of Christ cannot be among us.
Now let us consider 1 Corinthians 7. Paul told us here that he did not have the commandment of the Lord, but he expressed his opinion (v. 25). Whatever he expressed as his opinion, we have to take as the word of God. He expressed his opinion, but he also said, “I think that I also have the Spirit of God” (v. 40). When we feel that we do not have the Lord’s commandment, yet we express our opinion and this is of the Lord, this is the highest point of spirituality.
Chapter 8 speaks about the believers’ conscience. Paul speaks here of taking care of the weak ones and not wounding their weak conscience (vv. 11-12). The conscience is the main part of our spirit (Rom. 8:16 cf. 9:1). Whenever the conscience is damaged, the flow, the fellowship, of the Spirit is cut off. In other books the conscience is covered, but not in the way that Paul covers it in 1 Corinthians 8. This is because 1 Corinthians reveals that Christ is the life-giving Spirit indwelling our spirit (15:45b; 6:17), and the main part of our spirit is the conscience. If our conscience is damaged, the flow between us and the Triune God will be cut off. There will be insulation between us and the Lord, and we will feel deadened.
In chapter 9 Paul said that he sowed spiritual things to the Corinthians (v. 11). Then in chapter 10 he spoke of Christ as our spiritual food, spiritual drink, and spiritual rock (vv. 3-4).
Chapter 11 covers the truth concerning head covering (vv. 2-16) and the Lord’s table (vv. 17-34). Head covering is related to the headship of Christ, and the Lord’s table is related to the Body of Christ. Thus, chapter 11 takes care of the Head and the Body. It also speaks of the saints coming together not for profit but for loss (v. 17). Christians always think that as long as they come together that is good. But Paul said that we may come together not for the better but for the worse.
The main point in chapter 12 is that the Body, the church, is Christ. Verse 12 says, “Even as the body is one and has many members, yet all the members of the body, being many, are one body, so also is the Christ.” This verse is unique in the Bible, telling us that Christ is not only the Head but also the Body.
Chapter 13 shows us Christ as love. Tongues will cease, prophecies and knowledge will be rendered useless, but Christ as love never falls away (v. 8). He never fails, fades out, or comes to an end.
The main thing that chapter 14 reveals is that prophesying builds up the church (v. 4b).
In verse 31 Paul said, “You can all prophesy one by one that all may learn and all may be encouraged.” But in 12:29 Paul said, “Are all prophets?” Thus, chapter 12 indicates that we are not all prophets, but chapter 14 says that we can all prophesy. Also, chapter 11 says that women can pray and prophesy (v. 5), but chapter 14 says that the women have to be silent (v. 34). These varying portions of the Word show that we should not be legal. Today is the age of the Spirit. We should not make any practice a legality. In his preface to The Normal Christian Church Life, Brother Watchman Nee said that he was afraid that people would take his book as a manual to make something legal.
Today is not the age of the law. In the law everything is mentioned clearly and definitely with no room for discussion. But in 1 Corinthians 11:34 Paul said, “The rest I will set in order when I come.” This indicates that the apostle did not give instructions for everything related to the practice of the church. For “the rest” we need to seek the Lord’s leading, based on and governed by the principles set forth in the New Testament. Paul spoke to the Corinthians about division in chapters 1 and 3, about a sinful brother in chapter 5, about a lawsuit in chapter 6, about idol worship in chapter 8, and about head covering and the Lord’s table in chapter 11. But Paul did not tell them everything. If the apostle Paul could not come to us, what should we do? Paul cannot come, but the Lord is here.
If some say that we all have to pray-read, they have made pray-reading a legality. If others say that we should not pray-read, they have made this a legality. Nothing is right as long as it is a legality. When anything becomes a legality, that brings in death. We should say, “Lord, we thank You that You have not told us everything. We thank You that we have to open to You all the time.” Should we have a piano or an organ? Should we have a hymnal? We should not make anything a legality. May the Lord be merciful to us that we would never be legal. If we are legal with anything, we are finished.
In 1 Timothy 2 Paul told the sisters that they should dress in modest apparel (v. 9). We cannot define the standard of modesty. How modest is modest? Who can make the decision to set the standard? On the one hand, the revelation of the Bible is complete. On the other hand, we need the living Spirit to guide us into the reality of all things. With the law there was no room for debate. But in the New Testament many details are left up to the inner leading of the Spirit. Of course, things concerning idol worship, heresy, and immorality are not debatable, but things concerning forms and practices should not be legal.
How long should our meetings be and at what time should they be? The Bible does not tell us these things. Then what should we do? This is why Paul said, “The rest I will set in order when I come.” With so many questions and problems, we have to look to the Lord’s presence. We should say, “Lord, we cannot find any regulation in Your Word, but You are the living Word.” We need a living contact with the Lord. We have to take all the regulations and instructions of the New Testament in spirit. The letter of the Old Testament and of the New Testament is killing. It is the Spirit who gives life (2 Cor. 3:6).
Paul goes on in 1 Corinthians 15 to say that the last Adam became a life-giving Spirit (v. 45b). In incarnation Christ became flesh for redemption (John 1:14, 29). Then in resurrection He became a life-giving Spirit for the impartation of life (10:10b).
In 1 Corinthians 16 Paul pointed out that certain faithful ones refreshed both his spirit and the spirits of all the saints (vv. 17-18). Paul did not say that they refreshed his mind, emotion, or loving heart. He said that they refreshed his spirit. You cannot find this point anywhere else in the Bible. This is because in this book the apostle’s intention is to tell us that we have to always be in the spirit. If we are not in the spirit, it is impossible for us to experience Christ and have the church life.
In 1 Corinthians Paul did not say as much about himself as he did in 2 Corinthians. Brother Watchman Nee said that 2 Corinthians may be considered as an autobiography of Paul. But still in his first Epistle you can see that he is a person behaving, acting, working, moving, and having his being in the spirit. Chapters 4, 5, and 7 show that Paul was such a person, a person absolutely in the spirit. Then in the last chapter he said that the brothers who came to him refreshed his spirit. Paul cared for his spirit first. He was a person altogether in the spirit.
We have to remember that 1 Corinthians is not a book for the individual believers but a book for the church. We have to pay attention to the second verse of this book, in which Paul addresses the church of God in Corinth with all those who call upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ in every place. It is not and but with all those who call upon the Lord’s name. If Paul had used the word and, that would mean that all the saints were standing on the same level as the church. But Paul used the word with, indicating that the saints belong to the church. If we say, “The parents came with the children,” this means that the children belong to the parents. This book was written to the church with all the saints. This means that all the saints need a church with which they can be identified.
This book is full of a church concept. All that was written in it is with a church-consciousness. It was not a book written to an individual, but to the local church with all the saints. If we want to know this book, we have to be in the church. If we are not in a local church, we do not have the proper standing, qualification, or position to understand it. If we want to see a particular thing, we have to be positioned at the proper angle, and the proper angle for us to understand this book is the local church.
In 1:10 Paul said, “Now I beseech you, brothers, through the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all speak the same thing and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be attuned in the same mind and in the same opinion.” It is possible to have the same mind and opinion and speak the same thing only when we are in the spirit. When we are in the soul, we can never have the same mind. The only way is for us to be transformed by remaining in the spirit.
In verse 13 Paul said, “Is Christ divided?” Paul said this because Christ is in you, in me, and in all the saints. This implies that we have to forget about ourselves and simply take Christ. Then we are one. If we do not take Christ practically in our daily life, how can we be one with one another? It is impossible. We are many individuals, but Christ is one. When we are in ourselves, we are many, but when we have Christ and are in Christ, we are one.
In chapter 2 Paul reveals that to have Christ, to realize Christ, to experience Christ, and to partake of Christ, we need to be spiritual, not soulish. The soulish man, the man in the soul, can never realize the things of Christ (v. 14). This is like trying to realize sound with your eyes. Sound can be realized only by our hearing organ. Christ is the life-giving Spirit, and He can be realized only by our spiritual organ, that is, our spirit. Only the spiritual man can discern the depths of God, which are Christ Himself (vv. 10-11, 15).
This is not just a doctrine. We have to be in the spirit so that the Spirit can saturate our soul and take over our whole being. Then we can say, as Paul said in 2:16, that we have the mind of Christ. We in this verse does not refer to the fleshly or soulish believers at Corinth but to the ones in verse 6 who preach God’s wisdom and minister the spiritual things to the spiritual persons (v. 13). These are the apostles and all those who walk in the spirit. The fleshly and soulish believers cannot say that they have the mind of Christ.
Romans 12:2 tells us to be transformed by the renewing of the mind. Only the regenerated and transformed Christians can say that they have the mind of Christ. A person like Paul is qualified to say that he has the mind of Christ because he is spiritual and he has been transformed by having his mind renewed with the saturation of the Holy Spirit. Such a person can express his opinion because he has the mind of Christ. His opinion has something of Christ.
A soulish man is a natural man, one who allows his soul (including the mind, the emotion, and the will) to dominate his entire being and who lives by his soul, ignoring his spirit, not using his spirit, and even behaving as if he did not have a spirit (Jude 19). Soulish Christians like to argue and debate over doctrinal matters.
Some Christians are even worse than soulish. Paul said that the Corinthian believers were fleshly and even fleshy (1, 1 Cor. 3:3). This means that they were totally of the flesh. First Corinthians 5 and 6 describe what it is to be fleshy. There are the immoral things such as fornication and adultery in chapter 5 and contentions, envying, and strife leading to lawsuits among the believers in chapter 6.
Paul, of course, was neither fleshy nor soulish. He was a spiritual man. Paul demonstrated the Spirit by exercising his spirit (2:4). His spirit was so strong that he attended the Corinthians’ meeting in his spirit even though he could not be there physically. With fleshly and soulish people, there is no possibility of having the church life. Only spiritual people can have the church life.
Today there is a wrong concept among seeking Christians. The fundamental Christians think that the church can be built up by teachings. The Pentecostal Christians think that the church can be built up by the gifts. But history has shown that doctrines and gifts have divided the Lord’s children. The only way that the church can be built up is for us to be spiritual Christians, Christians who live according to our spirit mingled with the Spirit of God.
We should care only for the enjoyment of the Lord. Then we will be of one mind, of one opinion, and we will speak the same thing. When we turn to our spirit, we are the same. As we live in the spirit, the church as the farm of God will grow Christ. Christ has been sown into us, and now He needs to grow out of us. What we need today is to turn ourselves to the spirit. Then we will grow Christ and be transformed. If we remain in the spirit, regardless of our environment or circumstances, we will be taken over by the Spirit and become different persons. Then there will be the real possibility for us to have the church life. The only possibility for us to be built up into the temple of God is for us to be in the spirit. We are one in the spirit because in our spirit there is nothing except Christ, and Christ is everything. When we have Christ, we have love and patience. When we have Christ, we have everything.
If we are in the spirit, we will use our physical body in a proper way. We need to let the Spirit take over our whole being; then we will know how to use our body. The possibility for the church life is in our spirit, but the practicality of the church life is with our body. In 1 Corinthians 2 and 3 Paul deals with the spirit, the soul, and the flesh, and in chapter 6 he deals with our physical body. If we are going to have a proper church life, we have to use our body in the right way.
If you are careless in the way that you dress, you are misusing your body. Your body is for Christ, and Christ is for your body (v. 13). People in the world like to stay up late, making the day the night and the night the day. If we are like this, it will be difficult for us to have a time with the Lord in the morning. In this matter, we misuse our body. We have to be in the spirit to control our body and use it in the proper way.
Chapter 6 covers the sins of fornication and of eating in excess (v. 13). If we eat at restaurants often, we are misusing our body because that is not healthy for us. We have to be delivered from many old habits by which we misuse our body. Everything concerning the way we eat, dress, and live for our physical existence has to be proper. Our body should be absolutely for the Lord and for nothing else.
We need to learn the lesson of having our spirit strengthened by the Lord, our soul saturated with the Lord, and our body controlled by the Lord. Then there will be the possibility and the practicality for us to have the church life. Then the church can be built up as the temple of God, and we can glorify God in our body in a corporate way (v. 20). We will be the living members of the Body of Christ in our body with our spirit strengthened and all the parts of our soul saturated with the Spirit.
